You win some, you lose some
Dave Feschuk reflects upon the 10 most indelible moments of the past 10 years
A look back at 10 of the most indelible Toronto sports stories of the past decade,
Maybe Toronto will forever be a Maple Leafs town. But the 10year span that’ll end at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve certainly won’t go down as a Maple Leafs decade, at least not when you do the results-based math.
Add up the numbers. Basketball’s Raptors captured the imagination of a nation by winning their first NBA banner in 2019. Soccer’s Toronto FC won their first MLS Cup in 2017. Football’s Argos won a pair of Grey Cups in 2012 and 2017. Lacrosse’s Rock won a title in 2011. And when it came to delivering groundbreaking performances on big stages — well, GTA teenagers Penny Oleksiak and Bianca Andreescu climbed competitive summits in the past handful of summers that inspired a country. The Leafs, meanwhile, watched the 2010s come and go without winning so much as a playoff series. Dominating the 2016 draft lottery amounted to the height of the franchise’s success. In other words, best of luck in the 2020s.
But before the page is turned, let’s take a look back at the 10 most impactful moments of a Toronto sports decade. á 10. LeBron makes Toronto LeBronto … again, 2018: A humiliating loss is never fun. It’s something a fan base tries to forget. But the Raptors’ second straight second-round sweep at the hands of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers is worth remembering, not because it was enjoyable, but because, in the cutthroat mind of Toronto team president Masai Ujiri, it was actionable. The ouster not only precipitated the firing of Dwane Casey — never mind that the beloved Casey would soon be en route to Las Vegas to pick up his coach-ofthe-year trophy. It turned into the seed of a championship, forcing an internal rethink that led to the acquisition of Kawhi Leonard. á 9. Maple Leafs collapse on Causeway Street, 2013: Toronto’s NHLers subsequently lost two Game 7s in Boston. But this one, it can be argued, spurred positive change. If the Leafs had held their 4-1 third-period lead and moved on to meet the Rangers, after all, who knows what ugliness might have ensued. Maybe, emboldened by modest success, the Leafs would have doubled down on a team wrong-headedly constructed around Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel. Maybe Brendan Shanahan wouldn’t have arrived as president less than a year later to begin a run that’s instilled hope, even if it hasn’t achieved results.
8. Tim Leiweke arrives, 2013: Former Leafs GM Brian Burke thought he was being brash when he declared, upon his arrival as Maple Leafs GM in 2008: “I want a parade.” To which Leiweke snorted, shortly after his insertion as MLSE president and CEO: Want one? I’ve already planned one. As ridiculous as some of his grand pronouncements might have been, there’s no denying Leiweke’s whistle-stop stay in Toronto, which lasted all of 21⁄ years, made an impact that lingers. A little more than a year after the competitively unambitious pension plan that owned MLSE sold its stake, Leiweke quickly identified a lack of title-focused goal-setting as a cardinal sin. “I’m not afraid of saying, ‘Our standard is, we’re going to win,’ ” Leiweke said. “We’ve always been afraid of that … Why be in this business if you’re not trying to win championships?”
7. Edwin Encarnacion hits a wild-card walk-off, 2016: This win-or-go-home one-off turned into an indictment of Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter, who kept hard-to-hit reliever Zack Britton in the bullpen as Encarnacion slammed a game-winning home run in the11th inning that ignited a second straight run to the American League Championship Series. Seen more than three years on, it’s also a reminder that Encarnacion, who left the Blue Jays in the ensuing off-season, has been sorely missed.
6. TFC wins MLS Cup, 2017: After Toronto’s Major League Soccer team missed the playoffs in the opening eight seasons of its existence, including the first five years of the decade, it was known more for its admirably loyal fan base than onfield acumen. But thanks to a push from Leiweke, they’ve been perennial contenders for years now, finally breaking through in 2017 after losing in the final a year earlier.
5. Oleksiak dominates in Rio, 2016: She hadn’t yet finished Grade 10. She was competing in the first major international swim meet of her life. And when she made the halfway turn in the 100-metre freestyle final, the 16-year-old from the Beaches found herself in seventh place. But her incredible closing 50 metres landed Canada’s first Olympic gold in the pool since Mark Tewksbury in 1992. And by the time she was named Canada’s closing ceremony flag bearer, she’d added a silver and two bronzes to her medal haul — the most by a Canadian at a single Summer Games.
4. Andreescu wins the U.S. Open, 2019: It’ll go down as one of the great hostile-territory victories in Canadian history. When Andreescu took the court in her first grand slam final, she wasn’t just playing against the great Serena Williams. She was playing against history — specifically, Williams’s push to win her 24th major title and tie the all-time record held by Margaret Court. And she was playing against a crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium that was clearly pulling for Williams.
3. DeMar DeRozan gets traded, 2018: It’s become popular in this sporting era: Teams, players, coaches — they refer to each other as “family.” But there’s a reason why the old heads of commerce discourage the mixing of business and blood relatives. And there’s a reason why the family shtick doesn’t ring true. True competitive ruthlessness doesn’t allow for such sentiment, which is why Ujiri traded DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs in the swap that brought Leonard to Toronto, even though DeRozan was a model NBA citizen who represented everything you’d want in a Raptor. The deal was as ruthless as it was right.
2. The Bat Flip, 2015: To understand the significance of Jose Bautista’s crowning moment as one of Toronto’s eternally beloved baseball savants, it’s important to remember the context. The Blue Jays, after slouching through the bulk of a season at an underwhelming 50-51, had ignited a hardball renaissance by breaking a 22-year playoff drought that was the longest such fallow period in all of North American pro sports. And in Game 5 of the American League Division Series, they’d found themselves ensconced in one of the great innings of baseball that’s ever been played — a 53-minute seventh that included biblical controversy and calamity and raining beer cans at the Rogers Centre. And then Bautista hit the three-run home run that gave Toronto a 6-3 lead — disposing of his bat with a theatrical flourish — and the Jays were soon off to their first American League Championship Series since 1993.
1. The Shot, 2019: Four dribbles. Four bounces. A fourth win over the Sixers on the road to the requisite 16 for the championship. Leonard’s Game 7 winner over Philadelphia in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs is not just the shoo-in winner for the most memorable moment of the decade in Toronto sports. It ought to be in consideration for the greatest moment of the decade in all of North America. Not since Tiger Woods left the sporting world hanging on the final turn of his Nike golf ball at the 2005 Masters has the fate of a sphere’s dying roll been so riveting. It didn’t deliver a championship, but it’s now emblematic of one.