Since we live in a perfect egalitarian paradise, no one is ever naughty. They're misinformed.
Oh, did I offend you by punching you in the face? Would you have preferred a hug and a small, indefinite cash loan instead? Well, that's sort of on you for not telling me, isn't it?
That's the essence of sports naughtiness – bad deeds done in charming and/or easily forgivable ways. We'd rather you weren't evil, but if you must be, try also to be stylish.
Frankly, "nice" is a much greater insult than "naughty" these days. Only one living creature ought to aspire to niceness – dogs. The rest of us need to find a way to leverage the darkness.
Nonetheless, people will sometimes surprise you with pure niceness that gives the word a good name. Rarely. But it happens.
NAUGHTY
Masai Ujiri
The Raptors GM may be the most popular man in Toronto. A little of that has to do with being very good at managing a basketball team. Most of it is down to one profane utterance at the start of the playoffs.
You won't find anyone who thinks Ujiri's "F*** Brooklyn" rallying call was wrong – even in Brooklyn. I mean, those poor people have to live there, buffeted by oversized prams and waxed mustachios.
But since we are Canadian, it's important that we be seen pretending to put him on the naughty list.
The Putin crowd at Canada House
When a rapacious tyrant pays a visit to your home, we advise maintaining the niceties. No spitting or pitchforks. That would be rude. But it's probably best not to cheer him like an astronaut who just returned from a manned mission to the Sun.
The Americans struck the right tone when Vladimir Putin visited them in Sochi – polite and distant. By contrast, Canadians went hog-wild for the Russian strongman. Hooting and hollering. Canadian Olympic Committee chief Marcel Aubut behaved like Smithers to Putin's Mr. Burns.
We all get overexcited sometimes, but try to keep in mind there's a sovereign nation about to be invaded.
FIFA
The sporting world's SPECTRE is so clumsily nefarious, it's hard not to love them. If they decided to take over the world, they'd end up invading the moon by mistake.
This year, the rulers of world soccer took a long, hard, inward look. Call it a self-intervention. After hiring a former U.S. attorney to head the inquiry, they refused to release his report, giving themselves a clean bill of corruption health. Instead, they released a bowdlerized version their own investigator said did not reflect his conclusions. He subsequently quit, prompting FIFA's promise to release the full report – at some nebulous future point, and in heavily redacted form. In Switzlerland, they call this sort of thing smart business. But in Canada, where we love a Mitteleuropean scamp, we call it naughty.
Milan Lucic
If Boston's in-house Australopithecan had, as promised in the playoff handshake line, "f***ing killed" the Canadiens' Dale Weise this year, we wouldn't be laughing about it. No, that would be sad and wrong. But it now seems Lucic was just engaging in high, post-Game 7 spirits. We'll put his death threats down to a naughty streak.
We'll also make sure to have a body-armoured postman deliver Lucic's box of coal, and flee before he opens it.
Toronto Maple Leafs
You know how to tell a real scandal from a made-up one? The suffix "-gate." When the world economy almost up and died a little while back, we didn't call it We're-Not-Sure-What's-Going-On-But-It-Has-Something-To-Do-With-Florida-Real-Estategate. We just called it terrifying. There have been some stupid sports "-gates" in recent years: Nipplegate, Tattoogate, Bumpgate. The Leafs' Salutegate may be the most irrelevant. But when the team fibbed about it afterward – "Who? Us?! Sending a message to the fans we absolutely do not secretly hate right now? Ummm … Sorry, we don't speak English" – it rose to the level of naughty. Just barely.
Jermain Defoe
He came for the money. We all knew that. And that was totally fine by us. Playing football is a job, not a holy mission. But then he got hurt, didn't make England's World Cup team, immediately wearied of Canada, began begging Premiership teams to rescue him and had the gall to pretend none of this was his idea. Fifty million bucks should at least buy you a rental. Defoe blew a tire as MLS drove him off the lot.
NICE
Gilmore Junio
Junio gave up his spot in the 1,000-metre Olympic speedskating final to Canadian teammate Denny Morrison, who then won a silver medal. Morrison offered to saw his medal in half. Junio declined. Junio later received a crowd-funded medal, and became far more famous for stepping aside than he might've been for competing.
It's a story so nice it'll eventually be a Disney film. When we realize Disney has turned Junio and Morrison into Americans played by Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart because that has better box-office legs, we won't think that's nice at all.
Jonathan Bernier
The Leafs goalie is a handsome multimillionaire who plays dress-up for a living and dates a lingerie model. That tends to make the rest of us take a hard look at our life choices. In order to take that look, we have to stand up, what with the cubicle walls obscuring our view while simultaneously crushing our spirit. Then Bernier graciously went and imploded when asked a very simple question about Nelson Mandela. In so doing, he's given the rest of us the momentary gift of smug intellectual superiority. That was nice of him.
Jean Béliveau
A man who played before every aspect of an athlete's life was up for public scrutiny, Béliveau remained an exemplar of quiet class long after he put away his pads. Though it's trite and simplifies far too much, Béliveau was born nice. He died having never broken the streak. He was the last of a vanishing type – a greater role model off the field of play than on it.
P.K. Subban
In Canada, we spend a lot of time arguing about the minutiae of Subban's kamikaze style of play. In the U.S., they filter out the buzz-killing noise and celebrate the fact that he makes hockey seem like fun. After a recent New Yorker profile and Sports Illustrated cover, the Canadiens defenceman is the game's de facto international ambassador. Instead of talking up expansion to hockey wastelands like Las Vegas, what would be nicer is the NHL finding a way to franchise its biggest young draw.
Justin Wadsworth
We measure Olympic success in medals, but also in those small, perfect moments that resonate after the competition ends. Wadsworth, a U.S.-born coach on the Canadian cross-country team, provided one of those. He was standing among the spectators when he spotted Russian competitor Anton Gafarov dragging himself to the finish line. Gafarov had broken a ski. Wadsworth ran out onto the track with a replacement. Neither man knew the other. "I wanted him to have dignity as he crossed the finish line," Wadsworth said later.
A lot of nice things happened in Sochi. That may have been the nicest.
Cathal Kelly