Lowry split two of them, momentarily losing the ball before snatching it back and finding a sliver of space to glimpse the basket. The Raptors had poor spacing on the play and four Nets would guard Lowry in those six seconds. Lowry fended off Brooklyn’s Deron Williams to free himself for the pass. “If you noticed, in that last 10 seconds, we had to shift to the whole side of the court,” Lowry recently recalled. But the Raptors believed the play would originate on the near side. Raptors coach Dwane Casey designed the play for Lowry, Toronto’s point guard, to create a game-winning shot for himself or a teammate off a pick-and-roll. There was no doubt where Greivis Vasquez would look to throw the inbounds pass. Toronto trailed by a point, with the ball and a shade over six seconds remaining. Lowry approached a moment that nearly every player covets. He had led the Toronto Raptors into the closing seconds of Game 7 against the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of last season’s Eastern Conference playoffs.
The biggest play of Kyle Lowry’s life was doomed from the start.
