Blog blast past: When Doornekamp's MVP performance was for some birds of a different feather ...

Former Carleton Ravens hoops star Aaron Doornekamp is on Canada's roster for the FIBA world championship, which begins Saturday in Turkey. From March 19, 2007, here's a post from someone from the same corner of the world, written the day the Odessa native was MVP of the CIS Final 8 after scoring 20 points in a championship-game win over Brandon.

Back in the day, Ernestown Secondary School had an English teacher named Peter Peart. Give a weak answer in his classroom — the sacred confines of 208 — and often you'd get zinged, "Good enough for Odessa."

With that line, Mr. Peart* summed up everything about the hometown and alma mater of Aaron Doornekamp (pictured), who was the linchpin of the Carleton Ravens' latest national championship run on the weekend.

Odessa, Ont., is a basic bedroom community which has had 1,000 people forever and hasn't changed much since I graduated in 1996 (I lived between Odessa and Bath, another bedroom community). It's so nondescript that during the Capital Hoops Classic in January, one writer asked the rest of the press box denizens, "Where's Odessa?" even though there was a good possibility he had driven past it on Hwy. 401 dozens of times.

Anyway, "good enough for Odessa" laid it out there. You had a choice: Be small time and never live a day in your life, or go for the big time. You might pull it off, but it could also be a royal asskicking.

Hopefully that gives some context to why it was such a trip yesterday, a for a fellow ex-Ernestown Eagle to see Doornekamp hugging his proud father Henk on the Halifax Metro Centre floor in front of thousands of people and a national TV audience. Aaron, the last in the Doornekamp-Smart line of succession that basically was one-half to two-thirds of Ernestown's basketball program for about a decade, kicked plenty of ass himself to help secure the Ravens' fifth straight national title.

Canadians generally don't do the whole alumni thing like Americans do when it comes to their high schools. Ernestown is no exception in this regard, but damn is it freakin' sweet to see one of our own garner such accolades. It almost makes up all the jokes and snide comments people make about a rural high school, along with the myth about buying a statue of the horse instead of football equipment, which is even acknowledged on the school homepage.

My mom teaches at ESS. Last April, a popular recent graduate, Tristan Webb, was killed after being struck by a train. A few weeks later, three students were charged with making alleged Internet death threats, which made national headlines. Right after the new school year started, there was a pellet gun shooting on a school bus which occurred the same day as the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. It's been a rough 12 months, so any positive publicity for Ernestown is really good these days.

So call it cornball, maybe even a little sad on my part, but yeah, it's OK to vicariously celebrate this.

On Saturday, you could watch one former Eagle, '96 grad Adnan Virk, anchor NCAA Tournament coverage on The Score in the afternoon, then flip over to TSN and see Aaron Doornekamp play a big part Carleton's semi-final win over Ottawa. Was there another high school in in Canada, let alone one with 650 students in a village of 1,000 people, which had two of its grads playing prominent roles in the hoopla for both the U.S. and Canadian versions of March Madness on the weekend?

Good enough for Odessa? Hell, we're good enough for the whole country. One cannot help but think back to mentors such as Mr. Peart, who saw that we were. Thanks, Aaron, for making sure some of us can't forget where we came from.

(* No relation to Neil Peart of Rush fame, although over the years Peter probably gulled more than one teenage metalhead who asked. Deadpanning, "Yes, he's my brother," would have them going, usually for a couple seconds.)

Blog blast past: A sure bet for getting more attention for the Raptors

It turns out someone was on about getting the NBA back on Pro-Line (Ontario's government-run sports lottery) more than two years ago. From Oct. 31, 2007:

Here's one untouched upon reason why the Raptors don't get more widespread attention outside their core fan base: People in Ontario can't stop by a convenience store and include the Raptors on a Pro-Line ticket.

Putting your money where your mouth fuels interest in sports. Just listen to a discussion among guys in an office on Mondays during the NFL season. They'll talk about how they did in the pool or how a team scored a meaningless last-second touchdown to blow the point spread or the over/under. It's similar for the NHL, baseball and soccer in Ontario (no one does the arm's-length symbiotic relationship with gambling better than the NFL).

But NBA talk can be a non-starter. The league's absence from Pro-Line isn't the only reason, but it's a big one, since Ontario is Canada's most populous province and has the biggest influence nationally on cultural tastes. The league has been off Pro-Line since the mid-1990s. Commissioner David Stern made it a condition of granting the Raptors franchise.

What's one reason why fewer people are less interested in the NBA compared to 15 years ago? They can't bet on it using the most convenient means available. Why do the flailin' and failin' Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team get so much media play while the Raptors, far more interesting and fun to follow, get much less? Because editors and producers don't believe the interest is there. See how it works? A big part of why someone watches the 11 p.m. sports highlights, checks the web at ungodly hours and picks up the morning paper is to find out how they lost their bets, or how they will bet next time.

It says a lot about MLSE that it hasn't tried to get Stern to reverse his decision. The commish was an anti-gambling hawk then (in the shadow of point-shaving scandals in college basketball in the 1980s). Changing times have forced him to soften his stance in the wake of the Tim Donaghy scandal. The perfect storm of the Internet and the revenue-hungry governments have made casual gambling on sports an everyday activity. Stern is sensitive to the dark side of this, but he knows you have to play ball, so to speak.

Stern can only ride that wave -- he even took the 2007 NBA All-Star Game to Las Vegas. Yet you or me can walk into the Union St. subway station in downtown Toronto, go into a smoke shop, grab a Pro-Line sheet, and not be able to bet on a Raptors game taking place a few hundred metres away at the Air Canada Centre. Figure that out.

How does MLSE deny itself a chance to expand the Raptors brand? That's the problem with a corporation that exists for bankers and investors, not sports fans.

