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Kyle Lowry's offence goes missing in Raptors' series-opening loss
By Dave FeschukSports Columnist
Sat., April 13, 2019timer5 min. read
The other day, before the Raptors' shocking 104-101 loss to the Orlando Magic in Saturday's playoff opener, first-year head coach Nick Nurse spent a few minutes describing the evolving nature of Kyle Lowry's role on the most promising team in the history of the franchise.
The Raptors can win, Nurse said, without the 33-year-old Lowry doing the kind of heavy lifting that was once expected of him. They can win, he insisted, with Lowry scoring four points or 34 points.
But as for Saturday's glaring total of zero points — Lowry's inaugural playoff goose egg as a Raptor — well, that clearly wasn't in the grand plan. Lowry's dismal, deja-vu-inducing shooting performance had to be heaped onto the long list of suboptimal ingredients the Raptors tossed into Game 1's unappetizing stew.
"We need to get him involved a little bit offensively and we need some points from him," Nurse acknowledged after it was over. Well, yes.
If you thought this week's episode of Serge Ibaka's cooking show was stomach-turning — and, if you missed it, the instant classic featured the Congolese-Spanish chef grossing out Kawhi Leonard with a serving of beef-penis pizza — Game 1 was far more unappetizing and not nearly as entertaining.
It wasn't optimal for the home team that Magic point guard D.J. Augustin outscored Lowry by a whopping 25 points to zero. It was hardly ideal that, with Augustin often guarded by Danny Green, the opponent Lowry mostly attempted to check, Evan Fournier, often proved too much for Lowry to handle, too, scoring 16 points.
It didn't seem right that Nurse limited Kawhi Leonard, as great as Leonard was in a 25-point performance that saw him score Toronto's final five points on a pair of clutch jumpers, to 33 minutes of playing time. Load management's one thing — and Nurse insisted Leonard wasn't on a minutes limit — but Toronto clearly could have used more of Leonard's dominant offence. And Game 2 doesn't go until Tuesday night.
"Obviously I'm ready to play more minutes, if need be," Leonard said. But when it comes to Leonard's minutes, to be fair, nothing has been obvious. And if Lowry's not a factor, the need goes without saying.
It didn't speak to Toronto's championship-bound readiness either that, after a season in which it used 22 different starting lineups and rarely had its core rotation together due to Leonard's absences and various injuries, the Raptors spent Saturday's post-game blaming communication issues on the defensive miscues that allowed the Magic to shoot a nifty 48% from three-point range. Augustin's open look for the game-winning three-ball was chalked up to a misread of the coverage, too.
And it could only seem like a frightening flashback that the new-look Raptors — as much as they've revamped their core by trading away beloved players over the past nine months — fell back into old ways in the post-season opener. Sure, last year the franchise finally claimed to have buried its infamous playoff-opener jinx with a win over the Wizards. And this year, if you were the betting type, the Raptors seemed destined to rewrite the playoff narrative with a convincing victory. Heck, Toronto was favoured by 10 points in some sports books. DeMar DeRozan wasn't around to be the scapegoat. So blame the presence of Jonas Valanciunas, the longtime Toronto big man who was traded to Memphis in February and watched from courtside. And let's assume that betting line's coming down for Game 2.
Clearly Orlando's defence ranked eighth in the league for a reason. Their long and rangy defenders posed problems.
The good news, for Raptor fans, was that the home team didn't exactly seem shaken by the loss. You know the old saying, it's a make-or-miss league? Toronto, to be fair, missed a bunch of open shots. Lowry, who went 0-for-6 from three-point range and 0-for-7 overall, sloughed off his poor night as a matter of gaping opportunity squandered. And fair enough.
"I got some looks and missed them — that's about it," he said. "It's nothing to me. I missed some shots that were open. I did well on the floor general side, but I've got to make some shots."
All of that's true. Lowry had eight assists against just two turnovers. He was a team-high plus-11. Which is why Nurse kept him on the floor longer than any player not named Pascal Siakam.
"I thought he was impacting the game," Nurse said. "I took him out midway through the fourth for his normal last rest before he goes in, and it was a decision, was I gonna? I look down and I see he was a plus-12 in the plus-minus and he had zero points, so he was still impacting the game greatly. I thought he was a positive factor in the game, which is why we went with him. I'm sure he'll bounce back and play a little bit better next game."
Will he? Certainly there are fans who'll remember post-season runs in which Lowry remained lousy for most of the duration. It's not fair to say Lowry hasn't performed well in the playoffs — just ask him. There've been moments when Lowry has been great, for sure, and they're some of the best moments in the franchise's modest history of success. But he's also played a considerable role in some epic post-season stinkers. And he certainly knows his way around a slow start. Lowry is now a career 26% shooter from the field in his six playoff-opening losses with the Raptors.
Maybe he rights the ship. But the more you see him play, the more you realize he's not what he used to be. On Saturday, while the quick and athletic Augustin was a threat both inside and out — scoring 10 points in the paint and 12 from beyond the arc — Lowry was alarmingly passive, barely bothering to venture into the interior. He missed both free throws after one of the only times he did.
"He's going to get in a rhythm," Leonard said. "He's been sitting for the last five days, with missing that (season finale)."
Some of us were under the impression that Toronto's NBA franchise considers excessive rest a good thing. But never mind. It's the same old Game 1 result, sure, even if we're pretty sure these aren't the same old Raptors. One thing we can say with certainty: Saturday saw the 33-year-old Lowry looking suddenly older than his age. Luckily redemption is two off days away.
Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk
Demar Derozan, Kyle Lowry