We the North are now We the Champions.
The Toronto Raptors did something last Thursday that I frankly would not have bet a nickel on happening the day the National Basketball Association season started.
Even with the acquisition of Kawhi Leonard I didn’t see a championship coming.
I’ll admit even as the playoffs started I was not brimming with confidence knowing the Milwaukee Bucks and ultimately the Golden State Warriors blocked the path.
The Warriors have been the model of sublime skill for five years, making the finals in each of those years.
Stephen Curry is the sweetest shooter since Michael Jordan draining threes with such ease it appears effortless.
And Curry did about all he could against the Raptors, but with Kevin Durant out of the picture, and Klay Thompson banged up they were ripe to be picked.
That the Raptors took advantage of the opportunity is not to belittle the accomplishment though. Toronto in many ways over achieved, not Leonard, the best two-way play in the game, but Fred VanVleet the undrafted, star of the team, Kyle Lowry who threw off the mantle of being a playoff underachiever, Serge Ibaka and Norman Powell all rose to the opportunity presented.
Sadly, the end of the deciding game six got bogged down in the questionable officiating of the NBA, and their protracted use of video replays, turning the final seconds of an historic win for the Raptors into something that appeared to be in the hands of the Keystone Cops.
The situation took away from the natural momentum of the win, and by the time the game was officially over, it seemed almost anticlimactic.
But it was a win, one that frankly will be forever a benchmark moment in the history of the franchise and the sport.
While basketball is just in my top-10 of favourite team sports, the playoff run engaged me completely, and the game six win is certainly in my top-10 sports moments, although not close to top-five.
On a related matter in terms of basketball, will the massive bandwagon-jumping by fans across this country for the finals mean those who have gathered at various venues across our country will now follow the sport more closely?
If the Raptor run has really created a new generation of basketball fans, it could be huge news for the Canadian Elite Basketball League.
Fans who gathered in parks, stadiums and theatres might now migrate to watch the current six teams in the CEBL, our Saskatchewan Rattlers among them, which would be a huge positive.
It might also indicate that there is more of an appetite for the game which could lead to more CEBL expansion than might have been anticipated. It has been suggested the league is looking toward being a 12-team league. It seems rather doubtful Regina would have been on the radar to be part of that growth. But thousands at Mosaic Stadium to watch the Raptors play in the finals might indicate a franchise could find a fan base in our province’s capital. That would be huge for local area fans in having access to games more easily than the drive to Saskatoon, and a made-to-order rival for the Rattlers.
Oh, yes, the Stanley Cup wrapped up too.
It was June 12, summer officially only days away, and hockey finally had a winner.
Congratulations to the St. Louis Blues on winning the Stanley Cup. No fan base in the National Hockey League could be more deserving than those of the Blues, a franchise with more than a half century of history with nary a Stanley Cup final game win, let alone a Cup win.
Of course the NHL has had a rather lengthy list of teams without a cup, Buffalo and Vancouver now suffering the longest Cup-less droughts at 49 years, but overall 11 NHL teams have yet to lift the Stanley Cup, which is basically one-third of the league. That is a rather large portion of the league, and a lot of fans living on hope, and hope alone.
Even my lowly Toronto Maple Leafs can look back at a rather gloried past in terms of Stanley Cup wins, although admittedly even I, with more grey hair than I would like, among the hair that is even still growing on my head, has only the vaguest personal recall of their last win in 1967.
The situation in the NHL is why I increasingly focus on being entertained by the game I am watching, and not sweating whether a team I favour wins a championship, or not. That said when it does happen, as it did with the Raptors it is sweet because they are rare. In the past 52-years of following sports rather closely, teams I follow across five different pro leagues have managed only 10 championships – so this is one to savour awhile.
