Roof That Peach

Surprising win by the Raptors in Charlotte Monday night. I was starting to get Buffalo Bills syndrome with this team the last few games – that sickening feeling where your stomach tells you they’ll lose no matter what the second-half score gets to be. In all fairness, they have played very well in three straight games now, and it is important because they only sit a game ahead of the 9th-place Bulls. Hedo Turkoglu even played, coming off the bench with 4-of-9 shooting and 11 points, right about what his contract should command. On a more serious note, it was also nice for a change to have a bad referee call go Toronto’s way when Raymond Felton got whistled late in the fourth.

Food for thought however: It was the Raptors’ second win THIS SEASON on the road against a plus-.500 team. I know this team is just trying to race to a red light here, but seriously, that’s bad.

Go figure that in one of the most unpredictable NCAA tournaments ever, Duke has to go and ruin things by showing up at the Final Four. Just when the prospect of no number one seeds making it seemed feasible, Coach K and his team of overachievers book a spot in Indianapolis. It’s like you try to assemble a group of four guys to go and cause shit one night, and a pretentious geek co-worker of a more worthy participant shows up uninvited.

I don’t have to know much about this Duke team. Players like Scheyer and Singler are simply interchangeable like auto parts with guys like J.J. Redick and Josh McRoberts. I realize Duke is a very good school – Richard Nixon Ben Mulroney went there, so it’s clearly a veritable genius factory. But this basketball program is one of the most asinine things ever unleashed on the public. Refer to this resource for more.

So far I’ve been wrong about who would take them out. Bob Huggins, your turn.

***

I’m assuming the Raptors are almost completely demoralized at this point. After Friday’s shit show ending against Denver, Toronto blew a 17-point lead Sunday in Miami and lost 97-94 – this time with onetime Rap Carlos Arroyo providing the dagger late. Hedo Turkoglu, who is now officially an albatross, sat out again with the flu. It’s safe to say he’s packed it in, at least mentally.

Up next … a loss in Charlotte.

You knew Carmelo Anthony was going to hit that shot. I texted my boy that at 9:34 Friday, right before Denver inbounded the ball. Most galling however, was on a night where the Raptors pulled down a season-high 58 rebounds, they couldn’t get their hands on a game-saving 59th that skipped out to Nene, who kicked it back to Anthony for a second chance and a subsequent 97-96 Nugget win.

There’s beatdowns – like the one the Raps took at the hands of Utah on Wednesday – and there’s draining losses, like this one. Afterwards, a red-eyed Jay Triano tried to explain how after a near-ideal Raptor performance – good shooting outside of Jarrett Jack and Andrea Bargnani, and five players in double digits (without Hedo Turkoglu) – they still came up short. “Two players made two great shots,” Triano said in reference to Chauncey Billups’ late 3 and Melo’s subsequent winner.

Notable were Chris Bosh’s five turnovers. While he led the Raps with 18 points on 50% shooting, it’s clearly not every night the team has his back the way they did in this one. In the past eight games, Bosh has thrown it away 33 times, double his career average.

“I don’t pay attention to that statistic too much,” Bosh said when asked about it.

GM Bryan Colangelo alluded to “outside influences” this week when he addressed the team’s recent lacklustre performances. Talk is those “influences” might have something to do with Bosh being more concerned about his next contact, and it’s along those lines where Star columnist Dave Feschuk really does a number on him this time.

In like 2003, I was sitting at Future Bakery with a friend and a girl who I was sleeping with at the time and we were mostly complaining about our lives. In an attempt to lighten spirits, someone brought up the novel idea of thinking of something that makes you happy. At the time there wasn’t much going on in my life, so I quickly realized that the number one item for me was Syracuse basketball. After all, Coach Boeheim, Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick, Gerry McNamara and Kueth with a U Duany had just captured the Orange’s first national championship, so there was good reason.

There’s really not much else to that story. Today I’m a titan of industry. I guess the point is I’m confident ‘Cuse is going to the Final Four. Although K-State does scare me a bit.

