Drake passionate about his role with Raptors: Griffin
On the surface it might seem a little hokey — a major professional sports team taking advantage of the profile of a big-name hip-hop star from its own city to promote the franchise and carry it up to and through a huge event.
But in the case of Drake, the Raptors and the 2016 All-Star Game, it works.
Wednesday was the second annual Drake Night since he was first named the team’s global ambassador in September of 2013. All fans received a Drake t-shirt and the former Degrassi: The Next Generation star dramatically emceed the pre-game introduction of the Raptors’ starting lineup with an improvised script, labelling point guard Kyle Lowry ‘the baby-faced assassin.’
“I just care so much about this city and the people in it — night after night it’s just so amazing to see all these seats sold out,” Drake said at a pre-game press conference. “It’s amazing to see all these people so passionate about something. Toronto itself is such a mosaic of different people from different cultures and different walks of life, and you look around the building and you just see all these people coming together for a great game. It just gets more and more exciting every day.”
The question was raised to Drake, that with the man who hired him to the prestigious but unpaid ambassadorship, MLSE president Tim Leiweke, soon headed for the exit, will the ’16 All-Star Game be Drake’s swan song with the organization in terms of having an official role?
“Tim has been a great boss and a great mentor, but I’ve been in this city for 28 years so all respect to Tim, but with or without him my focus has always been about Toronto and about the Raptors,” Drake said. “It was a blessing for him to give me the opportunity. Prior to that, I had to work my career up to get there, for somebody to notice me enough, to give me the opportunity, but I really do commend him for being brave enough to give me a shot.
“The 2016 All-Star weekend . . . I’ll be doing my best to curate the weekend and making it an exciting, safe, positive weekend for everybody who decides to come down to a different country, which is going to be very interesting for the all-stars. But yes, my goal is to stay with the Raptors as long as I have to.”
With Drake’s season seats right next to coach Dwane Casey at the end of the Raptor bench, the coach has seen first-hand what impact Canada’s most famous hip-hop star has on the fan-base.
“To go out there and see the t-shirts and see the crowd, again, I’m bragging on our fans, but I think we have the best fans in the league,” Casey said. “I’ve been around good organizations. This is by far one of the most passionate fan bases.
“I get texts asking, ‘You know Drake? Have you met Drake?’ He sits there every night and hears me cuss out the referees every night. He knows all my cuss words, but again, it’s all about the passion of the fans. It’s going to help us down the road.”
One profile-enhancing aspect of having Drake around is the Raps finally have a bona-fide No. 1 fan, just like Jack Nicholson of the Lakers, Spike Lee of the Knicks and Billy Crystal with the Clippers. Sports Illustrated’s off-beat weekly feature, Extra Mustard, lists 13 teams currently assigned music industry celebrities as unofficial No. 1 fans.
Counting down from No. 13 to No. 1 in the music biz, they list Alice Cooper (Suns), Wale (Wizards), T.I. (Hawks), L’il Wayne (Pelicans), Usher (Cavaliers), Eminem (Pistons), Will Smith (76ers), Justin Timberlake (Grizzlies), Beyonce (Rockets), Jay-Z (Nets) and Drake (Raps). Beyonce is a stretch, being too closely associated to Jay-Z to be able to count for her hometown Rockets.
“It’s just fallen into place,” Drake shrugged. “I don’t think about what I add, I think it’s more about the fans. If people are excited because they see me get excited — my goal is just to try and stay off the court and not get in trouble. What the franchise has given me as far as a purpose, confidence, an incredible hobby, I just try and give it back every night when I come to the games. I don’t think about what we’re getting out of it. I don’t think guys like (GM) Masai (Ujiri), guys like Tim are thinking about that either. I think they just enjoy working it for the city.”
Meanwhile, Drake was asked about the parallel between those haters who have always seen his lyrics and persona as soft, perhaps like the recent Raptors pre-2014-15.
Are they both gaining an edge together? When Drake gave a shout-out to Kevin Durant at his annual OVO concert, asking Toronto fans to show what they thought of the Thunder MVP playing in Canada, the league jumped in with a $25,000 fine. Durant becoming a Raptor is a possibility the team’s players and fans had never considered. Now they start to believe they are on a North American par with the rest of the NBA.
Drake’s influence?
“I don’t know, man, for that question just watch the game,” Drake rebuffed the “hater” question. “Don’t worry about what any of these people say, man. I tell you, just believe what you see.”
And in the case of the Raptors, seeing is believing.
