FOREWORD

by Vince Carter

It was a head-scratcher on draft night in 1998 when my North Carolina Tar Heel teammate Antawn Jamison was selected fourth overall by the Toronto Raptors. I knew he hadn’t worked out for them, so it didn’t make any sense. Before I had a chance to even figure out what was going on, my name was called and I was walking up to the stage to shake commissioner David Stern’s hand. I had been drafted by the Golden State Warriors.

As I was talking about my draft-day photo with Stern on stage, he told me to wait because there was going to be a trade. Antawn was going to the Warriors. I was going to the Raptors. Just like that, I was going from the West Coast to Canada in a matter of five minutes.

I had worked out with the Raptors, but outside of the two days I spent there for draft workouts, I knew nothing about Toronto. Immediately after the trade happened, I talked to Tracy McGrady on draft night. Just the year before, T-Mac and I found out we were cousins. Now, we were professional teammates.

The lockout hit after the draft and I didn’t arrive in Toronto until January. The first day I landed, I was walking through a blizzard. I was like, What in the world? I’m a Florida kid, now coming to a place where it was unbelievably cold. Coming from Chapel Hill, one of the meccas for college basketball, to where we were second fiddle to the Toronto Maple Leafs, which, no pun intended, were the big stick in the city.

We were trying to make our way, to teach the fans the game, and we gave the fans something to be excited about. Oh, by the way, what else do I remember about Toronto? Extra-friendly people. Everyone was just super friendly.

At the time, I had no idea what influence we would have on basketball in Canada. I was a young guy, playing with my cousin, and we were just having fun and enjoying the moment. At one point, I’m not going to lie, T-Mac and I had it on lock. We were out there trying to embarrass and dunk on people. I was young. I didn’t understand the impact I was having on the young five- or six-year-old who was attending a Raptors game. I had no clue.

Social media wasn’t a thing. You definitely didn’t know how much of an impact you had. Now, you can just look at your feed, your mentions, and you can see the impact. The jerseys. The videos of kids reenacting your dunk. We didn’t get an opportunity to see that.

I still remember the day I found out I was traded by the Raptors. It was a weird day. I was in Indiana and woke up from a nap after morning shootaround to a bunch of messages on my phone telling me I had been traded. Then I was sitting with Alvin Williams, Jalen Rose, and Milt Palacio. We said our goodbyes before they went to the arena for the game. I was sitting in my hotel not knowing how to feel. I didn’t know how to handle it.

Looking back on it, it was tough. The toughest thing to handle was that people questioned my love for the city of Toronto and the game. It was tough at the time to tell my side or to prove to people. It just had to organically happen over time. I believe that time heals all wounds. Once people gained more knowledge of the situation, it helped smooth things over.

I always wanted people to know that the night I was traded, the next day, and the days after that, I didn’t have any ill feelings over the team and the city. I loved the city. It’s unfortunate whoever put that out there. They were so far wrong. I remember Doug Smith wanted to have a feature conversation about all of that at the time, to shed some light on the actual situation, but it just wasn’t the right time. And I understood that.

So did Doug. It probably sounds weird to say this because a lot of athletes and media aren’t really one with each other all the time, but Doug was a guy I gravitated to over the years. I got to know him, and through having conversations with him, we developed a trust. Even after I moved on from Toronto, we kept in touch, and through all the ugliness of my departure from the Raptors, we talked. Doug understood me as well as my teammates did.

That’s rare in sports. For athletes, trust is always tough, and trusting the media is even more of a sensitive fine line. But over our six years together in Toronto, we became friends. Doug understood my ups and downs, he understood my moods, and we approached each other with respect and in the right way. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve gotten to know him over the years, but I know that the things I say will be the things that come out, and they’re in good hands when I say them to Doug.

Flash forward to June 2019. I was in Toronto again for a playoff game for the first time since I played in a Raptors jersey. It was Game 5 of the NBA finals. I was sitting with T-Mac. It was insane. I had chills that night. The Raptors lost, but I remember sitting there after the game and telling T-Mac, “Imagine if they win the championship, how crazy would that be?”

