The 25th home opener in Raptors history is going to be special for a handful of obvious reasons.
On a night that’ll see a city and a team enjoy one final celebration of an epic victory, the franchise’s first NBA championship banner will be unfurled from the rafters. Video clips of clutch performances will flash on massive screens. And somewhere along the way there’ll be a ritual distribution of diamond-encrusted rings, if you want to call them that.
“Those things, they’re like pieces of furniture,” Nick Nurse, the Raptors coach, was saying recently. “They’re not really rings they’re so big these days.