Watching Kyle Lowry, the Raptors' All-Star Guard Who Looks Nothing Like Himself

The world opened up for Kyle Lowry. It was nearly midway through the fourth quarter, and a screen set by Jonas Valanciunas worked as designed. This was a Canadian Tire situation: Lowry had all the paint in the world to work with. He could do what he wanted with it.

This is where Lowry excels. He is not the world's best finisher at the rim—he is not explosive enough to earn that status, not even close—but he routinely makes the correct decisions in those situations. There was nobody around the rim. The situation screamed layup.

Instead, Lowry threw a pass over two Miami Heat defenders to Valanciunas, who was moving away from the rim. Valanciunas somehow corralled it and scored. Credit to the big man and his soft hands. More pressingly, it was another damning play in a damning playoffs for Lowry, the Raptors' best player and beating heart.

In the Raptors' opening-round win over Indiana, Lowry shot just 31.6 percent, but his impact was still evident. He was doing the things that he does, minus raining in 3-pointers: stepping in for charges, running the pick-and-roll to set up Valanciunas, stripping opposing big men of the ball under the glass. In the Raptors' Game 1 loss to Miami on Tuesday night, Lowry looked legitimately lost for the first time this playoffs. He had no points and one assist in almost 19 first-half minutes. Given how essential Lowry is to everything the Raptors do, that is almost impossible.

"I passed up a lot of shots tonight. I passed up a lot, a ton of shots, actually," said Lowry after the game, still clutching a basketball after a postgame shooting session in the Air Canada Centre practice gym. Following his time in front of the cameras, Lowry would head out to the main court to shoot some more, without even a coach to rebound for him. "With the poor shooting, I think that's what it did to me a little bit more tonight."

This game, a 102-96 overtime win for Miami, was dumber and less plausible than the ending of Dexter. Inbounding the ball seemed like a herculean task. DeMar DeRozan hit two shots while getting fouled in the span of 36 seconds in the fourth quarter, and missed the free throw both times. The Heat missed dunks on back-to-back possessions. Miami shot 73 percent from 3-point range, while the Raptors shot 24 percent. The Heat played the first half as if they were hammered, while the Raptors merely looked buzzed. Terrence Ross was really good. It goes on.

Weirdest of all, of course, was Lowry's night. Lowry hit just 3-of-13 shots on the evening. One was fairly conventional, a layup. The other, his first of the night, was a leaner he did not even want to take, as he was looking for the foul. The final was a halfcourt heave that miraculously fell. Of course, it looked like Lowry stepped out of bounds before taking the shot. Even the weirdest thing in this weird game could not be the normal kind of weird. It had to be the complicated kind of weird.

"As soon as it left his hand," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said, "I think everybody in the building kind of had an idea that it would go."

No they didn't! Lowry looks shaken, and it is startling. Lowry has sworn that his elbow, which bothered him at various points in the second half of the season, is not an issue right now. His insistence on taking shots following the game instead of resting and icing it lends credence to his words.

That, however, is scary for Raptors fans. That means the struggles are less explainable.

"It's definitely a feel, just trying to get the touch back," Lowry said. "I don't know where it's at. It's kind of mind-boggling right now. It's frustrating. I'm not going to shy away from the criticism or anything. I'm going to continue to be aggressive, shoot shots and take the onus. I know I'm not playing well at all. We got out of that one series with me not playing well, shooting the ball well. But we've got to get out of this next series. I have to play better, shoot the ball better, score the ball better.

"Right now (there are) definitely a thousand different things going on (in my mind) because of how I'm… shooting the ball."

What do you even do about that? The Raptors' offence, so potent in the regular season, is a mess right now. DeMar DeRozan will catch some criticism for another inefficient night—22 points on 22 field-goal attempts, including a period in the third quarter where he dominated the offence—but a lot of that is the result of Lowry's struggles. DeRozan feels like he needs to provide the offence because his running mate is not only missing shots, but also actively avoiding those shots.

As the offence sputtered and died in overtime, the Raptors continuously ran high screen-and-rolls, with each one easily sniffed out by Miami's defence. When Lowry is not a real threat to shoot, stopping the play is easy enough. Perhaps the Raptors need to get Valanciunas more post touches to diversify the offence, but given Valanciunas's occasional lack of awareness—he was excellent Tuesday, by the way—that could be problematic, too.

"I mean, listen, playoffs, all eyes are on you," Lowry said. "So it sucks that I'm playing this bad when all eyes are on me because I know I'm way better than this. So I gotta pick this shit up."

Basketball can be an intricate, complicated sport. Lowry, however, is right in this case. Right now, it is as simple as Lowry makes it sound.