Kyle Lowry: Personal issue ‘kind of derailed my whole season’

Lowry missed significant time during the regular season for personal reasons.

Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported on a Toronto golf tournament last week that saw Kyle Lowry speak to the media. He discussed the impact of a personal issue that kept him out of nine consecutive games from Jan. 17 to Feb. 1 and another four games from Feb. 28 to March 5.

“I’m still dealing with it,” Lowry said to a group of reporters in Toronto of the family issue, with the Heat scheduled to open training camp on Sept. 27. “It’s a situation when it’s better, I’ll talk about it more, but it’s definitely something that kind of derailed my whole season and kept me derailed for a long time. Still to this day, it’s still something I deal with every single day, I actually got a phone call just now about it.

When Miami Heat Pat Riley challenged Lowry to get in world-class shape, he said that the veteran “had a challenging year for a lot of reasons” and added, “Earlier in the season, he had some injuries and missed some time and there were some personal issues.” The issue, of course, has remained private.

In late May, I wrote about Lowry’s struggles during the playoffs. He sustained a nagging hamstring injury in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks and never bounced back into that third star the Heat hoped he’d be next to Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. But how much did the personal issue also affect Lowry during the playoffs?

Hopefully, Lowry’s situation resolves itself and he and his family are safe and healthy. With it looking increasingly likely that Miami will start the season with its current roster, the Heat’s best chance to stay competitive in the East is improvement from Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Lowry.