Sweet vindication: Lowry, Raptors deliver clutch performance in Game 7
I want to go back to the aftermath of Game 1 when Kyle Lowry was shooting by himself at the ACC until 1 a.m.
Here was the the franchise player looking utterly defeated after scoring just seven points in a loss. He didn’t even have someone to rebound the ball for him. He just chased after misses, not knowing why his shot abandoned him, not knowing what was wrong, not knowing why he suddenly went from a top-10 player to being outplayed by backups.
Lowry wasn’t just searching for his shot. He was searching for himself.
There was a perception that Lowry wasn’t clutch. There were headlines being spun around how Lowry was the worst playoff performer of all-time. People connected the dots from this year to last year, to the Brooklyn series before that, and concluded that Lowry, and the Raptors by extension, weren’t real.
That had to be eating away at Lowry. He’s been tortured ever since Bradley Beal, John Wall, and Paul Pierce punked him. He didn’t have ‘it’, but damned if he wasn’t searching. Lowry reshaped his entire body, dropping down from a plump dumpling to a slice of jerky, as he devoted his entire summer to rewriting the narrative.
What followed was the best year of his career. Elite two-way production. Perfectly healthy aside from a bulgy elbow. Made the All-Star Game again. Stood toe-to-toe against Stephen Curry and drilled buzzer-beaters to beat LeBron James. Led the franchise to 56 wins.
He was looking for revenge.
But then he fell flat on his face again. His shot looked awful against Indiana. Those struggles carried over against the Heat. And so after having his supporting cast drag him past the finish line in Round 1, only to open with yet another loss at home, Lowry tried jumper after jumper by his lonesome, hoping against hope that the curse wasn’t real, that his shot would eventually drop — that he would have his sweet vindication.
Fast-forward to Game 7.
The stage is set. No other games on the schedule. All eyes on the Raptors. They got the afternoon game with ESPN in town. They sent their top broadcasting crew of Mike Breen, Mark Jackson, and Jeff Van Gundy. Everyone (except for Drake) was watching.
What they saw was Lowry at his best. He even got Breen to scream “BANG!” so you know it’s real.
He had shown signs of breaking out before that. Lowry scored 33 in Game 3 to put the Raptors in the driver’s seat. He followed that with another stinker, but scored 25 and 36 in Games 5 and 6. Lowry was coming out of his funk, and so were the Raptors.
Game 7 featured Lowry at his finest. That’s the superstar that powered the Raptors to a franchise-high in victories. The pull-up threes around high picks, the speeding layups in transition, spotting open threes and dropping dimes for dunks, playing lockdown defense — the rest of the world saw the real Lowry that we watched all season.
Lowry finished with 35 points, 9 assists, 7 rebounds, and four steals. He was a plus-31 in 42 minutes. He held Goran Dragic to 16 points on 6–17 shooting after the Dragon popped off for 30 in Game 6.
Those 1 a.m. shooting sessions, all the sleepless nights, working out in the desert during the summer — that all paid off.
Lowry got his vindication.
Now when you look up “Kyle Lowry Game 7” it’s no longer Pierce’s block. It’s highlights from the best game of his career.
It’s also vindication for the Raptors as a team.
You can still talk about the circumstances, you can point to Lowry and DeRozan’s inefficient shooting, you can gripe about ugly, backward basketball, you can harp on them needing seven games in both rounds, you can say the East sucks, you cite luck or injuries. That’s all fair.
But they’re one of four teams left standing. Say whatever you want, just remember that part. They made it to the conference finals. They did something right.
The worst part of seeing the Raptors struggle was the haunting feeling that this team, as constructed, wasn’t any good. The fear was that they lacked something — elite talent, mental fortitude, top-notch schematics — that made them incapable of elevating their game when it mattered most. And since everyone kept reminding us of their flaws (even after victories) there was no space to feel good about the Raptors.
They won, but that wasn’t changing what anybody thought of this team because of how it happened. The Raptors were a disappointment right until they ran away with Game 7 in the fourth quarter. They stomped on the Heat and asserted their dominance. They reminded everyone what the Raptors were capable of.
Finally, fans can feel happy without disclaimer, can feel proud without a caveat, can feel confidence without discouragement. They’ve finally shed the monkey off their back after winning two rounds.
Or look at it this way: The subtext to all the criticism was that the Raptors were supposed to be good. Because in order for the Raptors to disappoint, there had to been expectation. And in order for there to be expectation, they must have been good enough to earn it. The fourth-most wins in the regular season will do that.
But those weren’t the stakes from the outset. They set that bar themselves. Coming into the season, the Raptors were pegged as a mid-tier playoff team. Look at the SB Nation predictions panel that featured seven respected NBA analysts: Not one of them had the Raptors in the top-four. Two of them even had the Raptors missing the playoffs.
So for analysts to now attack them for a hollow series victory against the 7-seed, or to harp endlessly on their struggles against an injured Heat team—how did these expectations come about? And did anyone expect anything more than a conference finals appearance?
They’re here now. It hasn’t been easy, it certainly wasn’t pretty, but the Raptors have been vindicated.
