DeMar DeRozan remembers too many losses and too many struggles and too much disappointment not to revel in being with a Toronto Raptors team that once again has made franchise history. In his ninth season, a career that included an ugly 22-win second campaign, DeRozan has now seen the best year ever as the Raptors routed the Indiana Pacers 92-73 on a history-making Friday night at the Air Canada Centre. “It just shows that once you put your mind toward something, work toward a goal, it can be accomplished,” DeRozan said after the home team blew out Indiana. “We did that. Now, we’ve got another goal that we want to reach as well. So this gives us the confidence that we can do it and take it to another level.”
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Toronto clinched first place in the Eastern Conference for the first time ever. The victory was the team’s 57th of the season, eclipsing the team record set two seasons ago. Their 33rd home win marks another franchise record. And with three games left in the season, if they run the table they’ll reach the 60-win plateau, long considered a benchmark for a franchise. And Dwane Casey will still be a cool dad in his neighbourhood.
Toronto Raptors forward Serge Ibaka, right, smiles with teammate Jonas Valanciunas on the team bench during. Ibaka scored 25 points — the most he’s ever had as a Raptor — and tied a season high with five three-pointers, while also grabbing eight rebounds. ( Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press )
“I think the Raptors are cool now,” Casey said, discussing his team’s growing popularity before the game. “Before, when I first got here, basketball, you know, it was basketball. But now it’s fun, it’s cool. Kids at my daughter’s school, they wear Raptors gear, hats. Some of it I’ve given ’em, but it’s cool. “They’re on the playground playing basketball in sub-zero weather. You see hoops in the driveway instead of hockey nets — and that’s never going to change. This is always going to be a hockey country, and I understand that and respect that, but it’s still cool to play basketball now.” Especially the way the Raptors have played it this season. “There’s a sense of gratification, watching the growth of the program ... from scratch to the No. 1 seed in our conference,” Casey said post-game. “So that’s good. We’re not satisfied. We still have some things to get done and work on and to accomplish, but I know everyone in that locker room had something to do with it.”
With a far more diverse offence and a bench that’s the best in the NBA, Toronto has any number of ways to win games. They got Friday’s on the strength of a defence that held Indiana to less than 35-per-cent shooting from the field and an explosive offensive night from Serge Ibaka. The veteran forward scored 25 points — the most he’s ever had as a Raptor — and tied a season high with five three-pointers, while also grabbing eight rebounds. DeRozan had 12 points and eight assists, and Jakob Poeltl added 10. The Raptors defence was as good for stretches Friday as it has been in weeks, holding Indiana to 25-per-cent shooting in the first half while taking a 12-point lead into the break. OG Anunoby, who has seem to come out of a kind of mini-funk, did a wonderful job limiting Indiana’s Victor Oladipo, who only got four shots and had two points in the first half. “I thought he did a heckuva job,” Casey said on Anunoby’s work. “He didn’t play against him the last time because his ankle was hurt, but he did a tremendous job of getting into him, being physical and using his length and size, and we need that. That’s the OG that we need defensively. He made it hard on Oladipo, who is one of the most dynamic guards in our league, and he did a good job with him.”
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Kyle Lowry ponders the question.
“How badly are you addicted?”
Lowry comes clean.
“You know how they say cocaine is a hell of a drug?” the Toronto Raptors all-star point guard says. “Well, golf is a hell of a drug.”
Lowry got turned onto it when he was young by someone he trusted, and he’s never been able to shake it — not that he wants to.
Now the kid from North Philadelphia plans summer trips to the world’s most revered golf destinations. After a recent Sunday afternoon start with the Toronto Raptors against the New York Knicks, his first move was to pull up the Valspar Championship on his phone in the visitors dressing room at Madison Square Garden to follow Tiger Woods going for his first win in his comeback. (Woods finished second). What had him most excited about making his fourth NBA All-Star Game? Following Woods hole-by-hole at the Genesis Open.
He’s in a Masters pool – “I won it last year, so that’s big for me” — and in his spare time he’ll head over to the TaylorMade Canada headquarters to take some cuts on their state-of-the-art launch monitors to keep his feel over a long winter.
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Lowry is a golf nerd. And he’ll be watching every minute of the Masters this weekend like millions of his ilk.
“It’s been a great thing for me, to be honest,” he told me recently when asked about his fervour for the game. “The relationships I’ve built, the courses I’ve been able to play, the places I’ve been around the world, just by golfing … It’s been fun, it gives me a hobby that I enjoy and I’m passionate about.”
Like a lot of NBA players early in their careers, before kids and family provide more ballast, Lowry had a lot of time on his hands, especially in the off-season. It was his high school coach, Dave Distel, who identified the potential for problems and proposed a solution.
