2019 NBA Finals

• 1. Introduction

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  The 2019 NBA Finals ended on the 13th of June in Oakland, California, with a final score of 114-110 and a country that had never won an NBA championship celebrating for the first time. The Toronto Raptors, playing in their first Finals appearance in franchise history, beat the Golden State Warriors in six games. In doing so, they became the first NBA team based outside the United States to win the title, and the first non-American team to win any of the four major North American sports championships since the Toronto Blue Jays took baseball's World Series in October of 1993. The series posed two intertwined questions almost from the opening tip: how would Toronto contain a Warriors dynasty chasing its third straight title, and would Kevin Durant's injured calf hold up long enough to give Golden State a fighting chance? The answers arrived in ways nobody predicted.

• 2. Two Teams, Two Paths

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  Golden State arrived at the Finals for the fifth consecutive season, a run matched in NBA history only by the Boston Celtics, who appeared in ten straight Finals from 1957 through 1966. Coach Steve Kerr's roster had been reshaped in the off-season when the team acquired center DeMarcus Cousins, who was recovering from a ruptured left Achilles. Cousins gave the Warriors a true top-flight center for the first time under Kerr. Then, in November, a blowup erupted publicly when Draymond Green cursed out teammate Kevin Durant over his impending free agency, earning a suspension. By January, Cousins was back and the Warriors briefly became the first team in 42 years with five former All-Stars in its starting lineup. Through the playoffs, Durant had been Golden State's best player, averaging a team-leading 35.4 points per game entering the Houston series before a strained right calf sidelined him.

  Toronto's path to the Finals was built on a calculated gamble. Raptors president Masai Ujiri fired coach Dwane Casey, who was named the 2018 NBA Coach of the Year just weeks after his dismissal, and replaced him with assistant Nick Nurse. Ujiri also traded fan favorite DeMar DeRozan, who had spent nine seasons in Toronto, to the San Antonio Spurs in exchange for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. Leonard had played just nine games in the previous season due to tendinopathy in his left quadriceps, making the deal a significant risk. In the Eastern Conference semifinals, Leonard hit the game-winning buzzer-beater in a Game 7 against Philadelphia, the ball bouncing four times on the rim before dropping in, the first buzzer-beater in a Game 7 in NBA playoff history. Toronto's Finals appearance broke a 25-year drought for Toronto-based teams reaching any major professional sports championship.

• 3. Games One Through Four

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  Pascal Siakam, that season's NBA Most Improved Player, opened the series on the 30th of May with a playoff career-high 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting, including a perfect 6-for-6 in the third quarter. Toronto won 118-109, becoming the site of the first NBA Finals game ever played outside the United States. It was the only game in the entire series won by the home team.

  Game Two swung sharply. Klay Thompson scored 18 points in the first half alone, and the Warriors posted 18 unanswered points to open the third quarter, the most in Finals history to start a half. Golden State won 109-104 despite Thompson leaving the fourth quarter with a left hamstring injury. Kawhi Leonard had 34 points and 14 rebounds in a losing effort.

  With Thompson and Durant both absent from Game Three in Oakland, along with backup center Kevon Looney, Toronto exploited the depleted roster. The Raptors shot 52.4 percent and connected on 17 three-pointers in a 123-109 win. Stephen Curry delivered a playoff career-high 47 points in a losing cause, but his teammates combined for just 62 points on 36.7 percent shooting. The series turned emphatic in Game Four when Leonard scored 36 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in a 105-92 road victory. Toronto trailed by 11 early before outscoring Golden State 37-21 in the third quarter. Serge Ibaka came off the bench to score 20 points on 9-for-12 shooting in just 22 minutes. Fred VanVleet needed seven stitches in the fourth quarter after being inadvertently elbowed in the face, and still the Raptors held on for a 3-1 series lead.

• 4. Durant Falls, Warriors Survive

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  Kevin Durant returned for Game Five on the 10th of June after missing nine consecutive games, and scored 11 points in the first quarter. Two minutes into the second quarter, driving past Serge Ibaka, he went down clutching his lower right calf. He had ruptured his Achilles tendon. He left the arena on crutches and in a walking boot. Bob Myers, the Warriors' president of basketball operations, said publicly that if anyone needed to assign blame, they could blame him.

