Deception

I last left you with my account of the difficult start to my vacation and the news blackout I experienced and enjoyed. There’s still no news. It’s still August, so let me carry on, bypassing the incident where I found the tikki idol in a cave, and jumping right to the end of my trip out west.

It was 12:30am, on a Westjet plane at Calgary International Airport. Sleepy. Feeling very sleepy. The plane is just starting to back away from the gate, when a large man interrupts the stewards’ presentation of the safety precautions. He apparently decided that his heart could not be counted on to make the entire flight without incident. That will require a wait for paramedics to arrive and take him off the plane, and more of a wait for his luggage to be found and removed. I’m thinking that this means certain death for the rest of us: the plane will crash and this guy will proclaim that the hand of God saved him. Why am I thinking this? I do not know. I had not seen Inception as of yet, but it was true that this idea stuck like a virus once it was there. And the stress caused me to crash into a sudden deep sleep.

Let me share my dreaming. I understand, now that I’ve seen the movie, that I might be able to plant some seeds in the subconscious of somebody, and alter reality in the process. I can only hope.

The dream begins with the voice of Blane Harrington in my headset. The Chris Bosh personal appearances tour has landed him, and his alter-ego of no repute, a guest spot on BBC radio, announcing the time signal. “At the sound of the long tone, like a wolf released from a cage, following ten seconds of silence, the time will be 8am Greenwich Mean Time”. The ten seconds of silence stretch out for what seems like forever. It seems like ten seconds in dream time equals twelve minutes in real time. While waiting for the final long beep (or will it be a howl?), I fall into a dream within a dream. I’m sitting on the windowsill of Bryan Colangelo’s office. He’s speaking to Maurizio.

“We’re in the fourth quarter now. We need to make something happen.”

“Take it easy Bryan. It’s August. It’s hard to make things happen in August. There’s just not much to act on right now. I think I heard Charles Barkley kidding around and talking about coming out of retirement, but other than that-”

“Barkley…He played for the Suns…And he didn’t even need Steve Nash to get his numbers…And he called Bosh a punk. I’m intrigued with the idea.”

Colangelo removes his black onyx cufflinks, and rolls up his sleeves. The stone is set in silver with it’s eight sides coming to a sharp point. Gherardini observes the sudden seriousness the discussion has taken and interjects, “he weighs well over 300 pounds”.

“Bingo! We need a guy that takes up space in the paint so that Andrea can shift over to the 4.”

I walk over to the desk, pick up a cufflink, studying it’s edges, while thinking. “And he never professed to liking defense so it’s a perfect fit.” Oh shit - I guess in dreams you always think out loud.

“Well that clinches it then. Make it happen Maurizio. Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

That didn’t work out so well. Maurizio grimaces and comes at me. I don’t have time to set down the cufflink. It’s time to run, and run hard. The halls of the ACC office building twist and turn at odd angles. I squeeze through a tight space where the walls converge, leaving Gherardini behind me. And now I’m on and endless Penrose staricase, with different members of the Raptors Dance Pak leading me up and down simultaneously, their beaming faces offering no hint at the impossibility. I suddenly see myself sitting on the plane, waiting for the ten seconds of silence to pass. I’m well into the fourth quarter myself now. I should try to make something good happen. I jump into the center of the stairwell and my fall is broken by the giant inflatable Raptor mascot in the courtyard between the ACC and the new Real Sports complex. I run into the bar and sit in a booth next to where Jay Triano is drinking a pint of Guinness and talking on his cell phone.

“Just be sure you know that we need you Jose. You’re still a leader on this team, and I can still try to manage minutes so that you and Jarrett can both have a big impact. But I can’t lie. It’s going to be hard to have both of you guys on the court together now that we have Leandro as well. I’m trying to think of a way to have all three of you playing down the stretch, but it’s a tough one.”

I walk over to his table and use his notebook computer to locate a website featuring a guy that grafted his twin brother’s arms onto his chest as a form of body art. Triano looks and makes his icky face, the same one he makes in those 30-point blowout losses. But the idea has been planted. There’s no turning back.

“Wait a minute Jose. I might have something. What if we found a way to implant your hands onto Jarrett’s head? Just your hands. I have to admit my first thought was to stick both of your heads onto Jarrett’s body, but that would be asking a bit too much of Jarrett. This way your arms and legs will be equally useless, but you’ll still be able to live a pretty normal life while providing inspiration to millions. Give it some thought now Jose. It will likely require some cutting-edge stem cell transplant techniques to allow the hands to be accepted by Jarrett’s scalp, but if we can get it done it will allow for your greatest strengths to combine with Jarrett’s. With some work he can get your hands clapping while he’s defending. He can use your hands to signal a successful three-point attempt. And if he needs to tie his shoes as the shot clock is winding down, he’ll have some place to keep a hold of the ball. I always love the idea of having guys with good hands out there in crunch time, and this will give us an extra set. Give this a chance now. We’re going to need everyone to make a sacrifice if we want to win anything this season. This would offer the best example I could ever imagine. Honestly - I think I must be dreaming. I actually must be dreaming…”

Triano grabs the cufflink from my hand. He sets it down on its pointed edge and spins it on the table. It begins to wobble slightly. I panic and pick up the piece of jewelry. I feel the stone against the palm of my hand and direct the spike of silver into Triano’s forehead.

I feel a jolt. The plane is taking off. I hear Edith Piaf in my headset. Am I out of the dream? Is anything real? The state of the Toronto Raptors does not offer much help in delineating the fabric of reality. I might get stuck in this shared dream experience for another full season. I might see Colangelo repeating his pledge to move forward as a team that averages 50 wins per year. I might see Triano convincing his players to See, Believe and Achieve. If they can Believe they might See, but Believing might require some Achieving first. If only they can think they are climbing the stairs when they are actually descending as well. Eventually so many years of deception will crumble away and leave the right ideas to take root. But I might also grow old and lonely within this dream. I’ve been a fan since the very inception, and now? I’ll just have to take a leap of faith.

