The Toronto Raptors are a Canadian professional basketball team based in Toronto. The Raptors compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. They play their home games at Scotiabank Arena, which they share with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL). The team was founded in 1995 as part of the NBA's expansion into Canada, along with the Vancouver Grizzlies. Since the 2001–02 season, the Raptors have been the only Canadian-based team in the league, as the Grizzlies relocated from Vancouver to Memphis, Tennessee.
CJCL is a Canadian sports radio station in Toronto, Ontario. Owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media since 2002, CJCL's studios are located at the Rogers Building at Bloor and Jarvis in downtown Toronto, while its transmitters are located near Grimsby atop the Niagara Escarpment. It is the flagship station for the Toronto Blue Jays, and also airs games from the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Bisons and Buffalo Bills. CJCL is also a CBS Sports Radio affiliate.
Alvin Leon Williams Jr. is an American retired professional basketball player who played for Villanova University and in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1997 to 2007.
Chuck Swirsky is an American–Canadian radio sports announcer. He is the play-by-play voice of the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Swirsky's association with Chicago sports started in 1979 with his WCFL AM 1000 talk show, which debuted on August 27 of that year. Outside Chicago, Swirsky called play-by-play for both University of Michigan basketball and football and was formerly the play-by-play voice of the Toronto Raptors.
Sandy Annunziata is a former offensive guard and Centre in the Canadian Football League.
Daniel Shulman is a Canadian sportscaster with Sportsnet as well as the American network ESPN.
John Joseph "Jack" Armstrong is an American sportscaster, working primarily for the Toronto Raptors on TSN and NBA TV Canada. Armstrong is also the college basketball analyst for TSN and a former college basketball coach.
Mark Vernon Jones is a Canadian sportscaster for ABC and ESPN and the primary play-by-play announcer for Sacramento Kings games on NBC Sports California. Jones has been a member of the ESPN broadcasting family since 1990. Before then Jones worked for The Sports Network (TSN) in Canada. He mostly works college football and NBA games on ABC and ESPN.
James Sharman is a writer and sportscaster at Homestand Sports focusing on soccer. He is also co-founder and host at Footy Prime the Podcast. James also frequently appears on Rogers Sportsnet and Sportsnet theFan 590. In 2019 he launched Sharman's Proper Pies with his wife, Toni.
Matt Devlin is a play-by-play TV announcer currently employed mainly by the Toronto Raptors of the NBA, having replaced Chuck Swirsky in 2008. His current on-air colour commentator partners are Alvin Williams and Jack Armstrong.
Salvatore "Sam" Cosentino is a Canadian sportscaster who currently works as a junior hockey analyst on Rogers Sportsnet.
Paul Romanuk is a Toronto sportscaster and writer. He was born in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.
Paul Jones is a Canadian sportscaster. He previously served as the colour analyst on Raptors radio broadcasts, a role he had during the Raptors' inaugural season in 1995, with play-by-play man Mike Inglis on CFRB 1010. Currently, he serves as the Raptors' radio play-by-play announcer on Fan 590, alongside colour analyst Eric Smith.
Dan Dunleavy is a Canadian sportscaster for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League. He was formerly a sportscaster with Sportsnet 590 The Fan, and Rogers Sportsnet.
Mike Hogan is a Canadian sportscaster who is a sports talk radio host on TSN Radio 1050 in Toronto, Ontario. He also serves as the play-by-play voice for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League for that station's gameday broadcasts. Hogan was formerly a long time sports talk radio host on Toronto station CJCL (AM), branded "The Fan 590", until he was relieved of those duties on June 24, 2010. Hogan was born in Kingston, Ontario.
Michael Samuel Wilner is a former Canadian baseball broadcaster for the Toronto Blue Jays. From 2014 through 2020, he called play-by-play for the Blue Jays' radio broadcasts, and authored a blog on Sportsnet.ca/590. He formerly hosted a postgame radio call-in show called BlueJaysTalk on the Fan 590. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1994. As of February 11, 2021, Wilner has been a baseball columnist for the Toronto Star.
The Toronto Blue Jays Radio Network consists of 21 stations in 7 Canadian provinces broadcasting the team's games in English.
Tim & Friends is a sports talk show hosted by Tim Micallef. The show is broadcast by the Canadian sports television network Sportsnet. The program, originally known as Tim & Sid and hosted by Micallef and Sid Seixeiro, was established in 2011 as an afternoon radio show on CJCL. The program gained a television simulcast on The Score in 2013. On July 1, 2015, the program was re-launched on Sportsnet as a dedicated television program. On October 14, 2019, the Tim & Sid telecasts began simulcasting on CJCL, replacing Prime Time Sports as its late afternoon drive program. Seixeiro left the show in 2021, and the show was rebranded as Tim & Friends. During the summer of 2021, Tim & Friends stopped being simulcasted on CJCL and again became a dedicated television program.
The 2019 NBA Finals was the championship series of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) 2018–19 season and conclusion of the season's playoffs. In the best-of-seven playoff series held from May 30 through June 13, 2019, the Eastern Conference champion Toronto Raptors defeated the two-time defending and six-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors, , earning the franchise its first NBA championship as well as the first win by an NBA team based outside the United States. Acquired by the Raptors via a trade during the off-season, Kawhi Leonard was named the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) for the second time in his career.
