There’s plenty of room on the Toronto Raptors playoff bandwagon. Here’s what to know

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What happened?

The Toronto Raptors have won their first-ever NBA title after closing out the Golden State Warriors in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

Rachel Brady: Raptors defeat Warriors in Game 6 to secure first NBA title in franchise history

As the team with the better regular-season record, Toronto played host for the first two games of the series. Ahead of Game 1, Rachel Brady wrote, “it was Wednesday’s gigantic gathering of media on the Raps’ court that really brought it home. The franchise has never seen anything like this.”

Brady: Dinosaurs and maple syrup: The Toronto Raptors welcome the world for a media event like no other

• The Raptors were led to victory in Game 1 by Pascal Siakam, the third-year man who has been making a name for himself all season. He scored 32 points and, writes Rachel Brady, “exploded for 14 points in the [third] quarter on crafty lay-ins and athletic jumpers, speeding past the Dubs in transition.”

Brady: Siakam, Gasol lead Raptors to big Game 1 win over Warriors

‘He’s become a guy’: Pascal Siakam joins NBA giants in the history books

• In Game 2, Golden State reeled off an 18-0 scoring run to start the third quarter, turning a halftime deficit into a lead they would never relinquish. “I think everybody else outside of our locker room was a lot more excited than we were [about winning Game 1],” guard Fred VanVleet told reporters. "We understand what this team brings and what type of effort it’s going to take to beat these guys.”

Brady: Steph Curry leads the way as Warriors even NBA Finals series with Toronto Raptors at 1-1

• Game 3, in the Warriors’ home arena in Oakland, Calif., saw the Raptors regain a 2-1 series lead with a balanced attack and shutdown defence on every Warrior except Steph Curry, who had 47 points in a losing effort. “The Warriors were missing an irreplaceable man,” wrote Rachel Brady. “Klay Thompson had lobbied hard to play, but the training staff didn’t want to risk making his [hamstring] injury worse. It was the first missed playoff game of the All-star shooting guard’s career.”

Brady: Raptors beat Warriors 123-109 despite 47 points from Steph Curry

• Led by a 36-point effort from Leonard and 20 points from Serge Ibaka, including key minutes in the second half, the Raptors won Game 4 in Oakland despite Thompson’s return. “Canada’s only NBA squad takes a 3-1 series lead back across the border,” wrote Rachel Brady, “where the nation is gripped by Raptors fever.”

Brady: Raptors one win away from first-ever championship after beating Warriors 105-92

• Golden State’s best shooters, Curry and Thompson, led a late rally in Game 5 to stave off elimination and force a Game 6. Writes Rachel Brady: “They extended the series, but they lost their all-star teammate Kevin Durant, whose long-awaited comeback ended with him being assisted off the floor with a devastating injury.”

Brady: Raptors lose nail-biter Game 5 to Warriors, sending NBA Finals back to Oakland

• In Game 6, Kyle Lowry set the tone with 15 first-quarter points including four threes, and Toronto prevailed in a close game where the lead changed hands 18 times. “The Warriors pressed so hard on the Raps final possession," wrote Rachel Brady, "that they squandered it away, which resulted in a turnover with 9.6 seconds left.”

Cathal Kelly: The Raptors steal the Warriors’ identity – and Kawhi Leonard takes his place as a Canadian sports hero

Here’s a look at who makes up the team and what it took to become champions.

Who’s who on the Raptors

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For the casual fan, maybe only a few names on this year’s edition of the team will be familiar. Spark-plug point guard Kyle Lowry, the longest-serving Raptor. Leonard, thanks to his reputation as a San Antonio Spur. President Masai Ujiri, who has built the team from the lean years of the early 2010s to its place today. The roster overhaul began in the offseason, when Ujiri fired coach Dwane Casey and replaced him with lead assistant Nick Nurse. Then, the blockbuster trade that brought Leonard to town in exchange for hyper-loyal all-star DeMar DeRozan, a surprise to just about everybody.

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Kelly: The DeMar DeRozan trade is a knife to the heart. And it had to be done

The reconstruction of the Raptors continued right up until February. Here are the names that matter now: the ones who played key roles during this playoff run.

