Did Jamal Murray just avenge Canada from the clutches of LeBronto?

The Denver Nuggets beat the LA Lakers in the first round of the NBA playoffs to advance, but all Canadians can talk about is Jamal Murray.

Just because the Toronto Raptors didn’t make the NBA Playoffs this year, doesn’t mean Canadians don’t have anything to support this postseason.

In fact, there have been a ton of storylines for Raptors fans to follow — whether that’s the former Raptors who are carrying their teams to victory, or Canadians proving to the world that Canada is pumping out some of the best basketball talent out there.

One of the biggest stories of the first round of the NBA Playoffs has been the the Denver Nuggets dominance over the Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James. The Nuggets won game five on Monday night to secure the series over the Lakers, and both games four and five were decided by late-game shots by Jamal Murray.

That’s Kitchener, Ontario’s Jamal Murray to you.

Murray had a string of games in this series where he did not exactly shine in the first three quarters but made up for it in the fourth. In Monday’s game five, Murray scored 32 points on the night, including the game winner, to send the Lakers packing. He averaged 23.6 points in the series despite only shooting 40% from the field.

While that’s all great and it was fun to see the Nuggets advance to the second round, Canadians staying up late to watch the game could only think of one thing — LeBronto.

For our younger readers, LeBron James used to play for a little team called the Cleveland Cavaliers, in the Eastern Conference. During his tenure there, there were a number of years where Cleveland absolutely decimated the Toronto Raptors in the playoffs, prolonging the franchise’s championship dreams and causing the name “LeBronto” to be born. Basically, LeBron owned Toronto. Dark, dark times.

During this time, a young Jamal Murray was surely watching, working hard to make his own basketball dreams a reality. Who knows if Murray himself was really thinking about how LeBron embarrassed his home country all those years ago as he dunked on him Monday night, but fans in Canada surely were.

With LeBron James and the Lakers out in the first round, along with the Phoenix Suns who were swept by Minnesota, and the Golden State Warriors who didn’t even make the postseason, we are in a new era. This marks the first year since 2005 that the second round of the playoffs will not feature LeBron, KD or Steph Curry.

This new era of playoff basketball also happens to be led (in part) by Canadian hoopers. You have Jamal Murray with the Nuggets, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort who just swept the New Orleans Pelicans out of the first round. There’s also honorary Canadian Pascal Siakam hooping for the Indiana Pacers, putting up Wilt Chamberlain numbers and being close to knocking the Milwaukee Bucks out. O.G. Anunoby, another “Canadian” is out there with the Knicks, and could soon knock out Kyle Lowry (another “Canadian”) and the 76ers.

Sure, Jokic, Anthony Edwards, and Jalen Brunson, are there too... but we are talking about Canada right now.

Does this defeat eliminate the horrors of LeBronto from the history books? No. Does it help ease the pain still present years later? Yeah, totally. Murray did he best to avenge his country from the violence that was taken out on us in the LeBronto years, and for that we are grateful.

Seeing our homegrown hoopers take on the sport’s giants and succeed in handing them losses is sweet. Murray dunking on LeBron was as great as getting a patio seat at Moose Winooski’s in July, as great as flying onto highway 7 with no traffic, as great as the first sip of beer at Oktoberfest — okay, enough Kitchener references. It was freaking awesome.

While it will be fun to see our Canadians thrive for the rest of the NBA playoffs, it will be even sweeter when they hoop their hearts out in Canada jerseys this summer at the Paris Olympics.

...one more time for fun.