Kyle Lowry walked into the gym, and everybody stopped to look. Well, not quite. It wasn’t a beer commercial or anything. But Dwane Casey called the formerly-stocky point guard svelte, and slender. DeMar DeRozan said Lowry was “a lot more aerodynamic now.” Patrick Patterson said Lowry looked like Lowry’s evil twin. That’s been said before in the NBA, but in a different context.

“I couldn’t put it in specifics for you,” said the Toronto Raptors point guard on media day. “I just know I have abs.”

Abs! Lowry has been described as a pit bull, a bulldog, a fire hydrant, a fireplug, a stump, but now he looks like an athlete: more biceps, less belly, less butt. On the court, Lowry may always have been mean, but now he’s lean, too.

“I feel faster, I feel a lot lighter, I feel quicker, I feel sharper,” said Lowry. “I still feel strong because when I go in the weight room, I still move the same weight I’ve always moved. I can still bench press you.”

He said that to me, and I’m a long, lean 195 pounds. So, good to know.

As the Raptors open this season, there are questions and curiosities. There are two Canadians on the roster, one of whom is a regular, and one of whom is an intriguing lottery ticket. They acquired Canada-killer Luis Scola, who is a strong, canny Argentine veteran with the hair of the lead kid from Dazed And Confused.

And they won the most games in franchise history without passing and defending, and finished with a splat, and Lowry was at the centre of it. Lowry was a beacon for the first two months of the season, and then sank into a weird, dispiriting obscurity. He won’t say why, exactly; he says he doesn’t know. Inside the organization there are theories of physical fatigue or hidden injuries, but nobody is quite sure, either. As the Raptors reboot, Lowry is the puzzle at the centre of it all.

So he ran hills in Vegas, hired a new nutritionist, ate a little better, didn’t play a lot of basketball, and won’t tell those of us with subpar abs exactly how it was all done. It wasn’t a program from the Raptors; it was all Lowry. After his slow-motion humiliation, everything was fuel.

“Everything drives me,” said Lowry. “I read everything, I see everything, everybody who wrote anything, I read it.”

Everything?

“I know everything, I know every person who says something bad about me. But it’s part of the game, it’s part of the business, for me I don’t need the motivation from that but I just use it, I know who’s going to talk.”

So, what did you think about what was written about you from February, Kyle?

“It’s true, I know how bad I played. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. I want them to say those things, because they’re going to change their minds (from) early (last) year, and it was ‘Oh my god.’ Now I’ve got to go back to making them say ‘Oh my god’ again. That’s all that matters.”

If Lowry is reading this right now, I’ll just say this: He’s a fascinating, complex figure. At his best he makes basketball look like a heroic exercise, because unlike the LeBrons of the world, his greatness doesn’t have a big margin for error. It looks hard.

But he’s also a complex figure who either finds enemies or invents them, and it’s never been simple for very long. He’s scraped with coach Dwane Casey, and they’ve found a not-entirely-easy peace. Scola is like a big brother to him after their time in Houston, and that should be positive. He’s got a tough backup in Canadian Cory Joseph who will push him every day, hard, because that’s the San Antonio way. There’s a first-round pick, Delon Wright, as the third-stringer, whose calm, controlled work in scrimmages the last two weeks has team officials raving, despite no measurable jump shot.

If Lowry is a bulldog, he will be chased, and in the best case it’s more fuel. Lowry was asked about being a mentor to the young men, and half-joked, “Are you trying to transition me already outta the league? Sheesh. I’m only 29,” before saying nice things about them.

He’s reshaped his body, and now we see whether last year’s ending was about his body, or his mind, or some murky blend of both. This team needs togetherness, and it has to start with the guy who, in the past, has sometimes been a lone wolf.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“You’d be amazed from when I came here day one, all I heard was, ‘iso iso iso.’ Then you came in here a couple of days ago, because I’ve been here two and a half weeks, and you’d see how the ball moves,” said new Raptor DeMarre Carroll. “It’s a good thing, man.”

Lowry is still the heart of this team, and last year the heart stopped. It starts again now.

Read more about: