‘Sport can give a relief, a reprieve’

“Kudos to that officer.” And, as the Raptors prepare for a crucial Game 5 at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday night, they acknowledged that the events of Monday put recent playoff struggles in a different light.

“It was just this weekend I was talking to people in Washington about how safe Toronto is,” said coach Dwane Casey, who grew up in Kentucky during the civil-rights era, a time that was scary for different reasons.

“It does put things in perspective. There are things much bigger than sport that are going on in the world, and right now in Toronto,” he said. “Hopefully sport can give a relief, a reprieve, some joy in our lives a little bit. It should lighten things up.”

If nothing else, it will be a distraction. The Maple Leafs served that role on Monday night, winning a home game to extend their NHL playoff series, with Game 7 coming in Boston on Wednesday night, as the Raptors will be tipping off at home against Washington.

The Blue Jays are playing, too, and Toronto FC will be chasing a championship in Mexico on the same night. MLSE announced on Tuesday that there would be a joint Leafs-RaptorsTFC viewing party on Wednesday night in Maple Leaf Square, outside the Air Canada Centre.

It won’t help with the suffering of those involved, or with answers for why it happened, but all those games, one big cathartic party, will provide something else for Toronto to think about.

And for the Raptors, beset by questions after a two-game losing streak, Monday’s events were a reminder that one can only get so worked up about aggressive defence and limiting turnovers.

“What we do doesn’t really matter sometimes. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be on that sidewalk,” Ujiri said.

“My drive home, it’s all I thought about was that, and the heaviness of it, but the next thing I thought about was I still know who we are, I still know what this city is.”

Ujiri may not have been here as long as some, but his pride in this place is evident. He said he knew it would carry on: “I still know that those kinds of things can never put a city, a country, like this down.”