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The last time I wrote about the Toronto Raptors, it was 84 days ago, after the team had dropped out of the first game of its quarterfinal series of the conference. The East faces the oppressed Orlando Magic. A missed defensive assignment from Kawhi Leonard in the final seconds led to a 3-pointer from D.J. Augustin, sealing a loss that vibrated with a sense of déjà-vu uncomfortable. We had already seen this film, which had been directed by David Lynch. "Love this team," I wrote, "that means accepting that life is a pain and that time is a flat circle. … [Lynch’s films] are about repetition and recurrence, the realization that nothing really changes, no matter how much you want it, or how much it seems like it's okay. "
It has happened a lot since, and after a charming seven-week run during which a series of giants fell (quite literally) and the rebounds have followed one another, the Raptors, the The team I have followed since the opening night in 1995, when Alvin Robertson burned the New Jersey Nets for 30 points at the SkyDome, they are NBA champions. It's a too surrealistic phrase even for David Lynch, but it really happened: there was a parade and everything. Masai Ujiri he's got rid of Ontario's rogue Premier, Doug Ford; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a good impression on Howard Finkel; Marc Gasol thought it was Freddie Mercury; Kawhi Leonard had the last laugh. It was incredible, unfathomable and seemingly too good to be true, the kind of sensation that, as a fan, you want to live forever, relive the best moments with your friends and read all you can about what has happened and why. It lasts a bit, and then, on a Saturday morning, you check your phone at 5:30 in the morning until the detonation of a Woj Bomb it explodes your bubble. Life is pain Like The ring "s Raptor's resident correspondent (and Toronto honorary member), Danny Chau, said: Never mind the post-glow.
Danny's choice of an Everclear song for the title of his article is probably a coincidence, but I can not help but think about how the band's greatest success – released in 1995, two years ago earlier. That's it for the glow and during the same winter that the Raptors debuted, it's a hymn about the California dream of dreaming such a winter day. "I do not want to be the bad guy," sings the narrator of "Santa Monica." "I just want to see palms." Alone and dreaming of the west coast, he wants to live by the ocean. Kawhi can tell.
I recently visited Santa Moncia with my wife and the question of whether Kawhi was going to decamp in Los Angeles became a common joke on our trip. That's all friends and strangers – even the guy we met in search of our Lynchian pilgrimage to Mulholland Drive – wanted to talk about it; when we had dinner with some friends from home, we grilled the title but also hope that we would have a chance to defend it. One of the participants at the dinner was a Canadian filmmaker who had become a fan of the Raptors a few years ago and was heartbroken last July when the team traded DeMar DeRozan to the Spurs. At that time, she told me that she could not imagine encouraging another player in her place and I told her that I knew where she had come from but that once she saw Kawhi in action, she would have changed her mind.
"You were right," she e-mailed a few minutes after the end of the finals. But when the #Kawhiwatch story began to eclipse the outcome of the Raptors title – and it became apparent that the best player in our history had bought a New Balance sneaker from day one – I had been thinking about DeRozan for a long time . a scapegoat for the failures of the franchise, and then a real sacrifice on the altar of aspirations to the championship of the team. We could not have done it with him, but we could not have done it without him.
DeRozan's willingness to talk openly about his depression issues has earned him respect around the league. It also made an ideally unique face of the franchise in Toronto, where the attitude of the fan base with regard to their team has long been framed by a kind of anguish and out of fear, as well as by the suspicion that the world – referees, replay officials, experts, planners on Christmas Day, Paul Pierce, whoever it is – is against them. One of the reasons for the success of the "We, the North" campaign of 2014 is how it internalized and reversed the persecution complex fed by Raptor's supporters, making this source of shame a source of pride. Doubling the geographic isolation of the league's only Canadian franchise, "We the North" took everything that was said about Toronto as a liability in NBA circles, especially ex-players who had talked about shit during their tenure. , or coming out of the door – and turned them into objects of cheer. If outsiders aspire to something, it is a sense of inclusion and the collectivist battle cry of "We the North" worked perfectly to galvanize the people of the most diverse city in North America. That the Raptors proved their legitimacy by heading to the Southwest – the direction of a manifest destiny – and that beating a California dynasty was the icing on the cake (in funnel): revenge is, after all, a dish that is eaten cold.
Kawhi Leonard was the driving force behind this vengeance and he is now gone – as extinct as DeRozan, except by choice rather than circumstance. In the end, the only difference between Leonard and the other stars who were emblematic of the status of Raptors – your Tracy McGradys, your Vince Carters, your Chris Boshes – is that he did the work while he was there. was here.
This is not an easy task, and the general feeling around these regions (starting with the Official Twitter account of the Raptors) is that it's more than enough – that even though Fun Guy was never anything but a real boardman Gets Paid, it was worth it. But even if I think the idea that the Raptors championship deserves an asterisk because of injuries sustained by Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson is bullshit (show me a team that won a title without being the beneficiary of ############################################################################ 39, a good health and / or bad luck of their opponents), I think that Kawhi's decision to flee rather than retaliate will activate some of this old-fashioned Toronto insecurity.
We'll hang a banner next October and no one will take it off, but what are the chances of getting another one if, after having risked everything by buying a superstar – and giving it all we could have? , including the key to the city – it still would not stay? The league's tectonic plates have moved east and west, and although the Raptors' lineup is still solid, with much financial leeway released for 2021, in the short term they will not be factors. Another Everclear song title comes to mind: "One Hit Wonder".
Throughout the season, on RealGM's bulletin boards and in salons (including mine), Raptor fans have tempered their high expectations (and their inherent pessimism) through a thought experiment. If we win a title with Kawhi and that he's going away, would you agree with that? As long as the question remained hypothetical, the answer, for an overwhelming majority of us, was "yes," and I think these figures probably hold after the fact as well. I do not think Kawhi will be booed at the Vince every time the Clippers arrive in town (a very good match of Christmas day 2019 in prime time, index). But I wonder if in five years he will be encouraged here as DeMar DeRozan – the kid from Compton who has never succumbed to his Californian dream – will always do it.
Each player is, in his own way, an integral part and a living emblem of the short, intense and complicated story of the Raptors; both did their part to change it. If Kawhi did more, his departure paradoxically also reminded that in Toronto, nothing has ever really changed – and maybe we, the North, love it as well.
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