The Raptor: Basketball's #1 Mascot
Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids|March 2018

Voted the best mascot in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by Sports Illustrated, the Toronto Raptor has all the right stuff.

Pat Betteley
The Raptor: Basketball's #1 Mascot

For starters, he is a dinosaur. He can be intimidating, funny, and full of antics. He has roller-skated down the stairs of the stadium (face-planting at the bottom), swallowed a cheerleader who tried to pull him off-stage, and invaded a Toronto City Council meeting to celebrate a playoff series victory. Here are a few facts about the animal that inspired Toronto’s rambunctious raptor.

“Raptor” can refer to any bird of prey, such as an eagle, hawk, or falcon or the ever-popular carnivorous dinosaur called the velociraptor (vuh-LOS-uh-rap-ter). The velociraptor lived 85 to 71 million years ago during the end of the Cretaceous Period, at the same time in history as the famous T. Rex. In Latin, velox means swift, and raptor means robber. So velociraptor translates to something like “speedy thief.”

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Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids

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Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids

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Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids

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Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids

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Faces - The Magazine of People, Places and Cultures for Kids

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