Any Abyss

Earlier this month I was on something of a vacation, visiting family out west. During the flight out to Calgary I came across a magazine article that featured the following lines of Baudelaire’s poetry:

Once we have burned our brains out, we can plunge
to Hell or Heaven - any abyss will do -
deep in the Unknown to find the new!

From Calgary, my wife and I (and three dogs) drove to Canmore, where we picked up my Sister and Dad and headed to my brother’s place, about an hour across the Alberta/BC border in Golden. We made it halfway through Yoho National Park when all traffic stopped. Minutes passed. An hour passed. Nothing. We dipped into some of the beef jerky we had picked up in a small resort close to Lake Louise. Another hour went by. No sign of anything. Just a long lineup of cars sitting in the summer sun in the middle of a mountain range. People started to walk down the shoulder a ways. Some stepped out onto the empty stretch of asphalt that ran alongside us, looking for some answer. My wife had Mochi, the nutless wonder, doing some tricks on the side of the road to keep people entertained for brief moments. The time passed along and it got to where everyone wondered if we’d ever get back to the everyday movements of modern life.

And there was an aspect this that I enjoyed. This was something of an abyss, that lied somewhere between Heaven and Hell. We were deep in the Unknown, and I guess finding the new was a possibility, but simply not knowing was pretty good on its own. Enough time had elapsed for us all to figure out that somewhere ahead there was a good bit of death and destruction. Certainly, knowing about that was not going to be helpful. The not knowing was actually ok. There was no cell phone reception; no radio signals of any kind; no way of finding anything out. Just trees, and rocks, and sky. And it was actually ok.

It was around the time when the ugly figure of a long-horned pine beetle landed upon the windshield, that I thought of the Raptors. And no it was not in relation to the certain, horrible crash at the end of the long line of motionless vehicles. The deaths of real people should not be equated with my expectations for a basketball team. OK-OK, there was a millisecond where I wondered at the possibility of Bargnani severing an arm, but that was both ludricous and just unhealthy. Mostly, I just found myself happy not knowing anything that might be happening to my hapless team. Not only did I not know, I had absolutely no means of knowing anything. Bryan Colangelo might be admitting that he was wrong to say the team was evolving without giving equal time to Creationist theories. Jose Calderon might be getting interviewed and responding with his classic “we just need to get better” line. Chris Bosh could be tweeting about his trip to a pet store. I’d probably still miss that if I was back at home, but now I was absolutely sure that I would be missing that, and there is no denying the allure of the absolute. I started to get drunk on the absolute sense of not knowing.

I would have no way of seeing any youtube video, of reading any article, of watching any tv appearance, of receiving any ESPN broadcast in any form. Bosh could be singing You Don’t Send Me Flowers with Babs - I wouldn’t know. He could be standing in for one of the regulars in The Puppetry of the Penis show. He could be taping a stupid human tricks segment for Letterman (not where you defecate more than your own body weight Chris! No! Not that! It’s my idea! It’s my big chance goddamit - you’ve got Lebron!). He could be communicating with Emperor Penguins. He could be making a cameo appearance on the Young and the Restless. I would remain oblivious. He could ride a cow up one of the mountains that surrounded me, and shout “I’VE GOT MILK” through a megaphone, and the bears would likely get him before I noticed anything.

A part of me wanted to stay.

Four hours in and something finally moved besides the sun and the shadows. We would head towards Golden again. We would eventually come across a stretch of road scrubbed clean and now sudsy in the rain. From deep in the Unknown I would eventually be able to see the new that awaits this basketball season. It probably won’t resemble Heaven. It could very well resemble Hell. But it will be basketball all the same, and in that sense, any abyss will do. When the chatter and clatter and noise starts up, in my mind I will take myself back to the middle of Yoho, between the Rockies and the Purcell Mountains. And know nothing - as usual.

The Only Solution

One word has dominated Bryan Colangelo’s communications over the last couple of months. Whether it be in scrums, more formal pressers, or his most recent letter to fans, he has said it over and over: evolve. OK. So what has happened with the loss of Chris Bosh is not something that wasn’t anticipated? Good I guess, although I think he repeatedly tried to assure us that if Bosh left there would be a fair bit coming back. Maybe he will manage to convert the Traded Player Exception into something fairly exceptional. If that happens then we should all move on and allow the evolving to continue.

But at this moment I see a flashpoint that cannot be ignored before we just think this team will go on with business as usual. Bryan has been here for some time now. In his first year he made an excellent assessment of what was needed, put forward a blueprint with a core that looked promising, and he got real real results. They are results that he still throws out there to vindicate himself. At the end of the season he pointed out that the team averaged around 30 wins before he arrived, was averaging around 40 since he arrived, and he promised to keep the team “evolving” towards 50 wins. That sounds lovely, but the 47 win team happened four seasons in the past, and instead of evolving, they look to be eroding and losing traction. And it’s hard to see how losing an All-Star, and if nothing else, just about the only guy that gets to the free throw line, is going to push them onwards.

What is actually evolving, I suspect, is the message. And there is a note of desperation involved. Was Bryan responsible for putting an old video of Chris Bosh saying he wanted to be “the man” back into circulation on NBA.com? It seems pretty clear that it wasn’t Bosh. Bosh could have linked to it through his own website. Instead it looks like an attempt to undermine the character of the same guy that Bryan signed four years ago, at that time offering a testimony in the most glowing terms, of Chris Bosh’s character, above and beyond his talents. When Colangelo talks now, he constantly slips various references to Bosh changing his mindset, being more concerned with his brand than with basketball, and most recently, of being there hand in hand with himself as every move was made. Without admitting that this team outright sucks, he is quite brilliantly offering up his character signing as being at least somewhat responsible for the suckage.