The Raptors: They’ve got 13 games left, including four back-to-backs. One of those back-to-backs is Boston and Cleveland. There’s a certain complacent mediocrity around this team in a lousy Eastern Conference, but you’ve got to consider the possibility they may still backslide out of the playoff race. I’ve got their last thirteen at 5-8, assuming they win in Detroit, which while doable, they’ve only done once since Bill Clinton was president. Utah and Denver up next on top of that.

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UPDATE – Ya, I know I suck. Losing Arinze Onuaku really screwed ‘Cuse. I didn’t embrace that reality. But that’s why my love of Syracuse Basketball is pure. Cheering for college sports is the closest you can get to childhood fandom. You just believe, and the players don’t leave, they either graduate, go to the pros or disappear.

Unfortunate news with the passing of actor Peter Graves. While his role as pilot/cuckolded-by-horse Clarence Oveur alongside first officer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was spectacular in Airplane! this Geico spot from a few years ago was especially fantastic …

Oh, what’s this I’m looking at? Could be my bracket telling me Syracuse will clear a path to the Final Four, and a rematch of the 1996 national championship game against Kentucky? A rematch they will get revenge in with a victory, giving Coach Boeheim his second national title? Maybe I’m high, but it seems that Pitt is their biggest obstacle out of the West bracket.

The next most important question of the tournament of course, is who will get the honor of beating Duke this year? Unfortunately, I’ve got them going to Elite 8, where Villanova will once again send them home. I’d obviously like to see it sooner, but I really can’t get behind Louisville doing it the second round because I lost respect for Rick Pitino after he listed 9/11 as one of the reasons he cheated on his wife in the restaurant. But at least the Big East will once again exert it’s domination over the ACC and the alma mater of Christian Laettner.

There’s only a few hundred other things to talk about, but the death of NFL great/broadcaster/70s actor/FTD flower guy Merlin Olsen strikes a bit of a chord, so screw it.

I wasn’t alive to see this guy play on the “Fearsome Foursome” L.A. Rams defensive line with the likes of Deacon Jones and former RFK bodyguard Rosey Grier (that worked out well), but as a kid he was one of the first voices, along with the great Brent Musburger, who I began to recognize calling football games with a then-lucid Dick Enberg (YouTube clip below from the last big game those two called together, Super Bowl XXIII – also briefly featuring a playing Solomon Wilcots). Apparently he also appeared on episodes of Little House on the Prairie with Michael Landon and a then-child, now-cougar Melissa Gilbert, which spawned his own spin-off and an endorsement contract with FTD.

Most galling: He was 69 and died of mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer associated with asbestos. But dude didn’t work in the catacombs of Paris. He was a freakin’ NFL player/celebrity. But as the commercials on CNN tell you to do every nine minutes, he sued former employers for the cancer reason, including NBC/Universal, according to Thursday’s NBC Nightly News. I don’t know what that really means, but if a ceiling can conceivably do that, it really brings home again the thought about how much damage a Marlboro Light is doing.

Chris Bosh missed his seventh straight game Friday night against the Knicks, although the story now is a stomach virus struck him down before the game. He was taken to a HOSPITAL and put on an IV while the Raps wore the Huskies uniforms with the inexpensive Barney Miller title font and won 102-96.

IV is serious enough to warrant chatter. BTW there are whispers his ankle injury is more serious than the team has been letting on.

Meanwhile Tracy McGrady, he along with cousin Vinnie of “How much better would we have been if we came along in the ’80s when money hadn’t completely changed the game?” NBA players, imparted his wisdom about Bosh’s impending free agency to the Toronto media at Knicks shootaround Friday.

“Maybe he wants to start off fresh with another franchise, or maybe he’s doing it for tax reasons,” said T-Mac regarding the rumours Bosh will bolt T-dot the first chance he gets this summer. McGrady after all did it himself in 2000, in one of the least surprising developments of my lifetime. Soon after of course, the exodus watch focused on the aforementioned Vince Carter. And although most Americans forget it (revisionist history being their most lovable strong suit), it didn’t happen. Even most Canadians forget Vince resigned here long-term in the summer of ’01 when nobody said he would. Unfortunately, he opted to phone the bulk of his career in from that point forward, leading to the brilliant Rob Babcock trade of 2004, but he did re-up here. But I’ve talked about that before.

