DONALD DUCK!

I'm sick of the Toronto Raptors, but I'm even more sick of the borderline rail birds that profess to love the NBA but have no real affiliation with any team unless it's the team that's beating up the Raptors of course. If you're offended about this characterization then I'm talking about YOU. Yes YOU the guy who never says a peep when the Raptors reel off 7 straight wins in the regular season or beats a decent Bucks team in the first round. The guy who has all the answers and criticisms during the playoffs and then hibernates for the rest of the year. If you're not a die hard Raptor fan I simply don't want to talk Raptors basketball with you, sorry. If I hear one more generic comment about how Derozen and Lowry suck in the playoffs I'm going to slit my wrist. A real Raptor fan knows it's common place for these guys to disappear and not the the exception. I've said it many times before, being a Raptor fan is taxing, it's exhausting, it's a washing machine full of mostly negative emotions. And I get it we came from being the laughing stock of the NBA to a "good" team that can get out of the first round. That's why the girl at No Frills knows that the dinosaur on my hat is a basketball team, but I could careless. I don't care about her or YOU. If you're an NBA fan stay an NBA fan we don't need you on the bandwagon. I admit I can barely watch a non Raptor regular season NBA game, I am obsessed with the Raptors I have been for a while. I don't know when it got to this level but it did and there's no looking back. The next stop on this train I'm guessing is figuring out complex cap situations and digging through advanced stats for every player in every situation. Believe me I'm close, but for now I only dabble is PER, plus minus, and the eye test mainly because I'm not that smart. But back to the casual rail birds who chirp at every opportunity, fuck you! You do not get to chirp, those are not your children, you do not get to beat them because you think their misbehaving. We the die hards get to chirp, we get to spank. That's right these are my Raptors and I've counted in my head who the real fans are, the guys that got excited when Turkey Glue got signed, or know who Mengke Bateer is. I remember TJ Ford and Jose Calderon fighting for minutes and being on team Jose. I also remember hating Lowry at the beginning and wanting the Knicks trade to go down. I remember Andrea Bargnani's rookie season where he stroked it from three like Dirk and the world looked to be at his feet. We even went to the playoffs that year but couldn't recover from losing our heart and soul Garbajosa to a gruesome leg injury. All these memories intertwine to make up our Raptor DNA and it's a beautiful thing actually. A living breathing obsession that manifests its self in different ways everyday. From the euphoria of winning to the skid row bloody underwear feeling of a playoff blowout at the hands of a tyrant dictator. All this encompasses Raptor fandom and I wouldn't trade it in for the world. Sometimes I dream about a Raptors championship, and I almost taste it, even the tears of joy. Then I come back down to reality and realize it's probably like anything else in life, the journey is almost more important than the destination. And by the time we get there it will have felt deserved and not surprising. I imagine it will still be one of the most amazing feelings I will have ever felt though. Game 3 is tonight, the crowd will be there, please boys do the unthinkable and turn on a switch, it's all I can hope for at this point. But I've seen it before. It's the the main reason I watch sports. Sport is a religion to me. And the Toronto Raptors is the church I belong to. Go Raptors!