What an incredible NBA finals run.

For the first time in franchise history, the Toronto Raptors are the NBA champions after defeating the Golden State Warriors in Game 6 on Thursday night. Here’s how American media has reacted to the Raptors’ historic victory.

Bringing the Larry O’Brien to the North

It was the last game for the Warriors at the Oracle Arena, as the team will move to the Chase Center in downtown San Francisco next season. The Warriors have lost all three home games during the series.

“This felt like it was, indeed, the last game. A disappointing farewell. But, still, a goodbye for the ages,” wrote Ann Killion, sports columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle.

A San Francisco Chronicle website headline said “Warriors heart on display as Toronto takes title in Oracle’s final night” with a photo of a devastated Steph Curry.

Before the finals began, NBA analysts overwhelmingly favoured the Golden State Warriors to win. FiveThirtyEight was one of the few that gave the Raptors the edge.

“I guess FiveThirtyEight can say we told you so?” FiveThirtyEight video producer Tony Chow wrote.

The Raptors’ victory was on the front page of the New York Times’ Friday sports section under the headline, “Party Like It’s 70 Million B.C.”

The Times’ Marc Stein wrote:

“The Warriors were presumed to possess the emotional advantage coming in, playing their final game at Oracle and dedicating the evening to their superstar forward Kevin Durant, who was on the other side of the country after undergoing major surgery Wednesday. But Toronto just had too much.”

The Times also ran a story looking at the Raptors’ moves leading up to their championship. “The Raptors have turned player development into something of a science,” wrote Scott Cacciola referencing some of the players’ earlier beginnings in a piece aptly headlined, “New Coach, New Star: The Raptors Made All the Right Moves.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Ben Cohen wrote about how far the Raptors have come in franchise history, noting that the this was a team “that once played in purple dinosaur uniforms.”

“They couldn’t keep star players and couldn’t attract free agents. Toronto was too cold, too Canadian, too much unlike any other team in the league to compete at this level. But now they have to declare the Larry O’Brien trophy at customs because of someone who has always been different himself,” Cohen wrote, referring to Kawhi Leonard.

More: What did Kawhi Leonard say after Raptors victory?

Taking the gamble

Pundits praised the foresight that Raptors president Masai Ujiri had. Many of the Raptors squad were late-round draft sleepers, and some, like Fred VanVleet, were undrafted. Ujiri was also heavily criticized at the start of the season for firing coach Dwayne Casey, who was named NBA Coach of the Year, and trading star player DeMar DeRozan. But this allowed the Raptors to promote Nick Nurse to head coach and bring in Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs.

Former NBA player Jalen Rose told the ESPN panel that Ujiri’s actions “I think this is going to change the landscape of the NBA as it relates to top-tier players when they become free agents because you see if you have one and you’re able to build around him, all of a sudden, he can conjure something special.

Citing unnamed sources, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Washington Wizards are prepared to offer Ujiri a $10 million annual salary to get him to join the Wizards in a managerial capacity.

“You just can’t say enough about Masai Ujiri. It’s one of the reasons why the Washington Wizards and basically any other team probably wants him as their president of basketball operations,” ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith said. “Because he bet on himself, he bet on his team, and obviously, they came through for him.”

Dynasty killer

The Raptors’ small forward was named the MVP of the finals in a near-unanimous vote. This is his second NBA title and his second time being named MVP. In 2014, he led the San Antonio Spurs to a victory that denied the Miami Heat a third consecutive NBA title. Once again, Leonard has denied a three-peat, this time against the Warriors.

“But now the bud of blossoming narrative is poking through Ontario’s frost. It’s that Leonard is a disrupter of this NBA generation’s dynasties,” wrote SB Nation’s Tom Ziller.

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However, uncertainty over Leonard’s future with the Raptors looms. Leonard is about to enter free agency and hasn’t confirmed whether he’ll be staying or not. Nonetheless, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt said that even if Leonard chooses to leave Toronto, the Raptors should still be happy that Ujiri “pushed all his chips in and …won this hand.”

Steady Freddy

Fred VanVleet played a big role on Thursday night. The Raptors’s point guard came off the bench to score 22 points and five three-pointers, which is more than anyone else during the game. His final three-pointer gave the Raptors the lead that they needed to win.

“You cannot say enough about the way Fred VanVleet played not only in this series, the way he turned his post-season around after the way he started. It was at a point where I was surprised Nick Nurse was still playing him earlier in the playoff, because he had lost all confidence,” said Tim Legler on ESPN SportsCenter.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen also called VanVleet’s performance the “most insane part” of the finals.

In SB Nation, Michael Pina called VanVleet “the shot clock king” and praised his ability to score during the last few seconds of the shot clock.

“It helps that VanVleet isn’t sped up under pressure. He has an innate ability to process the clock, size up the defence, and still squirm his way into a decent look,” Pina wrote.

No excuses

Late in the third quarter, the Warriors’ Klay Thompson tore his ligament and left the arena on crutches. Thompson was the top scorer of the game with 30 points. The Warriors’ were once again missing star player Kevin Durant, who missed most of the finals with a calf injury, but came back for Game 5 where he suffered an Achilles’ injury.

Smith said a Raptors victory became “inevitable” after Thompson was out.

“You just got the sense that this was too much to overcome. KD being out and then obviously for Klay Thompson to have happen to him the very, very next game, you just spell doom,” Smith said.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, SFGate’s Eric Ting noted that Warriors fans were blaming their team’s loss on the injuries “as they probably should.”

But as CBS Sports host Bill Reiter put it, “Life isn’t fair. Sports aren’t fair. Injuries happen.”

Reiter noted that during the 2015 NBA Finals, the Warriors were able to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers after the Cavs lost two key players to injuries.

“(The Raptors) earned it. They did it. They got there and good for them,” he said.

Dan Favale of the Bleacher Report also said that the Raptors “deserve this moment.”

“Injuries did not determine the Finals. Toronto did,” he wrote.

“The victory wasn’t just historic. It was highly impressive given the raucous crowd in Oakland that was both trying to keep their team’s dynasty alive and honouring the Warriors’ final game ever at Oracle Arena,” wrote Melissa Rohlin for the Guardian.

Here’s a roundup of some of the Front Pages in the U.S. courtesy of Newseum.org.

With files from Ilya Bañares.

TY Tom Yun is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @thetomyun

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