Toronto Raptors: A Courtside Seat for $125K!

Well, nobody said this was going to be cheap.

After all, no Toronto team has made it into the championship series of a major league tournament for nearly a quarter century. But, when courtside seats for the game seven of the NBA finals are projected to go at USD 125K, you know that the Toronto Raptors have arrived.

To be more precise, Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry, and the rest of the Raptors have won the hearts of a sports-mad city.

The successful “We-The-North” marketing campaign has put a nationalistic stamp on the team’s playoff run. And, if the country’s well-heeled denizens want to show their appreciation by coughing up a quarter of a million dollars for two tickets, who is judging?

If the celebrations after the Raptors’ Eastern Conference win are any indication, no one is in a mood to judge.

The fans are fully onboard. Drake’s antics included.

Technically, the conference win was only a semi-final win. But, for a country with a string of sports franchises that make money without their teams going deep into the playoff rounds, this is new ground.

The fans have accepted the worst-case scenario: A second place finish in a 30-team league.

Clearly, that is acceptable. It’s good enough. Celebrations are in order.

Secretly though, the country is hopeful.

After all, it took the Raptors 82 regular-season games and another three playoff rounds to get here. Everyone knows that the Golden State Warriors are no pushovers. Three Championship titles and five conference wins, in five years, are nothing to sneeze at.

However, the Raptors did sweep the Warriors in the 2019 regular season.

What’s to say that the team can’t pull off another upset such as the one they did against the Bucks? 

For now, basketball and the Raptors seem to have transcended the provincial boundaries and hockey loyalties that typically divide the nation.

It’s true, nothing can quite unite a city like a championship win!

Or, a Conference win…