Watch: Kyle Lowry talks about team, wrist injury

Bold statement alert: despite being 11-5 over this recent Kyle Lowry-less stretch, the Raptors are at their best with their All-Star healthy and in the lineup. Lowry’s been out since he injured his wrist against the Hornets on February 15th. He underwent surgery to remove “loose bodies” on February 28th and we’ve been told, by Woj mostly, Lowry will be back in 4-5 weeks.

It’s been a tense time.

Lowry was on Sportscenter today to talk about Lean In movement, his pal DeMar DeRozan, watching Raptors games on the sidelines, and, of course, how his recovery is going. Have a watch:

The key bit comes at around the 3:19 mark, when Lowry is asked point blank, when do you think you’re coming back?

His response:

“It’s kind of a, once I feel the wrist being as strong as it can be, you know, no pain. You know, hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can be back and give us a boost before the playoffs. But we’re taking it day-by-day. I’m starting to get some more cardio in, getting on the floor and getting some work done, you know cutting and movement. I’m trying to get my feet ready, just so when I do make my comeback and get back on the floor I’m kind of prepared to play. I know I’m not going to be in game shape, but I’ll be in some kind of shape to go out there and play as hard as I can.”

Make of that what you will. The optimistic return date for Lowry is tomorrow (with April 4th as the semi-pessimistic one, which I originally incorrectly identified). That’d be the four week mark of the original timeline. There’s still a scenario here where Lowry makes it back for a couple of regular season games to get up to speed, but we’ll see.

As always, we’ll provide updates as they happen.