Some big-business type isn't stopping at the Kwik-e-Mart to play Pro-Line since gambling remains a taboo among wealthy shareholders, a vestige of WASP old-money values.

The everyday people you need to build a mass TV audience are though. They're being denied for no good reason in Ontario. (NBA games are on the sports lotteries in all four Western Canada provinces, but soccer isn't.) Government-run sports lotteries can also help fund athletics at the grass-roots level, and we all know Canada Basketball could use the help.

Yes, there are plenty of ways to bet that the Raptors will cover the 7.5-point spread in tonight's home opener vs. Philly or that Jose Calderon (pictured) will have more assists than the 76ers' Andre Miller. Pro-Line -- where, as its ads say, "anything can happen; anyone can win" -- is for everyday people. Of course, everyday people is a concept that's lost on MLSE.

Hoser hoops heaven... Canada worlds-bound

Canada Basketball needed Friday night the way a man engulfed in flames could use a glass of water.

That's is a best stab at capturing the meaning of Canada earned a spot at the 2010 world basketball championship with an 80-76 win over the Dominican Republic at the qualifier in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As Doug Smith of the Toronto Star wrote, "The magnitude of the win cannot be overstated. With solid development programs at the under-19 and under-17 levels, Canada desperately needed to see some success at the senior level to give the teenagers something to aspire to."

There is hope, to borrow that overused one-word aphorism. It was furnished by Jermaine Anderson, Carl English, Levon Kendall, Andy Rautins, Jesse Young and a Carleton Raven, Aaron Doornekamp. None are household names with the rank-and-file Canadian sports fan, although Aaron might be pushing for the status of being Ernestown Secondary School's most famous alumnus after those two cooler-than-freon three-pointers he drained in the fourth quarter to keep the Dominicans at bay. Whatever is to come — and there is lots more to come — for Canada on the court, Friday felt like a catalytic event.

Please remember, if you are so inclined, which group of quote, unquote obscure Euro-ballers helped with this big step forward. Canada had only NBAer at this tournament, the Miami Heat forward Joel Anthony. The team was still celebrating when Leo Rautins told TrueHoop that he wants to have a few more NBA players next summer in Turkey. He's hoping Steve Nash will take time out from saving the world to lace up for his country one last time. The San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner, an ex-Raptor who is married to a Toronto woman, is taking out citizenship. Bonner would be a good fit into the FIBA game, which prizes a big man who can shoot. Rautins is hopeful of getting Jamaal Magloire (don't hold your breath).

Meantime, as Smith alluded to, Canada has a lot of young talent coming up such as Junior Cadougan, Mangisto Arop, Kelly Olynyk, Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson. Some of the guys who were on the floor Friday will be pushed out in the years to come, such is the nature of sports.

Perhaps the San Juan crew will stand out in time the way Blue Jays fans remember Doug Ault and Bob Bailor. They got it started.

It is understandable if people do not consider Canada earning its first world berth since 2002 as a big deal. The only Team Canada most people across this great country care about, let's be honest, is the one with skates and sticks which will hit the ice in Vancouver next February at the Olympics. That is fine. However, some do believe being a proud Canadian and having a serious basketball jones can overlap, no matter what is implied by Molson's ads.

Maybe there is no deeper meaning to that beyond just loving basketball. Cheering for Canada on the hardwood, with the U.S. having such a larger player pool and so many resources devoted to hoops, is a lesson in being an underdog. It also seems to evoke the doubt Canadians are always going to face. That's why it's awesome, speaking as someone from the same corner of the world, to see that Doornekamp played a significant role in the final minutes with those two threes. He's had doubters all along, being from Odessa, having played at a smaller high school, making the national team from a CIS school, and he has come out shining.


It is almost seems like living in the past to play up that Aaron is an ESS grad, but then again there are not many Eagles even compared to other Kingston-area high schools, so attention must be paid. Imagine some young baller, maybe in Toronto, or Vancouver, who will grow up to represent his country. He might never hear of places such as Odessa, or Patrick's Cove, N.L., Carl English's hometown, but a small debt will be owed to those places. And that's pretty cool.

Basketball: Ex-Raven Doornekamp at centre of dust-up

The Italian term from "brawl" is apparently rissa. What's the translation for awk-ward?

Canada-Italy is about the last international basketball matchup where you would expect punches to be thrown during a friendly. Italy's team includes two members of the Raptors, Andrea Bargnani and Marco Belinelli. Raptors television analyst Leo Rautins coaches Canada. Raps assistant GM Maurizio Gherardini, who is from Italy, works with Canada Basketball. Nevertheless, it happened on Saturday. It was touched off when forward Stefano Mancinelli sucker-punched good Kingston boy Aaron Doornekamp at the tailend of a very chippy game. Italian media reports say it was in retaliation for being elbowed. Whatever brought it on, punching someone on the basketball court is beyond the pale.



What happened was that Canada guard Andy Rautins, who plays at Syracuse, had the ball on the left wing. Two defenders pressed him, forcing him to give up the ball. Doornekamp and point guard Jermaine Anderson both flashed high to give Rautins an outlet. It looked like Doornekamp had his arm out to ward off Mancinelli as he went for either a deflection or steal.

Reading Babelfished articles doesn't make that clear if that was when this Doornekamp elbow occurred or if it was on a previous play (some of the reports say it was under the basket and as you can see, they were out near midcourt).

Apparently, it had been a physical game between the two teams, who were playing for the second time in a week, so there might have been bad blood. It is also a different world over in Euro-ball. There is a different standard of officiating and there are not the same safeguards that the NBA has implemented to stop brawling since the Malice at the Palace almost five years ago.

