Kyle Lowry Had the Redemption Game Toronto Needed

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

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."

Prior to Tuesday's tip-off, head coach Dwane Casey echoed a similar approach.

"No," he said of a pregame sit-down talk. "Now is not the time to go to him. He's a self-starter, he understands the situation, and I'll be very shocked if he doesn't come out and play much better."

Lowry didn't exactly instill confidence in a bounce back on Sunday, when he said he'd approach Game 2 by being more aggressive at his teammates' behest and "force some more shots." The quote and attitude probably weren't indicative of Lowry's actual plan, but two years removed from a poor playoff performance and a year after a potentially elbow-related shooting slump extended through two rounds, eyes were understandably on Lowry out of the gate.

To call his Game 2 performance a bounce back would be a bit of an understatement, given the stakes.

Lowry was masterful Tuesday, scoring 22 points on just 12 field-goal attempts thanks to a pair of threes and nine trips to the free-throw line. He also added four rebounds and three steals, dished out five assists, and was a plus-7, the second-best mark in the game. It's perhaps that last number that resonates most, as Lowry's shown in the past he can be a huge positive even when his shot isn't falling, with last year's playoff on-off court numbers reaching staggering proportions despite the wayward jumper.

To hear Lowry tell it, there wasn't much of an adjustment beyond playing better.

"Just playing," Lowry said. "Going out there and taking my shots. Being aggressive. My teammates challenged me, like I said before, and I got to the free-throw line nine times. Got aggressive early and the second half, DeMar kind of got himself going. So we balanced well tonight. For me, it was just going out there and playing."

He may be guilty of over-simplifying here. The Raptors did make some schematic tweaks to try to open up additional driving room for Lowry, particularly early on in the game, and Lowry responded by attacking with more vigor. He still looked shy heading into the paint on occasion—he missed a layup trying to bait a foul on Khris Middleton, passed up a look at the rim to get DeRozan a slightly better one, and picked up his dribble in the paint a couple of times looking for a pass out—but this was also a big part of the game plan, to collapse Milwaukee's length after traps and get the ball out to open shooters (the Raptors responded by hitting 14-of-29 from long range).

All told, Lowry drove 15 times in Game 2, shooting 3-of-5 on those drives, getting fouled twice, and tallying one assist, a big change from producing zero points on 10 drives in Game 1. Lowry also had three secondary assists, and combined with DeRozan's four, it was clear that those two did a better job moving the ball away from Milwaukee's exceptional length and aggression.

"That's the way they play. They kinda make you get in there, they all come to the ball, you gotta kick out," Lowry explained. "You gotta make shots against those guys. Their length is their strength, so once you get in the paint, they're all in there. Trying to kick out, and we gotta make shots. It was there. We watched the film and that was one of the things that was open for us, get in the paint."

Lowry's redemption came with two big, defining, KLOE-type moments down the stretch, too. Lowry has long had a sense of the moment, and it's been his late-game heroics as much as his quarters-long surges that have ingratiated him to fans and earned him the Kyle Lowry Over Everything acronym (shout out to Zach Harper, and rest in peace Daily Dime Live). One goof with a sign in Jurassic Park aside, Lowry's earned the trust of the fan base with the game on the line, and the Air Canada Centre shook of a game-long anxious energy to dial in for the closing possessions.

Up two with 40 seconds to go, Lowry wound up switched onto Giannis Antetokounmpo thanks to a pair of screens from guards, and the 7-foot Greek began backing him down. It's still unclear if Lowry tried to draw a charge or pulled the chair—Casey would only say Lowry's entitled to that space—but Toronto's All-Star guard hit the floor, Antetokounmpo stumbled and couldn't take advantage of his substantial size advantage, and a swing of the ball resulted in a rushed Middleton miss.

(On the list of Lowry specialties, him guarding much bigger players in the post grades high, but expecting anything but a clean turnaround jumper here would have been asking too much.)

Still up two coming out of a timeout with 23 seconds left, Casey called DeRozan's number. Lowry had done the bulk of his damage on offense early, ceding the reigns to DeRozan as the latter heated up in the second half, and so DeRozan, as he often does, got the nod. The Bucks sent two players, including Antetokounmpo, DeRozan's way, and so the ball found its way to Lowry through Ibaka. Lowry used an Ibaka screen to get some steam driving toward Malcolm Brogdon, crossed over, and pulled up from 20 feet. Four-point game.

"For me, I just wanted to get to my spot," Lowry said. "I knew there was five seconds on the shot clock, I wanted to get to my spot. Get to my spot and let it go. At the end of the day, I work on my shot almost every day, so if I missed it, I would have still been happy because I got to my spot. But I was gonna try to make it."

The clutch basket will rightfully stand out. If the Raptors go on to win this series, Lowry turning things around after just one bad game—this ranked eighth among his 46 playoff games in terms of Basketball-Reference's Game Score, while Game 1 was 40th—will have been a big part of that.

"It's just his competitive edge. He's one of those guys who is a competitor," Casey said. "Being with him over these years, I've seen him be in the trenches with him before. He's always bounced back. That's just who he is. He's a competitor. He's a fighter."

That's not to say Lowry and the Raptors are in the clear yet. They only narrowly avoided being down 0-2, and the ball movement that helped free Lowry for a better, more aggressive night disappeared briefly in the third quarter when the Raptors seemed to get content with what proved a tenuous lead. They can be better, and the Bucks weren't thrilled with their defensive performance. As far as steps in the right direction go, though, this one was about as substantial as an Antetokounmpo stride in the open court.