The Kawhi Effect
As the Toronto Raptors entered the 2018-2019 NBA playoffs, few scribes gave them any chance to win the Eastern Conference and none of them believed they could win it all. But they did. And the further they went in the playoffs, the more dominant they appeared. So the questions to be answered are how did it happen and how could a corps of experienced journalists be so wrong about the Raptor’s chances?
Certainly there exists a gigantic U.S. bias to the reporting. The vast majority of reporters are U.S. based and as Canadians know, very little of what actually happens in Canada is of interest to the U.S. This is not generally a bad thing. Too often, when U.S. eyes stray north of the border, it doesn’t end up well for Canada. Quite often staying out of U.S. sight and therefore out of U.S. mind is a good thing.
It is also true that prior to the Raptors championship season, the team finished the regular season with high win totals 4 years in a row. These successful regular season tallies raised the hope of playoff success which didn’t materialize and left many with the impression that the Raptors couldn’t win in the hyper competitive playoff arena. In actuality, it was only the brilliance and dominance of the leagues generational talent LeBron James that snuffed out these runs as James led his team to the Eastern Conference Championship 8 years in a row. Nonetheless, it left many with the impression that the Raptors were soft and only successful by the standards of the weak Eastern Conference.
Even the off season signing of Kawhi Leonard did little to raise the confidence of the pundits in the ceiling of the Raptors. After all, even if Kawhi came back healthy – which was a giant question mark – everyone knew you needed more than just one superstar to win a championship in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors had a team practically full of Superstars and all stars, Lebron had Kyrie Irving in Cleveland and Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami and so on.
So most pundits were not expecting much when the Raptors finished 2nd in the East and headed once again into the NBA playoffs in 2018-2019. No one had seen the quiet revolution that had happened throughout the regular season. Everyone thought the locker room was positive and issue free. But quite the truth was quite different.
WIth enough under the radar talent and with Kawhi’s transcendent abilities, the Raptors won a lot of games and winning kept prying eyes from really seeing how tumultuous the departure of franchise player, fan favourite and best friend Demar Derozan had left the team. At the same time, what was happening in the Raptor locker room was metamorphic. It was if the raw emotions became so super heated everything melted and then began to coalesce around the one constant, the one unmovable rock – Kawhi. It was as if all the other players began to morph into extensions of Kawhi’s body – open men in fixed positions waiting for his pass; a man flashing into the paint and kicking it back to him at one of his chosen spots; a whirligig spinning into the lane and scoring at will in order to provide him room to operate. But moreover, these men took on Kawhi’s psyche. They believed if they worked hard and kept their composure they could win the championship. Down 2 games to nil to Milwaukie or up 3 games to 1 on the Warriors, the reaction on the faces of the Raptor players was the same: let’s get ready for another battle.
This was the true ‘Kawhi Effect’. What he instilled in the Raptors last season was a belief in self, in team and above all belief in hard work and steady attitude. That was the intangible 6th man that allowed the Raptors to win all 3 final games in the Oracle arena and earn the franchises first championship. And that is what remains with the team this year that has allowed them to match their franchise best record after 50 games from last even though injuries have decimated the starting line up.
How will it help them in the playoffs? I can’t wait to find out.