Canadian influence on Japanese basketball’s rapid rise

Former Raptor Stanley Johnson recently played in the biggest game of his professional career. As the Japanese B. League’s Sixth Man of the Year, he helped take his top division team, Nagasaki Velca, to its first-ever championship. Nagasaki rapidly rose from being a Division 3 expansion team to becoming a top division champion in the short span of five years. The team embraced its outsider identity, proved naysayers wrong, and adopted a slogan familiar to Raptors fans: We The Naga