It was the wee hours of Saturday morning when Raptors GM Masai Ujiri saw a number come up on his phone.
The call was from Drake. Ujiri knew this because the latest in a line of phone numbers belonging to the Toronto pop star and Raptors global ambassador is programed into his BlackBerry. It’s labelled, “Drake New New New Cellphone,” because the man goes through numbers like nicknames. He’s Drizzy, Champagne Papi, the 6 God, October’s Very Own.
But the point of the story Ujiri was telling on Wednesday, when the Raptors held the third Drake Night on the occasion of Raptors’ rousing 103-99 win over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Air Canada Centre, wasn’t about all that.