Kyle Lowry has spent most of his career building a reputation as the guy least likely to get sentimental on cue. The bulldog point guard. The competitive agitator. The floor general who argues every inch, takes every charge like it’s personal, and treats the game like a negotiation he intends to win.
So when the subject of a future jersey retirement in Toronto came up, Lowry didn’t reach for polish. He reached for honesty.
“Y’all ever see me cry?” Lowry said, when asked what it would mean to see his No. 7 raised in the rafters. “If it does & when it does, it will be a super emotional day. I put a lot of blood, sweat & tears in that 7.”
Then he repeated what he’s said for years now: when the playing days finally end, he plans to sign a one-day contract to retire as a Toronto Raptor, a ceremonial bookend that matches the emotional reality of his career, even if the middle chapters were written elsewhere.
I asked Kyle Lowry what’s gonna be in his heart when the Raptors retire his number 7 one day:
“Y’all ever see me cry?”
“I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that 7” pic.twitter.com/Etp4FhCDCJ
— William Lou (@william_lou) January 11, 2026
This wasn’t just a nostalgia hit. It was a reminder of how rare Lowry’s Toronto legacy actually is. The Raptors have had stars, icons, and moments. But Lowry is the player most closely associated with the franchise becoming a consistent winning organization, the connective tissue between eras, coaches, roster overhauls, and playoff heartbreaks that eventually turned into the ultimate payoff. It’s why Raptors chairman Larry Tanenbaum has publicly said the organization plans to retire Lowry’s No. 7 when his career ends.
Lowry understands that weight. He also understands what Toronto understands: the number isn’t being retired for vibes. It’s being retired because he made the Raptors matter in a way that lasted.
And that’s why his quote lands. It’s not “this would be cool.” It’s “this might wreck me.”
He even brought the perfect Toronto-specific detail into it: the idea that longtime Raptors voice Matt Devlin could be the emcee, and that if Devlin gets rolling, Lowry might be done for before the banner even moves. If you’ve watched enough ceremonies, you know the script. A montage. A few former teammates. A pause. Then the narrator says the one line that hits the player’s soft spot and the tough-guy facade crumples like a folding chair.
Lowry has made a career out of not folding. But this is different. This is the rare arena moment where the opponent isn’t on the other side, it’s the memory.
The jersey retirement, whenever it happens, will be Toronto’s way of formalizing what’s already been true in practice: Lowry’s tenure wasn’t a stop; it was a foundation. His No. 7 became shorthand for an era, an attitude, a culture, a style of play that demanded toughness and rewarded credibility. So when he says “blood, sweat & tears,” it doesn’t sound like athlete cliché. It sounds like accounting.
And that’s also why the “one-day contract” matters. The NBA is full of messy endings: trades, late-career cameos, awkward final seasons. Lowry is openly lobbying for a clean final sentence, one more signature, one more photo, one more moment where the franchise and the player agree on what the story was.
So yes, one day the Raptors will lift a No. 7 into the rafters. The organization has already indicated that’s the plan. The only remaining suspense is the human part: whether Kyle Lowry, the stubborn, defiant, unbreakable avatar of Raptors basketball for a decade, can make it through the ceremony without doing the one thing he just joked about.
If Matt Devlin gets the microphone, bet accordingly.
