The Rise of the Raptors

The Toronto Raptors made history on Thursday by becoming the first Canadian team to win the NBA Championship. The Raptors beat the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors 114-110 in Oakland on Thursday to clinch a 4-2 victory in the best-of-seven NBA Finals.

Having been founded in 1995 as part of the NBA’s expansion into Canada, it took the Raptors 24 seasons to claim their first title, many of which the team spent in the lower ranks of the world’s most important basketball league.

After winning their first playoff round in the 2000/01 season, it took the Raptors 15 years to win another postseason match-up in 2016. As the following chart illustrates, the newly crowned NBA champions made steady progress in recent years but crashed out three times against the Cleveland Cavaliers led by LeBron James. This year Toronto made it to the NBA Finals for the first time, where they promptly beat the back-to-back champions from California.