Ahead of the final game of Miami's first-round matchup with the Charlotte Hornets, cameras appeared to catch Heat talisman Dwyane Wade weeping during The Star-Spangled Banner.
Wade rocked side-to-side and stared ahead fixedly while one pristine tear wound down his cheek. As the anthem ended, he crossed himself and signalled heavenward.
It was an image so perfectly American that, were it made corporeal, it would immediately annex Grenada.
Unfortunately, Wade would not play along afterward.
"Everybody said I was crying," he said. "Maybe I was just sweating."
Oh.
After Saturday's loss to the Raptors, Wade proved he has serious range when it comes to creating anthem emotions.
Before the game, as O Canada began, Wade did not line up with his teammates. Instead, he continued to take practice jumpers as the Canadian anthem was performed. Not one jumper. Not two. Not three. Maybe four. That's when cameras cut away.
When video of the incident was released, Canadian reactions varied from "How dare you?" all the way to "How dare you." There was a great collective effort to feel affronted.
Much of it went along the lines of "What would Americans do if a Canadian did this to them?" (Correct answer: Nothing. If a Russian did it, they would lose their minds. But a Canadian? From the American perspective, it's like being insulted by a baby or smack-talked by a Labrador Retriever. Babies, dogs, Canadians – all too cute to be offensive.)
By morning, Americans were reacting to Canadians reacting to an American. By afternoon, Canadians were reacting to American reactions to their reaction. By Tuesday, this will have spiralled off into the ether and everyone will have forgotten how it started.
All anyone should remember is that Dwyane Wade once lit a Canadian flag on fire during a basketball game, or something like that.
Wade's small, inconsequential gesture should have two salutary knock-on effects.
First, it reminds us how little sense national anthems make at professional sports events. In the case of the Raptors, what could be more patriotic than watching nine Americans, a Lithuanian, a Congolese, an Argentine and two Brazilians stand at attention for a song not one of them knows the words to in a country they will leave as soon as it becomes professionally feasible?
At best, it's pointless. At worst, it's the sort of low-grade jingoism we'd roll our eyes at in any other context.
Anthems at a ballgame are a wartime tradition in a country that's made its international reputation trying to avoid war.
Done in the desultory "Oh man, do I really have to put my beer down and take my hat off for this?" way you see in most ballparks, it also cheapens the underlying meaning. Save the anthems for the Olympics, when there's an actual point to them.
The second thing Wade has done is given a whole country permission to dislike him. A lot.
Through their history, the Raptors have had only one sort of villain to tilt against – the traitor.
Vince Carter and Chris Bosh are our basketball Iagos. It's a sorry sort of sports loathing, myopic and self-defeating. Being a Toronto hoops fan means resenting the people who've gone on to be happier without you.
For a couple of years, Paul Pierce tried to break that habit by giving us someone outside the family to root against.
My favourite memory of Toronto's Game 7 loss to Brooklyn two years ago is the smile on Pierce's face as he repeatedly tried to toss his wristbands into the crowd at Air Canada Centre, and kept having them thrown back at him. Pierce wanted to be disliked by fans of quality. The smile suggested he'd found them.
But Pierce's triumphs made the whole thing seem small. Who wants to be the sort of people raging against someone who so consistently beats you?
That's where Wade comes in. In the second half of Game 3, he morphed momentarily into the old, can't-miss Wade, the guy he was before his injuries proved that the leg bone is (occasionally) connected to the knee bone.
On Saturday, Wade was as good as he's ever been. The Heat still lost.
This is an entirely new sort of Raptors villain – one who is great and can still be defeated.
On Sunday, both teams lost key pieces from their roster board. Toronto centre Jonas Valanciunas is out for the remainder of the series with a sprained ankle. Miami centre Hassan Whiteside is, like the rest of us, listed as day-to-day (sprained knee).
This is going to be just-slightly-above-average-height basketball from here on in. If the Kyle Lowry from the second half on Saturday is here to stay, you'd give the advantage to Toronto.
Inside the ACC, there's been a perceptible thinning of interest. The crowd is later arriving and not quite as loud. Even success starts to get old after a little while.
Wade's low-key gesture of contempt has turned that around. When the series gets back to Canada on Wednesday, Wade will be jeered as lustily as any player ever has been in this city.
He's given everyone a reason to get back into this thing that is far more basic than the winning or losing of basketball games. It's about national pride now. Nothing hurts us more than the impression our bigger, louder cousins from the south are ignoring us. Wade couldn't have hit Canada in a more sensitive spot if he'd been trying.
"If anyone thinks I was being disrespectful, they don't know who Dwyane Wade is," Wade told Miami reporters on Sunday.
It's the opposite of an apology, thank God. Any sort of sincere regret would have sucked all the fun out of it.
Wade understands what the greats know instinctively, and embrace. Sport is about hate just as much as love. Without the former, the latter never tastes as sweet.
Cathal Kelly