Whenever this happens, no matter what the sport, some people will always say that the guy had it coming, brought it on himself. It goes extra since it is a player from the Ravens, who are resented in certain Canadian basketball circles.

There is no illusion Doornekamp is an angel on the court. It is hard to become a key cog in four national championship teams in five years while playing nice. Like any forward whom you would want on your basketball team, he plays with some edge, no quarter asked, none given. His style drove a lot of opponents to frustration over his five seasons with the Ravens while playing for his uncle, Dave Smart.

Perhaps this is a well, duh statement, but you know some knucklehead on a message board, perhaps a current CIS student-athlete, will say Doornekamp brought that on. This was karma. Anyone who would say that needs to question their motivation for being in sports. No one has that coming just because they play hard and earn their space.

Considering the damage a punch thrown by a 6-foot-8, 200-pound-plus basketball player such as Mancinelli could cause, it's fortunate there was not a serious injury.

Granted, easy enough to editorialize when the player from one's neck of the woods was the punchee. What if Doornekamp was the puncher? Well, the way it seems to work in the Ravens' realm is that a good player does anything to not come off the court. Striking an opponent and risking a suspension seems like a very poor way to achieve that end. Smart's teams go all-out and make opponents rue thinking they could get an offensive rebound or an easy layup, but punch a player from behind while play is going on? Never.

On the clip, actually, former Carleton guard Ryan Bell can also be seen stepping in front of a teammate to keep him from getting involved.

Bargnani also tried to play peacemaker. Canadian forward Jesse Young seemed very agitated and Bargnani put an arm around him and said something, which seemed to calm Young down. For now, the feeling should just be a sigh of relief it was not worse.

Meantime, not be a Don Cherry about this, but it is something to see that flinty Eastern Ontario toughness make a player a continent away go berserk, especially in a friendly.

(Update: Coach Leo Rautins told Sun Media "It's all good ... no big deal" and added Doornekamp was uninjured. It was a lead item at sportsnet.ca.)

There is plenty of coverage from Italian media here, here, here, here and here.

Hoops: Canada pulls major upset, somewhat tinged with irony

There is half a mind to get bumper stickers of the image below made up and then go stick them up around Sport Canada's headquarters today.


Canada Basketball recently had to shutter its National Elite Development Agency residency program for lack of funds, since the highers-up in Canadian sport have decided to put everything into whatever offers the shortest, cheapest course to the Olympic podium and have said to hell with competing in any truly global sport whose popularity isn't based on a cold-weather climate and/or affluence . So what happened? Today in Bangkok, at the FIBA Under 19 World Championship for Women, Canada, with a nucleus of players who trained at NEDA, went out and beat a serious summer sport nation, Australia, 50-49, to reach the event's semi-final for the first time.

How about that? Perhaps it was one of those any-given-Friday scenarios. Outside of their leading scorer, the Australians missed 41 of 49 shots, so that might have been the case. However, the Aussies are regularly in contention for the medals at the Olympics and world championship and is currently No. 3 in the FIBA women's rankings, a full 10 spots ahead of Canada. It didn't matter. Canada pulled the upset, with Guelph native (and Notre Dame-bound) forward Natalie Achonwa matched her tender age with a sweet 16 points (Doug Smith noted recently she'll probably be joining the national team in a few weeks).

Six-foot-four Kayla Alexander also had a game-high 15 rebounds, as Canada went plus-6 on the boards against what was probably a bigger team. The pair of them also helped reduce Australia into a one-woman show. Their centre, tourney scoring leader Elizabeth Campage (who in the team picture is the middle of the back row, a head taller than anyone else) had half her team's points, scoring 26 along with 10 rebounds and five blocks, but getting her touches must have taken Australia out of its rhythm.

So much of international sport is about funding. Well, Canada beat China to get into the quarter-final, so this team has beat two countries which recently hosted the Summer Olympics.

Anyway, it's a simple point. A Canadian team being among the last four standing at a world junior championship is a semi-big deal. It sort of puts the lie to media-inculcated myth about being a hockey (only) country. There is clearly some burgeoning basketball talent, male and female, in this country. Some onus does fall on Canada Basketball to be able to scare up more sponsorship, of course, but the point is a sporting country worthwhile tries to give all of its athletes a fighting chance, rather than making a value judgement that the relative easy medals galore Winter Olympics matters more.

Anyway, great job by that Canadian team, including its three CIS players, one of whom, point guard Jenny Vaughan from the Western Mustangs, hit a three-pointer at the first-half buzzer to give Canada the lead after 20 and hit another with 3:13 left which put them ahead for good. The risk in saying this is to turn a group of teenaged athletes into a political football, but it's fair play when TSN, et al., do that every year during the Christmas holidays. One would hope this is not a tease, some triumph tinged with irony. Canada's junior men's national team was a respectable seventh at its worlds a few weeks back. Hopefully, some heads will start to turn toward a developing Canadian sports success story. Triumphs tinged with bitter irony are not too much fun, eh?

A long, long overdue Canada Basketball post

It's all onward-and-upward with all things Canada basketball. Hearing that Canada's junior national team, skipped by Alberta Golden Bears coach Greg Francis, reached the quarter-finals of the FIBA U19 championship in Auckland, N.Z., after beating Argentina should bring forth some pride.

Canada got 20 points from combo guard Cory Joseph (who might end up playing for Rick Pitino at Louisville, although the Kansas Jayhawks come up a lot too) and 18 from Mangisto Arop, who's off to Gonzaga in a few weeks. The kicker is they will face Team USA in the quarter-final on Friday; if they had won by three more points, they would have come out ahead on point differential with Argentina and Spain and avoided the Americans.

That's not here nor there. People should be positive about Canadian hoops and the way Francis' charges have pulled it together down under after a 1-2 start is pretty encouraging. Like the coach himself said:

"Now we get to play in the quarter finals of a FIBA World Championship, and that’s a good thing for Canada."

