The Toronto Raptors are the champions, and they aren’t. They won it all, and had a part of it taken away from them. It’s a strange place to be, this new beginning in this odd hereafter. The Raptors ascended to the peak. They’re here now.
“I think last year when we did this press conference I was sitting with Kawhi (Leonard) and Danny (Green) and I’m sitting all alone now,” said team president Masai Ujiri, smile on his face. “I’m lonely.”
“I think Fred (VanVleet) said it somewhere: like, all the bandwagons and all the people that came after Kawhi and kind of went away, it’s kind of like back to us,” said forward Pascal Siakam, the centrepiece of the new era, on the team’s media day.