RAPTORS: JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION

Star-Ledger basketball writer Dave D'Alessandro was big enough to respond when we asked him to clarify recent statement that "it wasn't clear basketball would catch on Canada" before Vince Carter joined the Raptors in 1999. He was big enough to respond via his blog, although he kind of changed the subject to avoid answering the question.

They were losing millions every month, as they had broken ground on the new arena and it was turning into a white elephant. Attendance was falling every year at the Skydome. There were reports that it took them four games to generate the sort of revenues that Madison Square Garden would get in one night. And there was a widespread perception that Revenue Canada (that's their IRS, for you Yanks who don't know) was going after athletes, hitting the non-resident NBA players with a higher tax for every day they spent in Canada - which everyone knew would be an issue when it came to pursuing free agents. Anyway, Carter arrived, he became the most popular athlete in the country after Gretzky, and the rest is history - in your case, the revisionist kind.

Fair enough, but if D'Alessandro had qualified his earlier statement by saying the Raptors were losing money instead of slagging the public, his meaning would have been clear. Being clear is generally part of a writer's job. (By the way, D'Alessandro is the same dude who called recently referred to Raptors fans "20,000 mouth breathers." What kind of mentality leads someone to write that? Most of us have to be at a pretty weak moment to go trying to provoke people like that.)

Fan interest was never really an issue for the Raptors. As for attendance going down at Skydome, almost all expansion teams take a hit at the box office once the novelty wears off after the first season, and then it slowly builds up (ideally) once the team becomes competitive. The bottom line is the economic question can be answered in five words: Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, Ltd. Their economic and political pull, once it entered into the Raptors equation, ensured the team would have an economic safety, Vince Carter or not. The song remains the same: We didn't need Vince Carter to teach us basketball.

By the way, Dave, it's now called Canada Revenue Agency.