Kawhi Leonard, forward

The publicity-averse superstar who has the option of leaving in free agency this summer has had plenty to prove after being acquired in July. After a season lost to a quadriceps injury, his stated goal was to regain his health. For the Raptors, the aim is to convince the 2014 Finals MVP to stick around long term. He’s that special. The Globe’s Robert MacLeod wrote in October: “The 6-foot-7, 230-pound enigmatic forward can do it all at both ends of the court: on defence, locking down the opposing team’s top player; or on offence with the ability to drive to the basket or score from the perimeter.” Despite sitting out 22 games in 2018-19 to rest his recovering body, Leonard led the Raptors with 26.6 points a game, the highest average of his career.

Robert MacLeod: What Kawhi, Nurse, Lowry and Co. have in store for the East this season

Kyle Lowry, point guard

DeRozan was Lowry’s best friend, so his departure was tough for Lowry to accept. But he did, and he started the year as the team’s undisputed leader. As Cathal Kelly wrote for The Globe a quarter of the way through the season, “Kawhi Leonard gets all the print because he’s the team’s shiny, new penny, but Lowry has been the driving force of this Raptors season.” That mentality stuck all year, through struggles with a sore back and the occasional shooting slump. Lowry ended up second in the league in assists, at 8.7 per game.

Kelly: Kyle Lowry and the Raptors have finally transcended early-season hype games

Pascal Siakam, forward

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The third-year Cameroonian who mostly came off the bench last season spent 2018-19 raising his charismatic profile around the NBA, to the point where he promises to be a contender for the league’s most-improved-player award. In a January game, Siakam hit a running layup to secure a win over Phoenix. As Robert MacLeod wrote at the time: “For the effervescent Siakam, it was his first close-out winning shot of his NBA career and he was beaming with delight afterwards in the locker room.” He finished as the team’s second-leading scorer and an ideal complementary piece to Leonard in the front court.

Brady: Pascal Siakam is a rising star for the Toronto Raptors

Marc Gasol, centre

Gasol, the 34-year-old Spanish national with a high basketball IQ, rare passing ability and outstanding defence, was acquired in a trade that sent popular centre Jonas Valanciunas to Memphis. The Globe’s Cathal Kelly summed up Gasol’s attributes plainly: “He is the prototype of a modern NBA centre – he can shoot, can pass, can stand in the middle being imposing. Unlike Valanciunas, he’s a bit chippy. He is a three-time all-star and has been the NBA’s defensive player of the year.” In the two months of the regular season after he was acquired, the Raptors were best in the league at three-point shooting.

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Nick Nurse, head coach

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The 51-year-old rookie coach from Iowa has paid his basketball dues, and he was rewarded with the opportunity to lead a title contender. As The Globe’s Rachel Brady reported in an October profile, “over his five years on Casey’s staff, Nurse’s reputation for offensive imagination grew. He got much of the credit for the team’s transformation in 2017 from an isolation-heavy offence to one that focused on ball movement and three-point shooting.” This year, he applied that creativity even further, meshing various lineups to adjust to injuries, trades and Leonard’s rest days. The result? A team that finished in the top five on both offence and defence, and a 58-win season, the second best in franchise history.

Brady: Toronto Raptors’ Nick Nurse may be a rookie NBA coach, but he’s no newbie

Path through the playoffs

Toronto entered the postseason as the second seed in the East. It also had the second-best record in the league on the strength of its bothersome team defence, hot three-point shooting and dominant play on both ends of the floor by Leonard.

Eastern Conference quarter-finals: Toronto vs. Orlando

Raptors win best-of-seven series 4-1

• The Raptors faced the seventh-seeded Orlando Magic in Round 1, and promptly dropped the first game at home. If Toronto’s fan base is one of the most nervous in the NBA, the team’s habit of losing Game 1 (the Raptors have four wins and 15 losses overall in Game 1s) is a big reason why.

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• That early stumble seemed to ignite some intensity in the Raptors. After their 104-101 win, the Magic would not score 100 points in a game the rest of the series. Toronto won each of the next four games.

Brady: Raptors bare their teeth, bounce back in playoff series

• Leonard averaged 27.8 points a game in the series to lead the team in scoring, while Lowry made his contributions in other ways: he averaged 8.6 assists and his team was +21.2 when he was on the floor. Meanwhile, Gasol embraced his defensive assignment, holding the Magic’s Nikola Vucevic to 11.2 points a game, far below his season average of 20.8.

