Kyle Lowry finds himself, at long last

Kyle Lowry insisted, over and over, that his shooting elbow was fine.

Given the conspicuous lump that persisted there, and the historic shooting slump Lowry endured through the first nine games of the postseason, you'd be forgiven for not believing him. Here was the Eastern Conference's starting All-Star point guard, coming off his best professional season, shooting 30.8 percent from the field and 15.8 percent from 3-point range in the playoffs.

Fans and media basically gave him an out. You're injured. It's not your fault. Just admit it. Lowry didn't. He blamed himself, saying that it was his head, not his body, that wasn't right. He stayed in the gym by himself, till the wee hours, putting up jumpers. He vowed to be better.

There were signs of sunshine poking through the clouds late in the Raptors' Game 2 win over the Heat on Thursday. Lowry hit two massive pull-ups in the final minute of regulation, stretching the Raptors' lead to four and three, respectively. If Lowry's confidence was the issue, it stood to reason those two shots would help.

If Game 3 was any indication, they certainly did.

In a game in which the Raptors lost center Jonas Valanciunas - their best player in the series so far - and got hardly any offensive production from anyone else, Lowry, for the first time in the 2016 postseason, played like Lowry, putting the team on his back and carrying them to a 2-1 series lead.

It was a familiarly inauspicious start, as Lowry looked hesitant and put up zeroes in the boxscore in the first quarter. But after Heat center Hassan Whiteside went out with a knee injury, stripping the Heat of their only reliable rim-protector, a light went on in his head.

It started with him attacking the basket and finishing with confidence, undeterred by the likes of Udonis Haslem, Josh McRoberts, and Amar'e Stoudemire. Still, he had just four points at halftime, and hadn't yet hit a jump shot.

He rectified that just 18 seconds into the second half, stepping into a catch-and-shoot three on the left wing that pushed the Raptors' lead to 12. Two minutes later, he drilled a pull-up from the right wing that put them up 13. From there, the ketchup-bottle theory was in full effect; everything came pouring out at once.

After the Heat, on the shoulders of a scalding-hot Dwyane Wade, came surging back with a 20-4 run that gave them a six-point lead, Lowry put his foot down. He drove to the cup and invited contact, or else stopped on a dime to hit mid-range jumpers, or bombed away from no-man's land.

In case you were wondering about his confidence level, this is what he did with the score tied and two minutes remaining:

All told, Lowry scored 29 points in the second half, which is more than he managed in the 90 combined minutes he played in Games 1 and 2. He finished with 33, on 11-of-19 shooting from the field (the first time he's shot above 40 percent in the playoffs, let alone 50) and 5-of-8 from distance.

"That's the Kyle I know," said Lowry's backcourt mate, DeMar DeRozan, who failed to shake out of his own playoff-long slump. "That's the Kyle I knew was going to come back. He got that confidence and he willed us to a win tonight."

The Raptors had won Game 2 despite Lowry's 7-of-22 night on Thursday. In Game 3, they needed every trick he had in the bag. The rest of the team scored just 17 points, on 4-of-21 shooting, after the half.

A popular refrain throughout these playoffs has been that without Lowry playing at an All-Star level, the Raptors are at best an average team. Even amid his identity crisis, they were 28.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor coming into Game 3. He's their beating heart, and they were never going any further than he could take them.

On Saturday, he served notice that he may yet take them where they've never gone before: the Eastern Conference finals.

They're two wins away.