Bosh’s illness and the issue that never dies
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.”