One problem though - I’m not that stupid. I saw the same thing attempted when Sam Mitchell was fired. Everything that was holding the team back was supposed have been reversed to some degree. Jay Triano had a great basketball mind and Bryan loved the professional manner in which he approached his job. Jay was going to let players like Andrea play through their mistakes, give everyone a little more freedom, and allow for an exciting brand of basketball to truly take shape. Did you buy what he was selling then? Do you feel like you might like to make a return, even if all you get back is a package of tube socks? Or are you willing to now take in the evolution of his message, and believe that the last two years would have been different had Chris Bosh not gotten in the way somehow?

No - it doesn’t add up. Sooner or later, Colangelo is going to have to accept that the focus is going to land squarely on him. Four years ago he was quite happy to accept the perception of himself as the guy that was going to turn things around here. Again - I have to give him credit for getting off to a brilliant start. This team needed to pair Bosh up with another consistent scoring option. He got that done. He signed John Salmons. Boom. Job well done. Give this team a two-way wing player like that, along with TJ Ford, and the potential of Bargnani with Bosh, and it wasn’t hard to see this team evolving into something at that point. And yet it did turn into nothing much pretty quickly. Salmons somehow decided to swim downstream (now there’s a sure sign of evolution). TJ got whacked. Garbajosa too. Bargnani’s mental strength was not as steely as the pre-draft testing suggested. Bosh kept patient and kept getting stronger. Maybe the whole time he was thinking of being on a real team down the road, and down in South Beach, but the chance to get something done here in that time was present all the same. The means of reversing some bad luck had to be there to some extent. If not - starting over, and looking to evolve all over again would have been a little easier to swallow many years earlier. He failed to have the necessary foresight. He failed to act. He never missed an opportunity to sell.

When the bad luck fouled the plans for this team’s future, Bryan did not make the same sort of assessments that he had when he arrived. He did not get back to the need to pair Bosh up with a proven scorer. He looked for an easy way out. He failed to stick to the principle of needing two solid options to be able to play off of each other, make each of them better, and make all the roles from there much easier to define and properly fill. When John Salmons did not materialize he jumped to his immediate signing of Fred Jones. At the time he said it might have been a blessing in disguise, since Jones came cheaper and afforded him greater flexibility down the line. Flexibility was one of his favorite words back then. He held it out like a magic talisman. It was going to allow us to get just the right player that was going to make this team top tier. Still, from there he overspent on Jason Kapono, and while he wasn’t giving up on flexibility altogether with that move, there was a dangerous shift in thinking. It was becoming apparent that he was giving up on the idea of pairing up Bosh with another star with reliably good production, and instead moving towards the gimmicky idea that five offensive threats on the floor in some shape or form, with defense as an afterthought, could get the job done splendidly. It didn’t, so he grabbed Jermaine O’Neal. There you go - something for everyone: defense, size, the tough mindset Bargnani was lacking, and a former all-star to boot. And flexibility remained for the future when that enormous contract expired. Flexibility was still the key. Bryan was paying lip service to everything else. Jermaine was not the guy that would be just the right player, but he could sell him as such and buy some more time.

JO turned out to be DOA. And unfortunately a former All-Star lying flat on his back and giving up, would eventually evolve into an almost All-Star (and great pizza pitchman) lying flat on his back and giving up, with drinks afterward. Now I don’t want to dredge up too much of the past that lies in the midst of all that, but it does strike me as remarkable how many players came here, only to end up with severely limited careers in the NBA, if any NBA careers at all, shortly thereafter. Of course that sort of thing goes back to before Colangelo arrived. But I’m definitely not going to dredge up the whole mess, and besides - I expected more of the man with the high collar. Instead he offered up the likes of the aforementioned Jones and Kapono and O’Neal. Then there’s also Luke Jackson and Juan Dixon and Pape Sow and Uros Slokar and Maceo Baston and Linton Johnson and Hassan Adams and Will Solomon and Roko Ukic and Patrick O’Bryant and Jake Voskuhl and Quincy Douby and Nathan Jawai and Pops Mensah-Bonsu and Reggie Evans, and that is all on top of the terrible luck occurring to Jorge Garbajosa and TJ Ford. I had hoped Hedo could do some of the things Garbajosa had, and more: play big, play smart and hit some threes as well as facilitating. Unfortunately he went straight to buggering up his leg and angrily denying that he was the same player as ever, while taking big long drags on cigarettes. The similarity to that part of Jorge’s history I could have done without. Unless he gets that leg back to what it was, and gets back into shape, add Turk to the long list of the living dead. That is an ugly list. And worse than that list, is that the players that didn’t make that list were still asked to fill much bigger roles than their abilities afforded them. There’s a list just about as long to cover all the players that looked bad far too often when too much was expected of them. This team won 47 games upon Colangelo’s arrival, with quite a few borderline talents like Humphreys and Graham contributing nicely along the way, and then going into the playoffs they pretty much had to start Joey Graham and force him into way too big of a role. The flexibilty never paid off as was promised. Andrea started as the small forward in the playoffs the following year, offering no better solution. Nobody as good or better than John Salmons was ever hooked. Flexibility turned into tying up too many of just-the-wrong-guys long-term. Flexibility turned into talk about paying luxury tax when Bosh was headed out the door. Flexibility was always just the long drawn out process of natural selection, and nobody on the Raptors roster has grown a third arm just yet.

