Don’t fret, sports fans, just sit back and enjoy it

It’s tough to resist the pull of sports after Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment so dramatically altered Toronto’s sporting landscape with two blockbuster moves.

Elite hockey player John Tavares chose Toronto and the Maple Leafs over all the other teams in the National Hockey League.

And the Toronto Raptors traded beloved star DeMar DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard, one of the very best basketball players in the world.

Toronto sports fans should be ecstatic. Predictably, many are perplexed. Rarely do Scotiabank Arena fans get to cheer the world’s greatest players in home team colours.

Tavares is a top-12 NHL player, Leonard a top 10, maybe top 5.

Tavares figures to be here for a while and wants to play here. Leonard? Not so much. He could jilt us for LA in a year, perpetuating the self-doubting angst endemic in this town.

Tavares picked the team of his childhood dreams when so many like him avoid the “pressure” of playing in the media capital of the country and the scrutiny that comes with the marquee franchise that has not won a title in 51 years.

His arrival will make the Leafs demonstrably better, though it will take three or more similar hockey moves before City Hall can dream of planning the Stanley Cup parade route.

It’s the kind of move — strangely rare — that should be old hat. But only dead or dying Leaf hockey fans saw the league’s best play for the home side. This may be the hockey capital of the world, but you couldn’t believe it from the Maple Leaf roster.

The basketball blockbuster is bold and risky, the kind of manoeuvre at odds with a franchise discounted as bereft of the “It” factor — that aura that leaves opponents shaking and terrified that the home team will turn in a fabulous, unconquerable performance.

Raptors fans are almost resigned to their image as a basketball backwater, despite significant examples to the contrary.

And so, Toronto doesn’t know what to think of its current sporting status because so much is uncertain, unscripted and unfamiliar to anyone who arrived after the nation’s centenary.

Since then, Toronto has emerged from the fog of international consciousness to become a celebrated and recognized city that ranks in the top 10 on most measurable levels of what makes a city livable and sustainable.

Despite all the good things trumpeted about our city, the locals are reticent to believe the kudos. Instead, we live and die on the next ranking.

Are we top three on the best places to live index?

Or among the worst on the nightmare commuting spectrum?

Are we friendly or indifferent? Are we tidy and clean or fastidious and uptight?

We can’t be good — not with so few subway lines on the transit map.

So much of our self-esteem is tied to the elephant next door and nowhere does this find greater expression than in the perennial prospects of our sporting teams, locked in faux civic combat with the likes of Cleveland, Boston, New York.

Torontonians cower as TV talking heads wax on about whether a potential superstar is better off, financially and otherwise, by taking his game and skills to Milwaukee or Tampa Bay or Phoenix than to the 6ix.

Do they like us? What are they saying about us?

“I am Toronto,” DeRozan famously said, declaring his allegiance.

For that he will never be forgotten.

But DeRozan and the Raptors that got crushed by a weak Cleveland team last May were never going to be great.

Vince Carter? The guy whose stardom and footprint can only be surpassed by someone like a Kawhi Leonard taking the Raps to a championship (and not even then) is denied deity status even though he is singu- larly responsible for putting the Raptors on the sports map. Vince’s failure is that he never declared his unrequited love.

So this week Toronto is of many sporting minds.

Will Tavares’ signing finally open the floodgates to all the elite level players who somehow never made it to the signature franchise? Really, how do you explain that the richest, most stable, iconic franchise in hockey keeps missing out on the game’s best players?

The Leafs should be the Yankees or Lakers/Celtics of hockey. George Steinbrenner bought baseball’s best players. Why couldn’t Harold Ballard or Steve Stavros or Larry Tannenbaum?

Will Kawhi Leonard grow to love us and stay — not bolt away to Hollywood?

Instead of fretting and second-guessing Toronto’s worth, a more secure and self-loving city might just enjoy the upcoming year for what it promises — a better shot at sporting success. For a change.

Really, how do you explain that the richest, most stable, iconic franchise in hockey keeps missing out on the game’s best players?