Stories Behind the Fur

Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen talks with NBA’s Raptor

November 20, 2008 at 7:38 am Leave a comment

Here’s an excerpt from an injuries rundown article.

2. The unseen injuries. On Wednesday in Toronto, The Raptor mascot was trying to dunk when his feet slipped through the springs. The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that he limped off the court and didn’t return.

“An ankle sprain,” Raptors media relations director Jim LaBumbard informed me. “Listed as day-to-day.”

I asked The Raptor to detail his injuries over the years.

“It’s a long list,” he said during a rare telephone interview Thursday. “A fractured tailbone. Cuts, scrapes and bruises, twisted ankles. I have one vertebrae that got twisted so I was getting pinched nerves in my back and neck. A few times I’ve dislocated a finger and popped it back in. I tore a hamstring trying to dunk over three ball racks stacked on top of each other. I had a concussion doing a backflip off something and hit a stanchion, or something, and ended up falling on my face, so when I got up I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know where I am,’ and they ended up escorting me out. I was in the old Skydome doing a dunk and I landed on top of the ball, I rolled my ankle on top of it. That’s no fun. I came back the next game in a wheelchair with a sign that said, ‘Say No To Trampoline Dunks.’ “

The Raptor agreed to speak with me on condition that I not reveal his true identity. In that sense, it was like talking to Spider-Man. He has been The Raptor throughout the 14-year history of the franchise. Maybe you’ve seen him: He is bright red with an oversized head, sharp teeth and limited eyesight, mainly because he sees through his mouth.

“When I’m running around in that thing, it’s like a sauna,” he said of his outer skin. “You’re breathing the same air inside of your head. Each night I’ll sweat anywhere from six to nine pounds in water. I’ll take my shirt off during timeouts and literally wring out the sweat.”

I first met The Raptor a few years ago at the Air Canada Centre. He came walking into the press room in the first quarter. When he took off his head, I felt like Dorothy looking behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but he wasn’t it. My innocence was gone, and I have never viewed mascots the same way again. Not even the San Diego Chicken.

“I’m 35,” he admitted. Before he was The Raptor, he was toiling in the Canadian football and basketball leagues. “This is my 20th season of doing mascoting,” he said. “Every parent wishes their kids will grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer. Mine got a puppet.”

The speckled red tail and monocular eyes belie a discipline to his craft. He missed but one game after suffering the broken tailbone.

“I was tobogganing down the stairs and lost the positioning on the toboggan.” After the collision, he said, “I got up on my own and my spine was completely tingling. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this hurts,’ and I got up and walked away. There was a slight little fracture in the tailbone. I didn’t dunk for the rest of the year, but I was back into doing some sort of running handstand maneuvers in a couple of weeks.”

I asked him what was the anticipated life expectancy of a Raptor.

“I get asked that all the time,” he said. “The answer is as long as I can, because I love doing it. It’s as fun a job as you can get in many different ways. You perform in games but also go out in the community and work with special-needs kids in different situations, such as going to hospitals for sick kids and bringing that element to them. I can tell you, there are times you’re glad you’re wearing a costume while you’re seeing these kids in their situations. Because the whole time you’re thinking, I’ve got problems?”

 

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