Kyle Lowry’s Philly rise said a lot about his NBA success. Just ask his Cardinal Dougherty teammates.

The basketball players from Cardinal Dougherty had been at their hotel long enough that all the food started to taste the same. They were in Myrtle Beach, S.C., 20 years ago for a premier high school tournament and needed to get out for something other than games and practices. They were bored.

So the Philly kids asked their coach if they could borrow the team van. Two of the teenagers had their driver’s licenses. Just don’t be stupid, Dougherty assistant Dave Distel told them.

“We were kids,” said DeSean White. “We were just like, ‘We’re going to take this and go for a joyride.’ Back in the city, that’s what you did.”

The high schoolers found something to eat and parked their vans in a parking lot. And that’s when they spotted players from the University of North Carolina, in town for a game the next afternoon. Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, and Sean May — three superstars of college basketball who would win the NCAA championship the following season — were leaving a restaurant.

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The kids from Philly — especially North Philly’s Kyle Lowry — didn’t want an autograph. They wanted a challenge.

“Kyle’s like, ‘I can beat you right now. Let’s go. One-on-one,’ ” said Shane Clark, who spent so much time at Lowry’s house growing up that Lowry’s mother joked she would claim him as a dependent on her taxes. “That’s how he is. All the time.”

Lowry, who makes his 76ers debut on Thursday night, was not yet an Olympic gold medalist, NBA champion, and six-time All-Star. He wasn’t even one of the highest-rated players in high school and some thought he wasn’t the city’s best guard. Lowry was just a kid from 20th and Lehigh with an edge. And that’s what allowed him to challenge Felton in the parking lot as his buddies backed him up.

“They started laughing,” Bilal Benn said. “We were like, ‘No, we’re dead serious.’ We weren’t playing. We wanted all the smoke.”

Lowry’s two seasons at Cardinal Dougherty ended the same way: crushing losses in the Catholic League final against St. Joseph’s Prep.

“That stings a lot,” Clark said. “We still talk about it to this day.”

They didn’t win a title, but those Dougherty teams — which started Lowry, Clark, Benn, White, and Tim Smith — are still remembered as two of the most memorable squads in the city’s history. Crowds followed them everywhere, big-time college coaches were always at the school at 2nd and Godfrey, the Cardinals played against everyone from Rajon Rondo to Rudy Gay, and their home games in front of “The Loony Bin” were always packed.

“Standing room only,” Clark said.

The five starters all ended up at Dougherty after playing for the Patriots, an AAU program based at Chalfont Playground in the Northeast. Smith and Benn went to Dougherty as freshmen before Clark (Northeast High) and White (Strawberry Mansion High) transferred the next year.

Benn was in the weight room with the football team when Distel and Mark Heimerdinger, the team’s head coach, told him that Clark and White — then a well-known teenage sensation — were coming. The Cardinals were going to be sponsored by Nike, the coaches told Benn, and expected to be nationally ranked. A year later, Lowry arrived as a junior after spending two seasons in the Public League at Northeast.

“We were looking for a dog,” White said.

Smith didn’t have a cell phone before his senior year of high school, but he did have a key to Dougherty’s basketball gym.

“I don’t want to say I stole it,” he said. “But I borrowed it and just never gave it back.”

It didn’t take long for Lowry to find out. It seemed like every day he was calling Smith’s house in Lawncrest, dialing up his buddy’s landline because he wanted to play.

“He would call my house late at night,” Smith said. “It didn’t matter if it was midnight. ‘Open up the gym.’ Other people were starting to worry about girls and Kyle was, ‘Let’s go to the gym.’ ”

Lowry, Clark, and White hopped on a bus from North Philly — Lowry grew up in a house that once held rooftop bleachers for Shibe Park — and met Smith at the door. It seemed like the games started as soon as he turned the key.

“The gym would be packed,” Clark said. “Everyone knew about us and wanted to come play with us. Everyone was there and ready to play.”

All was not perfect at Dougherty — Distel and Heimerdinger drilled the players as much about zone defenses as they did their schoolwork and how they needed to look prospective college coaches in the eye — but basketball never seemed to be an issue. The kids loved to play.