“Even if you know Kyle now, he’s just a puppy that never stops,” says Distel, who has known Lowry since he was 12 and coached him at Cardinal Dougherty in Philadelphia. “He just is constantly going and going and moving and wanting to do things and playing around until it’s time to crash and go to sleep and that’s kind of the way he’s always been.
“I told him your life can’t be consumed, now that you’re in the league, by just working out. You have to expand your horizons. I had been playing golf since I was a little kid and I said, ‘You gotta try it.’ It’s a great way to meet people. It’s a great way to network. It’s mind-engaging. It’s a thinking-man’s game.
Lowry grew up in North Philadelphia, a tough, crime-ridden neighbourhood. Golf was not on the menu. He was skeptical.
“Golf in North Philly? No. Hell no,” says Lowry. “Golf was golf. I never thought about it. I never knew about it. I was more like, ‘What is it?’
Distel persisted.
“He questioned it at first. He really did,” says Distal. “So I just said, ‘Come on. Come out with me. We’ll go out and throw my bag on a cart and we’ll just go play.'”
Lowry’s first reaction?
“I was like, I cannot hit this little ball that’s not even moving. I gotta get better at this.”
Lowry was hooked.
This was what Distel — who has played golf since he was a youngster — had in mind all along. When you’ve known someone since he was 12, guided him through some tumultuous high school years and helped steer him in the transition from college to the pros, you sometimes have feel for what would be good for him, even if he doesn’t know it.
Distel had no more basketball to teach his most accomplished player, but there were still many lessons to pass along.
“We started off just teaching him like you would a kid — golf etiquette; someone’s away; someone’s about to putt; you stand back and you don’t talk; when do you pull the flag, raking bunkers, you name it. All of that stuff that golfers take for granted he had to learn it.”
And now Lowry loves it. His favourite golf trip was to Scotland to play the Old Course at St. Andrews.
“It makes you concentrate on golf. You have to change your game, play the ball on the ground, listen to your caddies, be patient. You think you should chip it, but it’s better for you to putt it.”
He’s played in Spain and China and Brazil. He’s played Pine Valley Golf Club, one of the most exclusive clubs in the world and often rated the top course in the United States. He’s played Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic, one of the top courses in the world, and Oakmont Country Club, site of nine U.S. Opens.
Distel, who has since retired from coaching, takes a trip with him almost every summer.
“I’m just blessed to be the old white guy he doesn’t forget,” he says. “He doesn’t have me reaching for my wallet all that much. He’s very generous and I’m humbled by it. We thoroughly enjoy each other.”
But there are some place Lowry hasn’t been able to crack yet. He trades golf stories with Steph Curry, the NBA’s foremost player, a scratch handicap who has played at Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, twice. “I’m totally jealous,” says Lowry. “I have to get on his level. I got win championships so I can go play Augusta.”
His dream foursome would include Barack Obama and Tiger Woods, but not Michael Jordan, whose reputation for high stakes golf precedes him.
“I can’t afford to play with Michael,” says Lowry.
He’s worked hard to improve his game, evolving from a beginning who trying to break 120 to a respectable 12.5 handicap – a mid-to-high 80s golfer with gusts to the low 80s. But the 32-year-old sounds like any other Canadian golfer with a busy job, and a young family, lamenting the slow-coming of spring, firm in the belief that all that’s holding him back is time.
“The problem is I’m in a cold city so I don’t get to practice as much,” he says. “If I was in a warm city during the season I’d practice all the time and play in the summer.”
Good Show April 5: Masters gets a Tiger boost April 05 2018
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Golf has been a challenge for Lowry in part because his defining features as an NBA player – hustle, physicality, turn-up-the-heat competitiveness – don’t have an equivalent in a game where being able to manage your emotions and trying less, not more, is often the key to improvement.
“Golf teaches you to be patient. You can’t say I’m going to get stronger than somebody or be more physical. With golf you have to work at it,” he says. “You have to practice your chipping. You have to practice your 90-yard shots. You have to practice your sand shots …. You have to continue to get better at the specific things you need to get better at. It’s not given to you. You have to earn it.”
From Distel’s point of view, developing that patience has translated into Lowry’s day job. The Raptors set a franchise record with 57 wins on Friday night and clinched first-place in the Eastern Conference for the first time. One of the keys has been a commitment to a more pass-heavy offence with a wider distribution of shots and minutes, which has meant less of both for Lowry. It didn’t always go smoothly but Lowry stuck with it.
