NEW YORK—Marcus Stroman recognized the vibe in the Air Canada Centre immediately. He and Jose Bautista arrived midway through Game 7 of the first-round playoff series between the Toronto Raptors and Indiana Pacers and it felt just like the previous October during the Toronto Blue Jays’ post-season run.
“As far as energy and crowd involvement, I’d say it was pretty much right up there with our Game 5,” says Stroman, referring to the decisive contest of the American League Division Series versus the Texas Rangers. “To be in a different arena with a Toronto team and experience that same energy that we experienced last year was pretty special.”
Pretty special is a good way to describe the past eight months in Toronto sports, with the Blue Jays and Raptors both reaching their respective league’s final four, the Maple Leafs winning the draft lottery to advance a long-overdue foundation-up rebuild, and Toronto FC earning its first ever playoff spot. Tied 2-2 with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals heading into Wednesday’s Game 5, the Raptors are very much alive in the franchise’s deepest playoff run, hunting for the city’s first championship since the Argonauts won the Grey Cup in 2012.
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The period of success stands in sharp contrast to the predominantly bleak decade that preceded it, when a .500 season often seemed like a fantasy. Amid the incessant handwringing that is so deeply embedded in the fan experience these days, it’s worth remembering how much better this is than the alternative.
“From the time I’ve been in Toronto, from 2014 when I first got up there, it’s been crazy,” Stroman says of the change he’s noticed on the Toronto sports scene. “Obviously winning helps. I feel like everything came together as a unit, where the Raptors and the Blue Jays were chasing history in the same period of time. It was cool to see each other go through it. And it’s been sick. The city is unreal, especially now, with what the Raptors are doing and the Jays—everywhere you go, you feel a buzz. It’s just awesome having that fan support.”
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In 1992, the fans at Blue Jays games were so staid, Dave Winfield felt compelled to ask them for noise. A similar plea wasn’t necessary last season, when the Blue Jays returned to the playoffs for the first time since 1993. From the trade deadline on, the Rogers Centre was as blustery and raucous as any field in baseball. The near-riot during the seventh inning of ALDS Game 5 captured the visceral passion, although the brand of rowdy was otherwise nothing but fun.
In that regard, Blue Jays fans borrowed from their Raptors counterparts, long the city’s leaders in boisterous support. The Air Canada had that same edge to it Monday during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, when the Cavaliers weren’t whistled for their first foul until the second quarter, and the Raptors didn’t shoot a free throw until midway through the third. Things felt especially tense when Bismack Biyombo was called for a foul on what looked like a spectacular block of a LeBron James dunk attempt with nine seconds left in the second quarter. Thankfully, no one started chucking stuff, a 14-point lead surely easing anger over what felt like an Angel Hernandez-esque officiating performance.
Still, the passion and exuberance of Raptors fans is such that the Cavaliers consistently made mention of it as a factor in their consecutive losses in Toronto. After falling 105-99 in Game 4, James noted that the defending Eastern Conference champions had to figure out “how we wanted to play here in this building.” Kevin Love said the Raptors “used the crowd to their advantage,” and Channing Frye added that “they have a great home crowd, they fed off that.”
While it’s often wise to fluff off such talk as lip service, the Air Canada Centre crowds seem to be making a real impact.
“The energy from the fans, we feed off of that,” says Raptors power forward Patrick Patterson. “Sometimes you may get tired, sometimes you may get down, but you look out in the stands and the fans are constantly cheering, pushing, encouraging you, telling you, ‘Hey, next play, make this next shot. Hey, we’re cheering for you, we want you to win.’ It just causes you to want to do better, want to be better.”
A roaring crowd can cause the visiting team to shrink a little bit, as well.
“The fans, the loudness, you can’t hear the coaches, can’t get the right call, there are a lot of things that play into it,” says Raptors forward DeMarre Carroll. “That’s what we’ve got to learn, tuning everybody out and keeping our composure on the road. I think we will, I think we’ll definitely have a better [road] game in Game 5 than we had in the first two games.”
Stroman firmly believes fans make a significant difference to the outcome of basketball games, an opinion formed while he pitched at Duke and regularly followed the school’s hoops squad. “I watched the best teams come to Cameron Indoor Stadium and not even have a chance to beat our Blue Devils, and that was purely based off that home crowd, home energy and basically walking into an arena where everyone is against you,” he says.
In baseball, the advantage of playing at home comes less from the crowd than from having the last at-bats of the game. Sure, a stadium environment can be hostile, but for the most part, fans aren’t on top of players the way they are in basketball, and the sport doesn’t lend itself to the same type of emotional push.
“I feel like you’re so locked in, you don’t even feel anything around you, it almost all just becomes outside noise, whether it’s good energy or bad energy, it’s just energy that surrounds us. That’s why I feel like it’s kind of neutral,” says Stroman. “But basketball doesn’t feel like that. Basketball, the second you walk into the Raptors’ arena you can tell, wow, this is a Raptors crowd, it’s going to be hard to win here if you’re the opposing team.”
The Raptors are 8-2 at home and 2-6 on the road so far in the playoffs.
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New Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro didn’t need to turn on a TV or check his phone to know that the Raptors won Monday night.
“I fell asleep listening to horns honking outside my apartment,” he says, laughing. “It reinforces what we saw last fall, and it further demonstrates the depth of this market that we can still have a ton of interest in the Blue Jays against the backdrop of a team in a conference final, playing incredibly exciting basketball and potentially slaying the dragon. To me, it’s just an affirmation of the power and the depth of the market.”
Of that, there can be no argument, but another factor to consider is the pent-up desire for a winner. The last championship in one of the major North American sports belongs to the Blue Jays in 1993. The Maple Leafs, to the great merriment of the rest of the country’s hockey fans, haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, and each Raptors’ win now breaks new ground.
But the drought runs deeper than that. Before the Blue Jays advanced to the ALCS last fall, no Toronto team had even reached the final four since the Maple Leafs in 2002, when they fell in six games to the Carolina Hurricanes.
That run came at the tail end of a stretch in which the Maple Leafs made the playoffs 10 times in 12 seasons, advancing to the conference final four times during that span. The beginning of that era coincided with the Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series championships, while from 2000 to 2002, the Raptors grabbed a share of the spring spotlight with three trips to the playoffs.
It hasn’t been that good for multiple teams in the city at the same time since, which is why Toronto sports fans should savour what’s happened in the last eight months. The Raptors and Blue Jays both face bigger picture questions with some key pending free agents, while the Maple Leafs, even with the No. 1 pick in hand, still have many lumps to take before their program definitively turns.
It’s possible things won’t be this fun again for a while.
Raptors fans are taking full advantage, flocking to watch games on the big screens outside the Air Canada Centre in what’s been dubbed Jurassic Park, while inside the arena people keep blowing up the decibel counters.
“They’re getting louder,” says Carroll. “Are they letting more people in? That’s the question.”
Adds Patterson: “I feel like the crowd can get louder every single time. Every single fan can stand up and yell, even little babies can yell. But the fans have been phenomenal all playoff series, especially this one, so energetic, and we’ve just been able to feed of off it.”
