When Kyle Lowry came out an hour after Game 1 for his own long walk in the snow, he had a choice.
He could take the back hallway behind the locker room, take a dedicated elevator up to the practice gym on the third floor of the Air Canada Centre and work on his failing shot there. He did that right after the Toronto Raptors lost in overtime to the Miami Heat in the opener of their second-round playoff series, before doing his media availability.
When he was up there, no one saw him or knew what he was doing.
But once he'd faced the cameras, Lowry walked alone to the main court and began shooting again. Several people recorded the impromptu workout, including the Raptors own Twitter feed. The fact that he practised with a hoodie pulled up had an unsubtle Rocky feel. None of this happened by accident.
"It was just being out there and having time to reflect on things and think about the game that I grew up with, the game I love," Lowry said later, channelling Allen Iverson.
What Lowry wanted just as much as a bit of extra work was to be seen doing that bit of extra work. It was theatre. It's hard to say for whose benefit – ours or his own.
On Wednesday, there was more of that. Lowry came to the podium wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap. Maybe he thought the comparison flatters him. (And, if so, he's right, but not in the way he thinks.)
The knock on Lowry throughout the early stages of his career was that he was someone who always knew better. When it inevitably turned out he didn't, there was always an excuse. Coaches grew to despise him.
Despite the obvious talent, he was forever in some stage of wearing out his welcome.
He's got smarter. Lowry's excuse these days is that he has no excuse.
That's the reason the fan base has not yet begun to devour him. It's hard to knock a guy when he keeps beating you to it.
But at some point very soon, it will get old.
Lowry may have begun to stumble over that fuzzy line when he noted wryly that he is trolling the NBA's statistical ocean floor.
"[Raptors PR boss Jim LaBumbard] just showed me that I'm the worst shooting playoff player ever, in history," Lowry said, to general mirth in the room. "I'll take that award. I mean, it's an award. It's something."
Oh, yeah. It's something.
And if you buy that he just figured that out as he entered the room, we need to talk about some attractive investment opportunities that I can hook you up with for a small fee.
When it's convenient for them, professional athletes want to be just like the rest of us: 'Hey, we have bad runs. Things go wrong for us, too.' Lowry loves coming back to the idea of being "a kid again," which he did once more on Wednesday.
The problem is that he is not like the rest of us, and he certainly isn't a kid. Playing basketball for a living may be fun, but that's not the point of it. It's work.
Lowry is paid a frankly ludicrous amount of money to put a ball through a hoop. The expectation that you be able to do so should necessarily be higher on him than on some random schlub at an insurance company who needs to get his paperwork in by the close of the fiscal year. Much, much higher.
As another notable local athlete has pointed out, "this isn't the 'try' league. It's the 'get-it-done' league. Eventually, they're going to find people who can get it done."
Josh Donaldson of the Toronto Blue Jays said that in the second month of last year's regular season. Here's Lowry, in the playoffs, shrugging his shoulders and trying the whole 'waddayagonnado?' You don't want to rip a guy for being bad. That happens. But I doubt he'll be returning any cheques. So perhaps it's best to lay off the DIY existentialism for a little while. Or maybe just be better.
"No one's telling him to stop shooting the ball. No one wants him to stop shooting the ball," Patrick Patterson said. "One way or the other, we know he's going to get out of it."
Yes, absolutely. He will most certainly get out of it. It's called 'the off-season.' By now, Lowry's troubles have become the overarching theme of the Raptors' run. Outside Toronto, the storyline is 'Lowry bad; Raptors doomed.' It was only a matter of time before someone pointed out the obvious. LeBron James did the business after being asked Wednesday if he had thought about playing the Heat in the next playoff round.
"Naturally, of course," James said, breaking the one-day-at-a-time omerta of playoff declarations. It's the word "naturally" that should hurt. It's also quite reasonable that a guy would think about playing his former team in the postseason.
Offered a chance to create a motivational talking point out of nothing at all, coach Dwane Casey enthusiastically grabbed hold.
"Nobody respects us. Everybody's written us off," Casey said. "Hopefully … our guys take offence to it."
That would be one way to do it. Once again, the other would be to be better.
Lowry's problem is not physical. He's made it quite clear that it's mental. Part of being elite is being able to perform when not at your best. If you cannot do so, you aren't elite.
It's becoming clear that Lowry lacks that ability. After each one of these games, he says all the same things. And nothing changes.
"Keep chipping at that wood," Lowry said Wednesday, which was new.
It's an echo of one of Phil Jackson's favourite Zen koans: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
It's meant to quiet the mind while under stress.
Perhaps Lowry needs to try a less quiet mind. There is an urgency that comes when you begin to doubt yourself. Maybe what's needed here is less calm, less reasonableness, less late-night performance art and more anxiety.
Cathal Kelly