Is it all on Colangelo? I wish I could say yes. I think the job of GM in this city is simply very difficult and requires more good luck than bad. But if Colangelo is going to bask in a good perception upon his arrival, he needs to accept whatever poor perception might be cast upon him now. I simply wish he would not pee in a cup and tell me it’s Gatorade (or G, or whatever the hell it is now), or steal that brand’s latest slogan to try and sell some seats. After years of not being able to deliver what he’s been selling, he needs to just give us the straight goods and straight talk as much as possible. At most: let him pee in a cup and call it P. I’ll live with that. Because even if he offers a little bit of wizardry this off-season, this team will at best only give some indication of what kind of foundation they might be able to build upon. This team will be much more like the primordial goo where DNA first came together, than any kind of life-form worthy of evolution. If that is too hard to sell, it’s only because of how long we have seen him come up short. Which is a shame. The only thing that might have evolved from Dinosaurs are birds. And maybe that’s alright. Maybe this team takes that sort of step and finally takes flight after 15 years. They don’t need to fly into the sun or fly like an eagle. Just find some wings and show us some stability for a few years. With a little luck that can happen. Or maybe Colangelo just gets tarred and feathered, and sticks his head in the sand.

Still a Fossil

I almost felt like the clock was going to turn back a little there. I fell in love with the game as a kid, back when Boston simply couldn’t be beaten in a game 7. And it seemed like that leprechaun touch would last forever at the time. But now the Lakers have nearly won as many titles, the old parquet floor got torn up along the way, and Red is as much ash as all those victory cigars turned out to be.

For a moment there I thought it was going to happen like it did long ago. I thought this group of Celtics was going to make me feel much more nostalgic then the championship group from a couple years back did. I was in the midst of fondly remembering the rotary dial phone, the typewriter, and the wooden tennis racquet. The Celtics were up by 13 and bringing it on home. Fisher was back in the dressing room. Kobe was sucking horribly. The refs were not all that noticeable. And best of all - the game could be reduced to how the effect of the old-school guys, namely Sheed and Artest played out.

Both of those guys responded well to the pressure of one of the few exciting things to happen in the playoffs this year - a game 7 to put an end to all the blowouts, horrendous calls, and Lebron chatter superceding everything else. They both carried their weight through three quarters, on both ends of the court. Which one of them was going to lose it first? Unfortunately, at just around the time that Fisher returned, Wallace started to foul. He’s always been prone to celebrating too early, letting up a little mentally, and then getting his team off track. And he did it again. The tide turned at the point where he whacked Kobe (who was sucking remember) unnecessarily just as Ray was knocking the ball loose, and cleanly. The Lakers kept on getting to the line through that final quarter, and that edge combined with the rebounding edge just couldn’t be overcome.

Or could it? The ghosts of the past appeared in the final minutes. Crazy shots were starting to go down. Boston was somehow hanging in there, even with Artest hitting what should have been the final nail in the coffin, from beyond the arc, and then blowing a kiss to his psychiatrist (of course he was able to find a good shrink in LA - and there you have your title all wrapped up as a result). Still - with the Lakers up by 2, and the shot clock off, Rondo was able to knock the ball loose from Kobe. Dennis Johnson had to be heading to the basket! But the ball grazed the sideline. Laker ball…

…and I am NOT a teenager.

All the breaks seem to go the way of the Lakers these days. Pau not only doesn’t get the call for coming back down before releasing his jumper, but the ball just barely rolled over the rim. Take that basket away and things might have turned out differently. Maybe the Celtics summon up one last punch at the end. Of course that’s just wishful thinking, and that’s where those of us that want anyone to just beat LA are for now. But it won’t last forever, just like Phil’s hairline, Lamar’s marriage, and Artest’s music career. Soon enough, the young punks wearing their Kobe jerseys will become old fossils themselves, and wish anyone could ever be bothered to chant “beat LA” ever again. I just hope it happens before the rest of us are bored to death.

Story Time

Last Friday morning I was in the middle of a field in Fergus, waiting for my wife to compete with our dogs in a big Agility trial. To kill time I played a game of scrabble against my iPod. There was no competition involved with that. I killed it again. And what actually made it a little fun was how I scored on two great words for triple word scores. The word PIG was sitting right up against the triple word square in the bottom right corner of the board. I had an S to make PIGS for the triple, but I didn’t stop there. I was able to use another three delicious letters running up from that S to make ANUS. There it was - PIGS ANUS. Not a huge score, but good enough to beat an iPod. And just so satisfying in an aesthetic sense. I may never be able to enjoy scrabble in the same way ever again. It was like getting a royal flush. You just can’t feel good about the chances of getting another one again, even if the laws of probability are not effected.

Now had I been using an iPod Touch, I might have scanned the basketball stories of the day, and come across the breaking news about Hedo and all of the reaction in which “pig’s anus” might have been used in descriptive terms a few times. Of course I wouldn’t have gone that far myself, and not just in consideration of inflaming cultural sensitivities. I would have just thought - here we go again.

I’ve come to be pessimistic about this team very late in the game, and I think it’s mostly because I never found any value in mucking around in this garbage. I do think that fans here make too much of stuff that doesn’t really matter, toss around misplaced hatred like it was chemical dispersants in an oil spill, and if they are not going to enjoy watching a winning team they settle in on the enjoyments of running the various assembled losers out of town in a hurry.

There you have it. The NBA has it’s storied franchises - the two most storied which will add new chapters beginning this week - and they have franchises that seem to pull material from the Weekly World News. I guess we can feel fortunate to have Ed Anger instead of the handful of cities that just lie in a state of continual apathy. But I’ve veered from always having room for optimism, towards pessimism, and right toward apathy myself. How many more Hedo tales and losing seasons before the fanbase as a whole just shrugs?