I was in Oakland for Game 6. The evening the Raptors clinched their first NBA championship. It was unbelievable. In the second half, I looked at T-Mac and we were like, They are really about to win the championship. The Toronto Raptors. This team we played for so many years ago.

It was a proud moment for me to witness it and be in the building for it. To see my good friend Kyle Lowry and people in the Raptors organization who I still know, I was so happy for all of them. To leave the arena, we had to walk through the court after the game. I gave Kyle a big hug and congratulated him. I saw my friend superfan Nav Bhatia, who was on another level on the court.

It was awesome to see all the Raptors fans celebrating. I was happy to be there just to witness it, just to say that I was there. It was a special moment.

For me, it was a way to bring it all full circle.

Vince Carter

April 2020

INTRODUCTION

It’s hard to think of how many times over the last 25 years something has happened with the Raptors, good or bad, last year or in 1995, when I’ve thought, “Man, that’s one for the book.”

Well, here it is.

It’s hard for me to imagine how we got to this point, how I’ve become so ingrained with one sports franchise that enough stories have been amassed and enough history has been witnessed that I could come up with these recollections, opinions, and thoughts.

Incredible, really.

The ride has been tumultuous and enthralling and all-encompassing for a quarter of a century. It’s taken me all over the world, allowed me to see feats of athleticism up close that have at times been breathtaking. It’s allowed me to meet and get to know some incredible men and women, masters of sports and of business, fascinating personalities I got to interact with every single day of my professional life for longer than most.

I know Wayne Embry and Masai Ujiri because I cover the Raptors, I count Dwane Casey and Sam Mitchell and Brendan Malone as friends.

I watched Vince Carter up close and I saw Kawhi Leonard’s steely determination end with a raucous championship celebration.

I sipped wine in Treviso with Maurizio Gherardini and got Madrid restaurant recommendations from Jorge Garbajosa.

Thanks to the Raptors and the NBA and basketball, I’ve been to eight Summer Olympics, four World Championships, and more NBA finals than I can remember. Games in Honolulu and Rome and Madrid and London.

All because I wanted to write about basketball in 1994 when no one else did.

An incredible ride.

There were bumps and fun moments and sad moments. I saw good friends lose their jobs and far too many dreary losses to count, and the night I got hit square in the eyeglasses by a T-shirt fired out of a T-shirt cannon by the mascot of the Denver Nuggets during a pre-season game in Colorado Springs should have turned me off the game and its extraneous crap forever.

But it didn’t. None of it did. I loved the game, I appreciated the job, I did it 100 percent full out because that’s what it deserved.

In some weird way, I owe the Raptors my life.

If not for team doctors Paul Marks and Howard Petroff, head athletic trainer Scott McCullough, and a physician friend of Larry Tanenbaum who was just enjoying a night at a game one Sunday evening in 2016, I would not be here to write this.

They, and my great dear friend Jennifer Quinn, saved my life after I collapsed with an aortic dissection in the hallway outside the Directors Lounge of what’s now known as the Scotiabank Arena.

Prompt medical attention, a shot of nitroglycerin, and much comfort kept me going until the fine doctors and nurses at the Munk Cardiac Centre at Toronto General Hospital got me back to full health.

That’s being tied to a franchise, isn’t it?

When Nick Garrison of Penguin Random House first approached me about this project, we wondered just what “the story” was going to be because simply retelling the tale of a championship season was too narrow a focus.

It is, I thought, more a story of the evolution of a sport and, more important, a society. I said that when I looked out over the crowds that jammed the streets of Toronto, and of Canada, to watch the Raptors in the playoffs the last few years, the people I saw far more reflected the country in which we live than any crowd at any other sporting event in Canada.

White, black, brown.

Male, female, transgender, non-binary.

Old, young, somewhere in between.

Rich and poor, famous and anonymous.

That was the crowd and that was my Canada.

It has been the tale of the franchise as well. As I’ve tried to show in the pages to come, the story of the Raptors is not only the story of the evolution of a sport and a team but of a fan base, a society, a country.

Over all these years, it has been my great pleasure, my great honour, and my great responsibility to tell that story. Good stories, bad stories, happy stories and sad ones, it’s been a helluva ride from 1995 to now.

We’ve all grown because of it—and are better off for having been around it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have.