There are murals of Kawhi Leonard sprouting up all over the city and the curtain at the ballet has a Raptors logo and “We the North” projected on it and people started camping out to watch Monday night’s game five in Jurassic Park by Saturday morning.

Every coffee shop you walk into, every street sandwich board you pass, every cab you take, every elevator you stand in, people are talking about basketball. Hyped about it. Obsessing about it.

This is the Raptors’ town right now, and we all get to live in it, but in case you somehow missed it:

ONE! WIN! AWAY!

The Toronto Raptors are one (!) win (!) away (!) from being NBA Champions — and get up to three chances to finish it off after taking a 3-1 lead in the best of seven series Friday — and this city is ready to explode in love and anticipation and the exhilaration of the ride.

Before this series between the Raptors and the heavily presumed favourite Golden State Warriors began, I read a preview at The Athletic that wondered if Toronto would be just happy to be here in the final, in this company, after all this time. And hell yeah, we’re happy to be here.

There was a point in Game 4 on Friday night in the third quarter, as the Raptors took over the game and put a stranglehold on the series, when you could hear chants of “Let’s Go Raptors” on the TV broadcast from Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif. And anyone who’s been in Toronto through this playoff run could reasonably wonder if perhaps the crowds watching in Jurassic Park and at outdoor venues across the GTA and Canada had reached such a pitch that they could be picked up by microphones across the continent. (Of course, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported, that wasn’t exactly the case — it was thousands of Raptors fans who’d travelled to “take over” the arena in what could turn out to be the last NBA game ever played there, dancing and singing “O Canada” into the night after the visiting team won.) We’re here. And there. And happy about it.

But we’re not just happy to be here — our guys are ready to win. In this city, that’s a hard concept to come to believe, but this team has inspired a little faith. Keeping calm and carrying on and coming back and taking charge.

There are those who’ve been waiting a long time for this, since day one in 1994, who hoped and suffered with little Damon Stoudamire, big Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter and Chris Bosh. For them, it’s been a long walk to the promised land and you’ll forgive them if they’ve seen enough to enjoy this ride without cracking any champagne until the last game is won.

Many more became fans more recently, in time to have their hearts captured and broken watching Bismack Biyombo and DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry repeatedly bang their heads against The Great Wall of LeBron. And there are many thousands who are new to this: my friend Anna never watched a single professional sports event in her life before this month and has been posting updates on social media as she’s fallen in love with the team and basketball and sports fandom with them.

What a team this is to root for. Brian Phillips of The Ringer recently wrote that Kawhi Leonard is the working stiff’s superstar, quiet and elusive and keeping his emotions to himself, and as a result often overlooked.

“Kawhi is a misfit, like most of us in this mad and maddening world,” he wrote. “He’s the basketball star for everyone who missed out on an invitation to life’s red carpet. He’s the player for the artist who didn’t get the grant, the photographer who doesn’t get likes on Instagram, the singleton whose crushes don’t swipe right. He’s the player for the parent whose kid didn’t make honor (sic) roll and the worker who got out-talked and out-smiled for the promotion. His game is a reminder that the universe’s golden children don’t have a monopoly on brilliance — that you can be outside the circle of prestige and still be great, and maybe, eventually, be vindicated.”

In that, he is the perfect leader of a franchise that has for so long been opposite of the glamour markets in L.A. and Miami and the San Fancisco Bay — the Toronto Raptors, where the stars leave in free agency and no one wants to play, in the city that championships forgot.

And he’s the perfect leader of a team of misfits: Kyle Lowry, whose playoff performance has been so long unfairly run down; Fred VanVleet, who is six feet tall and went undrafted; Pascal Siakam who didn’t start playing organized basketball until he was 16, less than a decade ago. Danny Green, drafted 46th overall; Marc Gasol, drafted 48th out of Spain; Serge Ibaka, born in Congo, who played in France and Spain, picking up languages along the way before making his way here after a decade in the NBA.

For a franchise and a city that may have often had occasion to feel overlooked, they are perfect. They speak Spanish and French and English to each other, and they come from places around the world. They hustle. Just like the city they represent.

What a run so far. Steamrolling Orlando. Four bounces to end seven long games against Philadelphia. All that fuss over Drake, unregistered massage therapist. That dunk by Leonard over Giannis, the league’s anointed next great star leading the regular season’s best team, on that pass from Lowry. And now near-domination of this decade’s previously unstoppable force of a dynasty, the Golden State Warriors.

It ain’t over yet, but the bandwagon is full and the tune it is playing is absolutely awesome. And it feels so right in this city, so needed. It’s been a generation since we felt the collective euphoria a major international championship can bring and celebrated together in the streets — stretching back to 1993 when Joe Carter swung for the fences and touched ’em all.

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There are people who were born, finished school and are in the workforce — there are people who hold elected office in this country — who have never known what this feels like. Even those of us old enough to have been there back then maybe forgot just how fun this is. For a city to get together and want something together and watch and stress and celebrate together. It’s a hell of a thing, and Toronto is living it, and loving it, now.

ONE! WIN! AWAY! Let’s go Raptors. Let’s go.

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