The guys who “borrowed” a key to the gym were the same group of teenagers who ended high school practice by practicing again with the team at a nearby prep school. While at Northeast, Lowry rode a bus to meet Benn at Dougherty before the two took a bus and two subway trains to work out at Drexel.

“That’s how I learned to take the El,” Benn said. “Kyle taught me.”

In the summer, Lowry borrowed his mother’s Buick Century and piled his friends inside as they drove from playground to playground. The same kid who drove that white van when they found the North Carolina players was driving his buddies around the city, always looking for action.

They played games at Chew Playground in South Philly, headed north to Cherashore Park in Olney, and then back again. There was always another challenge.

“We would book it right up Broad Street,” said Benn. “We would get to 10th Street, hop over the back gate, and come on the court and play.”

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Lowry, Benn, Clark, and White grew up in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. Basketball was their way out and they could not get enough.

“They were great kids,” Distel said. “People could judge them from afar and say, ‘They’re not what a 1980s Catholic League team would be,’ but they were great kids when you got to know them. At times, did we have issues? Sure. But they always figured it out and they knew that basketball was their opportunity to do things that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do.”

Distel and Heimerdinger knew they needed to get Lowry more attention during his senior year. He had college scholarships but was not ranked where the coaches — or Lowry — believed he belonged.

“Mark said, ‘We’ll play the Sixers. I don’t care. We’ll play anybody, anywhere, anytime,’ ” Distel said.

Dougherty couldn’t get the Sixers but it did get almost everyone else. The Cardinals played against Chester, Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy, Maryland’s DeMatha, and Orlando’s Edgewater. When they heard Brooklyn’s Lincoln High wanted to play at the Palestra just before Christmas in 2003, Heimerdinger and Distel couldn’t agree fast enough. Lincoln was led by Sebastian Telfair, who was considered the nation’s No. 1 guard and would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated three months later. He was a superstar. For Lowry, he was motivation.

“Going into that game, I’ve never seen Kyle more focused,” Smith said. “He took every matchup as a personal affront to him. ‘How dare this person think they’re better than me. I need to prove myself.’ Kyle thought that he could beat anyone.”

The Dougherty coaches were watching on TV days earlier when Telfair turned his ankle during a nationally televised game. Telfair stayed in the game, but Distel wondered if he would play against Lowry.

“He came out in warmups and he was bouncy as ever,” Distel said. “He looked really good in the warmups.”

Telfair was ready. So was Lowry.

“Sebastian thought he was going to walk over on this bulldog that I just sat in the locker room and petted and told him, ‘We’re going to eat in about an hour,’ ” White said. “You know what I mean? When the hour was up, the bulldog was ready to eat. He might have thought, ‘This guy’s a nobody. I can run over him.’ Then we got out there, jumped the ball, and it was a whole different ballgame. He realizes, ‘I can’t compete with this animal.’ ”

The following June, Telfair was chosen 13th overall by the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA draft. But he could not score a point against Dougherty’s bulldog. Lowry blocked Telfair’s three-pointer in the second quarter, scooped up the loose ball, and dunked it as the Palestra went wild.

“I don’t remember if the Palestra was sold out, but it was damn near sold out,” Distel said. “That’s when Sebastian kind of pulled the plug. Sebastian said, ‘I’m not playing’ and subbed himself out not long after that. Kyle was so focused. From the jump, Kyle said, ‘I want him. I’m guarding him.’ ”

Distel was reminded of Lowry a few summers ago when he watched The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Like Jordan, Lowry always searched for an edge. But it never seemed as if he had to dig deep to find that motivation.

“It was always easy for Kyle because he wasn’t the most respected,” Distel said. “He couldn’t jump the highest. He wasn’t the best shooter. He wasn’t 6-4. He was constantly questioned and doubted. That kind of stuff just lit a flame in him. To this day, he always found that as a rallying cry to say, ‘I’m going to play my hardest every single night I step on the floor and do the best that I can for my team.’ He just did that however he needed to do that. If he had to score 40 points, he could score 40 points. If he had to lock down the other team’s best player, he would try that. If he had to take four charges against big men, he would do that. He did what it took to be successful.”

