BROOKLYN, N.Y.—On Thursday, they’ll announce the coaches’ picks for the all-star teams.

Kyle Lowry won’t be one of them. He’s played well enough. The only other guard in the East who’s come close to having his impact is Washington’s John Wall.

Lowry won’t make the team because coaches don’t like him. From their perspective, he has two connected faults: he doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t bother pretending to listen.

But given where he’s at right now, why would he?

Lowry put the Raptors on his shoulders and carried them to the season’s most important win on Monday. He was a powerhouse throughout, not just of skill, but emotion. Where in the past he has sulked his way out of big contests, he rolled with it in Brooklyn and dragged everyone else along on his wave.

With 21 seconds remaining, and the Raptors trailing by one, came the play that might’ve won it: Lowry stole the ball in the defensive zone. A sliding Deron Williams interrupted his jailbreak toward the Nets basket. Clear block.

Referee Violet Palmer called Lowry for the charge instead.

Lowry raged back to the bench, taking a vicious swipe at an ad hoarding. Later, after it had all figured itself out: “She made a great call. That her call. Hey, she called it. That’s a charge.”

If there’s a way in which you can drain all the sarcasm from your voice, and thereby increase the amount of sarcasm you’re implying, Lowry managed it.

Still, the Nets couldn’t put it away. With 10 seconds left, they had a one-point lead. All they had to do was get the ball inbounds. Lowry was guarding the inbounds passer, Williams. Patrick Patterson was playing outfield, looking for a runner. He latched on to Joe Johnson and intercepted the pass.

Though the Raptors had a timeout, his first thought: “Where’s Kyle?”

Lowry took the pass, surveyed his options, and settled on Patterson. It wasn’t an obvious choice. Patterson had air-balled a three on his previous attempt. This time, he pump-faked and sunk it. At the other end, Brooklyn’s Paul Pierce couldn’t complete a remarkable performance. Toronto won 104-103.

Okay, let’s get this “never too high, never too low” stuff out of the way.

“It’s too early for statement games,” Dwane Casey said afterward.

That’s what coaches say, because on the list of things coaches want to be fired because of, misplaced triumphalism ranks just below bar brawls. If an NBA coach had been commanding the British team at Waterloo, the first thing he would’ve said afterward: “Hey, hey, we can’t get caught up. We’ve still got to play Paris.”

But this game mattered. Since Jan. 1, the Nets are 10-0 against the NBA (including the Heat, the Warriors and the Thunder). They’re 0-2 against the Raptors.

If Toronto has become a force in the Atlantic, it’s down to a few things. It’s tempting to credit most of it to a fortuitous change of chemistry.

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It is that, sort of. But it wasn’t just taking Rudy Gay out of it, or adding Patterson and his Sacramento teammates. The thing no one expected is that the winner out of that trade would be Lowry.

Dealing Gay and pulling his suffocating influence from the locker room gave Lowry his opportunity to pull a backroom coup. He’s in charge now.

Nothing has changed in the tempestuous Lowry-Casey relationship except the fact that Lowry got his way. He is amongst a handful of fully ball-dominant point guards in the NBA. Credit Casey for having enough self-confidence to allow one of his players to win an argument.

Left to run things, he is still looking for plateaus in his game. On Monday, he coupled scorching numbers (31 points, seven assists, five steals) with bruising physicality. Brooklyn likes to beat you up. Led by Lowry, they were the ones getting bullied. He drove Jonas Valanciunas to a huge game against Kevin Garnett (20 points, 13 rebounds). Watching the abrasive future hall of famer being pushed around under the basket, you almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Six weeks ago, Toronto was on the verge of moving Lowry to the Knicks for Raymond Felton, Metta World Peace and a 2018 pick. Maybe Iman Shumpert was in there somewhere. It hardly matters.

The move was kiboshed by New York owner James Dolan, apparently because he felt he’d been swindled by Toronto GM Masai Ujiri too many times before.

Thank God for Dolan. He saved Toronto’s season. If Knicks Game Ops has any humour, they’ll drag him onto centre court during Fan Appreciation Night and have him publicly flogged.

When Lowry’s cheated by 15 all-star voters in two days’ time, there will be a knee-jerk wellspring of “Why Us?”-ism from Toronto fans. Two things on that. First, give in to that feeling. It will stoke Lowry’s own sense of having been hard done by. Second, don’t invest in it.

DeMar DeRozan is out, and who knows for how long — Casey on that topic: “We don’t know what the timetable is going to be (for his return).”

They’re about to go on a gruesome west coast road swing. They are nowhere close to safely in the playoffs. At this point, Raptors fans, you want Kyle Lowry angry. You want every night to be Monday night.

If your hopes for this season are beginning to crystallize into something that looks like an expectation, you want Kyle Lowry trailing ash and the smell of lit matches.

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