Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network 

The art of building championships

The Raptors remarkable year

Episode #4

You are listening to the Art of Building Championships the podcast with your host Ethan Peck.

In this episode of the Art of Building Championships Podcast, we discuss The Toronto Raptors and their remarkable championship run.

They traded one of their best players in franchise history Demar Derozen, for Kahwi Leonard and Danny Green. The Raptors also were bringing in a rookie coach Nick Nurse. This was a very important year. As Kawhi Leonard has expressed he will leave in free agency after this year. This was a championship-or-bust type year for the Raptors. The Raptors figured this out quickly into the regular season at the trade deadline they were to trade for a big man Marc Gasol.

The Raptors ended the season as the two seed ready for a postseason run. They played the Orlando Magic in the first round. The first game of the postseason didn’t go in Toronto’s favor, as they lost game 1 of the first round. After this game, the Raptors stopped messing around and turned it around, and won 4 straight winning the series 4-1. They then played the 76ers in the second round this was by far their hardest match of the whole playoffs as the Sixers were stacked this year. This series went to game 7 in the final seconds of game 7, and Kahwi Lenoard hit the shot of his lifetime ending the Sixers season winning in game 7.

The Raptors were one series away from a finals appearance. They played the Bucks and quickly went down 2-0. The Raptors made some adjustments and won 4 straight to beat the Bucks in six games. They were onto the finals where they played a banged-up Warriors team. The Raptors went up 3-1 before Golden State could get healthy leading to the Raptors first championship in Franchise history. The offseason was huge for the Raptors as they lost their best player Kahwi Lenard most people knew this coming into the offseason, So it makes it even nicer the Raptors were able to win.

• @theHVSPN