Father Time Still Can’t Catch Kyle Lowry

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but when the Toronto Raptors needed a bucket Friday night, they turned to Kyle Lowry. At times it looked more like a 2020 playoff game than a 2020 preseason game.

The 34-year-old Lowry laced up his sneakers for the first time in the Raptors’ final preseason and showed no signs of aging. He seemed to roll out of bed and just do what he always does, nailing pull-up 3-pointer one after another while finding a little time to argue with a referee or two. Even in a 117-105 loss to the Miami Heat in the Raptors’ so-called preseason “home opener” at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Lowry was vintage Lowry.

“It felt great. It was great to be with my teammates, with the guys,” Lowry said. “We’ve got some kinks to work out. I think the flow was a little bit better for the first unit than the Charlotte games. I think our first unit got a little bit more flow, a little bit more uptempo, a little bit more talking. I think we played pretty good defence. But it’s a long, long, long journey, long season.”

After promising to take it easy on Lowry early in the season, Raptors coach Nick Nurse rode Lowry for 27 minutes in the first three quarters. It was hard to take him out, even in a preseason game. Eventually, he let Lowry rest up, giving him the fourth quarter off, but not before he scored a team-high 25 points with 5-for-6 shooting from behind the arc.

“He obviously was really good, excited to play [and] being back,” Nurse said. “I wish a couple of guys had gone with him in that same kind of zeal and excitement but they didn’t.”

As long as Lowry can keep up his incredible scoring pace, the Raptors will be in good shape. He’s their go-to guy in the clutch, stopping runs, and one of the few guys on the team that can create for himself in the half court. But eventually, Father Time is going to catch up with Lowry. It has to, right? When that happens, Toronto is going to need someone else to step up to fill that void and help Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam with the offensive load.

Here are a couple of observations from Friday preseason finale:

1. DeAndre’ Bembry’s played a lot.

Unlike earlier in the preseason when Nurse mixed and matched his lineups throughout the night, on Friday, Nurse kept things pretty tight through the first three quarters. He went with a 10-man rotation that included Lowry, VanVleet, Siakam, OG Anunoby, Aron Baynes, Chris Boucher, Norman Powell, Terence Davis II, DeAndre’ Bembry, and Matt Thomas.

Earlier in the week Nurse said he was impressed by how Bembry has played and Friday night’s action shouldn’t sway that. Bembry is a bit of a utility player for Toronto. He can guard one through three at a really high level and his offensive game is a little underrated. Midway through the third quarter he cut to the hoop and threw a beautiful kick-out pass to Anunoby for a 3-point attempt.

“He is really unselfish. He passes the ball, he likes to pass the ball. He does all the hustle plays. He’s really good on defence. His energy is always high,” Boucher said of Bembry. “The second unit is always based on energy so it’s always good to have a guy like that kind of help us and get us extra possessions.”

Nurse has always prioritized defence, so don’t be surprised if someone like Bembry who profiles more as a defence-first player gets more playing time than some of the more offensively explosive guards.

2. Chris Boucher logged significant centre minutes

Boucher is still Boucher. He’s going to do a lot of things that make your eyes pop, both good and bad. When he’s on, he can hit a few 3-pointers as he showed against Miami, going 3-for-4 from behind the arc. When he’s off, he’ll make some head-scratching decisions, taking ill-advised shots and taking frustrating fouls.

“I think first and foremost, Chris has got to be a defender for us, and a rebounder and a rim protector. He’s got to be,” Nurse said. “He can’t be a guy that’s not being able to hold his own on his position on offence and hope he gets it back at the other end.

“I always say that he can play offence, hit the shot as we saw tonight, he can roll and dunk. A lot of that’s kind of icing on the cake offence for us.”

I wouldn’t expect Boucher to take over the starting centre duties any time soon, but Baynes didn’t look particularly impressive Friday night and so more minutes from Boucher could be in store if he can cut down on some of those not so great plays.

Up Next:

The Raptors will start the 2020-21 NBA regular season on Wednesday when they host the New Orleans Pelicans in Tampa.