A few weeks later, the 6-foot bulldog was at it again. The place was just as packed as hundreds of people were turned away from Arcadia University’s sold-out gym. Lowry went step-for-step with Penn Charter’sSean Singletary, his old AAU teammate with the Patriots, and played the way college coaches often described Lowry to his coach: The bulldog could dominate the game without taking a shot.

“They gave him an MVP trophy for the game and he turned around and handed it to Shane Clark,” Distel said. “Kyle was not demanding of the spotlight. He wanted to prove himself as a player but at the same time, he loved and cared about his teammates.”

Lowry’s Dougherty teams were loaded, but so was St. Joseph’s Prep, coached by Speedy Morris and waiting for them two straight years in the finals at Tom Gola Arena. The gym was overflowing both years, with even more fans waiting outside.

“You can’t say anything about them,” Benn said. “They had Chris Clark, they had Mark Zoller, they had T.J. Valerio, they had John Griffin, they had Reggie Redding. They weren’t light. They came heavy, too.”

The Prep won the first year by seven points and the next year by 23.

“I’m best friends with Reggie Redding and I see John Griffin and Mark Zoller,” Shane Clark said. “They always have that hanging over our heads. ‘You guys were the best team, but look who won the Catholic League.’ That always gets us.”

Benn left Dougherty a few weeks before the 2004 championship — “Too many demerits,” he said — and wonders what would have happened if he stayed. Maybe the rematch would have gone differently if the Prep didn’t start the game by hitting 17 of its first 24 shots. Maybe the team that never won a title would have one.

“They probably sting even more now because had we won those two games, we’d probably be the best high school team in Catholic League history,” Smith said. “The fact that we didn’t win a championship, we have no claim to being the best team. Even though talent-wise, we probably were the best team. It stung a lot.”

Dougherty’s season ended two weeks later at the Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament in Frostburg, Md. Lowry hit a buzzer-beater to send the Cardinals to the championship and then scored 42 points as they lost in overtime.

“We were really kind of laughing afterwards,” Smith said. “The fact that we lost another championship. It was like the perfect way to lose. It was very fitting of our careers there, being really good but not being what we all thought we should have been. We’re kind of like the Buffalo Bills of the ‘90s.”

Shane Clark played at Villanova with Lowry and Benn before playing professionally in Portugal and Cyprus. He has three children, lives in Berwyn, and invests in real estate. White played two seasons at Providence, played a season in Portugal, and now lives in North Philly, and works for the water department. Benn left Villanova for Niagara, played in Portugal, Lithuania, Israel, and Canada, and now trains young basketball players as the founder of Workhorse Academy. One of his pupils is Smith’s 11-year-old son, Shay, who was born while Smith was playing at Holy Family.

They were so close 20 years ago that Smith was recognized on the streets as “the white kid from Dougherty” but never felt like an outsider around his teammates. They slept over each other’s houses until their coach banned that when they stayed up all night at Benn’s place in Germantown and played like it. They were brothers, White said.

The Dougherty guys might not all be as close as they were when they borrowed that van in Myrtle Beach, but the bond is still there.

“I texted Kyle the other day and said I was happy to have him home,” Benn said. “It’s beyond a dream. It’s been a dream come true. Everyone wanted to see him take it far. How many people have a gold medal and a championship? He went to school here, he’s about to play for the home team. It’s legendary. It’s beyond his wildest dreams and he earned it.”

Lowry never faced Felton that night as the high school kids eventually hopped back into their vans after they were done yapping — “We were talking big,” White said — at the college stars.

But 15 months later, Lowry was guarding Felton in the NCAA Tournament with Villanova in the Sweet 16. Everything seemed to take off so fast. Soon, Lowry was drafted. Then he was an All-Star, an Olympian, and finally an NBA champ. He called Distel just moments after winning it all, knowing he had to share the moment with his old coach.

“He said, ‘So this is what it feels like?’ He got that elusive championship at the highest level,” Distel said. “If he had never won it, it would have never defined him. You look at where he came from. We didn’t see any of this coming. He’s a 6-foot guard. How many of them do you see have 18-year careers? Six-time All-Star. Olympic gold medal. NBA champion. He’s an anomaly. We never saw any of this coming. And if they did, they’re lying.”