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Louis Blues, in the Stanley Cup Final, вЂњbut all anyone wants to talk about, sports-wise, is Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors.вЂќДЇor Dan MacKenzie, managing director of NBA Canada, these are heady times. He said there are three players from the province on the St. And so I asked the host in Saskatchewan if these games were a big deal there. On Friday morning, I was asked in quick succession to talk about the Raptors on radio stations in Edmonton, Ottawa and Saskatchewan. вЂњItвЂ™s been really freaky to see the multiplication in interest.вЂќ He was a long-time radio host in Toronto before moving west, and to see Winnipeg become a Raptors town, вЂњitвЂ™s something,вЂќ Ralph says.

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Photo by Nathan Denette/The Canadian PressД«etween the drama of the Sixers series and then the Raptors falling behind 0-2 to the Bucks before roaring back to win four straight, with another punctuation mark in LeonardвЂ™s soaring breakaway dunk, Ralph likens the Raptors momentum to a train that keeps picking up steam. Ralph was out with friends when Leonard hit the game-winner against the Sixers, and, he says, вЂњYou would have thought we were in downtown Toronto the way everyone was reacting.вЂќ The courtside presence of Drake, who is everything that non-Torontonians often complain about, has not deterred people throughout the country from being Raptors fans. вЂњThereвЂ™s no one there just having a pizza,вЂќ he says. But now, he says he went out on a game night to a local Boston Pizza and the place was packed with people there to watch the Raptors play.

Rick Ralph, co-host of The Afternoon Drive on TSN 1290 in Winnipeg, says that the interest in the sport, and the Raptors, in that town, was previously limited to a few diehards. People from around the country are reporting sudden outbreaks of basketball fever. Particularly remarkable are the audience jumps in Quebec, where on French-language RDS, an average of about 230,000 viewers watched Game 1 of the Finals, which was a leap of about 400 per cent over the numbers for the last round of the playoffs.Дomenic Vannelli of RDS says the RaptorsвЂ™ ratings increases in that province have been вЂњdramatic, drastic, any adjective you want to use.вЂќ He says that the only sports property that would draw higher is a Stanley Cup Final, or an NHL playoff round with the Canadiens or Senators. The single-game record audience for an NBA game in Canada has been set three times in the past two weeks: Game 1 of the Finals drew an average audience of 3.5 million on Thursday night, breaking the 3.1 million record set when Toronto clinched against the Bucks, which had smashed the 2.2 million record that was set when the Raptors beat the Sixers a couple of weeks earlier. The average NBA playoff audience in Canada through three rounds is also up 77 per cent this season over last year, according to the league. Television ratings for the six games of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Raptors and Milwaukee Bucks, split between TSN and Sportsnet, saw an average increase of 46 per cent when compared with the last time the Raptors made the third round of the post-season, in 2016. Right around the time the Raptors broke through the second round of the playoffs last month, in a series against the Philadelphia 76ers that culminated in Kawhi LeonardвЂ™s agonizingly slow four-bounce buzzer beater, interest in the team and their NBA playoff run shot up. Those questions are tough to answer, but the evidence that there is something happening here is clear. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. So, what happened? And will this last? Or will the rest of the country wake up in a couple of weeks, regretting their fling with Toronto basketball fandom like a one-night stand: Ugh, I canвЂ™t believe I slept with the Raptors. The Raptors even have a celebrity fan/mascot in Drake, who is everything that non-Torontonians often complain about: Too showy, too puffed up, too rich and fancy. Basketball doesnвЂ™t have a Howe, Orr or Gretzky in this country, and the Tragically Hip didnвЂ™t write songs about something they learned from the back of an NBA card. The Raptors are very much of Toronto: they play a sport that is associated more with urban playgrounds than prairie fields, and, even though it was invented by a Canadian, lacks the mythology that makes hockey part of the national identity. ItвЂ™s all more than a little surreal to those used to the disdain from the rest of the country. Photo by Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press Article content Toronto Raptors fans sing вЂO CanadaвЂ™ outside the Scotiabank Arena before the teamвЂ™s NBA finals debut against the Golden State Warriors, May 30, 2019. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.

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