MIAMI—It was a little over an hour before the latest biggest game of the season, and Kyle Lowry’s shots were missing all sorts of ways: short, long, left, right. He tried again. He slowed his release down a little, found a spot on the left side that worked, sped it back up. Swish, swish, swish. Near the baseline, broadcaster Sherman Hamilton, a former player, murmured: Seems like the days you miss everything in warm-up are the days the ball goes in. Kyle Lowry hadn’t made shots for a month-and-a-half, but he kept trying. An hour to go.
“I don’t doubt myself,” Lowry said later, a small bandage over his left eye.