This is how weird the Drake-at-N.B.A.-games phenomenon has become: Last year, the league spoke to the Raptors about getting him to tone down his antics. He almost got into a fight with Kendrick Perkins, then a reserve center on the Cleveland Cavaliers. Yes, the N.B.A. has a terrible recent history of fans and players fighting — but what a time to be alive when Drake can get that kind of reaction.

Drake, in many ways, represents the new N.B.A. He’s a different kind of superfan than the others — than what Lee is to the Knicks, or what Billy Crystal and Jack Nicholson are to the Los Angeles franchises. And that’s not even including all the various Wahlbergs for Boston.

Drake is the dream personification of what the league is now — youngish (32), international and credible among players. (His friendships include LeBron James, Stephen Curry and many others. Terrence Ross used him as a dunk contest prop in 2014.)

But more than that, he’s a troll watching a troll’s league. Players are constantly going at each other on social media. Curry laughed in a referee’s face near the end of a regular-season game in which the Warriors were unhappy with calls. Damian Lillard waved off Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of this year’s playoffs.

There are posturing dunks and crippling, nearly ankle-breaking reverse dribbles. The N.B.A., in 2019, is about ownage — about how much territory and airspace you can claim. Having Drake be the face of the Raptors, and by extension, the league, is ideal and even unique to the N.B.A.