It is easy to see how a professional sports franchise becomes a lasting and meaningful fixture within a city’s culture. From their obvious economic impact to the positive public perception that the team association to the city can generate in the media, the case for how a team influence it’s city’s identity should be obvious.

Perhaps less obvious through this is a paired relationship. A city’s existing character and sense of personality, as well as its heritage, plays an incredibly important role in shaping the culture of the team it supports - at least that is the case in instances of franchises self-aware enough to recognize the importance of this correlation.

It is to that end that the leadership at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment developed a blueprint for rebranding the face of the Raptors. Management has rebuilt the team’s roster in the city’s image and created the NBA’s version of the United Nations.

And somehow, weaved into all of that, is a connection that binds Toronto to its newest star, Hedo Turkoglu, and excuses the city’s repudiation for the franchise’s fallen former prodigal son, Vince Carter.

Turkoglu signing with the Raptors this summer did not just underline the city’s unique position amongst NBA cities in terms of its global persona, it was actually a direct result of said persona. Toronto’s well-earned reputation as a ‘global city’ drew his eye (and perhaps more important to any married man’s decision-making, his wife’s).

Turkoglu’s exposure to the city throughout his NBA career allowed him decide that its character and lifestyle were to his liking, to the point that he did not even feel the need to visit it when on his tour of prospective free agent destinations. That speaks to his comfort level with the diverse multiculturalism it offered.

If we step back and examine this for a moment, it is a rather ground breaking idea. For maybe the first time in the history of one of Toronto’s non-hockey teams, the city itself was a selling point for a potential free-agent signing.

For the better part of my life as a Toronto sports fan, all I have heard was that Toronto teams were forced to pay a premium for free-agent talent because star players did not want to play in the Canadian marketplace for fear of it limiting their media exposure in the US. Even now we still hear this a potential reason that Chris Bosh may leave the city next summer in hopes of pursuing a higher Q-Index Rating and more marketing opportunities by playing in a larger television market.

One can easily trace this back to Vince Carter.

The man dubbed “Air Canada” was not just the face of the Raptors in Canada – he essentially was basketball itself in this country for the common man (at least until Steve Nash became NBA MVP). Before the Raptors developed a franchise identity that was independent of any one player, Carter meant everything - a flashy, dynamic American star set to take the country and world at large by storm.

I can only speak as a fan, as I have no intimate knowledge of Carter’s time here, but as a fan, it always seemed that Carter accepted the city’s love and adoration almost begrudgingly.

That is not to say he was sour or malcontent all the time (though that was certainly the case during his final two seasons here where he quit on the team altogether). He was an ambassador for the city in several ad campaigns and is to be commended for the considerable amount of charity work he did locally through his foundation to help at-risk youth in the Toronto community.

Yet he never seemed to adopt the city as his home. In interviews he would give off the air that at least a part of him was disappointed that he had risen to such success with the league’s only non-American outfit, and that he was displeased that he had landed in a market where no matter his exploits and his team would always be the second game in town behind hockey. He always seemed to have one foot out the door and looking back to the United States.

Carter projected to fans such as myself that he had no devotion to our city, and further, that its distinctive character, its rare and special demographic and cultural identity, meant very little to him.

Flash forward now to this summer and the case of Turkoglu, a player drawn to the franchise in no small part because of the city’s reputation as a truly international city, perhaps one of the only ones in the NBA with a decent sized Turkish population and offering direct flights back to Turkey year round.

This cosmopolitan identity appealed to the Istanbul-raised Turkoglu and his family. Here was a player who has played literally all over the world, in leagues across several continents since he was a teenager. For a player with that sort of global perspective, playing in the most multi-cultural city in North America and, in terms of sheer number of ethnicities it contains, one of the most diverse city’s in the world, is a huge selling point.

It would be naïve to not point out here that the huge contract Toronto offered Turkoglu didn’t also pay a role in his decision, but it would likewise be too easy to say that was the only factor.

The circumstances that drew Turkoglu here were repeated elsewhere throughout the roster. We saw it when Rasho Nesterovic agreed to resign with the team for less money simply because he loved the city. We saw it when Jose Calderon resigned last summer, as well as when Andrea Bargnani cited it as a major part of the team’s attractiveness to him and thanked the diverse cultural community for its support.

The Raptors now have a roster full of international players, ready to bust out two weeks from now and show the league a European-style of basketball that management has been trying to implement for three seasons running now. That playing style features a ton of selfless passing in an effort to stretch the floor as well as a roster built with diverse skill-sets in mind so that every player on the court has the ability to shoot from anywhere on the court.

Turkoglu’s ability to become a playmarker, to dribble-drive and kick out to big men who can shoot on the perimeter while handling the ball as a point-forward fits perfectly into their system, but it is almost an afterthought to why he will be such a solid component to the team.

Turkoglu reflects the new global face of this organization, and stands as a true representative of the city and people who support it: diverse, cosmopolitan, unprovincial.

It seems interesting how, at the same time Hedo arrives here, Carter gears up exactly where the Turkish forward left.

By landing in Orlando, Carter seems to have realized some kind of destiny to return to his home state of Florida and the comforts of its climate and lifestyle. Each player seems at home, and at peace, with their new surroundings, and each serves as a symbol, an interesting ideogram to the city they represent.

Sometimes, it would seem, not only do our teams represent our city’s collective attitudes, but so to do the players themselves.

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