Since Kawhi’s fateful shot, our world has changed
TORONTO — Patrick Cassidy watched the game alone in his Boston home. The only light in his living room came from the glow of his TV.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Cassidy was a lifelong Sixers fan. But he’s also the global director of consumer marketing for New Balance and, on this night, enigmatic Toronto Raptors superstar Kawhi Leonard was about to launch the company’s basketball brand into the stratosphere.
“It was like a rocket ride,” Cassidy said, looking back.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of Leonard’s buzzerbeating moon shoot over the giant outstretched hand of Cameroonian big man Joel Embiid in Game 7 against Philly. The shot sent Toronto into the National Basketball Association’s Eastern Conference finals, and erased years of heartbreak for Raptors fans.
“It was a moment in time that (reaffirmed) everything that we had thought or suspected about why launching a basketball brand and doing it with Kawhi Leonard as not just the face of basketball but in many, many ways the New Balance brand, why that was the right decision at the right time,” Cassidy said. “Everything paid off.”
Big time.
When Toronto was coming out of its final timeout with 4.2 seconds to play, Mark Blinch’s heart was pounding.
“I do get nervous,” the photographer said. “It’s just part of capturing stuff like that, you’re very nervous about your decisions and what lenses you’re using. You just hope all your instincts were right.”
It was the dramatic suspension of Leonard’s shot, Blinch said, that created one of the greatest moments in his career.
Glancing off the front of the rim and high into the air, the ball would bounce an agonizing three more times before falling, an unlikely sequence of events unfurling seemingly in slowmotion. Leonard had time to squat and watch.
The faces of those around him made for one big kaleidoscope look of expectation.
“A second is such a short period of time, in the context of time itself but, in basketball, it’s a long time, and that one second when the ball was bouncing created that extra bit of tension,” said Blinch, who was working for the NBA that night, but also shoots for The Canadian Press among other outlets. “And then even thinking about 25 years of Raptors history, and it comes down to that extra second for the ball to go in, really made it extra dramatic. If that ball goes straight in, it’s still a great shot. But I don’t know if that becomes the climax of the playoffs anymore.”
Blinch’s photo, taken from high up in Scotiabank Arena, earned him World Press Photo’s award for best sports shot of 2019.
Matt Devlin, doing play-byplay for Sportsnet that night, spent the Raptors’ final timeout calculating in his head how the final few seconds could play out.
“You go back to the basics of time and score and timeouts remaining and fouls to give,” Devlin
said. “If the shot goes in, it’s for the win. And, if he misses, you’re headed to overtime, so you’re thinking about the technical aspects of broadcasting and delivering the information to the audience.”
Leonard normally shoots a line drive but, because of Embiid’s length, he had to launch a high-arcing shot.
“When I think back of those 4.2 seconds, it all comes back to me in slow motion and it’s truly remarkable,” Devlin marvelled a year later.
The world has done a 180 since that heady night a year ago in Toronto. The NBA suspended play two months ago after Utah’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus.
There is massive uncertainty around whether the league will be able to salvage the rest of the season.
Those lightning-in-a-bottle few weeks last season saw Toronto’s love for the Raptors spread across the country.
Whether it was in Scotiabank Arena, outside at Jurassic Park, at a bar, or at a friend’s house, everyone “came together to watch a magical run,” Devlin said. “Everybody’s taking to the streets and it’s a mass celebration.”