Roof That Peach

Three games into the NBA season, there isn’t a whole lot to report on the Toronto Raptors. An emotional, unexpected win over one of the Eastern Conference’s top teams on opening night has given way to two losses – one to an NBA doormat in Memphis Friday, and one against another elite Eastern squad.

But Sunday’s loss against Orlando doesn’t signify much. Fatalist Toronto fans may be hitting the idiots’ panic button now, but the Magic were insanely hot from beyond the arc — hitting 17 threes, tying a game record for a Raptors’ opponent. At the end of the day it was actually a pretty wacky game and Toronto really wasn’t all that bad, despite trailing by 22 at one point.

While Hedo Turkoglu seemed absent for most of the game, Andrea Bargnani rebounded from a lacklustre effort against the Grizzlies, scoring 22 in the second half and singlehandedly getting the Raptors back in the game late. Chris Bosh dropped 35 with 16 boards. I like what I’m seeing in the small doses of DeMar DeRozan — just a damn shame he’s going to hit that rookie wall in January.

This isn’t a Raptor team that is going to be spectacular defensively anyways, and sometimes your opponents can’t miss. The Raps were no slouch from the land beyond anyway — 10 of 17. Vince Carter missed the game for Orlando with a sprained left ankle, more notable because an unusually small Sunday crowd witnessed the game. Call it a Halloween hangover, I guess.

While I’m on it, seeing as Jay-Z played the ACC on Halloween night, I need to bring this up — this Toronto-ized cover (below) of his and Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind. Few things — Rosie O’Donnell included — annoy me more than Torontonians putting themselves in the same league as New York. This sort of thing NEEDS to stop. The reason New York is called the City That Never Sleeps is because it literally never sleeps. Finding a 24-hour restaurant there on a Tuesday night isn’t a lost cause, like it is here. And that’s not even taking into account everything else — infrastructure, transit, etc. SO PLEASE STOP THIS COMPARISON.

Or so says my local Toronto city councillor, Adam Vaughan. Dude’s not a bad guy – his knowledge of civic politics is certainly unquestioned, and that and his name is why he got elected.

But his platform to turn Richmond and Adelaide into two-way streets is for the most part nonsensical and lesser part pandering to the cyclists. I don’t drive too often, but when I do, it’s nice to get across downtown in under 30 minutes. These streets are the only avenues in the centre of the largest city in Canada that allow you to do that.

I understand the car is the enemy here in these people’s minds. But the problem is, many lobbyists (some tree-huggers, some uber-wealthy developers) have no clue how to run a city. It’s bad enough Toronto is one of the poorest-engineered cities on earth, but when these guys are pulling strings, things only get worse.

More two-way? The fact is downtown doesn’t have enough one-way, like most other major cities on the planet. And they say it negatively affects street life? Right, and New York and Montreal certainly have none of that despite a plethora of one-way streets.