Roof That Peach

Cutbacks claimed the jobs of The Score Television Network’s longtime hockey commentator Steve Kouleas and producer Dave Krikst, better known as Cabbie on the Street’s ‘My Man D’ this week. A handful of other behind-the-scenes staff were reportedly also let go. The moves from the sports channel at King and Peter follow last year’s purge, in which several employees were laid off.

Chris … I mean Joe Hollywood’s appearance on the latest episode of HBO’s Entourage features the newly-minted Heat forward at a T&A and coke-fuelled Vincent Chase afterparty. On an aside, I’m not even sure why I still watch Entourage — Jeremy Piven’s act is finally waning and I now find myself rooting for Vince to self-destruct. I suppose I watch it to reaffirm my disdain for the cult of celebrity, but I digress.

Clearly, NBA players aren’t strangers to crazy parties — in fact the one portrayed in the show was likely tame in comparison to what really goes on (think the masked orgy from Eyes Wide Shut with more ethnic diversity and without the masks). And somebody snorting blow in the same room as you doesn’t make you guilty, as anyone who has ever been in the bathroom at Cheval or that Keg on York Street can attest. But it’s gotta make you wonder if anybody’s concerned about marketing a clean image any more. I realize the world is vastly different from what it was 15 years ago and standards are non-existent now, but it wasn’t too long ago leagues and agents would reject a script like that before an athlete got a chance to get on set. Granted, we’re in an era now where people are famous for doing nothing and the saying “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” is a sworn mantra. And not unlike the Kardashian kids, Chris Bosh just wants to be famous.

I have no moral opinion on this matter whatsoever, but it is actually quite interesting and I must say I do like criticizing Bosh’s affinity for transcendent superstardom.

Apparently the episode was only shot June 8.

I’ve been getting upset about stuff like this for more than a decade now, but I also reached the point long ago where I knew what Toronto is. It’s simply the type of city that would rather fawn over local media reports about how it’s portrayed in a movie like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, than come out and support it’s national team in planet Earth’s second-most popular team sport. That’s not meant to be a shot or a sarcastic remark, it’s just the truth. It is what it is. I took the above picture during the fourth quarter of Friday’s France-Canada basketball game, night two of back-to-back pre-World Championship exhibitions that drew 2,225, about 300 less than Thursday’s game.

Canada Basketball has always deserved a fair amount of blame for its overall incompetence, specifically its inability to market the product. However you also have to take into consideration the fact that Toronto is Canada’s number one basketball market. While it’s unquestionably a frontrunner, flavor-of-the-month loving city, the reality is if you can’t draw a healthy crowd for a national team game here, where can you? We know Canadians as a whole don’t hold hoops in particularly high regard: Basketball telecasts in this country are regularly outdrawn by curling and poker. But seriously, 2,200 fans? And some of them were actually from France, like the family next to me. I can take the usual shots about how most Canadians are so blindly wrapped up in our dominance of ice hockey, a sport nobody knows nothing about outside of seven nordic or semi-nordic countries. A sport called ice hockey in most of the world, so as not to confuse it with field hockey. But I won’t. Because it is what it is.

As for Friday’s game itself, Canada destroyed a Tony Parker-less France 85-63, playing with a 20-point bulge most of the night. And speaking of bulges, it dawned on me that Raptor fans need to thank Michael Jordan or Larry Brown or whoever it was who kiboshed the deal that would have landed Boris Diaw in Toronto. Team Canada looked good, Leo Rautins kept rotations up all game despite the rout and constant foul calls, so everybody averaged about 18 minutes. I get the impression watching Robert Sacre though that the guy should be a hell of a lot more dominant than he is.

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Saturday’s about-face by the McGuinty government on MMA virtually guarantees a UFC event in early 2011, or March at the Rogers Centre as some are suggesting. It’s huge news for MMA fans, but a typical political flip-flop from a premier who doesn’t seem to know up from down these days. Many expected this to drag on past this fall’s municipal election in Toronto, where a newly-elected mayor would likely have put pressure on the province. But whatever, it’s done now and the rumor mill is calling a GSP/Josh Koscheck card here. Now Dana White can focus all his efforts on New York state.

Chris Bosh, undoubtedly brimming with joy and confidence about his new lease on life in the land of fake breasts, indicated to the Miami Herald in a Sunday story that Toronto “smelled different” because it wasn’t in the United States. Now I’ve written about all I can stomach about the U.S. player/Toronto team thing, so I’ll leave it alone. However, the article’s writer, Israel Gutierrez, takes the usual absent-minded digs that many American journalists fall victim to, specifically saying that the league didn’t notice Bosh because he played in Toronto.

