Butch Carter broke my heart the night of my first live Raptors game.
From the second I opened the envelope holding the tickets on Christmas morning 1999, to the train ride downtown to watch Toronto host the Bucks a few weeks later on January 14th, my warped seven-year-old brain was fixated on seeing one player, and one player only.
Before you go and make assumptions, let me stop you. It wasn’t Vince Carter, although that would change by night’s end. Tracy McGrady regrettably didn’t much fascinate me until after he dipped for Orlando. And despite my grandfather’s best efforts to spook me with tales of Ray Allen’s sharpshooting ways, I wasn’t fearing any opposing boogeymen that wintery Friday night.