Quarter marks
Oak? Drake? Ranking the most important figures since ’95 tipoff takes balance and a little inside knowledge — let the debate begin
Twenty-five seasons.
Twenty-five people dating back to 1995.
Find the 25 Most Important People in Raptors History and rank them. A fun and easy exercise, right? Not so much. Try and put aside any recency bias, because the team’s won for more than half a decade, and remember those who were important parts of the process that got them to this point.
Try to balance the basketball side of the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment conglomerate with the corporate side and if that means people like Tim Leiweke and Richard Peddie can’t make the cut because they were too MLSE, well, that’s just the way it is.
Don’t weight it too heavily toward players because there are too many others who were and are too vital to what the organization is.
Put the list together knowing it’s subjective and hope it sparks some debate — respectful and peaceful — and see how it turns out.
So here you go. One man’s take on the 25 Most Important People in 25 Years of the Raptors starts here:
25. NAV BHATIA
Many people can say they’ve been to many games. None can match Super Fan, who’s been around since the very beginning. But even more than his willingness and ability to spend countless millions of dollars and years of his time following the Raptors, Bhatia has taken the team’s message to a group of fans that might not otherwise have had an interest in the team. That’s the importance of his contribution to the franchise.
24. LENNY WILKENS
Coached the team to its first playoff series win and that can’t be discounted. He may not have been the hardest-working man in showbiz when he finally got to Toronto, but he did turn Alvin Williams loose — and we know what he became — and Wilkens did bring a sense of calm to the team after a somewhat tumultuous end to the Butch Carter years.
23. BERNIE OFFSTEIN
Anonymous to many, the late great security chief and longtime basketball lover and supporter in the Toronto area walked so many players through so many precarious situations in the city — these were young and somewhat irresponsible rich young Americans thrust into a new city, country and team — that his value was necessarily out of the public eye. But ask anyone who was around for the first decade of the team how valuable and important he was. They’ll tell you.
22. BRYAN COLANGELO
Sure, Andrea Bargnani. But looking back, why not gamble on something that might have been special even if it failed somewhat miserably? Colangelo did infuse the team with a cockiness and he was a gambler. He got the team back into the playoffs for the first time in what seemed like forever, and at that point in history it was something of a watershed moment. His biggest failing might have been that the Raptors won a bit too quickly after he took over.
21. SAM MITCHELL
Demonstrative and loud, brash and definitely opinionated — post-practice scrums might last an hour when he got on a roll about something entirely divorced from basketball — if you win the first coach of the year award in franchise history and last as long as he did, you get on the list. But as emotional and all over the place as he could be, Mitchell got an awful lot out of some suspect rosters.
20. CHARLES OAKLEY
These are the words of someone who works closely behind the scenes with the players to this day: “Learned both industry and life lessons from that man every day he was with us — and still do. I’ve never simultaneously loved and been terrified of a person more in my 44 years. His impact guides much of what we do with these players even today.” Oakley was vitally important to a promising team becoming good and professional and he remains the best quote in the history of the franchise. No one is ever going to come close to usurping him.
19. KEVIN DIPIETRO
All the stuff you don’t see? The flights, the hotels, the tickets for players, the buses, the logistics it takes to move a small army around the continent or the world? DiPietro makes sure it gets done. He’s been around forever, survived Sam Mitchell and Kevin O’Neill and every general manager the team’s ever had, and he makes things work to this day. It’s not easy — these can be quirky, demanding men and women he deals with —but DiPietro and his back-of-house running mate Paul Elliott make sure things get done.
18. ALEX MCKECHNIE
The Raptors haven’t pulled off a lot of coups hiring people away from other franchises. Getting “Silver” to come to Toronto from the Lakers was one of their greatest. He’s one of the most respected medical/ training minds in all of North American professional sports and has kept guys like Kawhi Leonard, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry as healthy and productive as they can be over the course of seasons and summers. The Raptors aren’t where they are today without him.
17. DRAKE
There is no denying his passion for the Raptors, which existed long before he became the team’s Global Ambassador leading into the 2016 NBA all-star game in Toronto. But what lands him on this list is the cachet he has with an important demographic, not only young players but young fans who might take their lead from an international icon. It’s impossible to quantify his contribution, but it is real and it matters to a segment of society that the team needs and wants to reach.
16. JIM LABUMBARD
It began with John Lashway and continues today with Jennifer Quinn. The Raptors media relations department has been, for years and years, consistently among the best and most respected in the league. LaBumbard, now with the league office in a senior media role, guided the Raptors through the Vince Carter years, the DeRozan-Dwane
Casey era, the odd Oakley blowup and a more than a few coach and general manager hirings and firings. It was always, unfailingly, a time of truth-telling and not hiding from bad stories and not pumping good ones too much. Fans might not know that, but it mattered in the big picture.
15. DR. PAUL MARKS
Through all the changes in sports medical science in the past quarter-century, Dr. Marks has been making sure the players get the right, immediate treatment they need and deserve. He’s seen it all, from Carter’s “jumper’s knee” to Nate Jawai’s heart issues to constant monitoring of medical examinations of Leonard’s leg. A lesser physician might have bowed to pressure from management to clear players who might not be ready to be cleared. Dr. Marks has been there consistently for the person rather than the team.
14. WAYNE EMBRY
No one in the organization has accomplished more and seen more than Embry. Wise, fair, firm and able to listen and dispense advice that comes from a life well lived is invaluable. The former NBA star turned executive/adviser walked so many people through contentious times without any fanfare — ask Sam Mitchell what Embry meant to his sanity — that they should find some way to permanently honour his contribution.
13. DWANE CASEY
As genuinely good a man as you can hope to ever meet. The former coach took over a horrid team going nowhere, stayed committed to his principles and took the Raptors from nothing to something. People throw around the phrase “franchise culture” so much that it’s almost a cliché, but Casey truly instilled one with the Raptors that turned them into champions.
12. CHUCK SWIRSKY
Swirsky gets on this list for nothing more than his unbridled enthusiasm through some dark franchise times. It wasn’t easy to be “up” and “on” back in those days, but he was and it made bad basketball a bit easier to take. You could put the late John Saunders and the Jack Armstrong/Matt Devlin/ Leo Rautins triumvirate on this list and that’d be OK, but Swirsk was the guy who did the heavy lifting any way he could.
11. KAWHI LEONARD
If the Leonard era had lasted longer than one magical championship season he would have been a lock for a top-five or top-10 slot. There is no denying what he did and what he meant in the 2018-19 NBA Finals run. It was magical and it was a joy to watch his somewhat understated brilliance. But there’s always going to be a “what if” component to Leonard’s one year in Toronto.
Tomorrow
The Top 10