© John E. Sokolowski | 2019 Jun 10
Monday night will likely go down as one of the most infamous and ugly nights in Toronto sports history. Not only did the Raptors let a 6-point lead slip in the final three minutes, but fans cheered as Kevin Durant went down on the court injured, in what has proven to be a torn right Achilles. The 106-105 Warriors win sent the NBA Finals back to Oakland, but before the Warriors flew back to the Bay, they returned to their hotel at the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto.
There was a video before Game 1 of the Finals of head coach Steve Kerr being heckled by Raptors fans asking Kerr in jest whether the Raptors would win the series in five or six games.
Kerr responded, “I take them in eight.”
The heckling against Sonya Curry, the mother of Stephen Curry, was not as polite. In the video above, you can hear some Raptors fans yelling expletives including, “F**k you,” multiple times at Sonya and Dell Curry, although one fan at the end of the video appears to say, “Yeah Dell, yeah Dell, legend. Dell, you the man Dell. Dell, you the man Dell, don’t even listen to these guys.”
On Wednesday, Stephen Curry was asked what he makes of the aggressive fan behavior.
“I think in terms of being in The Finals five years in a row and being on this stage, it’s hard to avoid those interactions with fans that want to kind of impose their — or make their imprint on the series somehow, in some way, especially with social media these days,” Curry said. “I think it’s kind of stupid, to be honest, in terms of people camping outside our hotel just to yell expletives at either us or our family members or whatever the case is. But we handle all that stuff with class and try to ignore it the best we can. And if they get something out of it, so be it.
“But it doesn’t affect us at all in terms of what we’re trying to do and how we carry ourselves as a team as players and as people that represent us and our families as well.”