Title: KYLE LOWRY HAD THE REDEMPTION GAME TORONTO NEEDED
Date: April 19, 2017
Original Source: Vice
Synopsis: For my latest at Vice, I wrote about Kyle Lowry’s bounce-back Game 2 after a terrible Game 1 showing against the Bucks.
Two days can be a long time.
Following yet another Game 1 loss, the Toronto Raptors were forced, by schedule, to sit and wait for an opportunity to make things right, the cloud of another 0-1 series hole festering over their first-round matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks. Rest is great, and in this case Serge Ibaka’s ankle probably benefitted from it, but most players say the best thing to do after a bad outing is to get back on the court and wash it away. With all that time to sit and analyze, there’s plenty of room for overthinking.
That the Raptors had been here before didn’t make the Game 1 loss OK by any means, but their collective experience fighting through this same type of adversity was at least able to inform how they’d approach the time between games. For DeMar DeRozan, that meant giving his co-star some space following a disastrous Game 1 performance.
“Nothing,” DeRozan said between games when asked what he’d said to Lowry after the point guard went 2-of-11 from the floor in the opener. “It’s just him figuring it out. One thing, Kyle’s mind works at 1,000 miles per hour. Once he settles down, he gonna figure it out.”