Canada hasn’t had the opportunity to cheer for a team on a National level for some time and given the fact that all Canadian NHL clubs were eliminated from further play in the playoffs, it’s the Toronto Raptors that have captured the hearts of Canada, basketball fans or not.
As the Beatles sang “It’s a Long and Winding Road” truer words were never said and the Raptors have the chance of making history.
Regardless of where your travels take you in your car to the mall shopping, to the local park or to watch your kids play fans across the country are decked out in Red showing support of the Raptors.
Not only does it make you have a sense of pride, it showed the NBA that having the highest team salary in the league won’t win you a championship.
The cost for the fans to attend any game, simply put is outrageous thereby keeping the working Man or Women and Families from attending the game.
Families can’t buy them, but the scalpers somehow manage to grab bundles of tickets managing to sell them making top dollar while at the same time living “high off the hog” taking advantage of their working environment.
The Golden State Warriors have the highest team season salary of $45,780,966 followed by Oklahoma City managing a price tag of $37,895268 while the Raptors have a season price tag of $11,616,328.
Golden State Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber purchased the team in 2010 paying $450 M and now having a team value of $3.5 managing to win it’s third NBA title in 2017-18 managing an unbelievable $20 million-a-year patch deal with Rakuten.
They also managed to secure a record $2 Billion through contractual sponsorship, season ticket holder fees, suites for their new home the Chase Centre Arena scheduled to open prior to the 2019-20 season.
The Warriors dropped game 4 by a margin of 105-92 having home court advantage and now despite the price tag the Warriors are faced with the task of winning three consecutive games with game 5 played Monday June 10th or else!!
They’ve been down 3-1 before, back in 2016 in the Western Conference finals against Kevin Durant and Oklahoma City and they could be watching the Championship Larry O’Brien Trophy getting hoisted in Canada.
Quite the feat and who is the pressure on, Toronto or the Warriors and not being a betting person you would have to think all the pressure is on Golden State.
Many in the Golden State are saying that the reason for the downfall is the fact that Andrew Bogut was injured in Game 5 as well as Draymond Green impressing the Officials forcing the NBA to issue him a one-game suspension.
At present the Raptors have no injury concerns as well as no “childish temper tantrum problems to deal with.
The Raptors had issues in all of the first three rounds of these playoffs, first being down 1-0 to Orlando, then down 2-1 to Philly then down 2-0 to Milwaukee, but for whatever reason the Raptor grew as a team managing to get better game in and game out.
The Warriors quite possibly have taken the last walk off the court at the Oracle Arena given the fact they are moving across the bay to San Francisco’s new Chase Center this fall.
Regardless their roster might change this fall with free agents and the other pending question is will Durant be ready for Game 5?
Let’s not forget that this will be the first title by any Canadian club in any of the four major sports since the Toronto Blue Jays won their second straight World Series back in 1993.
Regardless of the outcome Toronto’s Jurassic Park will be packed with thousands of cheering Raptor fans!
All we ask is that you don’t act like the rebels (and I use that term loosely) did during the 2011 riot in Vancouver when the Canucks lost the playoffs!!
The only other question some have if the Raptors win is “Will they have the chance to go to Ottawa with the Prime Minister as well as Washington to meet with the US President???