RF’s own Acie has created a series of matchups over in our forums, where people can vote for the most hated people in this team’s history. It’s quite impressive, a little cathartic, and eight rounds do not exhaust all the possibilities. That’s a lot of hate to fill 15 seasons. And who can we pick out as players that are unquestionably loved? A man who barked? A guy who was eternally out of shape but always found an improbable shot and a smile? Little Mugsy Bogues? I would say Alvin Williams, but even he would stir up toxic feelings regarding all the money he collected without being able to play. In any case, it’s a short list.

If this is going to be a storied franchise, the question is whether any of the stories will ever be anything other than horror stories. Rondo gave me goosebumps with his incredible dive for that ball on the floor in the Orlando series, but instantly it also brought to mind Havlicek and Bird. The Lakers just keep adding to the list of big games won with big baskets at the buzzer. The Raptors keep looking like a team where a mass exodus is either happening or about to happen. Or being dreamt of by the fans. In other words they do not typically even look like a team. But I’ve sat near guys in the ACC that spend the entire game filling the ears of their dates with all the intricacies of the hurt egos and spurned stars that have been churned up within those four walls, so I guess it all serves some purpose.

Right now I’m liking the fire I see in my dogs when they run their agility course, and the way my wife and them work as a team. I’m starved for a little competitive flare where all the drama always waters things down. There is our little Bonsai, who loves driving my wife crazy by refusing to do a number two all day long. That can really ratchet up the tension each time they’re about to go into the ring. But that’s all the drama there is, and I’ve yet to see dog anus become a problem when it comes time to perform. It’s just a little thing to overcome.

The Raptors should be so lucky. I thought the overcoming stage had happened a few years ago. When Bryan Colangelo arrived I expected something different. I was pretty certain that he could make this a place that players would not be in a rush to leave anymore. But it seems that maybe the odds were stacked against him, and I should have recognized that as soon as John Salmons talked things over with God, and God found Toronto wanting. Fish Anus.

And so here we go again, and again. And at least we know the story still goes on. This player or that player might want it to end for themselves, but our hatred makes certain it will all live on, saving the team from apathy, and pushing it forward while the love in the hearts of Celtic and Laker fans ensure that there is an NBA Finals with any kind of remote connection to the game’s past glories.

J. Edgar Who For What For?

So far we have seen the heralded Free Agent class of 2010 fail to create any real excitement outside of the talk about whether they will stay put or go elsewhere. There has been a whole lot of underachieving, disappointment, and failure. At this point the only guys with any measure of success would be Amare Stoudemire and Ray Allen, and Amare has looked awful in his current matchup, while Ray Ray’s mother has probably garnered more looks than he has.

And I don’t blame the players. Not as individuals anyways. It’s the league. And I suppose since it’s a player’s league, then you can blame the players as a group. What happened to the ability to assemble a core of truly great players who go on to allow a certain mastery of the game to be distilled right down to the role players at the end of the bench? Forget about matching up two or three All-Stars (something which in itself happens infrequently). How about allowing us to see two or three future Hall of Famers on the court together? In their prime? And then stick some more All-Stars alongside them for good measure.

OK - so maybe I was spoiled by the Celtics and Lakers and Sixers of old. But I can look at teams that followed in the wake of those golden years, and still see a good deal of depth, in terms of aspiring to that greatness that came before them, that simply isn’t matched today. Expansion and the CBA have made building a great team less likely than seeing a team hindered by bad contracts. Too much money comes to too many players before they have truly earned it. That alone changes the dynamics of how a player develops, and how a GM makes decisions. Of course the NBA is about the business as well as the game. But the way things stand, the business of basketball undermines the game itself, to the point where I think it might actually become unprofitable.

And I’m not sure that is where the attention will be focused if a lockout happens. This is a league that has become too obsessed with talented individuals, and not enough with greatness. There is a big difference. There is no lack of talent in this league. There is not enough of the intangibles, of the will to fight through difficulties, of accepting blame and growing from it. That stuff can be supplied by players that do not fit the Michael Jordan mold of “superstar” player. Just look at Rajon Rondo. The more that this guy plays in big games and faces bigger tests, the more greatness we see from a kid that never had any kind of star tag applied to him for the longest time. Now he’s a guy that mirrored a lot of what Lebron was able to do in the last series. He’s a guy that illustrates such a smart awareness of how to impact the game every second he is on the floor, whether it’s knowing where the heads of the refs are at, which teammates need to get some confidence built up, or exactly what needs to be done defensively. He personifies getting the most out of himself and his team. That’s greatness. And I suspect a lot of it came from some of the greatness that surrounds him. The Big Three’s greatest achievement might be the creation of a truly great player in Rondo.

Greatness begets greatness in ways that talent can never beget talent. The prior incarnation of the Detroit Pistons is always referred to as a team lacking a single superstar. Why are they not seen as a collection of players that overcame a certain lack of supreme talent through the greatness that they instilled in each other? If that is not the model that this league looks to, then it does so at its own peril. Finding singularly great talent has been a means of selling out arenas over the last decade or so. But greatness has not been extracted from that business formula. The game needs colliding waves of greatness, and instead relies on showcasing islands of talent while seas of mediocrity roll along those shores.

