For the first half-decade of their existence, the Toronto Raptors were little more than an NBA afterthought, a new team few cared about, playing in a city fewer knew about, in a country even fewer had any knowledge of.
They had a goofy dinosaur logo and cavernous ill-suited home and they really weren’t very much.
Then came the league’s 2000 all-star weekend in rainy and dreary Oakland. All of a sudden, in front of the eyes of the basketball world, the Raptors became a thing, basically thanks to Vince Carter.
The party-filled celebration, that descends on Toronto starting Friday, is here in no small part because of what Carter did more than a decade and a half ago.