Team will call Tampa home

TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors will start the NBA season next month in Tampa, Fla., because of travel restrictions by the Canadian government stemming from the pandemic.

The Raptors will play home games at Amalie Arena, home of the Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning.

“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 in a statement Friday.

An official familiar with the Canadian government’s decision told The Associated Press there is too much COVID-19 circulating in the United States to allow for cross-border travel that is not essential.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity and not authorized to talk publicly about the matter, said there’s a chance that the decision could be reviewed next year.

Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai Health System—University Health Network, said the Canadian government made the right decision.

“With the current situation it is almost impossible for the government to reasonably sanction travel back and forth travel outside a bubble,” Morris said.

So, for the Raptors, it’s now time for Florida to be home away from home.

The league will release the first half of the schedule around Dec. 1; the second half of the schedule is likely to come in January or February, and there is a possibility that the team — for now, anyway — could return to Toronto at that point.

“So we’ll be away from our home and our fans for now,“Ujiri wrote in his statement. “They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’m not sure that’s possible for us — we love Toronto and Canada, and we know we have the best fans in the NBA. For now, I’ll ask you to cheer for us from afar, and we’ll look forward to the day we are all together again.”