A championship night we will never forget
One year ago, Raptors came together as a team and unleashed a national party
Memories of a championship night on the one-year anniversary ...
The odour was daunting late into the evening, that rare combination of sweat and Champagne. On this special night, the odour was rather intoxicating.
It was bedlam everywhere in Oracle Arena, but nowhere more so than in the championship locker-room of the Raptors on the Thursday night that is still so hard to believe, at the end of the stunning, memorable, still shocking, NBA title win by Toronto.
The spray of Champagne stings when it gets in your eyes and stains your clothing and the architect Masai Ujiri was rubbing his eyes and laughing and smiling and hugging everyone around him. The scene was bedlam and then some. Bedlam inside the dressing room. Bedlam in the hallways outside the room. Screaming and shouting and celebrating everywhere in the last game to be played at Oracle Arena.
The championship no one saw coming. The championship we will celebrate forever.
The final score was Raptors
114, Golden State Warriors 110.
The game and the title weren’t decided until the final 10 seconds of Game 6. This was one of those basketball games you see in the movies, just rarely in real life. There were few runs, little momentum, the game just went back and forth and back and forth. The Raptors led by one at the end of the first quarter, a sensational quarter, a sensational start for the rock named Kyle Lowry.
Toronto led by two at the half, trailed by two at the end of three quarters: That was the kind of game it was. Anyone’s game.
And it wasn’t until Steph Curry missed on an off-balance three that there was certainty there wouldn’t be a Game 7. The Danny Green turnover blends in over time, but the throwaway almost cost the Raptors a championship. Almost made them play another game.
It doesn’t matter now. What Nick Nurse and his team managed that Thursday night in Oakland was rather special and spectacular. Lowry and Pascal Siakam with 26 points apiece, Siakam scoring the final Toronto field goal in the final minute. Kawhi Leonard, expected to dominate, didn’t really, but still ended up with 22 points. Fred Vanvleet, not expected to dominate, had a remarkable Game 6 with 22 points off the bench: he hit five three-pointers — one of his misses was turned into a basket by the redoubtable Serge Ibaka — and wound up with a Finals MVP vote.
Combined, Ibaka and Vanvleet scored 37 points in Game 6. The Warriors, playing without Kevin Durant, playing with a hobbling Klay Thompson, had their bench outscored 37-20.
Part of the wonder of the Raptors’ win — and it has been evident in the season still not concluded — was the depth of contribution. Yes, Leonard was sensational and there is no way the Raptors get past Philadelphia or Milwaukee without his utter dominance.
But in the finals, everyone came out to play. The combination of Marc Gasol and Ibaka proved to be special, just as Vanvleet and Norm Powell off the bench were, and on that clinching to see the kid, Siakam, dominating late and the old man, Lowry, dominating early.
Everyone was drenched in the championship room, drenched in sweat and championship celebration and drenched from hugs that came from players and family members and management and ownership and some unrecognizable people: In that controlled space, the scene was rather out of control.
And across Canada, for the team that had no national presence for so many years, that fought to find a place on the sporting landscape, there were parties and shouting and dancing and screaming and running through the streets. Isiah Thomas told me it would be like that one day, that the Raptors would own the country. It took a long while and the Leonard gamble to get them there.
Nick Nurse, in his first season as an NBA coach, replacing a Toronto legend, became a legend himself in just one year. He seemed almost shocked to win, too excited to immediately celebrate: He needed days to process everything.
It wasn’t like that for Lowry, the longest serving Raptor. It was as though his world had changed in one night: The tough guy who never won anything outside of playing a bit part at the Olympics, almost always on competitive teams, was suddenly a champion. He’d lost in city championships in high school, lost in college, almost always left something behind. He left nothing behind on this magical night in Oakland.
It was crazy across Canada, but I was trapped in the hallways at Oracle, trying to make my way to the dressing room, like a lot of us — including Raptors management — caught in a rush. Too many people. Not enough space. Not enough security. And suddenly, we were pushed through a lineup into the madness.
And everywhere there was sweat and celebration and the room was raining Champagne. That pungent odour of a championship night never to be forgotten.