BEYOND THE HOOPLA
Raptors president vindicated
It still doesn’t feel real.
A few hours of sleep later, that series-clinching win over the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final feels far more dream than reality.
The confetti-covered court, Kyle Lowry walking back to his locker-room with the Eastern Conference championship trophy under an arm still seems surreal.
The fact that come Thursday the NBA brings its entire operation to Toronto to begin the 2019 NBA final? All of it is still a little too much to believe.
But we all should have listened. Masai Ujiri told us to believe, believe in ourselves, believe in this city and believe in this team the day he officially introduced Kawhi Leonard to Torontonians some eight months ago, weeks after the midsummer blockbuster deal.
Those words hit home Saturday night in the short walk from the arena to my parked car with delirious fans leaning on their horns as they made the circuit around Scotiabank Arena.
Horns blaring, buses stopped, vehicles unable to move because the more agile in the crowd decided now was the perfect time to surf atop one of said buses.
Give Ujiri and his team credit. They went all in this year looking to put the franchise’s fans in this very position.
He started by replacing a pending NBA coach of the year in Dwane Casey, another popular member of the organization, with Nick Nurse, an experienced assistant who was unproven as a head coach at the NBA level.
Then there was the trade of fan-favourite Demar Derozan for Leonard. Ujiri knew the backlash was coming despite the sense the trade brought one of the top three players in the NBA to Toronto.
And the backlash came.
Ujiri’s loyalty and his ability to be trusted were questioned, first by a hurt Derozan, less publicly by the aforementioned coach of the year and then by a fan base that values those qualities.
But big moves, franchise-altering moves, are not made without a cost.
The Raptors organization lost one of its most loyal and devoted employees in Derozan and that’s before we start expounding on the talent of a Jakob Poeltl or that first-round pick it took to acquire Leonard. They told the winningest coach in franchise history he was no longer wanted. A man makes enemies for life with moves like that and Ujiri pulled the trigger on both anyway knowing the cost.
Still the work was not done. When the rest of the East started loading up — first with Philadelphia acquiring Tobias Harris and then Milwaukee adding solid depth pieces in George Hill and Nikola Mirotic — Ujiri, Bobby Webster, Dan Tolzman and the rest of Toronto’s management team doubled down again, sending another long-serving, loyal soldier and fan favourite in Jonas Valanciunas, along with homegrown Delon Wright and popular CJ Miles, to Memphis for Marc Gasol.
Without Gasol, the Raptors defence is not the lockdown group they have become. They probably don’t get this far. Again, the price was steep. And risky. But it has worked out.
Ujiri took a cold, hard look at the landscape, decided what he needed and, with a little help from the basketball gods, the necessary pieces were available.
He struck and now he has made NBA history as a Canadian team will play in the championship game for the first time.
And Ujiri is looking to make more history.
The journey is not done. The Golden State Warriors, making their fifth straight appearance in the final and winners of three of the last four league championships, await. The Raptors will be underdogs against the Warriors. Of that there is no question.
Ujiri, though, doesn’t care what the odds say. He never has.
Given the chance to gloat on the national stage after Saturday’s win by TNT broadcaster Ernie Johnson, who asked how that Leonard trade was working out for him, Ujiri first chuckled and then replied: “He’s the best player in the league and we’re happy he’s in Toronto.”
But that wasn’t the end of Ujiri’s message.
As usual, he played the crowd perfectly, building to what he really wanted to say and using Johnson to get there.
Johnson wanted to talk about the successes in the draft and the trades it took to get the Raptors to this point. Ujiri acknowledged the compliment, but then flipped the script.
“We’re not satisfied because we want to win the championship,” Ujiri said, his voice rising to stay above the cheers.
Johnson wasn’t done. He wanted to know Ujiri’s feelings about Golden State.
The last time Ujiri was asked this publicly about a playoff opponent, he got into a little trouble for his choice of words, telling everyone what he really thought of the Brooklyn Nets. That was five years ago in a firstround matchup.
Ujiri kept it clean this time, but the message was no less of a mike drop: “We came all this way to compete and we want to win in Toronto and we will win in Toronto,” he said.
He was right last September. Why shouldn’t you believe him now?