I’ll admit, going into that series against Cleveland, I didn’t have a lot of hope for my Toronto Raptors, but there was a moment after that win in Game Four where I thought, “hey, they might actually win this thing!”.
About ten minutes into Game Five I was smacked back to reality.
But still it was a great run for the Raptors and continued a suspiciously decent run of Toronto sports fandom… I’ve been doing these phantom merchandise posts for years and it wasn’t until last October that I had to actually do one for a team I was a fan of. Seven months later, here’s number two. I meant, you can’t get a phantom post unless you’ve had some brief run of success.
Anyways, if the Toronto Raptors had done the impossible and eliminated a team with LeBron James on it prior to the Finals, this is what some of the merchandise celebrating their 2016 Eastern Conference Championship would have looked like… This are 100% the real stock photos various online shops would have used to sell these items if Toronto won.
We start, as always, with the official “Locker Room” combo — what the Raptors players would have worn on the court immediately following the victory:
And now a collection of retail-only caps, t-shirts, pins, pennants, and miscellanea:
A shame they couldn’t do it, we’ll give ‘er another go next year.
If you enjoyed this, take a look at our other phantom championship posts right here.