The deal was done. The pieces were in place. The Knicks needed to do something, anything, because the season was already a disaster. They were 6-15. A year after winning 54 games, looking like a true comer in the Eastern Conference, the Knicks had come limping out of the gate of the 2013-14 season. They needed to shake up the deck.
They had a name in mind.
Right around Dec. 13, 2023, or so, the Knicks and the Raptors began to engage in some heated discussions. The Knicks’ front office — led by Steve Mills after Glen Grunwald had been unceremoniously dumped following a 54-win season — engaged in serious discussions with the Raptors about Kyle Lowry.
Lowry wanted the Knicks. The Knicks wanted Lowry. The Raptors were pondering a full rebuild. They exchanged names. The Raptors wanted a haul: Raymond Felton, Metta World Peace, Iman Shumpert and either Tim Hardaway Jr. or the Knicks’ 2018 first-round pick (for history buffs, that turned out to be Kevin Knox}.
The Knicks were in discussions with the Raptors over Kyle Lowry, who they now face in the playoffs with his new team, the 76ers. Getty ImagesHow close did they come?
Lowry would describe it this way: “I was traded. Essentially, I was gone.”
Except a funny thing happened.
James Dolan blinked.
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This was still at the point when Dolan often foisted himself into Knicks discussions, and he smelled a rat. Toronto’s boss, Masai Ujiri, had already hoodwinked the Knicks a few months earlier, dumping Andrew Bargnani on them for three players and three draft picks, and Bargnani had quickly proven himself to be a profound failure.
Ujiri had also traded Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks when he was running the Nuggets three years earlier, and while Anthony had played well for New York, Dolan had heard for three years that he and Donnie Walsh had gotten fleeced in that deal, too. So the idea of making another complicated deal for Lowry … Dolan said no.
And it’s amazing. To that point, Lowry had been, at best, a pedestrian NBA point guard. He’d shuttled from Memphis to Houston to Toronto, and he’d averaged 10.6 points and five assists with a 41.7 percent shooting over his first seven years in the league. And while he improved his numbers slightly in Toronto’s first 20 games — 14.6/6.7, 42 percent — Dolan was paranoid that Ujiri was once again dealing with pocket aces.
Knicks owner James Dolan, center, watches the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Chicago Bulls. APHe killed the deal.
And it’s funny: From almost that exact moment on, at the advanced basketball age of 28, Lowry became, like magic, one of the essential players in the entire sport. Across the final 58 games of that season Lowry was good for 19.4 points, 7.6 assists, and 43 percent shooting. Instead of tanking, he led Toronto to the fourth seed in the East.
And from there …
From there, he made the All-Star team six straight years. In those six years, he was good for 18.5 points and 7.2 assists per night, maintained his shooting percentage, significantly upped his 3-point aim (to 37.5, percent, up from 26.2 his first six years). He and Kawhi Leonard co-starred on the Raptors’ 2019 NBA title team.
76ers Kyle Lowry defends guard Jalen Brunson during the fourth quarter of Game 1 on Saturday. Charles Wenzelberg / New York PostAt 38, he is still playing. He is a good bet for the Hall of Fame. And it feels like the last bit of satisfaction he gets from the game is routinely torturing the Knicks. Last year, as a member of the Heat, he averaged 12.5 points and 5.7 assists in the East semifinals, and it seemed every time Miami needed a dagger shot at any time in those six games, the ball was in Lowry’s hands.
He’s a Sixer now. There was some talk at the deadline that he might wind his way to New York. He wound up in Philly instead, a full-circle transaction since he was one of the first members of the Jay Wright Villanova pipeline. And in Game 1 of this first-round playoff series Saturday, he was brilliant: 18 points, including a stretch early in the third quarter when he scored 12 out of 14 points for the Sixers, sparking them to immediately slice a 14-point Knicks lead to five, and by himself got the 76ers back in the game.
“Played with some pace, played with some energy,” he said after the Knicks had survived, 111-104. Same as ever with Lowry, who once upon a time wanted to be a Knick and might’ve made the last 10 years look awfully different at Madison Square Garden.
