Raptors guard draws comparison to a franchise legend

Jamal Shead has had an extremely strong start to the season.

Players drafted where Shead was drafted -- 45th overall, halfway through the second round in an historically weak draft -- don't tend to make an impact right away. Not so for Jamal Shead, who was a star at Houston in college and was the national Defensive Player of the Year last season. He came in ready to play, and with a skillset that appears to have translated smoothly to the NBA.

Through Tuesday's games, Shead ranked first in the rookie class in both total assists and assists per game. He has been a menace defensively, both on-ball and as a help defender. He pushes the ball in transition and helps to ignite a roster well-equipped to thrive on the move. In his first five games he has already played 101 minutes. The Raptors have a trio of rookies all contributing in unexpected ways, and he has been the best of the bunch.

Jamal Shead received the best comparison

While playing the Denver Nuggets on Monday night, Jamal Shead stepped in and took a charge on Julian Strawther, his second drawn charge of the night. The broadcast team proceeded to make a compelling comparison for the rookie guard: that he looked a lot like Kyle Lowry out on the court.

Kyle Lowry was, of course, the greatest player in franchise history, the epitome of an entire era of Raptors basketball. He was never the on-ball sueprstar, but rather the glue that held everything together. He scored, yes, but he also passed, defended, screened, rebounded, hustled, got deflections, dove on the court -- and famously, drew a lot of charges.

Charges drawn is a stat that doesn't go back to the start of the NBA, but rather was tracked starting in 1996-97. In that time, no player in the NBA has drawn more charges than Kyle Lowry. He has something around 290 drawn charges in his career, well ahead of the second-place Ersan Iylasova. The image of a smaller guard standing in and drawing an offensive foul is quintessential Kyle Lowry.

Lowry was himself an undersized, unheralded guard when he entered the league; he went 24th, higher than Shead, but then bounced around the league a bit because his impact on a game wasn't as obvious as the high-octane scoring guards populating the league. Yet Lowry proved his worth, eventually improving as a scorer as well to become a perennial All-Star and, in 2019, one of the best players on a championship team.

As a rookie, Lowry averaged 17.5 minutes per game, putting up 5.6 points and 3.2 assists. Shead is currently averaging 20.2 minutes per game while scoring 8.2 points and dishing 5.6 assists. Those numbers likely go down once Immanuel Quickley returns, but he's off to a strong start.

Visually the comparisons are certainly there. Both point guards are 6'0" tall, with Lowry officially listed at 196 pounds and Shead at 200. Both are active verbally and in moving constantly on the court. The intensity from each is palpable.

Shead has a long ways to go if he is going to be a future Hall of Fame point guard, but there is plenty of room for him to grow into a steal without becoming the literal second coming of Kyle Lowry. If he is a long-term rotation piece the Raptors will have nailed the pick; to be more he will need to improve as a shooter and a scorer, just as Lowry once did.

Shead has been one of the bright spots in a difficult start to the season, and for fans to see a little of a franchise legend in his game is the highest of compliments.