Through all Heat’s injury issues, Kyle Lowry has taken on heavy workload: ‘I take pride in that’

Through all of the Miami Heat’s injury issues early this season, the oldest player on the roster has managed to stay healthy.

Not only does 37-year-old guard Kyle Lowry enter Saturday night’s matchup against the visiting Chicago Bulls with a team-high 24 starts this season, but also with the most total minutes played. Lowry entered Saturday with a team-high 715 minutes logged this season, just two minutes ahead of second-place Jimmy Butler’s 713 minutes played.

“I think at the end of the day, I like to play basketball,” Lowry said. “I love to play basketball. I’ve taken pride in being able to try to be available. Throughout my career, I’ve had a lot of different type of injuries, freak injuries, that take me out. But if I have an opportunity to be healthy enough to play, I take pride in that.”

That approach has been on display this season, as Lowry has missed just one game and has played both games in three of the Heat’s first four back-to-back sets. The only game he missed this season came on the second night of the Heat’s second back-to-back, when he played in the Heat’s win over the Hawks in Atlanta on Nov. 11 but sat out the Heat’s victory over the Spurs in San Antonio on Nov. 12 for rest.

Among the nine players around the NBA who entered Saturday with at least one game appearance this season at age 37 or older, Lowry ranks second in total minutes played and minutes played per game (29.8) behind only 38-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James.

“He put in the time during the offseason,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Lowry. “He was healthy going into the offseason, so he was really able to train and prepare for this season. He understands as well as anybody that Father Time is the ultimate opponent and you do have to adapt as you get older. The instinct is to do less and you actually have to do more to prepare for this. So I think if he was trying to fast track everything once the season started, he would not have been in a position to be able to handle these kinds of minutes early on.”

Lowry also hasn’t had the luxury of taking games off to rest or nurse bumps and bruises, as injury issues have already forced the Heat to use 14 different starting lineups less than two months into the regular season.

“Kyle is just a winner,” Spoelstra continued. “So he understands that we have guys out and we need him, we need our guys. Anybody that can play, we need them right now. Nobody waits in this league. You don’t want to make any excuses. If we’re constantly saying, ‘Hey, we have enough to get the job done,’ you have to have guys that actually live it and breathe that. Kyle is one of those kinds of guys.”

But Lowry isn’t just making himself available in his 18th NBA season, he’s also been effective on the court.

This season, Lowry entered Saturday with a career-best effective field-goal percentage (field-goal percentage adjusting for made threes being 1.5 times more valuable than made twos) of 60.4 percent and career-best true shooting percentage (shooting percentage that factors in the value of three-point field goals and free throws in addition to conventional two-point field goals) of 63 percent behind a career-best three-point percentage of 44.2 percent.

Lowry, who is averaging 9.8 points, four rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.3 steals per game this season, ranks eighth in three-point percentage among the 92 players who entered Saturday averaging at least five three-point attempts per game. Only New Orleans’ Matt Ryan (47.1 percent), Brooklyn’s Lonnie Walker IV (46.3 percent), New York’s Jalen Brunson (46 percent), Boston’s Sam Hauser (45.8 percent), Milwaukee’s Malik Beasley (45.8 percent), Denver’s Jamal Murray (45.3 percent) and Miami’s Duncan Robinson (44.2 percent) are ahead of Lowry on that list.

Still, Lowry entered Saturday averaging just 7.2 field-goal attempts per game in his third season with the Heat, which would go down as his lowest for a season since the 2009-10 campaign. He also holds a career-low usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 13.3 percent this season.

But Lowry has done the little things well this season, entering Saturday ranked first on the team in deflections (46), first in loose balls recovered (18), first in charges drawn (8), first in assists (99) and first in potential assists (212). Also, the Heat’s offense has scored 5.9 more points per 100 possessions when he has been on the court this season.

“He’s finding more consistent ways to do that and to complement different lineups,” Spoelstra said. “Hopefully that will continue to be something that we can count on even as we start to get other guys back. We always want Kyle to be aggressive.”

The Heat is expected to get guard Josh Richardson and forward Haywood Highsmith back from injury for Saturday’s game against the Bulls. And Heat starters Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro are expected to make their returns in the coming days after missing time because of injuries.

Meanwhile, Lowry continues to play and make himself available for the Heat after missing extended time last season because of a left knee injury.

“It’s not sometimes the smartest idea,” said Lowry, who is due $29.7 million this season in the final year of his three-year, $85 million contract. “But I think in this situation that we’ve been beat up so much this season, I think just trying to be available and help and play basketball games and do my job at the highest level where I can do that. I take pride in being able to be on the floor.”

HAMPTON GETS OPPORTUNITY

With the Heat trailing by 25 points just eight minutes into Thursday’s game against the Bulls at Kaseya Center, Spoelstra turned to guard RJ Hampton to play his first meaningful minutes of the season.

Hampton had played just 2:02 this season prior to Thursday’s appearance, as a sprained right knee forced him to miss 10 straight games before becoming available again last week.

Hampton, who is on a two-way contract with the Heat, finished his second appearance of the season with three points and two rebounds in nine minutes off the bench in Thursday’s home loss to the Bulls. He made his only shot attempt of the game — a three-pointer.

“I just tried to change the pace of the game,” Hampton, 22, said after his first game since playing the final 2:02 of the Heat’s blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Oct. 28. “I felt like the first thing I did was I saw the ball on the rim, tried to go get the rebound, grabbed it off the rim and kind of got my feet wet dribbling down the court. Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve played. This is probably the longest stretch in my life that I went without playing a game of basketball. So just to be back out there, it felt good.”

Hampton’s opportunity in Thursday’s loss came with the Heat missing four rotation players. But he’ll take playing time however it comes.

“I’ve just been dreaming about playing basketball again,” said Hampton, was selected with the 24th overall pick in the 2020 draft. “Sitting on the bench, whether I was in street clothes or whether I was in game clothes, just wanting to be back out there. I think it’s one of the most important things in my life. So being back out there tonight was great for me. It brought a lot of joy to me and my family.”

▪ The Heat ruled out Adebayo (left hip contusion), Herro (right ankle sprain) and Dru Smith (season-ending knee injury) for Saturday’s home game against the Bulls.

Heat second-year forward Nikola Jovic will be available for Saturday’s contest after rejoining the Heat following a two-game G League stint.