The inability of all the current free agent stars to grow greatness in this game, is more an indictment of the state of the league, than of those individual players. They’ve all been asked to be Jack Bauer, but the casts around them has more closely resembled Agent Cooper’s. And now they are supposedly looking to hook up like various Scully and Mulders. Have they had talent around them? Yes - without a doubt. But the talent has not been well-tested, entirely proven in its mettle, nor shown to be capable of rising to the greatness that could further the greatness that lies within the Lebrons and Dirks and Wades and Boshes. It’s something that needs to spread across whole teams to some extent. Maybe the pairing up that could go on with this class of free agents will allow that to happen more than it has recently. I just wonder if there will be the correct point of emphasis - to make sure some of the greatness works its way down to the eighth or ninth man of the rotation.

I suspect much will get made of who is Scully and who is Mulder in the matching that might occur - that the emphasis will be entirely misplaced on stuff that does not matter to the game as a competitive engagement. I fear that the trend of mental weakness, non-accountability, and whole teams shrinking in the face of adversity will grow more than any trend toward expanding greatness. In other words, fewer competitive games when we need to see them the most. How long are fans going to settle for the empty myth of a Jack Bauer getting the job done in an instant, before realizing that there must be a demand for a league-wide culture, requiring a real longview that aspires to games that are larger than life, far above and beyond the call of superstars to fill highlight reels? This fan is pleading for the game to be put ahead of the business side of the league. The business end of the NBA will take care of itself as long as the game is tended to: the reverse is not true, unless talent that need not prove its greatness, or even have that opportunity, is enough for us all to identify ourselves as fans of the game, instead of just fans of a bunch of various personalities that are not asked to aspire to much more than just being personalities. If a bespectacled Dwight Howard playing his own goofy version of Clark Kent while interviewing himself about his “Superman” persona is enough to make up for the heartless asses that showed up on the court wearing Magic jerseys, then I will be proven wrong.

beat down

It might just be me trying to ease the pain of the Raptors failing so badly, but for something like the third season running, the last two for certain, the playoffs are a stunning bore. Are 30+ and 40+ point differentials the new 20 point winning margins? Is losing by 18 or 20 a good sign that your team is at least hanging around with a chance to come back up until the last half of the fourth quarter?

No. I don’t buy it. I actually see Toronto not being that far off from what we’ve seen in terms of quality play in the playoffs. If the bar is set at being able to provide the odd competitive matchup, then I think the Raptors can clear it. That doesn’t reflect on my homerism as much as it reflects on the sad state of the NBA. I’ll admit I can be prone to foolish homerism. And I won’t apologize for it. Right now I have to be foolishly hopeful just to keep from making it a daily practice to set up my Raptor mascot wind-up toy on the railing of my balcony, and shoot it down with a stream of urine. But it’s not about that. I do love basketball as I remember it being showcased in the post-season, with or without O Canada being sung by Robin Thicke or some such deadbeat celeb with loose ties to the great white wonder that is us. So where is the showcase?

Or should I ask how competitive playoff games went the way of the original raptors? There are the injuries, clearly. Having an NBA team that is healthy in the playoffs is like having an NHL team with a hot goalie in the playoffs. The regular season kills off way too many of the games stars. The league is going to have to address that somehow. The NFL needed to do so, and they did. And as much as it sucks to see one of those fat dudes get killed on roughing penalties for breathing on the quarterback, the fat dudes just don’t count in comparison (go ahead and argue that they aren’t playing football anymore, but they weren’t really playing much of anything in the XFL and that was all about the fat dudes).

But it’s way more than the injuries. It’s the way teams are put together. A solid team should be able to continue to compete through injuries to big name players. Sort of like the Milwaukee Bucks, but to the point of being able to beat an embarrassing collection of players like the Atlanta Hawks for an entire series. Show me some teams, like the Bucks, that make heart matter, and throw in some verifiably great talent on top of that, and I think the NBA suddenly has something it can showcase. Instead it has individual stars, often alone among surrounding role players, sometimes paired up with some other serious talent, but all too often without the kind of foresight and vision that would make it work. So many teams added big names to their rosters with so little success. Remember when every team in the league fired their coach every seven months or so until they all figured out that the constant change was having more of a negative effect than a positive impact? Now it would seem that the shuffling is going on with the player personnel. So much of it comes from the same place as with the coaching crisis. Theres the hope for some sort of magic to occur. But what happens? S.O’Neal looks far too much like J.Oneal did in a Raptors jersey. You can’t question their heart or desire and they proved to be surprisingly effective at times. But they don’t fill the large role that is in their own heads nor a lesser role that is in mind when it comes to getting more out of the other four guys on the court. And it just doesn’t add up to a showcase.

Then there is the way that the league has become guard dominant due to rule changes. That gets us all through the regular season reasonably entertained. It makes a team like the Atlanta Hawks look impressive in spite of the fact that they are a collective embarrassment of heartless, dumb-ass athletes. But get into the playoffs and suffer the kinds of constant defensive breakdowns we know all to well here in Toronto, due to the opposing guards just playing downhill every possession, and the game itself gets ugly. Even Milwaukee’s limited success had as much to do with their point guards penetrating easily and guys on the perimeter knocking down threes, as it did with their heart. It’s becoming a heartless game. If Dwight Howard hoists the championship trophy upon one massive shoulder, and the Finals MVP trophy on the other massive shoulder, then we will have officially entered the heartless era of the NBA. Of course it won’t quite happen that way, because rule changes have allowed a guy like Jameer Nelson to become Finals MVP material, so if the Magic win it all that is how it will likely go down. Jameer has a ton of heart so maybe I’ll be able to console myself to that fact, but still, his MVP win will not be about his heart as much as it will be about smartly exploiting the path of least resistance. Teams cannot defend the perimeter and the paint. It wasn’t just a Raptor enigma - they were just a particularly bad example. The result is that there is a great deal of freedom at the point of attack where anyone can pretend to be like Mike without needing to assert their will to anything of the same extent to get some of the same results. And that does not tend to equate to competitive battles. With that in mind, it could be VC as Finals MVP. Lord knows, he can take the path of least resistance like no one else. What kind of a beat down for the league would that be?

