Looking back on Raptors in NBA Bubble five years later

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Five years ago this week, the sports world gave fans some welcome entertainment amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

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Months after sports — amongst other things — had been shut down, live action was about to reappear and the masses badly needed it.

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The NBA was at the forefront of the return to play in North America, moving operations to a “bubble” in Orlando at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex at Walt Disney World in Florida in an attempt to save its season, which was suspended on March 11.

The initiative brought 22 of the NBA’s 30 teams to the bubble for eight additional regular-season contests to determine playoff seeding, followed by the play-in and post-season.

The Toronto Raptors were in an unusual position. The team was the defending NBA champion, but had lost its best player, Kawhi Leonard, and another starter (Danny Green) after that win, yet went into the pandemic third in the league in wins.

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Teams were initially allowed to bring just 37 people — be they players, staff, coaches or managers — and Toronto was one of the few that took two members of management — then-president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster.

“We’re here in full support, we’re in this together, obviously we think this will be a long haul for us here, and we just wanted to do that,” Webster said at the time on a video call with media back in Toronto (these types of interactions between the Raptors and media would become the new normal for quite some time).

The players appreciated Webster and Ujiri’s decision to be in the bubble with them.

“They’re committed to what we’re doing,” Norman Powell said. “They’re very active in talking to us and making sure we’re good mentally or if we need anything in terms of the movement and going forward, how we’re going to get our (social justice) message out.

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“They’ve been really active in sitting in practice that and sitting in practice talking to the guys. It’s good to see those guys in practice and really interacting with everybody. We preach that it’s a family organization and you can really tell.”

The Raptors also put up Toronto-themed artwork, banners and Raptors logos and slogans all over its floor at its hotel.

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To say it was a strange time is an understatement. Hyper-competitive athletes suddenly were surrounded by their opponents whenever they went to eat, relax by the pool or hang out on the complex. And players used to playing in front of packed arenas suddenly were competing in eerily quiet spaces.

Coaches and players who always had screamed out plays and schemes knowing it would be drowned out by crowd noise quickly found out the opposition would pick up anything right away so adjustments had to be made. There were also no energy boosts provided by raucous fans, no home-court advantages anymore.

Some were more ready to return than others. Pascal Siakam’s decision not to pick up a basketball for so long put him way off his game (Siakam shot just 39.5% from the field and missed 43-of-53 three-point attempts in the bubble playoffs) and ended up hurting the Raptors. He wasn’t the only one, though he has received the most attention in ensuing years.

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Still, Toronto won its first game back five years ago on Aug. 1, against the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers no less, plus another against Miami, the team that would advance to take on the Lakers in the Finals, and Orlando before falling to Boston.

The Raptors won 7-of-8 games in all and looked like a legitimate threat to repeat after steamrolling Brooklyn in four straight in the first round of the playoffs before dropping the first two games of the second round to the Celtics.

The Raptors would win the next two (including Game 3 in epic fashion on OG Anunoby’s buzzer-beater off a great pass from Kyle Lowry) to tie the series, then take Game 6 in double overtime after dropping Game 5, to force a Game 7. The Raptors couldn’t pull that one out and their time in the bubble came to an end.

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The NHL also adopted a bubble type of system after its season had been paused on March 12. The rest of the regular season was cancelled, with the playoffs played in the two centralized “hub” cities Toronto and Edmonton, starting Aug. 1, but with no spectators.

Major League Baseball had cancelled the rest of Spring Training on March 12, but it began again on July 1 rebranded as “Summer Camp.”

The shortened regular season commenced on July 23, but the Blue Jays were denied permission to play in Toronto, so they spent their home games in Buffalo.

The Blue Jays did not actually play a game at Rogers Centre again until July 30, 2021, having previously played there in September of 2019 when the team completed an awful 67-win campaign (the Raptors spent the 2020-21 season in Tampa and didn’t play again in Toronto until Oct. 2021).

The NFL skipped only its pre-season in 2020 and started on Sept. 10.

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