The Star-Ledger's Dave D'Alessandro, who covers the New Jersey Nets, referred to Raptors fans as "20,000 beslubbering joltheads" in a blog post yesterday.It seems like provoking people for no reason is the only thing the guy gets off on more than getting a fist bump from Vince Carter. How pathetically naive is it to call Raptors fans "beslubbering joltheads" in a blog post? Like everyone is supposed to be wowed that D'Alessandro wrote beslubbering instead of the more common slobbering.
Secondly, what is with the cheap name-calling coming from a full-time professional writer? What have Raptors fans done to deserve this?
Sure, Raptors fans, present company included, call Carter "Vin Weasel," but that is rooted in fact. Booing Vince is our one outlet for exercising our power as members of the paying public. Carter represents the pro basketball establishment, he's paid millions of dollars a year, and he quit on the Raptors.
D'Alessandro, meantime, is calling the paying public "beslubbering joltheads" in the wake of Maclean's (Canada's version of Newsweek) publishing an article about the Raptors' large, thriving and basketball-savvy online fanbase.* If D'Alessandro cared to exercise basic journalistic curiosity, there are any number of hip, young hoser hoops nuts such as Ryan McNeill of HoopsAddict and Scott Carefoot of RaptorBlog and MSN/Sympatico.ca, just to name two, who could bring him up to speed about Raptors fans and what makes us tick.
Fans are fair game, but it can be done with class. After covering Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoff series between the Senators and Devils, which ended around 11:30 p.m. local time last Saturday, globesports.com's David Shoalts noted thousands of fans left the arena before the Devils won in double overtime. Did he use this as a jumping-off point to call people from New Jersey "beslubbering joltheads"? No. He left it open-ended: "What was the rush to leave?"
How's this for irony: Shoalts wrote this after visiting the same building that is presumably a second home to Dave D'Alessandro, since the Nets play there.
It's too bad that D'Alessandro is apparently so lacking in grace and apparently can't or won't admit that Raptors fans are people too. Hating on Vince Carter has created something unique at the ACC. Good friends who attended the Raptors-Nets playoff games have said that it's been unlike almost anything they have experienced going to sports events in Toronto. The atmosphere probably can't top the Dallas Mavericks-Golden State Warriors series, but it would be hard to top a series where a team who is in the playoffs for the first time since 1994 is is poised to deliver an unprecedented upset.
One would think that Raptors fans would come in for some praise. Instead, we're described as "20,000 beslubbering joltheads." Figure that out.
(* No idea where Maclean's would have got the idea for that article, but it could have been found here.)
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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