NBA Finals: Drake’s antics as a Toronto Raptors ambassador might make everyone a Golden State Warriors fan
- Rapper and franchise ambassador has been front and centre during the team’s run to a first finals
- Defending champions have been asked how they will deal with Drake
Drake has proved a divisive figure in recent weeks, which is nothing new for the rapper, it’s just unusual that it is down to his presence on a basketball court.
He is the Toronto Raptors’ number one fan and employed by the team as an ambassador.
There have been plenty of column inches, or their digital equivalent, lauding his effect on getting people talking about the franchise and on turning the NBA into a fun league, arguably the most fun among North American sports.
But if he is an ambassador should he not behave like one?
His are among the worst ambassadorial antics since those trigger-happy South Africans kept trying to play the diplomatic immunity card in Lethal Weapon 2.
The Six God, Drizzy, Champagne Papi and October’s Very Own, Drake goes by plenty of names but they will have come up with a few more in Milwaukee after the Eastern Conference Finals, where he was front and centre as the Raptors came back from two games down to take the series 4-2.
If he wasn’t rubbing the shoulders of Raptors coach Nick Nurse, he was making a show of league MVP Giannis “The Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo missing free throws or wearing a “Kahwi Me a River” sweater, as a nod to his own team’s superstar Kahwi Leonard.
He also appeared to be the first man to sport an NBA Finals cap when the buzzer went on the series win, mugging for the cameras before any of the players and then mugging some more all over his Instagram.
Needless to say, some people thought all this a bit much, that he’s become a right pain in the hoop.
Stop whining, his defenders say, but how about stop encouraging this tawdry fandom? It’s gone too far – he’s a fan not a player.
Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green looked exasperated when he was asked about the rapper’s role in the finals.
Green looked like a man determined to make Drake, or at least the Raptors, pay when asked “How you gonna handle Drake?” A study in disdain encompasses his face over the next 30 seconds as he says the following:
“Drake can’t shoot, nor can he pass. Have you ever seen Drake play basketball? I saw a couple highlights – they wasn’t so hot, so I really don’t care.”
What we should care about is the ballsy trade that brought Leonard to Toronto for this season, or Jeremy Lin’s late career resurgence seeing him get to a first showpiece, or the fact that it is Canada’s first ever NBA Finals.
Maybe this social media LOL-athon is just sport in 2019?
Mallory Edens, the daughter of Bucks owner Wes Edens, took Drake’s antics in her stride, pointedly wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of Pusha T, the Clipse rapper who has a long-standing beef with Drake.
That did not phase the Raptors superfan, though. Fittingly for a man called Drake, criticism is like water off a duck’s back.
He went on social media to own the joke, changing his profile picture to one of Edens and putting her on his Instagram story. “All is fair in war and war,” he wrote.
It’s a war that Drake seems to be winning. The fans and the media love him. He has also formed a close relationship with the Raptors players, with many of them publicly interacting with their rap-bassador on Instagram.
Lin, a former Golden State Warriors player, even apologised to Drake for missing his fist bump during a recent game. Elsewhere, it has been reported he was face-timing the locker room in the aftermath of the biggest win in franchise history.
But might the players come to regret their association with the rapper, as he is fast becoming the first Canadian to make you forget that Canadians are meant to be likeable?
No one outside the Bay Area wanted to see the Warriors extend their dominance over the NBA this season with a fourth ring in five years but Drake’s gurning might just force a rethink.
One of the teams has to lose these finals but even if it is the Raptors, that might still be a win for Drake.
The rapper has tattoos of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant’s jersey numbers on one arm and he has long worn Warriors gear on stage.
That means that either way, the so-called “Drake Curse” – where teams whose jerseys he has worn on stage do not win – will continue.
Pro-Drake:
The Canadian rapper and Toronto Raptors superfan is great for the game and reflects the current culture much like Spike Lee did, argues Patrick Blennerhassett.
Surely it is better for basketball that Steve Kerr’s super team win again rather than Drake does?
If that happens then his courtside circus act might be the biggest curse of Drake yet.
The opposite is unthinkable: that the rest of the NBA wheels out the most famous man in town to make a show of himself from the sidelines.
