Creating an NBA fan page, the journey— @torontorapsbr
This is actually quite an odd story I think, I'm going to tell it in a timeline so it makes more sense.
2007: I start playing basketball at my school Colégio Farroupilha in Porto Alegre-RS, practicing after class. My dad also really helped me practice because he liked it and played when he was younger, we mostly did that in our cottage in Gramado-RS where we had a little multisport court in our condo.
2008: I play NBA 2K for the first time and learn what is the NBA and also connect a lot with the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs, they were the teams I played with the most.
2013: I was 13 years old and me and my family went to live in Canada because my father was working on his post-doc in Medicine at the University of Toronto and the Sick Kids Hospital. There I had the opportunity to watch my first NBA live game, I went to the old Air Canada Centre nowadays called Scotiabank Arena to watch Toronto Raptors vs. Miami Heat. In my first NBA game, I got the chance to watch Lebron James and also acquire a DeMar DeRozan jersey, I fell for the game and the league.
From this point on I became a Raptors fan and kept rooting for the team as I also connected more to the League(NBA) through the years. While in Canada, I still had the opportunity to watch more live games in the arena and also consume more NBA/Raptors content.
In Canada I also kept playing basketball, I was in my school team at John T. Tuck in Burlington, Ontario, and also participated in the basketball club during recess.
PS.: Writing about my time in Canada made me feel nostalgic, a pretty unique time in my life, and also a really singular experience to have lived in another country with lots of different cultures. Sorry got carried away :)
2014: After living one year and a half in another country I come back to Brazil, and continue to play basketball at my school, and also at a sports club for a certain period of time. Coming back changed nothing Raptors-wise, I still kept rooting for the team from half a world away. For some years we had some tough Playoff runs and it was fun to watch the ride.
2017: There was I in my last High-School year and also taking extra classes for what in the States is called SAT but here in Brazil in we call it Vestibular. In one particular class, I was sitting next to a friend that had an Orlando Magic fan page and I was telling him about how I loved to connect and interact with other people that talked about Toronto Raptors on Twitter.
Finally, it rang a light on me: "I should create a Twitter account where I can create a Raptors social community". So I did!
I founded the Toronto Raptors Brasil fan account firstly on Twitter, it was one of the three first pages that talked about Raptors on the platform.
2017–2019: Throughout the years I worked so hard on the page that it grew fast, in followers and social recognition. I was gifted little souvenirs from Budweiser Brasil, Unifacisa, and others that recognized the work I was delivering on the platform.
One of the page's biggest milestones was to show up on SporTV, the most famous sports TV channel here in Brazil, I was invited to talk about how the Raptors were doing in the playoffs in the 2018–19 season(the one we won) and appeared in national television.
From then on as the page grew I also looked forward to partners and other people working alongside me to make the page even bigger. We created an Instagram, and a TikTok page and also recorded a few podcasts along the way which was pretty fun.
2019: At the beginning of this year I had the opportunity to revisit Canada and relive all that connection I had with the team. I got the chance to watch the Raptors in the arena again, buy souvenirs from the team, and also watch some games in the Sports Bar which is a really cool experience with all the big TVs.
This visit was a few months before we were champions, that was the first time we won the NBA and all Raptors' social media went crazy, which was an amazing moment and definitely the best I had as a Raptors fan and also owner of the page.
2023(today): Nowadays I'm happy to say that the page is still up and running, this wouldn't be possible without the help of my colleagues that work with us to make it happen, they are myself (Matheus Homrich), Guilherme Canquerini, Lucas Carneiro, and Rennan Ribeiro. We're still to hit 10K followers on Twitter, 3K on Insta, and 1K on TikTok, so let's keep going!
Thank you if you've read it up here and learned a bit of the history of a project of mine that became reality :)
