For the fourth straight year, the Raptors are heading into April with the fan base having fair reason to feel good about their team. It’s very weird that this has become the new normal. When this core began their post-Rudy Gay trade run back in 2014, there was a reason that the insanity of Jurassic Park hit the levels that it did. Raptors fans rooted for a team that had been so bad, for so long, and they finally had something to cheer for. It became our basketball Woodstock; where decades before young people, fed up with having grown up under the bad choices of the generation before them and desperate to express themselves after a lifetime of repression embraced a new fashion, did a boatload of drugs, had all kinds of sex and listened to rock and roll on a farm in New York State. Jurassic square and the ACC was our concert space, “We the North” our tie-dye, wildly overpriced Molson’s our drugs and Pizza Pizza our bad LSD. We even had Masai Ujiri as our Jimi Hendrix, with “F&*k Broolyn” as his star spangled banner solo.
The Raptors lost that Brooklyn series at the buzzer in game 7. It hurt, but it still felt like a positive direction lay ahead. Then in 2015, the Raptors won the Atlantic Division, April was hype month, and then they got swept in embarrassing fashion by the Wizards. Wuh-wah. Fast forward a year, and the Raps set a franchise record for regular season wins. Raptors fans are losing their minds on message boards and Reddit talking about how the Raptors could make the finals. Then the Raptors get into trouble in their first round matchup with the Pacers and the anxiety starts to settle in. The Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football paranoia sets in and we maybe start to believe that this is why we can’t have nice things, are worthless and don’t ever deserve happiness. But the Raptors turn it around, pull out multiple series wins in one of the longest stretches of horrifically ugly basketball (but who cares, they won!) and then even improbably take Cleveland to 6 games in the conference finals.
Now we find ourselves in 2017. After a torrid start through the 2016 stretch of the schedule, the Raptors hit a major wall after new years and struggled to play .500 basketball amidst injuries and inconsistencies leading into the all-star break. Then Kyle Lowry, who had been playing at an All-NBA level, goes down for most if not all of the rest of the regular season. Two fascinating things happened at this point, though.
First, the team made some key trades, called each other out on defense and changed their approach to get to where they are now: The 2nd best defensive team since all-star, riding a 6-game winning streak and featuring unquestionably the best two-way basketball that DeMar DeRozan has ever played.
The second thing that’s happened is far less consequential, but maybe even more surprising. Despite an extended stretch of mediocrity and uncertainty, Raptors fans (generally) maintained optimism and enthusiasm. This has always been a fanbase that’s been capable of exceptional rationalization, just think back to how many people talked themselves into and then wouldn’t give up on Andrea Bargnani, but we’ve never been a group that expects the team to figure things out. Toronto sports radio culture has tried to chase every player not named Doug Gilmour or Wendell Clark out of town by spitting venom and throwing under the bus any player who has a bad game, attitude or looks different. But for the most part the conversation has instead been patience, and expectations that the franchise would get things back together, as they now have.
So now, once again, we head into April with reason for optimism. Raptors fans are speculating in bars about how the team could sneak into the finals, googling whether or not PJ Tucker and Serge Ibaka are under contract for next year and getting uncomfortably hopeful every time they see a Cleveland highlight where Lebron appears to maybe, possibly have just gotten injured. It was strange to see Terrence Ross in an Orlando jersey last night, because for the first time in it’s history the Raptors have also had major roster continuity throughout this stretch. That’s what comes from being consistently good, and why it hasn’t really ever been a thing until now. Whether this is the new normal or a brief stretch of sunshine tucked in between long winters, I don’t know. But as a sports fan, it’s a strange pleasantness to finally be in a good place.
