Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James during the third quarter of Game 4 of their NBA Eastern Conference basketball playoff series in Chicago April 25, 2010.JOHN GRESS/Reuters
First, it must be said that LeBron James really didn't diss Toronto, so don't go giving him the Full Vince Treatment when he comes to town, okay? He's not a former Toronto player with the audacity to flee our little big city for more money and a chance to win.
And it's not as if he uttered the most cutting, vile, four-number comment you can make to a Torontonian at this time of year: 1-9-6-7. But if this is a city that can get all exercised when some hack with a tape recorder gets an air-headed, malleable outfielder and a low-brow manager to suggest Major League Baseball should move the Toronto Blue Jays to Venezuela, you'd think it would resonate when a person of actual relevance states that the Toronto Raptors "didn't want to make the playoffs."
Because when your basketball team is called out by the most marketable basketball player in the world and the single biggest individual sports property in North America who can still show himself in public without being embarrassed, well, you have a monumental image problem.
Here is the King James Version on the 2009-10 Raptors, uttered after the Cleveland Cavaliers skewered the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the NBA playoffs:
"We knew that this team [Chicago]would push us. Honestly, we wanted to play Chicago more than Toronto in this first round, because we knew we were going to get pushed a little bit more. That's not taking away anything from Toronto. But with [Chris]Bosh being out for the rest of the season, and all those injuries, it just didn't seem like they wanted to make the playoffs at the end of the season. Especially when you see the game between Chicago and Toronto in Toronto, you can tell they didn't really want to make the playoffs. When Chicago made the eighth seed, we was excited about that, because we knew we had to be in tune every possession, every game, because that team plays hard no matter the score and no matter the time, and no matter what the series is."
Makes you want to up and renew your season tickets this morning, eh? It's like having Sidney Crosby say: "The Leafs didn't want to win." Times 10.
After watching the happy-go-lucky manner in which the Raptors greeted their elimination from the playoffs on the final night of the regular season - all but having a sing-along and spraying champagne around the locker room - it is impossible to argue with James. But it's one thing when a corn-fed, white, middle-aged, overweight sportswriter can say he's never seen a team accept choking so readily, and quite another when a guy whose opinion holds sway muses about it, especially after an opinion column in the Toronto Star suggests the Raptors partied their way out of the playoffs, a charge that has not been sufficiently riposted.
It speaks of a group of athletes with a remarkable lack of self-respect and a management team that for some reason let it go unchecked. Montreal Expos manager Felipe Alou used to worry about his team being perceived as a "small team" - small not in stature or even within the game's economy but small in the sense of getting the 50-50 calls to go their way during a game. There's no zone rating or statistical measure for that. But there are teams that leave that type of an impression, and this year's Raptors were like that.
Know what? It was kind of cool in a Canadian inferiority complex sort of way when Toronto received some love as a destination for NBA players' high-end parties, like millionaire American athletes letting their hair down is a mark of a city's cultural importance. But what good is it if Toronto is a good place to play off the court only? The NBA is a social club, and if you are prepared to buy the management line that his peers could get Bosh to shut it down over champagne during the all-star break, it also stands to reason that James's remarkable candour about the Raptors wasn't a revelation to those same members of Murmurer's Row who were in Bosh's ear. Turns out the Raptors can fool sportswriters, fans and maybe even management. But not their peers.