How Lowry became a 'self-made' three-point shooter

Josh Lewenberg

TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - Kyle Lowry hung around the gym later than usual on Tuesday afternoon, getting some extra shots up after practice and, as you might imagine, he didn't miss many.

The Raptors' all-star point guard is in a groove, unlike any he — or virtually anyone — has ever experienced, having hit 40 of his 66 three-pointers (61 per cent) over the last nine games. With a team staffer rebounding and an assistant coach tossing him passes, he launched jumper after jumper, each release identical to the one before it.

In the midst of the hottest shooting stretch of his 11-year career, Lowry remembers a conversation he had with the great Jerry West — the man who drafted him — shortly after breaking into the league with Memphis in 2006.

“Jerry West helped me with it,” he told TSN.ca. “Jerry West told me my footwork has to be consistent to shoot the ball [well].”

“Everything's the same way. I try to shoot the ball the same way every single time. Every single time.”

A 20-year-old rookie at the time, Lowry would work on his shot as if he was a shooter, but he wasn't one yet. In two seasons at Villanova he attempted just 40 threes, making only 13. In his first four NBA seasons — with Memphis and Houston — he shot 26 per cent from beyond the arc. It wasn't a big part of his game.

“He was more of an attack guard at the time,” said Dwane Casey, who coached in the Western Conference and faced Lowry three or four times a year. “We didn't really game plan for him.”

"I've always thought of it like a good weapon, I just didn't shoot it like I could have," Lowry said. "I've always worked on it since high school. I've always worked on shooting the ball, but I always felt like I could get to the basket, make assists and do all the [other] things."

The motivation for extending his range came ahead of the 2010-11 campaign, when Rockets head coach Rick Adelman gave him an ultimatum: shoot or sit.

“I think Rick Adelman put the pressure on me and said you can't play if you can't shoot the three,” Lowry recalled. “And that's when I started shooting it. I always worked on it. I always felt like I could do it. I just feel like once I got more confident and the coach put the pressure on me to do it, I had to do it."

Lowry hit 129 threes that season, more than he had in the previous four years combined. He shot the long ball at a 38 per cent clip, which is roughly his career mark from that point on. Patrick Patterson, a teammate of Lowry's in Houston at the time, didn't take a single three that year, or the next, but also credits Adelman and the Rockets system for eventually stretching out his game.

With advanced stat guru Daryl Morey at the helm of the organization and the offensive-minded Adelman at the controls, Houston is considered a pioneer in the analytical movement that's brought on the current pace-and-space era in basketball. In each of his end-of-season meetings with the coaches and front office staff he remembers being told “No matter what you do, just try to get better at shooting threes.”

And he has. A student of the game and someone who is very aware of the tactical advantage in featuring the three-ball, Lowry began to change his pre-game routine five years ago, just after Houston moved him to Toronto. More and more he found himself practising those long jumpers. As the league evolved so did he.

“It's helped take my game to another level,” he admits.

Last year, Lowry made 212 three-pointers — tops in the East and a Raptors franchise record for most in a season, beating his own mark set a couple seasons earlier. He's on a torrid pace this season, hitting 44 per cent from beyond the arc, many of them from way behind the arc. Only two players — Portland's C.J. McCollum and, go figure, Houston's Eric Gordon — are shooting a better percentage from outside of 25 feet.

Lowry still doesn't consider himself a three-point shooter, at least not in the same class as the players he lists in his personal top six — Stephen Curry, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Robert Horry, Craig Hodges and Steve Kerr — but, if nothing else, his recent stretch rivals any nine-game stretch they, or anybody else, has put together. Casey, who has been around the NBA's greatest shooters, would know.

“It's unbelievable,” said the Raptors coach. “I've been with Dale Ellis in Seattle, Hersey Hawkins, Ray Allen and the stretch he's on ranks right up there with those guys, the way he's shooting the ball with confidence and the way it's coming off his hand. Great shooters like that, they know, they feel that rhythm that they're in and he's in that same rhythm.

“Kyle's done a tremendous job of working on his three-point game and making himself a great three-point shooter. Not a good three-point shooter, a great three-point shooter. He's self-made. In high school and college you wouldn't have said the same thing about him. So it's something that's a great example for young kids to say, ‘Hey, you can add something to your game,’ and he's definitely added that to his game.”

At some point he'll cool down. That’s the reality with tough, variant shots like the three-ball, and Lowry knows it. For now, he's just enjoying that feeling. Whether he's drilling a late-game dagger with a hand in his face, spotting up from 30-feet, completing a four-point play or simply getting reps in after practice, he's earned that feeling.

“It’s like that runner’s high they talk about,” he explained. “I have never caught the runner’s high. I don’t know what people are talking about, but I think it’s that. That high that no matter what you shoot you feel like it’s going to go in. Even if you miss it, it should have went in. If you shoot an air ball you feel like the rim moved.”