Learned hoops chroniclers such as the Toronto Star's Doug Smith (who noted a while back, incidentally, that the Raptors are going to have training camp in Ottawa again) have said there are great things starting to happen with Canada Basketball, notwithstanding the loss of the National Elite Development Agency. It's a several years process, not an overnight success story.

Smith said several weeks back, "the junior team that could very well make some noise in New Zealand" is among some "hugely significant steps in the right direction" for Canadian hoops. Along with beating Argentina, Canada went down to the wire with Spain (which won by seven after Canada took the lead midway through the fourth quarter), Australia and Croatia, all respected basketball nations. In other words, some results are starting to bubble to the surface.

The fact that Joseph and big man Tristan Thompson, who have each been down in the U.S. for a couple years, are playing instead of spending their summers with a travel team sponsored by a shoe company is also a good sign. Seeing that Canada is assured of finishing in the top half of the draw (no worse than eighth out of 16 teams) is a good sign. It's not lead-off-Sportscentre sexy. Chances are, it barely rates a mention outside of the players' hometowns (Kamloops Daily News sports ed. Gregg Drinnan at Taking Note has been having regular e-mail exchanges with Canada forward Kelly Olynyk, by the way).

It is never going to be cupcakes and sprinkles for Canada Basketball. It is egg-on-the-face for this country (or it would be, if anyone had noticed) that as the Toronto Star reported, Cuba and China are helping foot the bill for the national women's team to make an exhibition tour this summer. Smith has also made some pointed remarks about the traditional media's unwillingness to deviate from the Hockey Reflex and maybe offering more balanced fare.

"... they are missing out on a great opportunity because they are myopic followers rather than media leaders. I always thought part of the responsibility we have is to lead and to educate, rather than simply regurgitate what's already been on highlight shows and the internet.

"I would think the pucks-centric men – and they are almost all middle-aged men – who run the broadcast outlets here would realize the hockey people are still going to watch and listen but if you want to expand your listener base or viewership, giving something to people they can’t get anywhere else might be a good idea."

Complaining about the lack of media attention for basketball is kind of passe. Footy fanatics have proved (here one thinks of The 24th Minute), you can do it on your own. The Raptors' radio voice, Paul Jones, popped off a while back about how knowing your game is rarely on the front burner builds character.

"I guess that's what makes us tough and has us persevere as basketball people. And please, don’t tell me about the antiquated ratings system because I’m not buying it.

"That discussion is for another time as I have never met anyone that has a "box" in the their house and there was no way they would bring a box into my old 'hood back in the day when you had at least 10-15 guys around a TV watching a game.

Anyway, getting back to the point, it is good to see a Canadian team stick with it and knock off Argentina. Granted, it probably would have been better to not be playing the U.S., but hey, you never know what might happen in a game between two teams of teenagers. Beating Argentina, having been in every game, those are triumphs nonetheless. Don't be cynical about this. That would be kind of Canadian.

Related:
Composed Canada move through (FIBA.com)

Nazem Kadri and the Hockey Reflex

It might be a stretch, but whatthehell.

The way some media portrayed the Leafs drafting Nazem Kadri, a young man who is Muslim, might be a symptom of what a friend calls the Hockey Reflex. It's an umbrella term for a much larger identity crisis which envelops the national obsession. Canada is evolving faster than ever as a nation, albeit not in ways that can be 100% anticipated. That has stoked angst hockey will one day concede some of centre stage to other sports. If that happens (stress, if), it will be because it is cost-prohibitive and a sport of the middle class, which has been shrinking for more than 20 years.

Please bear in mind this is not directed at any individual. It's more of an attempt, as someone on the outside, to try to figure out what is at the heart of the Saturday Star describing Kadri as a "symbol of change" (beat writer Kevin McGran's story) and a sign "the cultural tectonic plates of the GTA just shifted a little bit." (Damien Cox's accompanying column.) The Globe & Mail also got in on the act ("The new face of the good ol' hockey game"). Here you thought the Leafs drafted Kadri because they thought he might be a potential 35-goal scorer whom you can already see skating on a line someday with Taylor Hall. Suspend your disbelief and presume that Leafs GM Brian Burke is waiting for next year to make a big move to snag a phenom from the OHL, instead of just talking about it so much).

Kazem being Muslim is part of the story, certainly. One could not get away with not noting it when only one other Muslim, early-2000s journeyman Ramzi Abid, has played semi-regularly in the NHL (68 games). There are certainly fans who are going to identify with a player who's of a similar background to them, or commit it to memory like his height, weight and junior team (case in point: On Newsday's blog item about Kington Frontenacs forward Ethan Werek being drafted by the New York Rangers, the first comment makes reference to Werek being a "dual Canadian-Israeli citizen").

This comes back to the Jason Whitlock saying that social agenda does not trump truth. One way to get away from a loaded word such as "agenda" is to say that labelling and packaging — Leafs draft Muslim player! — should not stand in for honest dialogue.

Think about it. It as if there is a nettle tugging at the heart that mandates reassuring people that newer Canadians are taking up the game en masse, even when they are not. It comes off as a Hail Mary, hoping there something will just magically happen to off-set trends which are working against sustaining the elitist youth hockey model in Canada.

That would include, off the top of one's head, urbanization, an aging population, the decline of the manufacturing sector in smaller Ontario centres (if the family breadwinner now works at a big-box instead of on an assembly line, it will be tougher to afford new skates for little Logan) and last but not least, the fact the cost of youth hockey is divorced from sanity. You can only count on families being willing to make a sacrifice for so long.

