Bosh and the Miami Heat burn Raptors



I was in the stands the night Chris Bosh finally returned to Toronto, the most hyped game of the season in Raptorland. Upon entering the building one couldn’t help but feel the excitement of better days. It was a sellout crowd, only the fourth this year for the Raptors. Raptors fans are an undeniably hardcore fanbase that extend well beyond Canadian borders. They’ve had little to cheer of late.



Damon Stoudamire



             The Raptors are once again rebuilding around a young core in Bargnani (Great Offense; No Defense) and DeRozen, who’s still very much the rook (makes a lot of silly mistakes that cost games). Building the team around one player has been the teams consistant downfall.

             When we first got our NBA team, it was almost unbelievable that Michael Jordan and his Bulls would be coming to Toronto. The purple dino’s were simply the excuse to get a glimpse of America’s basketball elite. Then the Mighty Mouse started lighting up the scoreboard and the hope that we COULD have a good team was ignited. The habitual behaviour of building the franchise around a single player was started with the beloved Damon Stoudamire. When he left soon after Isaiah Thomas exited the front office, fans got their first taste of the franchise player leaving for better opportunities.      



Vince Carter AKA Air Canada



    Vince Carter is known for putting Toronto on the map with his high flying antics and became dubbed Air Canada when the Air Canada Centre was opened in 2000. His contributions overshadowed the play of Tracy McGrady who was a rising star in his own right. McGrady was in Toronto a full year before we drafted Carter, but Vince was shown far more favoritism. T-Mac knew he could be a franchise player in his own right and didn’t want to live in his cousin’s shadow. At his first opportunity he left Toronto for Orlando and was given the franchise player treatment there. It’s sad because to quote Kobe who was winning 3 titles with the Lakers at the time: “If Tracy had stayed in Toronto, we would have been facing Toronto in the finals every year.” 



Tracy McGrady

      Vince missed the infamous buzzer beater that made him realize he couldn’t lead a team to a championship. Vince needed to play with players better than himself (sound familiar?). The way the Vince debacle played out largely had to do with the fact that the Raptors spoiled him in ways they never have any other player. His mother’s free parking space will forever be a thorn in the organization’s side. Vince’s exit was embarrassing and until Lebron recently eclipsed him, it was one of the ugliest sports departures ever. Vince compounded everything after the fact by saying that he “stopped trying as hard” while playing here.

            Chris Bosh was drafted into the organization during Vince’s last season and he witnessed first hand everything that went down. With Vince gone Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment scrambled to make Chris Bosh the franchise as they needed a marketing icon for a team that just lost the greatest player it had ever had.

            It took two years for the Raptors to start winning again after a long drought and finally in 06-07 under Chris’ leadership they won their division. When asked what inspired the turnaround Bosh said “We just got tired of all the losing.” This was the apex season in post-Vinsanity era, to bad Vince and the Nets spoiled the party. It still stings.

            The Raptors were ousted in 5 games in the first round the following season and they haven’t returned to the post-season since.

            It was during these two seasons that Chris Bosh’s leadership propelled the Raptors into the playoffs, and for this he deserves praise. Those two campaigns were inspired but the team was a finesse Raptor team that was not good on defense and lacked grit and toughness. It became clear that Bosh needed another All Star if this Raptors team was going to win.

Rookie Chris Bosh

            Bosh was still committed at this point as team captain, but the team failed to land an effective co-captain in Bosh’s remaining two seasons. Last year Chris Bosh stated in the press that if the Raptors were going to be successful they would have to spend what other NBA elite teams were spending. The Raptors demonstrated over a 7 year period that if Bosh returned it would be business as usual and new spending habits were unlikely to occur. Based on these facts, it was widely suspected he would leave; he just got too excited about it for many Raptors fans liking.

            I’m glad Chris Bosh left, both for Chris Bosh and the Raptors. Chris is in the perfect situation a player like him needed to win. The Raptors should have traded him while he was hot at the start of last season. According to Colangelo, Chris Bosh indicated at all times that he would re-sign in the offseason, yet he refused to sign an extension until testing the free agency waters. Colangelo was naïve to believe Bosh would resign if this was the message he was communicating to the front office. Now we’re not even going to use the trade exception we got from Miami for him.

            Bosh is a forward with an excellent jumper, that can play the post due to his height but is not a physically dominant player.  The deficiencies in his game have been put under increased scrutiny since joining the Heat. If Chris had stayed he would have needed a bigger, better, stronger all star to come in. The teams game plan would have also remained running the ball through CB4, a strategy they rarely deviated from. Not anymore. Chris’s exit forced this team to evolve and develop in ways it never would have had he remained. In this sense he did the franchise a favor.

            Though the media and Colangelo have tried to vilify him for the Raptors recent woes, CB4 fans could be heard amidst the boo’s. He might be CB1 now, but I saw plenty of CB4 jersey’s in the stands. Chris Bosh knows Raptors fans are one of the best kept secrets in the NBA, but he could also see that MLSE wasn’t committed to winning it all. He’ll never be adored the way he was in Toronto again, but he’s on a contender.

            Losing Chris Bosh was a sobering reminder of how far we really are from making a dent in this league with the MLSE in control. The outcome of last night's game and both teams respective standings only reaffirms to Bosh he made the right decision. He was the Raptors to lose, and they lost him. Thank you Chris Bosh for the memories. It was good while it lasted.