Sports, sadness mix in Toronto

Something that often happens to the Toronto Raptors on the road happened the other night in Washington.

The Raptors and Wizards got in a mild tussle, and some members of the D.C. crowd started chanting, “US-A! U-S-A!” The public address system played Born in the U.S.A., with the operator apparently oblivious to the fact that most of the Raptors were born in the United States — and that the song is a Vietnam War protest song.

But this is the thing about the Raptors: They are a truly international team, heavy on Americans, but with key players also from Europe and Africa, and yet they are very much a team of Canada. It’s why Americans shout pro-American things at the Americans who wear Raptors jerseys: They see this team as representing Somewhere Else.

And so, when that somewhere else was shattered by tragedy on Monday afternoon, the Toronto Raptors, the team from everywhere, spoke up for their adopted home.

“Everywhere I go I brag about this city,” said Masai Ujiri, the team president from Nigeria who played and worked in Europe for years and is on his second stint in Toronto. “It’s the safest place in the world, it’s the best city in the world, and it’s going to continue to be the best place and the best city.”

Ujiri said he was in a meeting Monday when texts and messages from around the NBA started flooding his phone. He turned on the television to see the reports of dead and injured pedestrians struck by a van on a Yonge Street sidewalk.

He has travelled enough to have been close to masscasualty events before, and he said he’s had times when his mother has been worried about some of the places he’s gone for his job. Once, she gave him grief over such a trip when he was home in Denver, where he was working at the time. Days later, a movie theatre in Colorado was the scene of a mass shooting.

You could be anywhere, Ujiri said, and these things could happen.

“We must continue to live our lives and not be afraid,” hesaid.

Kyle Lowry, the star guard, said he thought about his children when he saw the “sickening” news. It could have been them, he said, echoing a thought shared by millions in this huge city in the hours since the news broke and everyone thought of the times they had walked that same sidewalk, in a busy stretch in Toronto’s north end. Lowry said he was amazed by the video of the police officer who apprehended the suspect without firing a shot.

“I think in America he would have been shot up a few times,” he said.