The NBA's only Canadian franchise is a little edgier than we thought, eh?
Before the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets squared off in the first game of their opening-round NBA playoffs series on Saturday afternoon, fans were treated to some championship-caliber trash talk from the most unexpected sources: a Raptors executive and a local Toronto tabloid newspaper.
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Pro sports executives typically toe the company line with maximum discipline, but Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri went off-script in a pre-game speech to fire up fans outside Toronto's Air Canada Centre. As captured by a fan in the Instagram video, below, watch Ujiri bellow "F*ck Brooklyn!" before exiting stage left.
And the crowd goes wild.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Sun's Saturday-morning issue poked some cruel fun at the Nets' aging roster -- in particular 36-year-old Paul Pierce and 37-year-old Kevin Garnett -- with a headline reading "Raptors vs. Dinosaurs."
From @Mike_Ganter; #Raptors vs. #Nets playoff breakdown. http://t.co/bQ9uAIkYI8 pic.twitter.com/weOFeGmRor— Toronto Sun (@TheTorontoSun) April 19, 2014
The bottom scroll, you'll notice, reads: "Garnett & Pierce are so old the Raptor had to ask his dad about them."
Rob Ford should be proud. The Raptors, however, lost Saturday's game, 94-87.
UPDATE: Ujiri addressed the media at halftime and delivered an apology -- of sorts:
Raptors GM Masai Ujiri ended apology with non-apology: "You know how I feel. I don't like them, but I apologize."— Jeff Zillgitt (@JeffZillgitt) April 19, 2014