“The major transformation that the offence went through, no one knew how it was going to look, and it tested Kyle’s patience, which at a younger age he didn’t have as an immature NBA player,” says Distel. “A lot of what golf teaches is being patient and trusting … Kyle said he was going to work hard and he knew it was going to be difficult and he was going to make the best effort to make it work … the patience and the willingness to try something different when something isn’t working for a long-term goal there is no question that golf has helped him in that.”
He doesn’t have a golfing buddy among this teammates, and his habit is a source of ridicule from those closest to him, fellow all-star DeMar DeRozan in particular.
“DeMar is just a hater,” says Lowry. “He doesn’t play golf. He just hates on me. That’s all he does.”
But Lowry is still Lowry. His golf partner is John Altilia, the team’s security officer, who can confirm that the edge Lowry plays basketball with carries over onto the golf course.
“He’s a fun to play with,” says Altilia. “[But] there’s a lot of non-stop razzing from shot to shot. It’s the looks. It’s the sneers. It’s the giggles. It’s the trash-talk out there. He’s very competitive … but he’s such a down-to-earth guy when he’s out there he makes it very, very comfortable.”
Clinching the first-seed early comes with its rewards. Lowry can plant himself in front of the television like millions of golf fans this weekend, watching the Masters, enjoying a job well done before the playoffs start.
The only complication is Toronto has a game Sunday night against Orlando, starting at 6 p.m. – or just when the leaders will be coming around Amen Corner.
What will he do if Tiger Woods is among them?
Lowry pauses for a moment.
“Ah coach, my knee’s sore,” he says, laughing. “I think I’m going to sit this one out.”
TORONTO — The celebratory Atlantic Division T-shirts were draped neatly over each player’s chair in the post-game locker-room.
The Toronto Raptors barely glanced at them.
On an historic night they clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, won the division title, and set a franchise record for regular-season wins, there was no celebrating. The Raptors were only looking forward.
"Journey’s not over. Next question," Kyle Lowry put it bluntly, on their regular-season accomplishments.
Serge Ibaka scored a season-high 25 points to lift the Raptors to a 92-73 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Friday, Toronto’s 57th win of the season, and 33rd at the Air Canada Centre. Both topped the previous franchise highs set in the 2015-16 season.
The Raptors (57-22) have three games left in the regular season before they embark on their fifth consecutive post-season, and coach Dwane Casey said now is not the time for reflection.
"It’s gratification but you’re not satisfied, that’s the way I like to put it," Casey said. "We haven’t got to where our ultimate goal is."
DeMar DeRozan added 12 points, while Jakob Poeltl finished with 10, and Lowry doled out nine assists.
Glenn Robinson had 12 points, Trevor Booker finished 11 points, and Canadian and former Raptors guard Cory Joseph scored six off the bench for the Pacers (47-33).
Playing in their Drake-inspired black and gold OVO jerseys, the Raptors led from the opening tipoff and, other than a second-quarter blip when they allowed the Pacers to pull within four points, they dominated for most of the night in front of a capacity Air Canada Centre crowd that included Drake.
They pulled away in the third quarter thanks largely to Ibaka, who shot a perfect 5-for-5 — including a pair of three-pointers — that put the Raptors ahead by 27 points. They took a 72-49 lead into the fourth.
The sizable lead allowed Casey to go to his bench for the final frame, giving the starters some much-appreciated rest before the playoffs begin on April 14.
A pair of Robinson threes midway through the fourth pulled the Pacers to within 17, but the visitors couldn’t put a significant dent in Toronto’s lead. As the clock ticked down the final seconds, the ACC crowd stood and applauded the Raptors’ regular-season record.
DeRozan said achieving the No. 1 seed shows "that once you put your mind toward something, work toward a goal, it can be accomplished.
"We did that. Now, we’ve got another goal that we want to reach as well," DeRozan said. "So this gives us the confidence that we can do it and take it to another level."
The Raptors’ magic number on the night was one — either a Toronto win or Boston loss Friday clinched them the No. 1 seed, and home court for the duration of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The regular season played out in a series of step-by-step goals, DeRozan said, finally culminating in earning the top seed.
"That’s one of those goals that you fight for, you strive for," he said. "That’s what motivates you, is to get there and understand you took care of business. We’ve got home court advantage throughout the playoffs so let’s use that to our advantage. Little things, step by step, that’s how we look at it."
Casey scoffed when questioned about potentially resting players down the regular-season stretch, saying the team is only now rediscovering its rhythm after a handful of poor performances.
"That’s bullcrap. If you’ve been around the last couple of years, you’ve seen what totally shutting guys down for a few games does to their body," Casey said. "You may rest a guy a few minutes, or whatever a game, but there won’t be anybody that’s going to be taking the rest of these next few games off, because we’re just now these last couple of games have got a sense of rhythm.
