I GOT US

Five years ago the Raptors were poised to “Tank for Wiggins” and start a ground up rebuild. Now they’re eyeing a run at the NBA finals.

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Even though I was a “little bit drunk” at the time and it was more than five years ago, I remember this particular night quite vividly. I was walking the concourse of the Air Canada Centre during half time of a Raptors game and having already grabbed a drink, was standing by a small group of tall bar tables, people watching and waiting for a friend to finish navigating his way through the hot dog line.

It was a boisterous crowd-as it always is on a Friday or Saturday night- and I was amazed at how much excitement and energy was in the air as people snaked and squeezed their way down the overcrowded corridors and I remember thinking to myself how great it would be if the Raptors became a good team again and how the whole scene would be amplified ten fold.

The Raptors fan base is undoubtedly one of the most diverse and loyal in the NBA. On this night there were fans of all ages and wearing all types of Raptors paraphernalia. There were Raptors scarves, T-shirts, hoodies, hats and even a few proudly worn retro purple jerseys with the likes of McGrady, Carter and Bogues emblazoned across the back. I was taking this all in when I saw it.

A man in his early twenties passed by me with draft beers in both hands. He was smiling and wearing a red Raptors hat with the brim slightly turned to the side and when he passed I could see that he was wearing a red Andrea Bargnani jersey but had taped over the name and had written “Wiggins”. Two quick feelings washed over me. On first glance it struck me as being funny and actually kind of clever but then it kind of stung me in a way that made me nostalgic for the good times however brief they may have been.

The Raptors first window of success was between 1999 and 2002. These were the years that Vince Carter thrust NBA basketball into the forefront of Canadian sports culture in a way that no one ever dreamed possible. Carter was one of the biggest stars on the planet- in any sport-and he played for Toronto. It was a dream scenario for an expansion team in only their fifth season.

The second window was the Chris Bosh era and although not as flashy as the “Air Canada” era, the Raptors won a solid 47 games in the 2006–2007 season which at the time tied their best regular season record in franchise history. These are the days that I was feeling nostalgic for. By 2013 the nearly deafening “Let’s Go Rap-Tors!” playoff chant had become nothing more than a distant echo. For myself and fans like the guy wearing the altered Bargnani jersey the only excitement about the team was a sad enthusiasm towards the possibility of deliberately finishing near the bottom of the league so that the organization could essentially start from scratch, a process which, in 2013, was known as “Tanking for Wiggins”.

On this particular night the Raptors record was six wins against eight losses and they truly were in a state of basketball purgatory. They weren’t good enough to win but at the same time not quite bad enough to make losing worthwhile. Quite clearly something was going to give. They went on to lose this game by seven to the Heat and then followed that up by losing for another week straight. By the following Sunday they found themselves six and twelve and at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings. It was that Sunday that everything changed.

On December 8th, the Raptors new GM Masai Ujiri successfully managed to trade (dump) Rudy Gay, his iso jumpshot and nearly all of his nearly eighteen million dollar contract onto the Sacramento Kings in return for a mixed bag of players on expiring contracts. The trade drew a line in the sand and a new era was clearly about to emerge. It was out with the old and fans breathed a sigh of relief that something dramatic was happening and that there appeared to now be a clear path forward. By all indication the organization was cleaning house and now out from under the two albatross contracts of Gay and Bargnani would surely continue prepping for a complete tear down. It seemed like everything was in place to lose for a period of time but they were going to lose with a plan. The only glitch was that it didn’t happen.

After the six and twelve start the Raptors won forty two of their last sixty four games and won the Atlantic division. It was truly one of the most remarkable and bizarre turnarounds in basketball history. The team that was left after trading their two highest paid players wasn’t supposed good but they were and there were so many strange reason for the change of fate that it became dizzying to try and even analyze why and how it was happening.

The first and main ingredient to the change was the fact that DeRozan went from one foot out of the organization to being all in. DeRozan has a long history of being loyal and thrived in both high school and college in the role of underdog on underdog teams(he deliberately chose to play for a highschool that hadn’t won in a long time)but even he began to doubt if being on a rebuilding team in his fifth season was something that made sense for his career.

At the same time Kyle Lowry was completely out the door. He even said his goodbye’s to teammates convinced (as was the media) that his trade to the Knicks was inevitable. However it abruptly fell through and it was as if he suddenly realized that he had left a good party early and was racing back inside so that he wouldn’t miss out. This Derozan/Lowry alliance has been running strong for nearly five years now and is the engine that drives Toronto’s success.

The other unlikely byproduct of the Rudy Gay trade was that the players they received in return-the ones with expiring contracts who were destined to be Raptors for only a few months-became integral to winning. Greivis Vasquez, Patrick Patterson as well as John Salmons were all seemingly upgrades and almost immediately gelled. This may have not been true in every statistically way but to the eye the new chemistry was undeniable. The Raptors were fun to watch again.

Fast forward five years later and the momentum that was at the core of this movement is still building. There have been peripheral players that have come and gone and there have been set backs but it’s undeniable that December of 2013 was the beginning of something special. It was the dawn of a new era of sustained winning that included a partnership with Drake that helped “normalize” and popularize a Canadian team that was having difficulty doing so and because of the unexpected playoff birth the wildly effective “We The North” campaign was prematurely launched to capitalize on the momentum. The Raptors have now had five straight playoff trips including a 2016 run that ended just two wins shy of the NBA Finals.

That’s a lot of success in a short period of time for a franchise that was faltering and was completely prepared to start over. I think what has made the past five years so special to watch is that it wasn’t anticipated. You just didn’t see it coming. If you told me back then that Kyle Lowry who was inches from being traded to the Knicks and relatively unproved DeRozan would become one of the best back court duo’s in the NBA and would together go to the All Star game three years in a row I truly wouldn’t have been able to wrap my head around it. I also wouldn’t believe back then that Duane Casey would become one of the longest tenured coaches in the NBA and that his defense first philosophy would ever eventually coincide with a fast paced new age offense that virtually eliminates the isolation style of play.

When DeRozan said “I got us” in a tweet from 2010 it felt like it could quite possibly be just lip service because he was so young and unproven but in the end it turned out to be the stone cold truth. He has quietly but confidently led the Raptors out of obscurity and into the spotlight and is the heart of a team that has a real possibility of playing in June for the first time in franchise history.