"Kawhi rubbed people the wrong way because of how he operates" - Lowry says some Raptors players despised Kawhi during their championship run

“Kawhi rubbed people the wrong way because of how he operates” – Lowry says some Raptors players despised Kawhi during their championship run originally appeared on Basketball Network.

In 2019, the Toronto Raptors did the unthinkable. They won it all. No LeBron James in their path. No excuses. And no mercy from the man leading the charge.

Kawhi Leonard, the new franchise savior and former disgruntled San Antonio Spur, wasn’t a vocal leader. He wasn’t the guy cracking jokes on the plane or lifting up teammates with long-winded speeches.

He was the guy who asked for the ball and let the scoreboard do the talking. And according to Kyle Lowry, not everybody loved it.

“Kawhi rubbed people the wrong way because of how he operates,” Lowry said. “He’s like, ‘Yo, give me the ball. I’m a get it done.’ You might be like, ‘Kawhi, I’m open.’ But he’s like, ‘I’m gonna get this bucket.'”

When the big dog eats

Toronto had never seen a player like Kawhi. Not with that level of focus. Not with that kind of resume. He came in after barely playing in San Antonio the season before, quiet as ever, with that familiar stoicism and a limp that raised early questions.

And then the games started. By the end of the 2018–19 regular season, Leonard had averaged 26.6 points per game, the highest of his career at that point. He shot 49.6 percent from the field, locked up on defense and never blinked.

But it wasn’t just what he did. It was how he did it.

“You understand he’s the best player,” Lowry said. “Big dog gotta eat.”

And so things shifted. Lowry, the face of the franchise for years, didn’t need to score 20 a night anymore. His job was to keep everything moving — keep feeding Leonard and keep the team from unraveling under the weight of expectations.

“My role really changed, because the year before, I had to score. But I just went straight to passing,” he said.

He still made All-Star and still mattered, especially after his pal DeMar DeRozan was dumped by the franchise months earlier to acquire Leonard, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year. But Lowry’s points per game dropped to 14.2 — his lowest in six years — while his assists climbed to 8.7, second only to Russell Westbrook that season.

“He got us 24, 25,” Lowry said, referring to Leonard’s offensive load. “We had others around — Marc Gasol, Danny Green. Freddie was coming into his own, Pascal was coming into his own, we had Serge. So my scoring was way down, but my assists went up.”

That kind of change doesn’t always go over smoothly in a locker room. Some teammates didn’t like how Kawhi isolated. Some didn’t like how he never said much. Some simply resented the fact that he could take over, at will, and rarely looked back. But there was no denying the results.

All the right tension

Leonard’s postseason run that year might be the most dominant single-player playoff performance since Michael Jordan.

Thirty points per night. Two game-winners — including the four-bounce dagger that sank the Sixers. A torn-up Milwaukee defense. And then a Finals MVP performance against the Golden State dynasty that was in its fifth consecutive NBA Finals.

His usage rate in that postseason was nearly 32 percent — higher than Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant or James had in their most recent Finals runs. The Raptors learned not only to tolerate Kawhi’s tunnel vision but feed off it.

And when the confetti fell, when the city erupted, when the champagne flowed, those “wrong ways” didn’t seem so wrong anymore. Lowry always understood the assignment. He had watched DeRozan grow up beside him, only to see him traded acrimoniously.

The six-time All-Star had watched the culture of the Raptors get tested, tweaked and rewritten. And he gave Kawhi the ball. Because the big dog had to eat. And Toronto was starving for a ring.

“We go and win games, it’s all good,” Lowry said.

That year, it was better than good. It was everything.

This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 25, 2025, where it first appeared.

“Kawhi rubbed people the wrong way because of how he operates” – Lowry says some Raptors players despised Kawhi during their championship run

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