"So, what rest? I don’t what guys’ minutes tonight were … Kyle was 28. What rest?"
A solid defensive effort saw the Raptors hold Indy to 22 per cent shooting in the first quarter and, when Poeltl scored on a reverse layup with less than a minute to go, Toronto went ahead by 17 points. The Raptors took a 26-14 lead into the second quarter.
The Pacers cut Toronto’s lead to just four points with a 10-0 run midway through the second, but a three by Lowry capped a mini Raptors run that sent them into halftime up 45-33.
The Raptors host Orlando on Sunday in their last regular-season home game.
The celebratory Atlantic Division T-shirts were draped neatly over each player's chair in the post-game locker-room.
The Toronto Raptors barely glanced at them.
On an historic night they clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, won the division title, and set a franchise record for regular-season wins, there was no celebrating. The Raptors were only looking forward.
"Journey's not over. Next question," Kyle Lowry put it bluntly, on their regular-season accomplishments.
Serge Ibaka scored a season-high 25 points to lift the Raptors to a 92-73 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Friday, Toronto's 57th win of the season, and 33rd at the Air Canada Centre. Both topped the previous franchise highs set in the 2015-16 season.
Toronto defeats Indiana 92-73 to claim the Eastern Conference title for the 1st time. 1:15
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Cavaliers fell 132-130 to the Philadelphia 76ers, making it more likely that Toronto will meet nemesis LeBron James in the second round.
The Raptors (57-22) have three games left in the regular season before they embark on their fifth consecutive post-season, and coach Dwane Casey said now is not the time for reflection.
"It's gratification but you're not satisfied, that's the way I like to put it," Casey said. "We haven't got to where our ultimate goal is."
Raptors lead from opening tipoff
DeMar DeRozan added 12 points, while Jakob Poeltl finished with 10, and Lowry doled out nine assists.
Glenn Robinson had 12 points, Trevor Booker finished 11 points, and Canadian and former Raptors guard Cory Joseph scored six off the bench for the Pacers (47-33).
Playing in their Drake-inspired black and gold OVO jerseys, the Raptors led from the opening tipoff and, other than a second-quarter blip when they allowed the Pacers to pull within four points, they dominated for most of the night in front of a capacity Air Canada Centre crowd that included Drake.
They pulled away in the third quarter thanks largely to Ibaka, who shot a perfect 5-for-5 — including a pair of three-pointers — that put the Raptors ahead by 27 points. They took a 72-49 lead into the fourth.
MA FUZZY MAN pic.twitter.com/IDZrUUzzsN —@Raptors
The sizable lead allowed Casey to go to his bench for the final frame, giving the starters some much-appreciated rest before the playoffs begin on April 14.
A pair of Robinson threes midway through the fourth pulled the Pacers to within 17, but the visitors couldn't put a significant dent in Toronto's lead. As the clock ticked down the final seconds, the ACC crowd stood and applauded the Raptors' regular-season record.
Home court advantage
DeRozan said achieving the No. 1 seed shows "that once you put your mind toward something, work toward a goal, it can be accomplished.
"We did that. Now, we've got another goal that we want to reach as well," DeRozan said. "So this gives us the confidence that we can do it and take it to another level."
The Raptors' magic number on the night was one — either a Toronto win or Boston loss Friday clinched them the No. 1 seed, and home court for the duration of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The regular season played out in a series of step-by-step goals, DeRozan said, finally culminating in earning the top seed.
"That's one of those goals that you fight for, you strive for," he said. "That's what motivates you, is to get there and understand you took care of business. We've got home court advantage throughout the playoffs so let's use that to our advantage. Little things, step by step, that's how we look at it."
'What rest?'
Casey scoffed when questioned about potentially resting players down the regular-season stretch, saying the team is only now rediscovering its rhythm after a handful of poor performances.
"That's bullcrap. If you've been around the last couple of years, you've seen what totally shutting guys down for a few games does to their body," Casey said. "You may rest a guy a few minutes, or whatever a game, but there won't be anybody that's going to be taking the rest of these next few games off, because we're just now these last couple of games have got a sense of rhythm.
"So, what rest? I don't know what guys' minutes tonight were . . . Kyle was 28. What rest?"
A solid defensive effort saw the Raptors hold Indy to 22 per cent shooting in the first quarter and, when Poeltl scored on a reverse layup with less than a minute to go, Toronto went ahead by 17 points. The Raptors took a 26-14 lead into the second quarter.
The Pacers cut Toronto's lead to just four points with a 10-0 run midway through the second, but a three by Lowry capped a mini Raptors run that sent them into halftime up 45-33.
The Raptors host Orlando on Sunday in their last regular-season home game.
