When Joe Carter hit the famous World Series winning home run on a Saturday night in Toronto, who knew back in 1993 that this would be the last championship victory by the Blue Jays.
Maybe the last World Series we’ll ever know in this city, win or lose.
Back then, we celebrated the moment and the accomplishment. We paraded through the streets. We embraced the great back-to-back run of two very different Blue Jays teams. And naturally, we assumed after two World Series titles, that more would be on the way.
There have been none.
This is Kawhi Leonard Day in Toronto. The day he returns to get the NBA championship ring he so richly deserves. The day he grunts a few words for the fans or maybe laughs that big awful laugh of his, if he chooses to do that at all. The truth: we cannot thank him enough for bringing a basketball championship to the most unlikely of NBA championship cities.
We can’t cheer loud enough to explain how it was he changed history and changed a franchise and changed people’s lives. Insulated as he may keep himself, he probably isn’t all that aware of all that. The basketball part, yes. The social part, definitely not.
How he grabbed a franchise best known for playoff defeats and changed everything, and along the way brought a divided country together that couldn’t give a hoot about basketball in places like Red Deer and Fredericton and Moose Jaw and Kamloops and had them following every moment of every Raptors playoff game and had people cheering on the streets in every corner of every province.
There’s really never been anything like this in Canada before. The Sidney Crosby goal in Vancouver in 2010 brought people to the streets. But that was one goal, one game, one afternoon. Maybe the Paul Henderson of goal 1972 was more emotional, more stirring.
But this was so different. This was a journey of 24 playoff games, played over eight weeks. This was a novel, with twists and turns and subplots and an ending with Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet foreshadowing the future — starring in Game 6 against Golden State, carrying that into this season.
There’s never been that kind of national celebration for just about anything in the past 40 years, let alone for the NBA, let alone a one-year, see-you-later wondrous star, here and gone. We may have hardly known him but he left a mark forever.
Leonard left a wondrous gift behind now passed around like the Stanley Cup, parties with the Larry O’Brien Trophy being part of Ontario cottage country life. With the majority of Canada not knowing who the late Larry O’Brien was. That doesn’t matter. We have the damn trophy. It’s ours for the year.
Kawhi Leonard, via Masai Ujiri, made that possible. LeBron James, heading West, made that possible. The Shot — that moment in time none of us will ever forget — made that possible. The playoff season could have ended in Game 7 against Philadelphia, but that crazy, bouncing, time-stopping, fade-away, falling-back three by Leonard changed history.
This is what the most super of super stars do at the highest level. They win games and they win championships. The NBA, more than any of the other major leagues, is star reliant. You don’t win a championship very often without a top-10 player. Just once in the past two decades has it happened.
Ujiri brought Leonard to Toronto because he thought he was “the best player in the NBA.” He was the best player in the playoffs, when it mattered most. Leonard had a jumpshot to win Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Milwaukee after the Raptors were pushed aside in Games 1 and 2, and he missed it. That was momentarily shocking.
And then he went on to play 52 minutes on a body hardly cooperating and his steal and high level dunk late in double overtime provided the emphasis and the energy for a Toronto win and a series still alive.
The Raptors finished the playoff season with an 8-2 run — four straight wins against the Bucks and MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, four of six wins against what was left of the Golden State Warriors. Feeding off the emotion of Kawhi.
We will talk about this championship today and tomorrow and yesterday and probably for the rest of our lives. That where-were-you moment, the winning basket against Philadelphia. These were the best sports photographs I can remember seeing. We will remember where we were and who we were with and what that victory felt like and how we celebrated after that, the two rounds that brought the Raptors to the NBA crown.
This is Toronto. We don’t win a lot of major championships here. This was the first in basketball. There have been two in baseball, 26 and 27 years ago. The last Maple Leafs title was 53 years ago. If you’re under the age of 40, this is probably the only Toronto major league championship you have ever experienced.
Who knows when next we’ll have a celebration anything like this one?
For one magical season, coming from San Antonio, leaving for Los Angeles, Kawhi Leonard changed everything. He fulfilled his contract and moved on, leaving a sporting gift behind we may cherish forever.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
