Demar Derozan and Kyle Lowry- The Rapture Of The Raptors

After years of playoff disappointment, Raptors stars Demar Derozan and Kyle Lowry are hell-bent on owning the road to the NBA finals.

- Rachel Nichols

Ok, ok, yes: The Raptors are quite aware of their playoff reputation—four exits in four years, just once past the conference semifinals. But this year, with a revamped playing style and an Eastern Conference-best 59 wins (a franchise record), Toronto is determined to rewrite the narrative. Stars DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry sat down with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols to talk about their on-court evolution, tight bond and pride for the Great White North.

ESPN: The regular season you guys just put in the books is a pretty big departure for the NBA. Usually if a team hasn’t gotten quite where management wants it to go, they rip up the roster. This team, you guys kept the roster and changed the playbook. Now that you’ve seen that evolution through a season, how do you think it went? 

DeMAR DeROZAN: I think you gotta withstand the test of time, you know? You gotta go through them dog days sometimes, to be built even stronger. And I think that’s what we did. You gotta give the credit to the front office, believing. And it’s a testament to us, sticking to our game. And one that continued to get better. 

Your playing-style changes have been well-documented over the season. The one story I really liked was that during some of the intrasquad scrimmages early on, the coaches changed the scoring. So if you guys hit a corner 3, that actually counted for four points. But if you hit a midrange jumper, it counted for zero points. What was that like?