The Toronto Raptors’ first-round schedule was offering a small window for serendipity.
Had the Raptors’ series with the Orlando Magic been plotted out differently, Jacob and Cara might not have found themselves at the same concert at a midsize downtown venue on an off night in April. Jacob and Cara knew each other, only kind of, in the way that people who spend a fair amount of time online begin to inhabit the same circles, a social bandwidth of sorts. A crossing of paths would have produced, at most, an awkward nonverbal acknowledgment of which each was only 90 percent sure was occurring with the person they believed. If Jacob was there at all, that is. The plans he’d made with friends coalesced only once it was confirmed the Raptors had the night off, and the mutual friend who invited them both out for drinks afterward would not have been in attendance had the team been in action.
But the Raptors were off, gleefully ahead 3-1 in a series they’d win the next night. And so Jacob and Cara met. In real life. Where they liked each other as much as they did on Twitter, their small network of mutual friends providing an implied vouching and an instant comfort level.
A Raptors off night presented the spark. It was the rest of the 2019 NBA Championship run that shaped Jacob and Cara’s relationship, and many others like it.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 