Toronto Raptor tickets are selling online for thousands of dollars.

Raptor fans invaded Oracle arena in Oakland, California Wednesday night, serenading fans of the dynastic defending champions Golden State Warriors with “O Canada.”

It was front page news that day that the value of the Raptor franchise had topped $1.8 billion — $350 million more than the beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, the perennial local team of the gods.

John Bitove, the guy who won the bid for the franchise in 1993, was at a charity function recently with wife, Randi, where a pair of Raptor tickets was auctioned off for $15,000.

“I said to Randi, ‘Boy, have we arrived,’” Bitove told the Star Tuesday.

Listening and watching media these days, it’s “basketball all day,” Bitove says. “For a kid growing up here (in the ’70s and ’80s), the thought of that happening is astounding.”

During Game 6 against the Milwaukee Bucks, his private corporate box at the Scotiabank Arena overflowing with more than 30 family members Bitove said he took a moment to take it all in.

“It was crazy. We are Canada’s team. The city is going nuts but nobody gets arrested. It’s great to be in Toronto right now. My dad would have given anything to be here (John Sr., died in 2015). He lived for these moments.”

Some 26 years ago, competing against three corporate groups vying for the right to start the NBA’s first franchise outside the U.S., Bitove was certain of one thing: Basketball could become a big hit in Toronto.

The hockey Leafs are entrenched in the psyche of old Toronto, never to be erased. But for women, kids, and the wave of immigrants arriving in Toronto from a world that knows basketball almost as naturally as it does soccer, the NBA is a slam dunk.

The NBA bought Bitove’s vision that day — above the old money security of the corporate team representing the Leafs, and denying the group anchored by concert promoter Michael Cohl and NBA megastar Magic Johnson. Almost immediately, the decision touched off a titanic struggle for sports supremacy between the Leafs and the new kid on the block.

At 33, Bitove became the youngest owner in the NBA. He planned to build a basketball-friendly arena and share the space with the Leafs, who clearly needed a new home as the venerable Maple Leaf Gardens limped along to a certain demise.

But the Leafs figured they should be king in their own palace and wanted basketball to play second fiddle in a hockey arena. With neither side budging, and as Bitove pushed ahead with the arena plans, Bitove’s main partner Allan Slaight invoked a shotgun clause forcing Bitove to buy him out or sell the Bitove interest in the franchise, leaving Slaight free to join the Leafs. Bitove sold, saying he was not prepared to risk his family treasures pursuing his childhood love.

The NBA was not nearly as successful at the time. The massive TV deal the league just signed, doubling league revenues to $2.6 billion a year shared among 30 teams, was then a fantasy. Consider that five years ago the average NBA team was valued at $490 million. The average value today is $630 million. The Raps are almost three times that value.

So, has Bitove looked back, like a jilted lover, who missed out on the bonanza he mined?

“In the past 10 years the NBA has become super healthy but you can never look back. I never look back on anything. Why would I? I have been fortunate to have done so many things that looking back is a waste of time and energy. It’s more fun to enjoy the present and hopefully see Toronto as an NBA championship city.”

If he feels jilted, he is showing it in an unorthodox way. Instead of shunning the team, Bitove embraces it. Basketball is his love. His family is on the bandwagon. He has a private box that will be jammed for Game 5 on Monday. He has courtside seats, but prefers the sightlines from his five premier seats 10 rows up at centre court, a section over from where Obama watched Game 2. He attends up to 30 home games a year.

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When he needs extra tickets, Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment is “more than accommodating to me. They’ve allowed me to go for the ride with them.”

His game day ritual often has him exchange high fives with employees and basketball junkies he hired when they were the only ones who shared his belief that basketball had a future in Toronto. Then before the tipoff he gives “Randi a kiss and nervously hoping they win.”

“I absolutely believed this day would come,” he says, while invoking the early believers — like Slaight, owner of Standard Broadcasting, and NBA star Isaiah Thomas who brought instant credibility and instilled the “scrappy, win with class” image Bitove says is built into the team’s DNA.

But the success has come sooner than imagined. “It’s amazing how quickly basketball has become big in this country,” he said. The evidence is the explosion of Canadians playing U.S. college basketball, drafted into the NBA, playing in European leagues,“ and the number of basketball nets in front yards. That’s our proudest achievement. Getting the team started the snowball. Players like Damon Stoudamire, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter and Chris Bosh built on it. And Kawhi (Leonard) has turned it into an avalanche.”

A Canadian team has not had a player as dominant as Kawhi since hockey’s Wayne Gretzky, Bitove says. “Everyone is noticing. Almost one-third of the country watched part of Game 2 against the Warriors — in a sport that most of them never played.”

In fact, Bitove says, the Raptors already is Canada’s global sports franchise and could become the kind of world icon like the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls were. “Toronto is a global city. We have an even stronger case, because we are not American. Everyone can see some of themselves through this team.”

The players seem to like each other, they are cosmopolitan and diverse. They are likable. And they have Drake, a megastar entertainment mogul, as global ambassador — a recognizable meteor not afraid to sing the praises of the team and city.

“I think Drake’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to this city. He’s so proud to be Canadian, proud to be from this city. Tells everyone this is the best city in the world,” eschewing the standard Canadian modesty.

In Oakland for Game 3 Wednesday night, Bitove reported: “Well, this crowd is nowhere near a Toronto crowd. Maybe they are spoiled from so many championships. Our fans are hungrier, louder and bleed every shot. Raptor home games remind me of watching Indiana Hoosiers play an important game as Assembly Hall.

“This is so much fun to watch Raptors play for a title and basketball be firmly planted as part of Canadian culture going forward. That’s the joy in all of this.”

Correction — June 10, 2019: This article was updated from a previous version that misstated the name of Scotiabank Arena.

Royson James is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @roysonjames

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