Sportsnet new channel is only available to Rogers customers, this story would matter a bit more if any Raptors games were on it, but this does stink of TSN2, only this time for Bluejays fans. What is the deal with Sportsnet anyway? None of their anchors are remotely interesting and even their relatively-attractive-when-compared-to-girls-without-makeup female anchor, Martine Gaillard, was stolen from The Score. Not saying TSN is much better, but at least their graphics guy didn’t flunk out of George Brown. I used to like Headline Sports, now called The Score, because we never actually saw the faces of the anchors, just heard their voices. Now we’re told to think Sid Seixeiro is funny and that James Sharman is an expert at football. While we’re at it, Laura Diakun (call me) is nice. Other than that, everyone can piss off.
The guys at Dime caught up with Leandro Barbosa where he revealed that he asked for a trade after the season ended and that the Raptors were the first team to come calling. He’s excited to play with the international players and is also looking forward to playing more minutes than he did in Phoenix, which was 18. Expectations need to be kept in check when it comes to Barbosa, a lot of people will expect him to have the same impact as he did in Phoenix, but this is a very different situation. The offensive philosophy in Phoenix was tried and tested, and they had the coach and personnel to play what they preached. In Toronto, we think we have the personnel but everything else is up in the air. I fear him breaking out after a missed shot only to realize that we don’t have the defensive rebound. Fingers crossed.
DeMar DeRozan was in town after being back from Tim Grgurich’s basketball camp and our own Mike Ganter confused his Malcolm X look with a Clark Kent look. The two couldn’t be more apart. Some good info in the article, though. I’m growing fond of DeRozan, I was always a fan of his skill, but his genuine affection for the team and city is winning me over even more. That goes for Sonny Weems too. Yes, neither of these guys’ love for Toronto will do anything to change the perception of the team or attract free-agents at this point, but I get the feeling that these guys have made it their personal mission to lead Toronto back to respectability. They’ve come in when the franchise is pretty much at rock-bottom and have taken on the challenge of winning, when it would have been easy to just play out the rookie-scale and bolt. That still might happen, but their attitude has been refreshing enough for one to look past the juvenile part.
Time for the ‘comment’ section of the post. This is where I pick a subject and ‘comment’ on it and you proceed to rip me a new one for it . Subject: Bargnani’s international play and how it’ll affect him next season. Comment: It’ll help him. I don’t buy that he’ll be fatigued like Hedo when training camp rolls around. Unless he’s getting some very specialized coaching, Bargnani is better off playing basketball and trying to improve areas of his game that haven’t seen practical growth in the NBA, namely his drive game which, from the highlights I’ve seen, has been his focus this summer. And this theory that we should find him a ‘big man coach’ and help him improve is all well and good, but great big man coaches aren’t exactly readily available. Not to mention that we already tried that approach after his second year and nothing much stuck. Unless we have such a coach as part of the assistants crew and with the player for the whole season, I don’t see it making that much of a difference, at least not more than practicing your game all summer.
You might have heard of this thing called Tweeter, or Twitr or something like that. It’s pretty popular they tell me, so popular that we’ve added a button to the end of the post where you can twit, or twat or however you use the bloody thing. Try it, winner gets a Mamadou N’Diaye signed game-worn wristband. I’m off, I got 8 episodes of the Bernstein Bears to catch-up on.