Toronto Raptors: Remember when life was normal?

The Toronto Raptors and ourselves included have all been living in weird situations. Life has changed since last year, and let’s remember the good old days.

Remember when life was normal? Going to school with hundreds of classmates was normal, meeting girls (or guys) you’ve matched with on Tinder after matching with them was normal, walking in an aisle with 10-15 people in a grocery store was normal, getting ready to watch the Toronto Raptors go against the Golden State Warriors in the final with all your friends and family was also considered normal (okay maybe not as normal, but still).

The crowds at Jurassic Park

We all know life has changed since then, and things moving forward will forever change the way we do things. For instance, just think about Jurrasic Park. Not the movie. The place outside Scotiabank arena where THOUSANDS of fans and people go to watch the Toronto Raptors play basketball.

Imagine that. With our own eyes, we were either watching that crowd or in that crowd representing more than just the Toronto Raptors, but the entire nation of Canada. Now when will we be able to see that again? A crowd roaring and cheering for the Toronto Raptors. Who knows when huge crowds will be a norm again.

Canada’s eyes were on the Toronto Raptors

People across Canada were tuning in to watch the Toronto Raptors (There was no Canadian team in NHL finals anyway). This was the first time in NBA history that a team that wasn’t American made the NBA finals. Not only did they make the finals, but they won the whole damn thing.

Sure it may have been abnormal for Americans and especially Stephen A. Smith, who expressed his problem with the Toronto Raptors in July.  Smith said, ” I don’t want a champion being in Canada again.”

He followed this by saying how Canadians have their hockey — the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup was in 1993, the Raptors weren’t even a team yet — and that the champions need to come back to America. So it was made clear that Smith didn’t find normalcy when a Canadian team won the championship.

But maybe even for us as fans, this time last year wasn’t that normal. Okay, our everyday lives were the same, like tinder dates, going to class, working at an office and not at home. But ending your day by watching the Toronto Raptors in the final, didn’t seem normal for the first couple of games.

But it did feel normal after a while. The Toronto Raptors were giving us our best basketball ever, and we will forever remember that. We even try to remember that today as fans, as we patiently wait for the NBA season to resume and all we have left to do is watch “The shot” a million times or look at Pascal Siakam highlights on YouTube.

This has become our new reality as fans. And as humans, we know what our current reality is now. As much as we want to live our normal life again, we can’t. We must be patient and wait. Things will go back to normal soon enough. The Toronto Raptors will be in a finals soon enough (okay maybe not).

Hopefully, the day comes soon, where the only thing that wasn’t normal, was seeing a Canadian team in the NBA finals.

For now, all we can do is live this new “normal,” until the normal of old returns.