I first became interested with the Raptors during the heyday of Vince Carter and Antonio Davis, as was the case with almost every other basketball fan close to my age, and my earliest memory of watching the team is seeing Vince miss the shot that would have beaten the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.
Since then, I went all in on the Bosh/Bargnani playoff teams, stuck with them during the ebb of the "just Bargs" after Bosh left to join LeBron, and then my fandom hit a fever pitch with the team's current Lowry/DeRoza incarnation. The team has been superbly run by Masai Ujiri and built into perennial playoff presence. They're young and mostly homegrown, so its been an exciting time to follow the team.
2017/18 has been, to this point, the culmination of the Raptor's building process. They have a great young core and they ended up winning a franchise-high 59 games (!) to pace the Eastern Conference. This season was, without a doubt, the most fun I've had watching the team and I think that most fans would agree with me on that.
The Raptors are also a little maddening to watch sometimes. They're always great in the regular season, but are choke artists, as much as I hate to admit it. They consistently lose to worse teams once the games that actually matter come around and seemingly forget everything they've done and learned along the way. It makes them easy targets for the rest of the NBA and it can be exhausting to defend them and assure everyone that "no, they're actually good".
This year seemed different and a lot of factors that that the Raptors have no control over (LeBron's teammates, injuries to other players) rolled in their favour. They still weren't favoured to win, or even be in the NBA Championship, but this was without a doubt their best opportunity and one like it wouldn't come around again for many years. I had a lot of hope.
Instead, by the second game of their second round match up against the Cleveland Cavaliers, it became apparent that the Raps were definitely going to lose, if not be swept, which is exactly what happened.
In the 4th game of the series, which ended up being the last one, they were getting blown out and it was obvious that there was no way they were going to mount a come back and that their 2018 season would end that night.
I thought about turning the game off, because who really wants to watch their favourite team get meticulously picked apart by one of the greatest players of all-time? It's frustrating and deflating. Then, I had a moment of clarity and decided to instead tick with the team and watch through to the end of the game. I felt pretty that Toronto's best opportunity at playing for the championship had once-again slipped away, but I also realized that it can be good and healthy to sit in that feeling for a little bit. Just because you initially feel sad about what the eventual outcome will be, doesn't mean that there is no beauty in the moment. 2017/18 was by a wide margin the most basketball I had ever watched in my life, so instead of trying to block this Raptors loss out of my mind, I figured that since I had come on this season-long ride with the team, I should stay on the boat and see it through to the end.
Watching the team go through the motions of playing a game, and season, really, that was already decided forced me to be present in the moment. This coloured the sadness with a bit of joy, making for a weird combination of feelings. I was sad and couldn't believe that they had choked yet again, but also felt strangely glad to be in situation.
I'm not sure how to describe the situation anymore or make my point any better. Describing ethereal emotions is hard. Basically, what I want to say is that when things seem annoying, frustrating, or shitty, sometimes it can be fruitful to take a moment and revel in the situation. Being present is hard and it's counter-intuitive, but that doesn't mean it's something we need to work towards.
On the other side of the coin, a similar thing happened at work this week. My workplace can be very frustrating and though I haven't been particularly bummed at work recently, it still wears me down. This week our youth outreach program had their end-of-year show and it never ceases to remind me that art can be very good sometimes. While everyone was making their speeches about how proud they were of the kids for making all that they did, I took a moment to sit in the elation I felt. Even a small inner victory like that can carry you for a couple of days.
It's beautiful, I would say. I wouldn't have it any other way.
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