Paper Tigers

There are some uncanny parallels and connections between the Dallas Mavericks and the Toronto Raptors. Both teams began the decade with old coaches that could both look forward to accumulating more wins and more losses than anyone else. They would both soon after go with motivational coaches with southern drawls, not long removed from their playing days, and with coach of the year honors not being enough to keep them employed long thereafter. The two franchises have front office guys that are revered, maybe a little too highly, by their fanbase. The face of each franchise is a power forward more renowned for their finesse than their actual power games.

And both teams have underachieved terribly, with Dallas making history by exclusively losing to an 8th seed, and exclusively losing to a 7th seed, since the inception of 7-game series in the first round. On paper they always fool you into thinking they can really get it done. This season, with the addition of Haywood and Butler, they looked better than ever on paper, but the story was the same. Fundamentally, this team comes from a starting point of not being built for playoff success. They have improved on defense since the days of Don Nelson, without a doubt. But the role definition still begins and ends primarily on the offensive side of the court.

Watching the Mavs-Spurs series, there was a comment made by Doug Collins at one point when the teams went to their benches. He looked at the players on the court for the Spurs and said something about how they were going to have to count on Parker and Jefferson to carry the load of the offense. And that struck a fairly obvious note of how differently the Spurs and Mavs have always been constructed. The Spurs have guys in roles not requiring offensive prowess, but always being capable of doing something to help those two or three guys who are going to carry the load, do so more effectively. And there are no trade-offs in terms of always having the best team defense they can possibly put out there - again it’s where the roles are defined to begin with. Tony Parker started to get exposed on defense as the the team aged a little, said goodbye to Bruce Bowen, and had to try to incorporate Richard Jefferson, who was taking a while to figure out his role on the team himself. On top of all that, Parker had injury problems through the year and maybe wasn’t the same player that won the Finals MVP a few years ago. Enter George Hill, whose defense allowed some room for error with Jefferson, and allowed Parker to take on a new role off the bench that ensured the best overall team defense while still making use of his offensive abilities. He made the sacrifice, as Manu had before him, and as all the role players on the team do. A team built upon such interconnecting roles and the concept of sacrifice will overcome a lot of obstacles and succeed. That’s not what you see with the Mavericks or Raptors.

Not that Avery Johnson and Sam Mitchell didn’t come close to getting their teams more in line with the Spurs model. But neither of those guys could count on support from above, where looking at stats and building a team based on an abundance of offensive weapons trumped the need for proper role definition and making sacrifices.

Now if Dallas fails in the playoffs, with a former MVP alongside a bevy of verifiable star players, not to mention a point guard that will at least get some consideration by hall of fame voters; it’s not hard to see how the Raptors would just plain struggle. Toronto has had to make up for the lack of star power, by running and looking for early offense rather than create a lot in halfcourt sets. That plan alone lead to all kinds of problems with floor balance and turnovers and horrible transition defense. It was a case of looking to get the most out of their collective offense at the cost of defensive integrity. Even as a guy like Reggie Evans was acquired, Bryan Colangelo couldn’t help but tout how much he felt we would all see how good he could be scoring the ball. Jay Triano began the season talking about the importance of defense, and quickly found himself selling the “exciting” brand of basketball they planned on showcasing. This whole franchise is more of a sales job than a basketball team. Plain and simple.

It goes deep into the culture. Just like with Dallas, the players are sold on how they will be made happy, with great facilities, coaching that supports more than it criticizes or requires internal competition, and a style of play that allows everyone to look towards scoring as a point of emphasis that overshadows the emergence of the kinds of intangibles that might not show up in the stat sheets, but that allow for success all the same. Triano thought the proper cultural notes to strike centered around looking at a picture of the championship trophy and having everyone “see it, believe it, and achieve it”. I was sold Jay! And your players clearly were as well! What could have gone wrong? I can’t wait until you come back next season and try the same thing again. If I could just make one little suggestion? How about stressing “see the ball, see your man, compete or take a seat”?

That would be a start. If that kind of culture doesn’t take precedence, then this team can spend and add more stars around Bosh to entice him to stay, or they can look to rebuild with a bunch of new pieces, but they will still have the same ceiling as the Mavericks. They will still underachieve. Remember all the flak Babcock took when he suggested his team might not look all that great on paper? Well now we have a GM that constantly tells us how good his teams are on paper. He’s promised to get the team to reflect what he sees as being capable of 50 wins on paper. But even if he sees it, believes it, and achieves it, his 50 win team will merely disappoint in the playoffs, unless he somehow fundamentally alters how he sees the game and sells his team. He’ll just be offering another Paper Tiger that folds too easily.

King of Babble On

I was in NYC 25 years ago, walking through Central Park, when I came upon one Mr. Spoons. He was an old guy in a lavish outfit, playing the spoons like only someone named Mr. Spoons could. He could play six sets of spoons at one time. A veritable spoon orchestra held within two manic hands. Really though, it was just a bunch of clickity-clack. But the guy’s passion shone through the nonsensical performance. I almost saw his name in lights above his head, in place of the felt marker on the cheap cardboard sign propped up at his feet.

I remembered that day in Central Park while listening to the endless rattling-off and babbling on of Bryan Colangelo’s season-ending presser. I wish I could still be that fan so easy to convince that the “gloom and doom” is exaggerated. Actually I never even needed to be convinced of it in the past. I always looked to the positives all on my own, even through some of the worst years of this franchise. But this season the positives just made the end result that much more infuriating. So telling me that for almost half the season this team was winning 70 percent of their games, just gives me another hit of feverish chills. I had been coming to terms with the sense of incompleteness with this team. Now I am simply struck by the incompetence that must have been exerted upon this entire organisation.

