TORONTO — If there were any concern about the Nets and Raptors finding reasons to dislike each other, there shouldn’t be anymore.
Speaking to several thousand fans in Maple Leaf Square outside of Air Canada Centre before the Nets’ 94-87 win in Game 1 of their first round series against the Raptors Saturday, Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri ended his speech with “F— Brooklyn!” before giving up the microphone and exiting the stage to raucous cheers.
Ujiri then met with the media at halftime, where he attempted to clear the air.
“Guys, I apologize,” Ujiri said. “I used [the] wrong choice of words out there. This thing is not really about me. It’s about the players, and the playoffs. I’m just trying to get the crowd up there [riled up]. It was a wrong choice of words. I apologize to kids out there, and to the Brooklyn guys. Nothing against them, I’m just trying to get our fans going.”
Nevertheless, as Ujiri said he wasn’t answering any questions and began to make his way through the media scrum, he was asked by a reporter if that were how he really felt.
“You know how I feel,” he said. “I don’t like them, but I apologize.”
Players on both sides reacted after the game to Ujiri’s colorful comments, mostly with amusement.
“It’s all good,” Kevin Garnett said with a smile. “It’s motivation, so keep rooting for the Raptors, keep rooting for their home team. It is what it is.”
“Masai, he is a very passionate man,” Raptors forward Amir Johnson said. “We definitely have his back.
“I’m with him 100 percent, so if he said ‘F— ’em,’ I say ‘F— ’em’. So I’m with him. That’s pretty funny.”
That wasn’t the same for everyone, however.
“I don’t even know who the GM is,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said. “I could care less what they think about Brooklyn.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was not thrilled either.
“It’s unfortunate the @Raptors’ GM threw profanity around discussing our beloved borough, but we spread love, it’s the #Brooklyn way,” he tweeted.
It was a fitting way to kick off what should be a very competitive and entertaining playoff series between the two Atlantic Division rivals. After the two teams split four competitive games during the regular season — three of which were decided by seven points — words have flown back-and-forth leading up to the start of the series, mainly surrounding the discussion of whether the Nets intentionally tried to find their way into a matchup with the inexperienced Raptors in the first round instead of the battle-tested Bulls.
“Yeah, they tanked to try and get Toronto, OK?” Jeff Van Gundy said on a conference call with reporters Thursday.
“I guess they’re going to get what they want. They want us, we’re definitely here to play,” Johnson said. “I’m going to use a quote [Raptors coach Dwane Casey] usually gives us: ‘You can’t really mess with the basketball gods.’
“If you really sit down and lose games and you’re not in rhythm, you’re going to come here and just get hit in the head.”
The tabloid Toronto Sun took things a step further Saturday morning when their front page blared “Raptors vs. Dinosaurs” including a readout that said, “Garnett and [Paul] Pierce are so old the Raptor had to ask his dad about them.”
Both players — not surprisingly, given the result of the game — took it in stride.
“It’s all good,” Garnett said, as a smile crept across his face. “It’s not our first time. When [I would] go to San Antonio [while playing in Minnesota], they’re similar.
“I’ve been before. I’ve read this book before. It’s nothing new. But I love the Toronto fans. They’re passionate, they love the Raptors, and that’s what’s up. That’s true NBA basketball.”
Pierce, on the other hand, initially said it wasn’t a motivating factor. But he couldn’t help but respond to it when asked another question later during his press conference.
“I don’t remember,” he said before adding with a smile, “Since I’m a dinosaur it’s been so long.”
He later had some more fun with the dinosaur theme on Twitter, retweeting a fan that tweeted, “Truth-asaurus 1, Raptors 0.”