The Toronto Raptors' Road to Becoming NBA Champions
On June 13th 2019, the Toronto Raptors defeated the Golden State Warriors in game six of the NBA Finals – in doing so, wrapped up the series by four games to two and were crowned 2018-19 NBA Champions.
This was the first time the NBA title was won by a non-American team and the third Torontonian team to be named champions of a major US sports league, after the Toronto Blue Jays’ win at the 1993 World Series and the 2016 Major League Soccer championship win of Toronto FC.
While Golden State came in as the hot favourites, having won the previous two Finals comfortably, injuries to key players Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and DeMarcus Cousins saw them not playing at full strength in these finals, and Toronto took full advantage.
Many NBA veterans have now won their first NBA championship ring: Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Jeremy Lin. Kawhi Leonard, meanwhile, joined prestigious company – after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James, he becomes the third player to win the Finals MVP award with two different teams.
While it was a confident performance from a team that ranks among the best in the NBA, Toronto had to come a long way just to be able to compete for the NBA title.
In their first season in the NBA they registered only 21 wins out of 82, the third-worst record in the season. It would take some time for the team to find its feet – it took five years for them to make their first playoff appearance.
In that time they saw Damon Stoudemire win the Rookie of the Year award, signed future hall-of-famer Tracy McGrady and witnessed Vince Carter and Chris Bosh emerge as a league superstars after both debuting with the Raptors. The individual efforts of these big-name players would not be enough to establish Toronto as an elite team in the NBA.
Their first taste of real success came in the 2006-07 season, when the team ended the regular season as champions of the Atlantic Division. However, they weren’t really able to follow it up – they fell at the first hurdle in the subsequent playoffs and could not repeat their success the following season.
After another long period where they were floundering as one of the league’s lesser teams, their fortunes started to change dramatically in 2013. They won their second division title – and that was just going to be the start of their new era of success.
They made the playoffs in each of the next five seasons and won a further four division titles. 2009 draft pick DeMar DeRozan flourished into one of the best shooting guards in the NBA and Kyle Lowry has his breakthrough after joining the team in 2012 – recording his career-best statistics and being named to five successive All-Star appearances as well as the 2016 All-NBA team.
The 2018-19 season started in a bittersweet way for Toronto: they said goodbye to DeRozan after nine years of service, but they welcomed on board one of the NBA’s biggest stars, Kawhi Leonard.
This proved to be a major turning point – the 2014 NBA champion led the Raptors in scoring, rebounding and steals in the season and he gave Toronto the competitive edge they needed to be able to compete for a title, which is exactly what they did.
It took more than two decades and a lot of trial and error, but the Raptors finally found what worked for them. Their reward for all that hard work was to finally see their names engraved on the NBA trophy.
