With his back against the wall, Raptors G Kyle Lowry delivers as usual

2:19 AM ET

TORONTO — Resiliency defines Kyle Lowry.

It always has.

He has always been at his best with his back against the wall. It’s almost as if he needs it to be there in order to thrive.

“He’s a little pit bull. I mean, you question him, and that’s when he rises to the occasion,” Toronto Raptors coach Dwane Casey said after his supposedly down-and-out point guard delivered yet another dominating performance.

“I’ve seen it so many times,” Casey continued. “Throughout the playoffs, everybody has second-guessed him, and he’s always bounced back. He’s done that his whole life, through high school, through college, through his first few years in the NBA, and it’s made him the All-Star that he is.”

Before the series even began, Lowry’s seemingly harmless compliment about LeBron James was viewed as offensive by some. And then, following an eight-point Game 1, Lowry was criticized for quitting on his team because he retreated into the locker room to decompress late in the first half of a 10-point Game 2.

The Raptors were down 0-2 and faced the inevitability of a four-game sweep.

But Lowry wasn’t about to let that happen.

After combining for just 18 points in Games 1 and 2, Lowry scored 20 in Game 3 and 35 more in Game 4, enabling the Raptors to knot their series with the heavily favored Cleveland Cavaliers at 2-2 with a 105-99 win on Monday night at Air Canada Centre. Game 5 is Wednesday in Cleveland.

“It’s felt like a boxing match, with me just finding my rhythm, finally figuring things out and calculating what they’re doing to me and understanding what they’re going to do to me and how to exploit it, and I think that’s how it’s been for me these playoffs,”said Lowry, who shot 14-of-20 from the field while also contributing 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals in 44 minutes.

“Just taking the calculations and figuring it out.”

Lowry scored 15 of his 35 points in the second …

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