Professional sports don’t make it easy to love them. Like so much in modern entertainment and culture, corporate interests have optimized, operationalized, arbitraged, commoditized, ROI’d, EBITDA’d, and spreadsheeted professional sports into a bland, flavourless paste with a $3 billion broadcast package.
Yes, it’s never great when synergy trumps soul.
Perhaps that warranted cynicism is why we can forget the joy of sports and its roots in the purest nostalgia – a clear, direct line from who you are today to an earlier self. For some, that joy first came as a kid when hope is boundless and heroes shine the brightest. For others, it came when you were looking for connection while making a home in a new city or new country. It doesn’t matter when, as reasons are as numerous as fans themselves, it’s just the fact you bonded with a sport, a team, a player at a critical moment.
Those human connections are what makes professional sports special for so many. That’s also why cell phone companies and banks and online casinos so desperately want a piece of sports, because it’s money they have, and a beating heart and warm soul they seek.
That’s also why cell phone companies and banks and online casinos so desperately want a piece of sports, because it’s money they have, and a beating heart and warm soul they seek.
Remember, nobody cheers for Rogers Communications unless they are paid to do so.
It’s that nostalgia We the Raptors (Simon & Schuster, 2025) successfully taps into to create an interesting, if not perfect, exploration of the first (and currently lone) Canadian NBA franchise.
Timing their book to the 30th anniversary of the Toronto Raptors’ debut, team radio voice Eric Smith and Ghent University professor Andrew Bricker have written a unique history told by through 30 interviews with former and current players. Interestingly, this handpicked lineup doesn’t feature any of the franchise’s biggest names, rather the authors lean into the kind of players who get labeled as fan favourites, glue guys, cult heroes, inspirational leaders – “guys behind the guys,” as the authors note.
Listen, fandom isn’t reasonable. Often, our favourites were the players who shined in the one game we saw in person that season, or the player who our dad mentioned in passing that he liked the way they played, or the name plucked from our first pack of cards, or the player who we dominated our friends with on a video game.
Smith and Bricker count on those connections to make their book work. It’s a bold, yet understandable, approach.
From a practical standpoint, you get a much faster ‘yes’ on an interview request with the players in this book than you do with superstars Vince Carter, Damon Stoudamire, or Kawhi Leonard. (They do convince point guard Kyle Lowry to play Foreword for this book, however.)
Beyond journalistic convenience, there is a larger point the authors are looking to make.
While in-depth star athlete stories are valuable, they are rare today. Gone are the profiles written by a third-party journalist. Instead, we are now presented with over-managed, pre-packaged, and athlete-approved versions of their story. Just look to The Last Dance or More Than a Game. They were fine – as far as bland, flavourless paste goes.
While in-depth star athlete stories are valuable, they are rare today. Gone are the profiles written by a third-party journalist. Instead, we are now presented with over-managed, pre-packaged, and athlete-approved versions of their story.
With We the Raptors, you get the stories straight from the athletes themselves, crafted by a trained (while still franchise-friendly) journalist, and that is what makes this a successful book.
Want to have some fun? Don’t read this book straight through. Meander. Look at the table of contents. Find you era, your team, your player – and then start there. Get adsorbed in one story and then let it guide you to others. This creates a unique experience for each reader.
Want to have some fun? Don’t read this book straight through. Meander.
My journey took me from Tyler Hansbrough, who I remember despising when he played at North Carolina, to Norman Powell, who I loved watching at UCLA, to Jimmy King, the Pete Best of the Michigan Fab Five who dominated my Fighting Illini growing up, to Mike James, whose ‘Amityville Scorer’ nickname remains one of the best.
That is exactly how We the Raptors is not simply a retelling of the team history, rather a nostalgic (there’s that word again) walk through your own past.
Despite the fun, there are gaps.
The authors admit to leaving dozens of possible interviews on the cutting room floor. While there are no glaring omissions, lifelong fans may be left wanting one more.
My wish list includes interviews with former super stars Charles Oakley and Hakeem Olajuwon, who closed out legendary careers as afterthought Raptors. Or a minute-by-minute account of Hedo Turkoglu’s night clubbing while claiming he had a stomach flu that kept him out of a game in 2010. Or even time with Jeremy Lin, whose short stint in Toronto brought a championship to the city and excitement to Asian Canadian communities.
That said, the string of 30 profiles written by the same authors is a tad monotonous at times, especially when read sequentially. There would have been value in varying story format to give readers some diversity (e.g., Q-and-A, single focus on one moment rather than a career, first-person, etc.).
Then there are the Raptors Moments, short narrative asides peppered throughout the book highlighting a nugget from franchise history. The best of these centres on Jan. 22, 2006, when Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant dropped “a quiet 81” points on the Raptors. Such a cool insight.
These pieces provide entertaining asides (and much-needed breaks) between profiles. In fact, the book could use a few more. For example, how about a retelling of the game where the expansion Raptors handed the 72-win Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan one of their 10 losses that season? Or what happens on the bench during a blowout loss? Or an insider’s look at a key trade or draft day?
Weirdly, the choice to avoid the franchise’s lone championship is a rare misstep. Perhaps the insider authors were tired of telling (or re-telling) the story, or they assumed we were tired of hearing it. Too bad, there are surely new voices who could add to the most important Raptors Moment in franchise history. It’s a rare air ball for this book.
It’s important to note these flaws are all about wanting more from an already successful book. Despite the corporate stranglehold on professional sports today, We the Raptors reminds us that it’s the connections we make with the players – not the sponsors, not the highlight reels, not even the banners – that keep us coming back. In documenting a franchise history, the authors capture the moments where basketball intersected with our own lives, when a team and its players became part of our story. In the end, that’s the magic of sports.
Despite the corporate stranglehold on professional sports today, We the Raptors reminds us that it’s the connections we make with the players – not the sponsors, not the highlight reels, not even the banners – that keep us coming back.
Eric Smith has been working at Sportsnet and Sportsnet 590 the FAN, covering the Raptors in some capacity, for nearly thirty years. He has also done work for Global TV sports, as their Raptors/NBA analyst, and he has appeared on CNN, NBA TV, CBC Newsworld, and more. For over twenty years, he has been the radio voice for Toronto Raptors radio broadcasts and a full-time sports talk radio host. When he is not working on the radio, Smith jumps over to TV, often appearing on the pre-game and post-games shows for the Raptors broadcasts on Sportsnet and appears regularly on NBA TV Canada. He also spent seven years as the pre-game and halftime host and sideline reporter for Sportsnet’s Raptors coverage.
Andrew Bricker is an associate professor of English literature at Ghent University. We the Raptors is his first book about basketball.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 4, 2025)
Hardcover 9″ x 6″ | 336 pages
ISBN: 9781668069202
Jason Winders is a writer, editor, journalist, ad man, and dad living in Tecumseh, Ontario, Canada. His first book, George Dixon: The Short Life of Boxing’s First Black World Champion, won the 2022 North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Book Award.
- Jason Windershttps://miramichireader.ca/author/jason-winders/
