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How Kyle Lowry pulled the Raptors – and himself – from the brink

TORONTO – LeBron James backed him down and backed him down and backed him down, delivering the framed portrait of Kyle Lowry's untidy, unconventional, unrelenting career: too small, too limited, too unworthy. Fourth quarter, Game 4 of these Eastern Conference finals, and James had been groomed to treat the likes of Lowry as though a playoff pest to be flicked away like lint.

Only, Lowry kept coming and coming in the final minutes on Monday night, big shots and big passes, bigger steals and the biggest steel of all.

"I've always been counted out," Lowry told The Vertical. " 'He's not this, and he's not that.' That's the life, the position, that I've always been in.

"And here I am."

Somehow, he's here. Lowry had been magnificent in this 105-99 victory over Cleveland – 35 points, five rebounds, five assists and three steals – and it inspired Toronto's general manager to proclaim and protect the virtues of his two-time All-Star point guard.

"He gets hit," Masai Ujiri told The Vertical late Monday, fist punching his palm for punctuation, "and comes back …" Ujiri clenched his fist and punched again.

"Hit, and he comes back," he declared.

The Cavaliers aren't in peril with the Eastern Conference finals at 2-2, but they do have a problem: They let these Raptors believe. The Cavaliers let DeMar DeRozan and Lowry rise up in a victory, and now the Raptors return to Cleveland for a Game 5 with something they didn't have upon leaving there: belief.

"We will handle this adversity," Cleveland coach Ty Lue told The Vertical.

How dramatically these East finals have turned; how suddenly the pressure's been thrust onto the Cavaliers. After Game 2, the Raptors had been declared a conference finals farce, and Lowry had let himself become the laugh track of it all. Once the TV cameras caught Lowry leaving the bench to return to the locker room late in the second quarter – something he had done multiple times in the regular season – the heart and soul of a franchise had been deemed a deserter.

On his way to Games 3 and 4 at the Air Canada Centre, Lowry hadn't only been playing for the Raptors' season, but his own good name. Narratives get cemented, images become unforgettable. That walk to the locker room could've strapped itself to Lowry forever, if not for these back-to-back performances that towered over everything.

"Perception is reality, and I put a perception out there," Lowry told The Vertical. "What people didn't know: That's my normal substitution time. But the perception became that I just took myself out of the game. But you have to understand – and I now understand – that everything on this stage is 30 times magnified over what it is in the regular season.

"I've done that numerous times – where I've gone back there to go the bathroom and come back out."

In the hours after the victory, Ujiri stalked the corridors of the Air Canada Centre naming the names of doubters, hugging coach Dwane Casey and fighting for Lowry's standing in the sport.

"He got us here," Ujiri told The Vertical. "It makes no sense for anyone to say that he abandoned his team. The guy went and took a freaking piss, and everyone makes a big deal out of it.

"The guy got us here. That's who he's been. 'Oh, he's going to put on too much weight. Oh, he's going to be happy with his contract.' I don't get it. What else can the guy do? He's been phenomenal here."

In every way, Lowry has been the perfect candidate to transform NBA basketball in Toronto.

Lowry is no blue-blooded star. He tore his ACL at Villanova, dropped to No. 24 in the 2006 NBA draft, bounced around three teams with the baggage of a bad attitude, and the Raptors became the make-or-break team of his career. He wears his self-doubt and insecurities, human to the core. It makes him endearing and engaging and engrossing. It makes him Kyle Lowry.

He struggled to start these playoffs, losing his confidence, his way, a threat to undo the greatness of the best regular season in franchise history. And then, Lowry was his old self again – eliminating Indiana and Miami – and now turning it on against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lowry is back again, full of swagger and bravado and belief.

Now, Lowry was thinking about Game 5, about the opportunity to make the Cavaliers uncomfortable, make them play with pressure. "When they punch us there, we've got to be able to punch back," Lowry told The Vertical.

Kyle Lowry was standing in the corridor of the Air Canada Centre, 2-2 in the Eastern Conference finals and he had to laugh: He was never, ever supposed to be the player going shot for shot with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in the fourth quarter of these late May games. He isn't so explosive, nor a great shooter, nor a natural scorer. There are better passers and defenders and athletic specimens.

Yet Kyle Lowry has a tenacity, a temperament, a city flair out of Philadelphia that never, ever backs down. He keeps coming, and coming and coming.

"Ten years into this league, and I've never been this far before," Lowry told The Vertical. For a moment, he was thinking about benchings and trades and moments where he couldn't even get onto the court in the NBA. He thought about it all on Monday night and considered now a career within two victories of an epic upset, of the NBA Finals.

"The criticism, it comes with the stage we're on," Lowry finally said. "I'll never complain about what comes with all of this. Here I am, man. I must be doing something right.

"Here I am."

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