“You guys traded a first-round pick for me to be this guy that sits on the bench, that plays fifteen, twenty minutes? I was not happy.

“It was part because I knew what I just came from being, which was almost an All-Star in Houston until I got sick and got hurt. I went from being almost an All-Star to back on the bench,” he said. “I was not a bad teammate. I was just really in a world of my own. I was just like, All right, I’m going to go to work. That’s all I’m going to do. I’m not going to fraternize. I’m going to go to work, come home, that’s it. Because it wasn’t my team. I was a role player.”

What would he have said back then about his chances of re-signing in Toronto? “I’d tell you, ‘You can kiss my ass,’” Lowry recalled. “I never thought I’d be back. Put it like this: I thought, I’ll do my two-year bid and I’m gone. That was it.”

Masai was the one who turned everything around and convinced him to get his act together and also to stay.

Couple more quotes showing that:

Ujiri challenged Lowry. “Do you want to be a $3 million player, $2 million player for the rest of your career and become a minimum player or do you want to be a $10 million player or more?” he asked. “Talent says you are that type of player, but the attitude and the way you carry yourself says the other. You can be so much better.”

and also

“Kyle, what a place,” Ujiri said. “The momentum, if we ever got good here — it would be crazy. This place could be wild and you could be the start of that. Why would you want to go be one of three guys — a third guy — when you can start something big here?”