Kyle Lowry shrugged off an apparent elbow to his groin from Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons, but the Raptors guard had a harder time shrugging off his subpar performance in Thursday’s loss to the 76ers. Lowry said it’s imperative he play better.
PHILADELPHIA — Kawhi Leonard was sensational Thursday night in the Toronto Raptors’ 116-95 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal matchup. Pascal Siakam was pretty good, too.
The rest of the Raptors? Not so much.
Of the rest of those Raptors, though, none of them has the experience with the franchise that Kyle Lowry does. Lowry, who finished with seven points on 2-for-10 shooting and was a game-worst minus-28 in 38 minutes, declared the Raptors have to help Leonard out — especially himself.
“We’ve got to help him,” Lowry told ESPN. “I was literally saying it during the game. We have to help him. He’s doing everything he can possibly do offensively and defensively to f—ing win games, and myself, I’m not helping him enough.
“I’m not putting it on nobody else but me.”
Meanwhile, a bad night was made worse when Lowry, after boxing out Ben Simmons in the first half, appeared to take an elbow in the groin from Simmons in the first half of Thursday’s loss that sent him falling to the ground for several seconds before eventually getting to his feet.
None of the referees appeared to see the play, and the game continued without a stoppage. Lowry has a history with Simmons, as both were ejected from a game in Philadelphia in January and got into a spat late in a game also in Philly last season, but Simmons apologized to Lowry at halftime.
“Yeah, he said it at halftime,” Lowry told ESPN. “Said he didn’t mean to. Scott [Foster] didn’t call it on the floor. It’s not like I’m going to dwell on it or bitch about it. It happened. It’s over now.
“We got our ass kicked after. It didn’t matter.”
When asked if Lowry thought the league should review the play for possible retroactive punishment, he told ESPN, “I’m personally not going to dwell on it.
