Diar DeRozan arrived at the arena an hour before tipoff, continuing a routine she’s had for three years—ever since she was born, really. While thousands of raucous fans filed into the Air Canada Centre, she settled into a playtime session with some of her favourite toys in the Raptors family room, wearing a white jersey with sparkly red sleeves sewn on and “DeRozan” written across the back. She ate her pre-game meal of pizza and popcorn. It was, in that sense, a game like any other.

But today was different. Today was the first time the Toronto Raptors would host an Eastern Conference Finals game. It was, in no uncertain terms, the most important game in the history of the franchise. The team had been demolished in Cleveland, falling behind 0–2. It looked like it’d take a miracle for them to stay alive against LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

On the baseline, while the Raptors are introduced, Diar’s mother and cheering partner, Kiara Morrison, holds her tightly. The two have become staples on the ACC floor. Diar is a camera favourite, always decked out in stylish Raptors attire. From their seats next to the basket, they cheer as wildly as any Raptors fans. Diar mostly sticks to positive reinforcement, and while Morrison does the same, she also provides critiques—yelling at referees and chirping opponents. “Sitting right there, you almost feel like you’re playing with them,” she says. “So your emotion is that much higher.”

She has been right there beside DeRozan since Toronto took him ninth overall in 2009—and before that, too. The couple met at the University of Southern California and, frankly, back then, she didn’t think he was all that great at basketball. Her friends told her DeMar was going to be an NBA lottery pick. “What?” she remembers asking, incredulously. “The lottery?”

She was there for DeMar’s first game in the NBA, when he drove into the key and slammed into Shaquille O’Neal (then playing for the Cavs), who laid the rookie out. “WHAT THE HECK?” she roared at the soon-to-be Hall of Famer. And Morrison has been roaring ever since, through years of criticism that DeMar wasn’t a real star, and that he and the team didn’t know how to win. She knows every NBA referee by name and has criticised most of them. She has cheered on DeMar and called him out, even prompting him to tell her, mid-game, to give him a break. She is his biggest fan and biggest critic.

Well, she was his biggest fan—until Diar came along. Her daughter has taken to chanting “DE-FENCE! DE-FENCE!” and “LET’S go RAP-tors! LET’S go RAP-tors!” with the crowd. When her father shoots a free throw, Diar pretends to shoot one, too.

Diar has already been there for some of the Raptors’ most heartbreaking post-season moments. There was the loss to Brooklyn just after her first birthday, followed by an embarrassing sweep by Washington when she was two. But this year, her father and his team finally pushed through the first round, then the second. It had been seven long years for her parents.

DeRozan jogged out into the spotlight and waved to the crowd, who nearly blew the roof off the building when his name was announced. The he turned and moved to the baseline, as he always does. There he found his daughter, held tight in her mother’s arms. They had arrived. The Eastern Conference Finals, in Toronto for the first time. DeRozan leaned in. As the cheers rained down, Diar gave her dad his lucky pre-game kiss.

This story appears in the July issue of Sportsnet magazine.