  With Durant gone, Toronto led by six points with minutes remaining. Curry and Thompson combined for three consecutive three-pointers to pull Golden State ahead. Leonard scored 10 straight points in the fourth quarter to erase a 14-point Warriors lead, and Kyle Lowry had a potential championship-winning three-pointer partially blocked by Draymond Green at the buzzer. Golden State survived 106-105, making 20 three-pointers in the game, the second most in Finals history at that time. Nick Nurse was criticized for calling a timeout when Toronto led 103-97 following a 12-2 run; the Splash Brothers' three-point barrage came after that break. The NBA's Last Two Minutes report later noted that Cousins should have been called for a shooting foul on Gasol with 49 seconds remaining, a call that would have put Toronto at the line trailing by three.

• 5. The Final Night at Oracle

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  Game Six on the 13th of June was Klay Thompson's last act at Oracle Arena. He scored a game-high 30 points before landing awkwardly on a drive contested by Danny Green with 2:22 remaining in the third quarter, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Draymond Green produced a triple-double with 11 points, 19 rebounds, and 13 assists but committed eight turnovers. With the Raptors leading 111-110 and 9.6 seconds remaining, Golden State forced a turnover, but Curry's three-point attempt to force a Game Seven fell short. Andre Iguodala called a timeout the Warriors did not have, drawing a technical foul. Leonard stepped to the line for three free throws to seal the title. Leonard finished the game with 22 points and was named the Finals MVP, averaging 28.5 points across the six games.

• 6. A Nation Celebrates

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  On the 17th of June, four days after the championship, an estimated two million people gathered in Downtown Toronto for the Raptors' victory parade, making it the largest public gathering for a single event in Canadian history, in peacetime or wartime. The route began at the Princes' Gates at Exhibition Place, traveled east along Lake Shore Boulevard West, then north along York Street and University Avenue before ending at Nathan Phillips Square beside Toronto City Hall. Overcrowding delayed the parade by three hours as fans bypassed barricades and blocked the route. Emergency services were delayed in reaching people suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration in the crowd, and an infant died. Later in the parade, during the victory speeches, shootings wounded four people and triggered a stampede; three suspects were arrested and two guns were recovered.

  The television audience that followed the series told its own story about the Raptors' national significance. Game Six drew an average Canadian audience of 7.7 million, with TSN reporting 15.9 million unique viewers watching some portion of the broadcast and 9.99 million watching during the final minute. The 82 percent ratings share in the Toronto-Hamilton market was reported as the highest for any sports broadcast in the region outside the Olympic Games. For comparison, Game One's Canadian average of 3.3 million had already set a record as the highest-rated NBA game in Canadian history at that time.

• 7. After the Parade

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  Kawhi Leonard signed with the Los Angeles Clippers that summer after just one season in Toronto, leaving behind the championship he had helped win. The Raptors still posted a 53-19 record the following season. Without Thompson, who missed two full seasons due to the ACL tear and a subsequent Achilles tear in the off-season, and without Durant, who did not play until the 2020-21 season after departing for the Brooklyn Nets, Golden State collapsed to a 15-50 record in the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season, worst in the conference and the league.

  The Warriors returned to championship form when Curry and Thompson were healthy again. In the 2021-22 season they won the title, defeating the Boston Celtics in six games, with Curry earning his first Finals MVP. For Toronto, the championship year became a singular moment rather than a dynasty. The pandemic forced the Raptors to play their entire 2020-21 home schedule at Amalie Arena in Tampa, and Ujiri later said the temporary move set the franchise back years. The Raptors missed the playoffs for three straight seasons following their second-round exit in 2022. With Chris Boucher's departure to the Celtics in the 2025 off-season, the 2018-19 Raptors became the most recent NBA champion without a single championship-roster player still on the team. Kawhi Leonard's individual run across the full 2019 playoffs, in which he averaged 30.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 3.9 assists across 24 games, is still measured as one of the finest postseason performances a star player has produced.