We the South?
The Raptors will call Tampa home after federal government rejects team’s plan.
The Raptors are being forced to winter in Florida.
The federal government turned down a plan that the team and the NBA had proposed to address public health concerns while allowing the Raptors to play their home games at Scotiabank Arena during the pandemic. With concerns over rising COVID-19 numbers — Toronto is headed back into a temporary lockdown — and with the NBA season set to begin in a month, the Raptors opted to make Tampa, Fla., their temporary home.
“Ultimately, the current public health situation facing Canadians, combined with the urgent need to determine where we will play means that we will begin our 2020-21 season in Tampa, Florida,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said Friday.
The Raptors had worked at finding a new location for months, even as they and the NBA tried to come up with medical protocols and safety measures that would have allowed them to play in Toronto. The backup plan became necessary Friday when the federal government, citing advice from the Public Health Agency of Canada, ended the hope of starting the season in Toronto.
The Raptors instead will play at Amalie Arena in Tampa, home of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, and will practise in a facility yet to be identified. They will remain in the their usual Atlantic Division spot in the league and training camp will be held at Saint Leo University, about a half-hour drive north of Tampa.
The Canadian government’s decision to reject the Raptors’ proposal is in line with one that forced the Blue Jays to play their home games in Buffalo this year. The chance exists, however, for the Raptors to play the second half of the season in Toronto, if border and public health safety concerns are met. The border remains closed to anything other than essential travel until at least Dec. 21 and the government insists on a 14day quarantine for anyone entering the country.
The NBA has built in a fiveday break into the schedule in early March and plans to release only the first half of the schedule in the next couple of weeks.
“I think our plan is, wherever we do decide on, we want to go down there and get settled and I don’t think we want to have a trip back to Toronto,” Raptors general manager Bobby Webster said this week. “But there is going to be, as you all have seen, a natural break in the season, so there would be an opportunity to transition back.”
The Health Ministry said it was “open to reviewing proposals from any professional sports
team or league that includes a comprehensive public health plan agreed to by the government of Canada and obtaining written support from provincial or territorial public health officials.”
Details of the Raptors’ plan were not available. But Ujiri, in an opinion article he wrote for the Star last weekend, said “we’ve provided detailed proposals to governments about how we, and the teams that visit us, could play safely in Toronto. Our plan builds on things we learned in the bubble, such as daily testing, limiting contact, and safe travel. It’s constructed to keep our players, staff, their families and Canadians healthy, because that has to be the starting point and the end point.”
Ujiri held out hope that a resolution could salvage some of the season in Toronto. But the Raptors had to make firm plans for the start of the season. NBA camps are scheduled to open Dec. 1, and a truncated 72-game regular season starts Dec. 22.
The team’s search encompassed a raft of issues.
“We’re trying to do what’s best for the organization,” Webster said this week. “So you can kind of go down the line. You know, what is first and foremost? The players. What does the practice facility look like? What would be the accommodations around the medical facilities, the medical treatment? Obviously you need to have an arena that fits NBA standards. There’s a ton of broadcast issues. There’s health and safety. There’s availability for arena dates. There’s a ton of stuff there.”
What effect the move will have on the team on the court is impossible to say, but it’s not something the players, coaches and staff are unfamiliar with. The Raptors were sequestered in Naples, Fla., for more than two weeks before spending more than a month in the NBA’s bubble in Orlando to complete the 2019-20 regular season and playoffs.
It was not a perfect existence but it gave them a grounding that might make the transition to Tampa a bit easier to deal with.
Almost all of the Raptors are already in the U.S., which has no travel restrictions despite nationwide growth in COVID-19 numbers.
The team is planning an informal mini-camp in the Los Angeles area next week, with the full training camp opening Dec. 1.