KAWHI CHANGING THE DIRECTION OF RAPTORS’ FUTURE
Leonard’s dominant playoff performance reminiscent of Alomar’s heroics of 1992
Late on a shadowy afternoon in Oakland, Roberto Alomar hit the home run that changed everything for Toronto sports.
It was the jumpshot, before Kawhi Leonard hit the arching Game 7 jumpshot. It was the singular moment in Blue Jays history that convinced a good team that couldn’t win — let’s be honest, something of a choking team — that they could win when it suddenly mattered.
They won the World Series in Atlanta in 1992, but without the Alomar home run off Dennis Eckersley, the betting here has always been it wouldn’t have happened. And one year later, the more famous home run. The Joe Carter smash.
Around the baseball world, that’s the homer people remember, the replay shown over and over again. But you don’t get to one place — one championship — without the kind of home run the great Alomar hit against the great Eckersley and the sneering Tony LaRussa.
And you don’t get to Game 6 Saturday — the first opportunity in the history of the Raptors to get to the NBA’s championship round — without Kawhi Leonard doing Kawhi Leonard things.
The Raptors have been a good team since Masai Ujiri took over six years ago. They had a short run of hope before that with Vince Carter, but not much else.
But two things stood in the way of the Raptors. LeBron James at his best. And the Raptors, bless them, led by DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, weren’t good enough to get past that wall.
They never did beat a great team in a playoff round. They needed an Alomar signature moment like the one in 1992, a Kawhi shot over the outstretched arms of Joel Embiid, with no time on the clock, the basketball bouncing on the rim, the greatest stop-time sports photograph in recent history, and then all the possibilities followed.
Leonard, who won them the Philadelphia series and is one game away from winning them the Eastern Conference finals, is doing really what no Toronto team athlete has ever done before, and it shows almost every night with the Raptors.
He makes players better. In one series, Fred VanVleet looked like he couldn’t play playoff basketball. The next round, the new dad is draining shots from all over.
In one series, Norman Powell was horrible, but against Milwaukee, he took more shots in one game than ever before.
The baton has been passed, night to night, from Marc Gasol, to Serge Ibaka, to a coming-out party for Nick Nurse as an NBA head coach. Respect is growing for Lowry that’s long overdue.
That’s what happens when teams get this far in the playoffs. Pat Borders won a World Series MVP in 1992 and was nowhere near the best Blue Jay at any time.
It was Alomar and Joe Carter and Devon White and Dave Winfield and John Olerud and so many more on that great Blue Jays team.
But since 1993, a few playoff sniffs for the Jays and nothing more.
Sure, the Argos have won and Toronto FC has won and the Rock have won and the Marlies have won — but those aren’t major-league sports, no matter what the soccer league calls itself.
Four times the Leafs have been to an NHL semifinal since the 1967 expansion.
Since the Carter home run, the Blue Jays have made the playoffs only in 2015 and 2016, and really weren’t in position to beat Kansas City or Cleveland in the American League Championship Series either time.
This is where Leonard is different, even if this is a one-and done scenario with the Raptors, because frankly, Toronto has never had a professional athlete like him before. Alomar is the greatest of all Blue Jays. He’s in the Hall of Fame. Dave Keon was named the greatest of all Maple Leafs. A very, very, good player, also in the Hall of Fame, but he’s a not a Gretzky, an Orr, a Lemieux.
Leonard is arguably the best player in the NBA today. Right there with Kevin Durant and LeBron. You can make the argument he’s the best professional athlete we’ve ever seen on a Toronto-based team.
Josh Donaldson and George Bell won MVP awards. No Leaf of our lifetime has been an MVP or Norris winner. Roger Clemens won two Cy Young Awards with the Jays, but neither year the team competed for anything important. That leaves Kawhi all by himself. He has changed the Raptors, really, the way Alomar’s home run changed the Blue Jays way back.
The difference being, should the Raptors win one more against Milwaukee, they next face the dynastic Golden State Warriors. The reward is getting to play for a championship. And that means something. And that matters.
Everything after that is gravy.