It started here.
Sounds good, right? Like deep fried chocolate on a stick, it was about time. Unprecedented access, a peek behind the curtain of your favorite the locker room. Coaches hardwired to nationally broadcast every obscene threat they scream at their employees. And the best part? They have no choice! Who’s your daddy, Jerry Sloan? Say goodbye to your sanctuary, Gnome Van Gundy! Short of implanting chips into their brains (ESPN 2015 Project Alpha), this is as close as we can get to The Action from atop our stained futons. It was an exciting announcement for any hoops fan, perhaps second only to the synthetic ball retraction.
So of course we Raptors fans won’t get to hear a cold second of it.
As we up here in Canada are already blatantly aware, it’s the official policy of the USA (aka Mother Earth’s toxic silicon implants) to consider us second class citizens…and we all know how they feel about Mexico. They treat their pets with more civility. So, while ESPN will broadcast Friday’s Raptors/Pistons game in all it’s invasive and pompous microphoned glory, us hometown fans won’t get to experience the joy/pleasure/rage of hearing Sam Mitchell’s vocal “coaching”. (I’ll be at the game, so I’m covered. But I’m looking out for all of you non-Mexican, non four-legged victims of this travesty.) ESPN’s selfishly unwilling to share the media feeds with Sportsnet, the Canadian broadcaster of the game.
Mitchell will be wearing a microphone for tomorrow night’s broadcast on ESPN, but the NBA has denied the Toronto Raptors’ request to let the comments cross the television border.
Does this seem just? Then again, why would I expect America knows anything about justice? Mitchell, considered one of the ‘more colorful and outspoken coaches in the NBA’ according to newspaper/toilet paper substitute The Toronto Sun, will surely be yapping, but his barbs will fall upon deaf, frostbitten ears.
I was going to PVR the game just to watch these little innovations and to see Jamario filling Sheed’s grill over and over. But now, what’s the point?
If the NBA’s attempting to bring fans and franchises closer together through these new features, it might help to allow all the fans to actually experience them.
(DiNote: Special thanks, as always, to Kopa for his ball-gagging skills.)