However, The Globe's Jeff Blair had a point when called BS on the Kadri coverage in his Monday column, writing, "Look, I like to sing Kumbaya as much as anybody but it's a stretch to see anything remotely altruistic behind the Maple Leafs drafting a Muslim player of Lebanese descent. Really." The Star, once it had time to flesh out a sober second thought, moved from "symbol of change" stuff to following up with a story headlined, "Immigrants won't flock to hockey for Nazem Kadri." The money quote probably came from minor hockey organizer named Paul Maich:

"We are still not seeing the numbers from the visible minorities that represent the percentages in the local population. I really don't think the short term effect will be that great but I'd like to be proven wrong."

Not to presume anything of some random minor hockey guy, but I'd like to be proven wrong is not far off from, It'd be nice, but I'm not gonna actually make an effort.

Point being, citing Kadri as a "symbol of change" is unfair. This is not out of concern for Kadri. It's presumed he has the head on his shoulders to handle being a hyped-up high draft pick and a Leafs prospect from Southern Ontario, plus being the team's first Muslim. That's for the Leafs and sports psychologists to handle.

The unfair part with some of the Kadri coverage is that it wrongly assumes a person who is a visible minority needs that role model. It's a little too close to the old liberal canard, add-minorities-and-stir. It is pandering. Just because your parents were born in another country does not you need a role model to get into a sport.

We can all find it on our own. Many already do this in Canada. The demographics of a Leafs crowd are distinctly different from Toronto's other teams, but it's a far cry from what it looked like at Maple Leaf Gardens in the 1970s and '80s. People from all walks of life are discovering hockey in Canada since it is the No. 1 sport, although it's overcovered. (There is even a side point that having the world junior here almost every year might be a good entry point, since it's the most publicized hockey event whose format is similar to the World Cup, with group play followed by knockout rounds. That is just a personal observation.)

The Kadri-to-the-Leafs love-in glosses over a larger truth. No matter what your cultural makeup is, you play a sport because there is an opportunity. It's like the riff Chris Rock did on blacks dominating U.S. sports — "and as soon as we get a heated hockey rink, we'll have that too!" (Oddly enough, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's story about the Thrashers drafting Evander Kane did not mention that Kane is black.)

Opportunity hinges on the values of one's family, community and society's ability to pay. On a macro level in Canada, that means there is a push to keep men's hockey on the front burner, even to neglect of other sports, which has passed the point of satire. Meantime, the way it works in this country is that if you want to be great at a sport, your family is expected to go out-of-pocket (unless said sport has a very thin field at the Winter Olympics).

That puts hockey beyond the means and interests of many families, pure and simple. That dictates a day is coming when the drop-off between No. 1 and whatever is the No. 2 sport will shrink. Exercising the Hockey Reflex only prolongs the inevitable.

(As a footnote, some recent examples of the Hockey Reflex. It is a gross generalization, to be fair, but you can see it in the sports section every day.

You can see at play with Canada Basketball having to scrap its successful beyond belief National Elite Development Agency or the fact our national women's basketball team's summer schedule is being subsidized by China and Cuba. Dave Feschuk, writing in the Toronto Star, noted sarcastically, "Thank goodness for Communists."

It's even prevalent within hockey. Earlier this month, ctvolympics.ca posted a story headlined, "Hockey schmoozers to gather at Olympic centre" which outlined how there will be a 80,000-square-foot entertainment and hospitality complex for rich folks and hockey players to hobknob during the Olympics.

On the same day, no less, the Calgary Olympic Oval scrapped its women's hockey program where national team mainstays such as Cherie Piper, Gina Kingsbury, Carla MacLeod, Colleen Sostorics, Delaney Collins, Tessa Bonhomme and Gillian Ferrari train. At least the schmoozers' needs are being addressed, eh!

As a second post-draft footnote, for any Sennies fans — love the choice of Jared Cowen — did you see this from the Columbus Dispatch:

"It's hard to believe how far the Ottawa Senators have fallen, and how fast they went from Stanley Cup runner-ups to one of the most dysfunctional clubs in the NHL.")

Related:
Newest Leaf's hockey-mad home; Kadri's father made sure son could play the sport his own parents couldn't afford for him (Kevin McGran, Toronto Star)
Immigrants won't flock to hockey for Nazem Kadri; New face of Leafs might help introduce the sport, but cost still a big factor (Lois Kalchman, Toronto Star)

Basketball: Kong at Canadian national team camp

There's a little news about Bol Kong.

Kong, just for anyone needing a refresher, is a guard from Vancouver who was supposed to go to a big-time basketball school, Gonzaga, two years ago but, as a citizen of Sudan, was kept out due to visa issues. However, Kong is among 19 college-age and slightly older players whom Canada Basketball has invited to a development camp which begins Monday in Toronto. It wouldn't figure that Canada Basketball would invite someone unless he had received citizenship or was very close to doing so, right? SB Nation's Gonzaga blog, The Slipper Still Fits, jumped to that conclusion, so might as well join 'em there.

"If Bol is a Canadian citizen, he can clearly enter the United States of America. Therefore, if Bol can enter the United States of America, he can play basketball for Gonzaga University (look at my Gonzaga education at work).

"This certainly goes along with what we had been hearing, which was that everything was looking good for Bol, and I wouldn't be overly surprised to see him here in late June for the second session of summer school. What I do know is this is the most definitive news I have seen publicly on the status of Bol, and I think we can start preparing to finally see Bol in a Gonzaga uniform, after over a year of speculation."

Coincidentally, Monday is also the deadline for underclassmen to decide whether to stay in the NBA draft or pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school. Gonzaga's Austin Daye seems to be leaning toward staying in the draft, which would alleviate any concern for Gonzaga about having more players than scholarships. (NCAA Division 1 teams are capped at 13 — no sharesies! — and Gonzaga would have 14 players on the roster if Daye had withdrawn from the draft.