Eastern Conference semi-finals: Toronto vs. Philadelphia

Raptors win best-of-seven series 4-3

• Toronto’s next opponent was a formidable Philadelphia 76ers team featuring budding superstars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and key mid-season acquisitions Jimmy Butler and Tobais Harris.
• Very little went as expected in this series. Four of the seven games were blowouts: Games 1 and 5 for the Raptors, and Games 3 and 6 for the Sixers. Coaches Nick Nurse for Toronto and Brett Brown for Philadelphia struggled to make in-game tactical adjustments, only to seemingly figure everything out in the lopsided games.

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• Embiid, an All-NBA player when healthy, battled illness and knee problems all series, and was only his overwhelming self in Game 3 – though Gasol’s defence was vital to slowing him down. On the other side, Toronto’s Siakam suffered a calf injury in Game 3 and played through pain the rest of the series, sometimes quite obviously.

Brady: Injury could put Pascal Siakam on sidelines as Raptors look to tie up series against 76ers

• Defence was a key factor for both teams, but a major source of concern for Toronto was its failure to effectively shoot three-pointers. The team with the best three-point shooting percentage in the NBA after it acquired Gasol in February (41 per cent), the Raptors managed to shoot only 29.8 per cent in this series. For comparison, the worst distance-shooting team in the NBA this season, the Phoenix Suns, was at 32.9 per cent.
• The one constant for Toronto was Leonard. In Game 7 he accounted for 41 of the team’s 92 points and 39 of its 89 shots, including the dramatic game-winner. Never in the history of the NBA had a player hit a series-winning shot as time expired in a Game 7. But with 4.2 seconds on the clock and the score tied, Leonard received an inbounds pass, hurried to one of his favourite spots on the floor and launched an arching jump shot over the outstretched arm of seven-foot centre Joel Embiid. The shot bounced twice on the front rim, then twice on the back rim, all while Leonard, Embiid and 20,000 others inside the arena held their breaths waiting for the outcome. It dropped, and the Raptors lived another day.

Brady: Leonard’s buzzer-beater pushes Raptors past 76ers in Game 7 for the ages

Kelly: Kawhi Leonard delivers on Toronto’s gamble – and exorcises the ghost of Vince Carter – with series-winning shot over 76ers

Eastern Conference Finals: Toronto vs. Milwaukee

Raptors win best-of-seven series 4-2

• The Bucks and Raptors met in Milwaukee for Game 1, with the Bucks prevailing 108-100 in a comeback win. “This one may hurt in retrospect,” wrote Cathal Kelly. “It was very doable, until it suddenly wasn’t right at the end.”
• In Game 2, the Raptors fell to the Bucks 125-103 and trailed in the series 2-0. On the bleak outlook at that point in time, Cathal Kelly wrote: “It wasn’t just that Toronto lost. It was how it lost. The Raptors were annihilated within the first 10 minutes.”

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• Game 3 was a double-overtime thriller, with Toronto coming out on top 118-112. Leonard played 52 minutes, a career high, and scored 36 points.

Brady: Raptors earn heart-thumping playoff victory against Milwaukee Bucks

• In Game 4 , the host Raptors scored a decisive 120-102 win to tie the series at 2-2. “This time it didn’t require heroics from ... Leonard,” wrote Rachel Brady. “The story of the night was the dominant performance from Toronto’s often-criticized bench, who exploded for 48 points – 18 from Norman Powell, 13 from Fred Van Vleet, and 17 from Serge Ibaka to go with his 13 rebounds.”
• The series shifted back to Milwaukee for Game 5, but the change of scenery did not benefit the hosts. “The Raptors bounced back in a game they once trailed by as much as 14,” Rachel Brady wrote, “and stole a 105-99 Game 5 victory over the No. 1-seeded Bucks.”
• In Game 6 on Saturday night, the Raptors eliminated the Bucks with a 100-94 win. Kawhi Leonard poured in 27 points and hauled down a game-high 17 rebounds. Pascal Siakam had 18 points, while Fred VanVleet finished with 14.

Brady: Raptors eliminate Bucks in Game 6, earning their first-ever spot in NBA finals

Kelly: The Raptors didn't just win – they completely changed their post-season identity

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Instagram: The Raptors and their fans celebrate a trip to the Finals

Video: FANS SHARE WILD REACTIONS TO HISTORIC GAME 7 FINISH

Compiled by Mason Wright

With reports from Robert MacLeod, Rachel Brady, Cathal Kelly and The Canadian Press