In the NBA finals, the Warriors dynastic ambitions are up against their own fatigue, the Raptor’s drive and excellence … and a great story. “More than 20,000 fans have crowded into Celebration Square in downtown Mississauga to watch Raptors games on a giant screen, and many thousands more have done the same in Garden Square, the predominantly South Asian suburb to the northwest. More striking still is this measure of heresy: A new poll reveals that more young Canadian men and women want to watch the Raptors than the Stanley Cup.” And Canada isn’t just producing fans. It’s producing players. NYT: Canada Becomes a Basketball Factory.

+ Rafael Nadal’s French Open dominance is so definitive, it’s getting boring. “There is no more difficult challenge in sport than to defeat Rafael Nadal on Court Philippe Chatrier, the main show court of the French Open. It is, for all relevant purposes, his home, his house, the place where he wins and wins and wins again, the way that John Wooden’s U.C.L.A. basketball teams of the nineteen-sixties and seventies won game after game in Pauley Pavilion, which is the only analogy I can summon from my six decades of watching sports.” Gerald Marzorati in The New Yorker: Rafael Nadal’s Unparalleled Dominance of the French Open.

+ Red Sox legend David Ortiz suffered organ damage from bullet during ambush at bar in Santo Domingo.