Kong's predicament was pretty big news in the summer of 2007 when he was initially supposed to go to Gonzaga after tearing it up in the B.C. high school ranks, where he played at St. George's School for coach Brian Lee (who has ties to Ottawa; he might have played his high school hoops at Sir Robert Borden at Nepean). The New York Times wrote about him and so did some major political bloggers. Kong decamped to Douglas College in the CCAA for the 2007-08 season. After that, the trail ran cold; even today, there's nothing on Google News when you do a unique search for his name.

There was strong speculation about six weeks ago Kong might play at Trinity Western University if it didn't work out with Gonzaga. The position, as one of cisblog.ca's charter contributors, is that if someone is very, very good at her/his sport, then a NCAA Division 1 school is in most cases the place to be since the U.S. institutions have more resources dedicated to sport.

Anyway, calls and e-mails are in to Canada Basketball in hope of getting some confirmation.

Related:
Here Comes Kong!!! (The Slipper Still Fits)

Hoops: The Vancouver rumour, again

The site's own Andrew Bucholtz has post up at Sporting Madness about rumblings Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini is side-eyeing the NBA's financially struggling Indiana Pacers.

Please set aside the obvious knee-jerk reaction — Moving a team from the heartland of basketball to a foreign country? That must be where Gary Bettman got the idea! — since Vancouver returning to pro basketball has been something of a blog obsession.

There likely is nothing to this particular rumour (keep in mind, bloggers have "horrible instincts," according to Jason Whitlock). The point is talk of Vancouver returning to the NBA is probably bound to pop up with increasing regularity, so don't take the easy way out (but we're the snark generation! It's alls we know!) and be dismissive. Several NBA teams struggling and the city has a rising profile and an arena suitable for pro basketball.

Basketball is also pretty big in the province; it probably has the best high school championship in Canada in terms of competitiveness and fan interest outside of the participating teams.

The timing and the tide might be a lot more right than it was in the mid-1990s, when the late and lamented Vancouver Grizzlies were sort of a throw-in along with the Toronto Raptors. Steve Nash's success has also underscored a critical point: The way to stimulate interest in a sport is to have athletes with whom fans see a connection with on the floor. People in Germany might pay more attention to the NBA because their countryman Dirk Nowitzki is starring in the league (hey, what if the Grizzlies had drafted him in 1998?), not because the Sacramento Kings played an exhibition there or something.

Getting back to the point with Vancouver, as someone said 18 months ago:

"... it's not that far-fetched to think Vancouver could accommodate the NBA. The city's profile with Americans is improving and will increase exponentially after the 2010 Olympics. The management team of a future NBA franchise would also learn from mistakes and make sure the players get to know the city better and are put more at ease in a foreign environment. Too often during the Grizzles' run, there were instances of players voicing displeasure with the city, which alienated potential ticket buyers, since everyone knows Vancouver is the greatest city in the world (in fact, that's what everyone in Rome, London and Sydney says too, really)." — Oct. 27, 2007

Anyway, please don't dismiss it out of hand. It is undeniable the national TV ratings for the NBA playoffs have been neglible in Canada. However, pro basketball fandom in Canada is similar to the NHL's following in the U.S. — it's great in the cities where the league operates but you get crickets everywhere else. (And as you know, judging the Raptors on TV ratings is a poor metric.)

You never know. Canada Basketball could certain use another pro team in the country (not to mention a WNBA franchise) to raise the game's corporate profile. The national body is actually soliciting donations on its website to help raise money for young players to go to FIBA tournaments.

Related:
Aquilini to bring Indiana Pacers to Vancouver? (Andrew Bucholtz, Sporting Madness)

Triano and Colangelo - 2 future paths tied together as one

There are many reasons why Jay Triano was officially announced as the new, permanent Head Coach of the Toronto Raptors this week. The economics worked out favourably (isn’t getting paid a lot at $3mil. a season, since they’re still paying Mitchell’s bought out contract), there is chemistry there with the club (GM Bryan Colangelo and Coach Triano see eye to eye, and the players like him from all reports as well), and a tremendous marketability remains in tact (Triano is the only Canadian-born Head Coach in the NBA presently and, well, ever!). A lack of superstar candidates helped to ensure that Jay Triano, who did a fairly decent job when he entered as Interim Head Coach upon Sam Mitchell’s firing, retained the position he occupied to end last season.

This move makes sense for a number of reasons so it’s hard to say that it was in the best interest of the club to go a different route. The real question to ask, however, is whether or not this move will bring more success and also reaffirm Colangelo’s status as one of the league’s best executives. Taking a big step back last season finally cast doubt on the two-time NBA Executive of the Year (once with Phoenix and once here with Toronto). This is likely the final shot before wandering eyes begin to appear within the MLSE boardroom.

By winning the Coach of the Year award in the 06/07 season Mitchell put a halt to the plans Colangelo had in place to bring along his former Coach from Phoenix Mike D’Antoni. Whatever your thoughts might be on the uptempo, 7 second shot clock offence that D’Antoni employs (some argue it will never win a Championship), D’Antoni has revitalized the New York Knicks much like he helped to do the same with the Suns. And Mitchell is no longer employed by the Raptors, which obviously shows that the resigning had more to do with appearances than anything else. That award, which was really the only saving grace for Mitchell in his role with the team, was the kink in Colangelo’s ultimate plans, and one of the primary reasons for the mess that is present today with this Toronto outfit.

