From the cartoonish little dinosaur and gaudy pinstriped jerseys to world champions, a phenomenal quarter-century run ended in joyous celebration for the Toronto Raptors.

After one final frenzied few seconds, when they seemed to be ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the Raptors finished off a 114-110 victory over the Golden State Warriors here Thursday night, capturing the first NBA championship in franchise history on their first trip to the NBA Finals, an unprecedented feat for a team that was once an afterthought in many fans’ minds.

“Beautiful,” team president Masai Ujiri said amid the bedlam of the champagne-drenched Raptors locker room. “Just beautiful.”

Players, coaches and team officials were chanting “M-I-P” as presumptive most improved player Pascal Siakam doused himself with champagne; Ujiri stood off to the side like a proud father overseeing a kids birthday party.

The players who had made the sign of the claw — hand grabbing wrist and held aloft — when Kawhi Leonard was named the MVP acted as if a huge boulder had been lifted off them.

It was a night of incredible emotion and talent and big shot made after big shot made for the Raptors, whose rise from 1995 expansion team to 2019 NBA champions has been a winding, pockmarked journey that tried the patience of fans for almost a quarter of a century, but ultimately rewarded them for undeniable support.

“Just being able to win this championship this year is just something special for me, because you know how the last year everybody was looking at me, and I stayed true to myself and I had a great support system,” Leonard said. “And once I got here to Toronto they understood everything and kept moving from there.”

A Danny Green turnover with 9.6 seconds left in the game and Toronto up a point — an errant pass along the sideline that was nowhere near Siakam — gave the Warriors a chance to extend the series.

But a Stephen Curry shot was tipped, the Warriors were unable to secure the ball in the ensuing scramble and Golden State was assessed a technical foul for calling a timeout they didn’t have.

Leonard, the near-unanimous choice as NBA Finals most valuable player, made the free throw and caught the ensuing inbound pass to seal the game.

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“Obviously I didn’t come out in this series trying to win it,” he said of the MVP award he won with 10 of 11 votes. “It was a whole group collectively. Tonight Fred (VanVleet) played amazing in that fourth. Kyle (Lowry) played amazing tonight throughout the whole game. Pascal played big. I just kept striving and pushing and I ended up with the trophy, but everybody deserves it.”

But it was a fitting end, given what he’d provided to the team this season after the emotions that ran rampant when he was obtained at a significant cost.

“I texted Kyle the day after I got traded: Let’s do something special,” Leonard said. “I know you’re mad, your best friend left, but let’s make something happen.”

And they did.

“This is a strong minded, tough-ass group of guys,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said before the game. “It really is.”

The victory ends a wonderfully exhilarating 24-game post-season run for the Raptors, who ousted the Orlando Magic, Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks to get to their first NBA Finals. It is the most playoff games in one spring in franchise history — eclipsing 20 in the 2016 run that ended with a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference final — and has made an even brighter star out of Leonard, who was so central to the championship run.

With his 22 points in Game 6, he finishes with 732 points in the 2019 playoffs, the third-most by any player ever behind Michael Jordan (759 in 1992) and LeBron James (748 in 2018) and put an emphatic stamp on his first season with the Raptors. But it was a true team effort that provided the final victory when Leonard’s offence was off just a touch.

Lowry had a brilliant night with 26 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds, VanVleet made a series of huge fourth-quarter shots and finished with 22 points, and Siakam had 23.

“He’s a gamer,” Curry said of VanVleet.

Source: The Star