What started out as a funny headline by the Toronto Sun has turned into an international basketball trash-talking contest that has featured Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri dropping f-bombs and hop-hop artist Drake escalating his war of words with Jay-Z.

The Toronto Raptors, who some sports journalists viewed as a team looking to tank the season while jockeying for a better slot in the 2014 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft, surprised the so-called experts winning the Atlantic Division, finishing 48-43 for the year, four games ahead of the second-place Brooklyn Nets, earning home court in their Eastern Conference first round playoff series.

The Raptors' ascendency has the team and those associated with the franchise feeling really good about themselves. But the Raptors' surprise success has not produced humility for a team that has not made a playoff appearance since 2008, with Toronto SF and 2014 Slam Dunk Champion Terrence Ross saying, on Reddit.com, he preferred playing Brooklyn in the first round, Ujiri firing up the Raptor fan-base at a rally before Game 1 yelling "[expletive] Brooklyn", and even Drake - who signed on to be his hometown team's "Global Ambassador" early in the season (complete with staff and an office next to Tim Leiweke - president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment which includes the Raptors, NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs, and MLS Toronto FC), taking digs at former minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets Jay-Z during the TSN Canadian telecast, saying "Jay Z is somewhere eating a fondue plate. It's our time."

The sports deities must have a great sense of humor, pitting the Raptors and Nets against one another as Jay-Z and Drake are involved in a lyrical "beef", after Drake said that Jay-Z "can't drop bars these days without at least four art references!" to Rolling Stone magazine promoting his latest album Nothing Was the Same, and Jigga going at Drizzy in Jay Electronica's We Made It remix saying, among other things:

"Sorry misses Drizzy for as much I talk
Silly me rapping bout [expletive] that I really bought
Why these rappers rap about guns they ain't shot?
And a bunch of other silly [expletive] that they ain't got"

For all the bravado coming from the northern neighbors, the Raptors wilted under the bright lights of the NBA Playoffs in their series opener - suffering through an energy outage in both the team's offense and the Air Canada Centre shot clock - that forced Ujiri, Drake, and the city of Toronto to eat humble pie while losing the home-court advantage they worked so hard to earn as well as giving the New York tabloids - left with only one team representing New York City in the 2013-2014 NBA Playoffs - fodder for jokes.

The series is far from over, with both teams having split the regular-season series 2-2. Game 2 may turn out different for a Raptors team that was all roar and no bite at the end of Game 1, despite locking up the Atlantic Division by winning six out of their last nine games going into the postseason.

And the ill will between the two franchises - from the dueling headlines between the Toronto Sun and New York Daily News, to Ujiri's brutally honest opinion of the borough of Brooklyn that cost him a $25,000 fine on Monday, to the platinum-award winning court-side celebrities lobbing shots at one another - is just harmless off-court theatrics that adds to the fun of the NBA Playoffs, even if it cost Ujiri in his pockets.

And while it hurts to lose that much cash regardless of a person's tax bracket, Ujiri, the 2013 NBA Executive of the Year, can afford the fine after signing with Toronto for a five-year, $15 million deal in 2013. As much as some prudes may use the moment to question Ujiri's professionalism, his mistake - if you can even call it that - was acting like any other fan that curses at the televisions in the excitemen of their team participating in the postseason.

Lapse in judgement? Sure.

Unprofessional? No, just no.

This has the makings of a long series. An 82-game season can wear on the Nets veteran team, particularly Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, against Toronto's younger legs. But the Raptors may want to dial down the tough talk - at least until they get a playoff win under their belt - before the "dinosaurs" on Nets roster, the ones with NBA championship pedigrees from previous stops in their career, show Toronto that Brooklyn goes hard, as Jay-z would say.

We Made It by Jay Electronica ft. Jay-Z (Drake dis)

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