There’s great skepticism with the appointment of Triano among fans and critics alike, and not just do to a lack of Coaching experience in the Association. There are also plenty of questions regarding his record from this past season (25-40 after taking over), the respect he has garnered throughout the League (even though his players love him a Canadian ballplayer not named Steve Nash has a hard time gaining ‘cred’), and whether this is nothing more than a marketing ploy to drag out Canadians to watch the games. Working with and not against the GM should benefit Triano, as will having a team from day one and not after a negative start to a season.

This seems like a no-brainer appointment, it’s obvious this was the choice at the time when the club is left to finish paying off Sam Mitchell’s buyout contract. However the 3 year extension, even at a relatively bargain basement price for an NBA Coach, makes it appear that Colangelo is placing a lot of faith in keeping his job in Triano’s hands. It is hard to say this move is bad for the club, but whether it’s the best move, only time will tell.

CIS Corner: Coolidge crosses canal to coach Carleton

Notes on our athletes and teams of interest from The 613 ... incidentally, it's possible former Duke basketball player Greg Paulus could be the second-most famous student in Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications, after Kinger.

Ravens: Veteran coach Shelley Coolidge crossing the canal to lead the Carleton women's hockey team after being behind the bench at Ottawa for many seasons. It's a pretty good score for Carleton and if memory serves, Coolidge will be the first woman to be head coach of the team since it moved up to varsity. It could be taken as a sign Carleton is really trying to push women's hockey.

There have been others who coached at both schools, most notably Andy Sparks in basketball, and probably a few in football too.

Golden Gaels: Queen's put out a formal announcement Wednesday (someone was wiped after covering a high school track meet on a humid day) announcing offensive linemen Josh Prinsen (6-foot-7, 290 lbs.) from Bayridge in Kingston and Matt Lapointe (6-foot-4, 270 lbs.) from St. Peter in Ottawa are coming. (This was noted a few months back.)

Meantime, Google alerts turn up the strangest stuff, like an article out of Michigan about a scholar-athlete named Jamie McDevitt-Irvin who plans to skate for the women's hockey Gaels. In the absence of an educated guess about her hockey skill, there was this curious quote:

" 'There's not a lot of difference between Canadian schools and American schools,' McDevitt-Irwin said. 'They speak English, although I did take a French class at Central Michigan just in case.' "

That shouldn't come up too often in Kingston.

Hoops: Two players from the 613 will play for Canada at this summer's FIBA Americas qualifiers. Kellie Ring, a guard for Louis-Riel and the Ottawa Shock club team, is on the cadette team. Jory McDonald, a 6-foot-1 post player from Kingston, was the subject of a great feature in today's Kingston Whig-Standard by Mike Koreen.

The cadet team is bringing in Ryan Evan, a 6-foot-10 (!) post from Earl of March in Kanata, for a final look. They have six players vying for the final two roster spots.

(It's been a while since a Kingston-area lady baller went down to a NCAA Division 1 school. At one point a decade ago, there were three at one time. Major points if you can remember.)

After all that: Liam McMorrow, talk about a fable

Spare a thought for Toronto baller Liam McMorrow.

The seven-footer, who earned a fair amount of attention last year when he earned a scholarship to Marquette without ever playing high school basketball, has been found "medically incapacitated to play basketball," before he ever got to play a game in the NCAA. It is crazy how that could happen to someone with such an unlikely story.

McMorrow, as the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star detailed last September, never played organized hoops, preferring hockey and lacrosse. He shot up up six inches after high school, played a single season at Durham College in Oshawa, and made what is believe to be an unprecedented leap from the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association to D-1 hoops.

" 'I am convinced that (McMorrow) will be one of the most unbelievable stories in college basketball and people will talk about it for years,' said Marquette coach Buzz Williams. 'Look where he is now, and then just wait and see where he'll be in five years.' " — Toronto Star, Sept. 17, 2008

The silver lining is that Marquette says it's going to honour McMorrow's scholarship as he works toward a career in sports broadcasting. Talk about a modern-day fable. You go from never playing basketball to being recruited by a Big East school — as McMorrow put it last year, "I blinked and got it." Then, almost as rapidly, the playing part is taken away through no fault of your own.

Anyway, a door never closes without a window opening, so wish Mr. McMorrow the best.

Related:
Liam McMorrow, we hardly knew we (Cracked Sidewalks)

CIS Corner: Looking out for Bol Kong, part II

There are rumblings surrounding Vancouver baller Bol Kong.

Kong is the Sudan-born swingman who's been trying to get a visa to enter the U.S. since 2007 so he can play at Gonzaga. It got a lot of coverage two summers ago. He's lived two-thirds of his life in Canada but is a Sudanese citizen, which is the cause of a lot of red tape.

Since Rob Pettapiece put up a cisblog.ca post late last week speculating that he might opt for a Canadian school this season, three anonymous commenters have said that the 6-foot-7 Kong is likely to join the Trinity Western Spartans out in Langley, B.C. Trinity has already added one semi-notable transfer, Tyrell Mara, who played in the NCAA Tournament twice with Portland State (he can play right away since he's starting a new degree), so their time is now.

Understandably, maybe this only becomes newsworthy for the dead-tree medium once it is clear whether Kong can enter the U.S. or the Vancouver Canucks are out of the playoffs, whichever comes first.

One commenter thought there was something to the fact Kong's former coach at St. George's School in Vancouver, former Ottawa resident Brian Lee, has joined TWU's staff after previously stating he planned to pull back from coaching. To reiterate Rob's point, Gonzaga is also budgeted scholarship-wise if Kong can't come.

"Gonzaga's recent acquisition of Dallas-area point guard G.J. Vilarino has excited the fanbase in and around Spokane; however, it leaves 14 players for 13 scholarships. Basically, someone has to go. All else being equal, if you were the Bulldogs and had one player whose candidacy unfortunately required lots more work than the others, who might you lean towards when choosing your odd man out?