Tracy has long purposely tried to be a thorn in the side of Raps fans and has eye sockets spread out like a fish, but this is a different situation. Quite frankly, if Bosh left tomorrow I don’t think I would lose much sleep. Is he a great player? Sure. Entertaining guy? Yeah. Would it “destroy Canada’s lone NBA franchise?” Hell no. As Bill Simmons adroitly pointed out, the business of the NBA is such now that every team is somewhat screwed the moment they commit to a large contract (potentially see Hedo Turkoglu). Unless you’ve got a true franchise superstar (re: Kobe, Duncan, LeBron) or catch a break (the Celts trading for KG could have backfired in ’07 – ask the 2004 Lakers all-ego team of Shaq, Kobe, Mailman and Glove), your team is generally caught in the same cycle of mediocrity.

But enough of that. Let’s look the real reasons why American athletes frown about playing in Canada.

It’s not taxes. The fiscal loss is negligible at best. It’s not cold weather. Go to Chicago in January sometime. It’s not necessarily the hockey thing. Play any sport other than football in Dallas, and see what it’s like to be second fiddle. But if one thing can sum it up, it’s four letters: ESPN.

I know Americans who live in Canada. There are minor annoyances that bother them about moving up here. Changing your mobile provider from Sprint Nextel to Telus. Figuring out how the health-care system applies to you. In other words, the same annoyances Canadians face when they move to the states. But one specific issue many Americans have — regular folk or pro athletes — is no ESPN. You see, the U.S. is a diversified sports nation. It’s not a country limited in large numbers to one sport like Canada is. The cliques of Canucks who love pro and college basketball would fit into one small-to-medium-sized American market, maybe Pittsburgh at best. And no corporation has capitalized in the past decade and a half on the spectrum of U.S. sports like ESPN. What was a simple cable channel with a glut of pro bowling in the late ’80s is now a standalone brand, a true monopoly that every sports fan in America turns to for their favorite sport (except for maybe hockey). While TSN has been partially been owned by ESPN since 1995, protectionist laws keep the American network off Canadian subscriber screens. And the similarities end with the graphics.

In the ’80s and early ’90s, Americans (or Dominicans for that matter, who now incidentally get ESPN Deportes) had no issue playing for the Blue Jays because those were also the days when most pro athletes weren’t so media-savvy. The combined Jays teams that won the World Series in 1992 and 1993 featured only two 25-man roster players — T.O.’s own Rob Butler and Willie Canate — who were born after Jan. 1, 1970. That means the bulk of those players were raised in the ’70s and early ’80s, pre-MJ, pre-Just Do It. ESPN’s powerhouse is a legacy born from that. The Shawn Greens, Vince Carters, A.J. Burnetts and Chris Boshes of the world grew up with ESPN as kids, some more importantly as alumni of the American universities ESPN has helped pad the coffers of.

It’s also no secret that most pro athletes who ply their trade in Hogtown live in the downtown condos, many of which ban balcony satellite dishes for aesthetic reasons. And unless they employ the same tactics a guy I know once did by propping up an illegal dish on a crude wood frame next to their window (assuming it faces southwest of course), then these American gladiators are left to watch programs at home where 65% of the winter sports highlight content is ice hockey and curling. Vince Carter said this was an overrated issue when asked about it in 2004. But it’s not. To a spoiled pro athlete, it’s a minor nuisance along the lines of the cellphones and health care for average people. The big difference being that spoiled pro athletes often have multiple choices about where they work. After all, how many times have the Raptors been on U.S. national television in the last five years? As superfan Nav Bhatia pointedly reminded me once, it’s been “since Vince left.”

Maybe I’m wrong. TV ain’t the be-all, end-all any more. Maybe the web-savvy generation (of which Bosh is clearly a member) rely on the Internet for non-nordic highlights, like The Score apparently deduced when they canceled their only live highlight TV program. Just gotta hope that ESPN never institutes an NBC/Universal-like policy of banning web views from outside the U.S.

Strange, though. I thought the world was supposed to be “getting smaller.”