But it was actually just a bunch of different factors combined, right Bryan? Sorry, but that seems to be a good way of describing what happens when incompetence takes root. Yet the coach gets a return ticket. The players all are described in terms of their inherent value. Bargnani gets praise for what he did against two crappy teams with fishing tackle stuffed in their lockers, after failing miserably to take sole control of the team’s destiny in the games prior to that, or in any number of games within the horrible post-All-Star game implosion. Hedo gets praise for apologizing and being embarrassed. Triano gets praise for learning. The team gets praised for having such a good offense. The city of Toronto gets praised for somehow giving a shit.

Remember when Glen Grunwald simply thanked the fans for their support under difficult circumstances, and promised to make things better? I didn’t really hear that from Colangelo. Will Chris Bosh? Will any of the players who really want to win hear something that makes them hopeful? Will any of the players that might not care about winning as much as remaining comfortable, hear anything that makes them suitably a little less comfortable?

I just have to hope that this guy does all of his real talking with his actions. Just like Mr. Spoons, his passion does shine through. Please let all the talk about the value of his players be about moving some of those players to some place where they can be so easily convinced. Otherwise, as a guy who always sees a glimmer of hope in the future of this team, I’m going to find myself amongst all the miserable SOBs in this town. I don’t enjoy that picture I just put in my head there, but that’s what it has come to. That, and me explaining to my wife that I am a magnificent lover, at least for almost half of the forty-five seconds that it takes for me to get my rocks off.

Giving Up on My Team (and Reality)

OK. So I was fooled. Yeah - no big surprise. I mean I am the Fossil Fool after all. But to think I actually thought Bryan Colangelo had some idea what he was doing. What kind of a fantasy world was I living in?

Even though the season isn’t over just yet. I still can’t help but have the feeling that it was over before it began. There was Hedo and Bosh getting hurt in the summer and then missing camp. Then there was Reggie Evans getting injured. Boom. It was as good as done. Or at least that feeling started to creep into my consciousness. But I should I have felt a twinge of false expectations in the air before that, when Colangelo guessed that Reggie Evans would be the biggest surprise of all the newest acquisitions, not for his defense, which he figured we would all expect to be good, but for what he thought was a pretty good offensive game.

And then there was the moment of greatest unease early in the schedule. It should have been nothing. Just a statement thrown out there. But after months of Triano stressing defense, and stubbornly hanging onto his idea of “protecting the house”, he started to talk instead about playing an exciting brand of basketball as one of the goals they hoped to achieve. Excuse me, winning brings plenty of excitement my way. This sounded like excitement that could be promised whether wins came or not. I had to try to push his words out of my mind. But as the season wore on, and running on offense kept getting more emphasis than running back on defense, my mind began to turn as mushy as the legs of a Raptor team in the third quarter of the second game on back-to-back nights.

Oh yeah - there were some fun games. And that helped to keep me fooled. But the weaknesses on defense just took so much away from everything good, even the handful of big wins. Then the final crash and burn at the tail end of the schedule made me forget what basketball actually looked like when played properly. Now I can’t look at the future with Triano and Colangelo and see any promise. I see only a franchise that sells the promise of excitement and hangs it out like a little worm on a big hook.

That fantasy of a team that could edge into the upper tier of eastern conference teams has turned very ugly. And as Andrea Bargnani was killing every chance of winning the biggest game of the season, last week against the Atlanta Hawks, by tapping rebounds out to Hawks players when he had good enough position to just grab the stupid ball, and by chucking up enough terrible, long-range shots to make me wonder why they couldn’t just let Bosh fire threes with his head encased in plaster as the verifiably better option; a new fantasy took hold inside my skull. It wasn’t as good as the fantasy that played out on True Blood, when Jason Stackhouse gets his twinkie soaped up by the porn-ready wife of an evil, right-ring, fundamentalist preacher. That one gets me in a bigger lather than Jason Stackhouse’s twinkie, just thinking about it. The way it built up week after week. And the way it went on further, to sweet love-making right there in the balcony of the church. It’s defintitely at the top of my fantasy pyramid. But this new one of mine was not down far enough from there to be just a part of the wider, middle range. It could be part of an HBO series all it’s own.

And so since there is little else to ever again be excited about with this team, thanks to the “exciting” brand of basketball that the guys in the suits look to offer us from here on in; let me share what played out in my mind as my eyes glazed over that night. Sam Mitchell has been known to attend games in Atlanta. And Colangelo happened to be there with the team as well. I imagined Bryan stricken by a great revelation, and being so moved as to play things out in the fashion of WWE shenanigans outside of the ring, walking into the stands, pulling Sam out of his seat, bringing him down to the Raptor bench, staring down the hapless Triano until the boob skulks away humiliated, and telling Sam that since he is still being paid by the organization, he might as well try to do something with this disgusting mess. At which point Sam calls Andrea to him, and the moment that the 7-feet of hopelessness gets off the floor, he kicks his ass, yelling and screaming, all the way out of Philips arena, through the parking lot, and pulling him by an ear, along the side of the expressway, heading north for miles and miles, with verbal abuse growing louder and more profane with each step, all the way into the Chattahoochee River. Sam rolls around the bank of the river, laughing uncontrollably. And…end scene.

It’s only a dream that spilled out of a feverish mind, but it’s about the only suitable ending this season is going to get. The creator of True Blood could make it almost real. What’s his name? Alan? Alan Ball. BALL! Is Ed Begley Jr. too old to play Andrea?…