10 Biggest Surprises of the New NBA Season
The NBA Season is almost a month old now and we can see some trends forming. The teams expected to perform are performing and the team expected to be bad are bad. However, this season has already given us its' fair share of surprises already. After a wild offseason, this start was just what the NBA needed to keep the fans' engrossed in the new season.
So, let's have a look at the biggest surprises so far.
#10 What's up with Kyle Lowry?
In the offseason, Kyle Lowry re-signed for the Raptors on a 3-year deal for 100 million dollars. He had averaged career highs in scoring, rebounding, FG% and 3PFG% last season. Heading into the new season there was no reason to expect Lowry will not play at his usual level, but sadly that's not been the case.
He's averaging only 13.4 PPG (a drop of almost 10 points from last season), 35.1% from 3, a number which hasn't been this low since the time he was a squad player with the Rockets and only 40% from the field. He's also averaging 0.6 Steals per game after averaging 1.75 Steals per game in his last 3 seasons with the Raptors. But, the biggest change in his numbers has been the fact that he is only taking 1.8 Free Throws per game down from 6.1 Free Throw attempts last year.
Such a drop off for an elite FT shooter is likely to affect his numbers, something which Russell Westbrook is suffering from as well (he's only taking 6.0 FT from 10.4 last year).
However, the plus point is that Lowry's performances haven't affected the Raptors as a whole. They're 7-5 on the season and when Lowry starts performing back to his usual level, things will only go up for them.