Didn’t notice? Wasn’t that Chris Bosh who did a week of hits on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (before Leno screwed Conan) during the 2008 NBA Finals? Wasn’t that Chris Bosh who was voted by NBA fans to start the 2007 All-Star Game? The next thing they’ll tell us is Vince Carter left T.O. for better endorsements with the Nets, which isn’t true. After Vince left, I didn’t see his jersey in Fat Joe videos, like it was when he played here. But people have short (or no) memories.

Aah, to be a fan in the frozen tundra.

Bryan Colangelo took his shots at Bosh to Bob McCown on the FAN 590 Monday, admitting what was clear at the time, that he mentally checked out on the team down the stretch. In retrospect, it really was pathetic. After a rough March 26 loss to Denver on a last-second Carmelo Anthony jumper, I was in the locker room scrum and the Star’s Dave Feschuk was grilling him on his recent rash of turnovers. Bosh, in his laconic speaking style, just kept shrugging and mumbling. It sort of reminded of the time Shaq called him the “RuPaul of big men,” and he responded in a YouTube video by just giggling like someone to afraid to make a meaningful statement.

With the likelihood of any meaningful player additions decreasing by the day, the Raptors organization did bring into the fold veteran TV broadcaster David Amber, who was a Toronto-based reporter for ESPN, to replace Adnan Virk on pre- and post-game, who went to … ESPN.

Amber a solid guy and a knowledgeable ball fan who will be a good fit. And the reason it’s newsworthy is because this coming season, the team’s broadcasters may be worth watching more than the team itself.

If you go on Google Street View and type in “Johannesburg, South Africa” you can see anything in this turbulent, crime-ridden metropolis. Including a black Jeep Cherokee tailing behind the Google camera car wherever it goes in the downtown area. Black Jeep Cherokees are the preferred vehicles of government and private security forces in South Africa, like the ones Google would hire to protect that dumb-looking little car with the high camera.

So to summarize: Breaking news, Johannesburg is unsafe.

ESPN’s Marc Stein wrote early Tuesday that the Matt Barnes-to-Toronto deal has hit a snag, apparently because of sign-and-trade issues between the Magic and the Raps, given the MLE Bryan Colangelo just gave Linas Kleiza. There’s no definitive word yet, but the Raptors and Orlando were scheduled to talk later Tuesday in an attempt to perhaps hammer something out.

This is why NBA capology is a nightmare. You need an MBA and PhD, and on top of that basically have to be an idiot savant just to crunch the numbers involved in acquiring an averagely-talented swingman from UCLA. Meanwhile, some NHL teams run by borderline lunatics partially circumvent their own cap by giving players 17-year contracts which frontload and probably pay entry level salary at Bass Pro Shops in year 15.

You see, sports isn’t really fun any more, people. Plus, while incorrect, the whole thing gives off a whole “nobody wants to play here, and we don’t want anybody to play here either” stench from the Raptors. It doesn’t really matter if it’s correct though, because perception is reality.

Matt Barnes to the Raptors at an alleged 2 years/10 mil. The pro is he’s a good guy to have at the 3, given Toronto’s lack of production on the wing. Price tag on the steeper side, but far from deadly. Con is he’s not starter quality on any respectable team. However this isn’t going to be a remotely respectable team, so it is what it is. He is tradeable however should he put up the 8 a game on decent shooting he’s done for the seven teams he’s played for in his NBA career.

On the topic of Michael Jordan questioning LeBron James, the thinking here is he didn’t go far enough. Obviously, as MJ said, the generations are different. NBA players are all boys now and shug before games rather than after. But Jordan can certainly be more ruthless (and smarter) than comparing the ’3 Kings’ or whatever you want to call them to himself, Magic and Bird. Instead he left us wishing that he volleyed a stronger shot across LeBron’s bow, perhaps a stronger-worded version of what Charles Barkley said.

Of course he doesn’t need to because while logically, his legacy was always safe from the idiotic comparisons, it is firmly affixed for all to see now.

So apparently either MJ or Larry Brown realized they were acquiring Jose Calderon and changed their mind. As a result, Tyson Chandler, pictured, is now heading to Dallas. Take back half of what I said about Colangelo, even if this isn’t his fault. Any other suitors for Jose are out there? There was talk of Philly being interested, but it would probably require taking on Iguodala, which would mean the Raps would have to throw somebody else in. Unlikely.

George Steinbrenner, 1930-2010