It makes one wonder whether Kong will stay closer to home. His adopted hometown is Vancouver, and the improved TWU Spartans are but one team in that area who could use a player of his talent, but we'll leave the speculation for his basketball career (NCAA, CIS, or wherever), to those who know more."

It is something to keep an eye on. The role of a blog is to say, "I bet people would like to hear about this," and hope that the paid, professional media follow suit. It's the difference between flipping rocks over and pointing out there are some rocks that need to be flipped.

One would hope Kong gets a resolution soon. It's past the point of doing a passionate plea. It does seem unusual that he would practise with Trinity Western players if he was only doing so to keep in shape. Lee's role is is neat variable, too. He is a former coach at St. Francis Xavier and Kong has been previously been rumoured to be headed there.

Mara, Kong and reigning CIS player of the year Jacob Doerksen all on one team would be pretty formidable, on paper. This will also be the first season where a B.C. team's road to the CIS Final 8 won't go through the UBC Thunderbirds, since the Canada West conference is dropping down to two divisions with cross-over playoffs.

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

CIS Corner: Looking out for Bol Kong

The story of Bol Kong, a Vancouver-area baller whose Sudanese citizenship has caused him much grief when trying to enter the U.S. to play college basketball, has been chronicled here and elsewhere. He is, currently, one of six commitments to the Gonzaga Bulldogs program. However, he may be the only one of those six who's not there to stay.


Gonzaga's recent acquisition of Dallas-area point guard G.J. Vilarino has excited the fanbase in and around Spokane; however, it leaves 14 players for 13 scholarships. Basically, someone has to go. All else being equal, if you were the Bulldogs and had one player whose candidacy unfortunately required lots more work than the others, who might you lean towards when choosing your odd man out?

It makes one wonder whether Kong will stay closer to home. His adopted hometown is Vancouver, and the improved TWU Spartans are but one team in that area who could use a player of his talent, but we'll leave the speculation for his basketball career (NCAA, CIS, or wherever), to those who know more. For now, it'll be good to keep an eye on Kong and see how this plays out.

(Originally posted at The CIS Blog.)

Hoops: Mini-March Madness for Canadians

It sounds like a made-for-TV event, but Toronto-area ballers Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson are part of a national championship U.S. high school basketball team.

Joseph and Thompson, each made some key baskets today to help the Findlay College Prep Pilots beat Oak Hill (Va.) Academy 74-66 to win the inaugural ESPN RISE National High School Invitational. It sounds weird and scary that there actually is a semi-recognized national tournament for high school basketball and that ESPN broadcasts the championship game on the off-day during the Final Four, but what the hey, that's America.

Thompson, as you know, is a 6-foot-9 lefty power forward who is destined for the Texas Longhorns. Joseph is one of the best point guards in his year (he still has another year of high school), but has not signed. The Las Vegas Sun reported last week that it was down to Louisville, Ohio State (meaning he would play against his brother Devoe, who's at Big Ten rival Minnesota), Texas Tech and Texas A & M.

Related:
Pilots beat Oak Hill, 74-66, for ESPN Inv’l title (Las Vegas Sun)

CIS Final 8: Semifinal liveblog, UBC vs. Calgary

We're up and running here at Out of Left Field now--apologies for the delay, tech problems--so stick around for our second-half live blog!

Hoops: Six overtimes, seriously

The best way to put Syracuse's six-overtime win over UConn last night is that the No. 2 team in the NCAA, Pittsburgh, lost earlier in the night. Almost no one noticed.

Toronto's Andy Rautins had no small part, hitting a buzzer-beating, contested three to force the fourth overtime and hitting another to put the 'Cuse ahead to stay in the sixth.



The greatest game ever played (according to the weird guy at the end of the clip, language NSFW)? Not likely. This wasn't N.C. State over Maryland in 1974. But it was a hell of a game.

Bonner spurred by love of country

It keeps popping up here and there; Hoops Addict is the latest to report that former Raptors big man Matt Bonner is working on getting Canadian citizenship so he can play for our senior men's national team.

This very well could be for real.

" 'It's in the process,' Bonner told Hoops Addict. 'It’s something that has to get done regardless because my wife is from Toronto and we’re planning on living here. So I'm going to have to get Canadian status at some point.'

" .... the current coach of the national team, Leo Rautins, is ecstatic about adding a player with the abilities of Bonner to his roster.

" 'I think it's great for the program but Matt (Bonner) is the kind of guy that is great for the team because he’s a blue collar guy,' Rautins told Hoops Addict while grinning from ear-to-ear. 'He’s the kind of guy who is low maintenance and he just wants to play. Even with his wife expecting he's still said he’ll be in camp and that’s the kind of mentality you can’t put a price on that because other guys see that.' "

Feel free to read into that Bonner is not Samuel Dalembert. International basketball prizes a big man who can shoot and Bonner is leading the NBA in three-point shooting.

Canada is currently 19th in the FIBA rankings and will need a lot more than Bonner (who claims a Newfoundlander grandfather) to recapture something on the order of what it had in international hoops the '70s and '80s with the late, great Jack Donahue. , and briefly at the turn of this

Bonner has somewhat outgrown the awkward age he was when he played in Toronto. His streaky shooting masked flaws seemed obvious to everyone other than Sam Mitchell (Scott Carefoot had the immortal line for Bonner's Toronto tenure, saying basically that Bryan Colangelo had to trade him since it was the only way to keep Smitch from playing him so much). He has only got better playing with a top team such as the Spurs; he's even good enough to have an impact in fantasy leagues (sadly, though, there is no saving Team Säger Bombs in the Rockhard Fantasy League this season, consider your day made that you're being spared the gory details of what happens when you can't log in on draft night).

Bonner, though, become into a player. He'll still have times where someone dunks over him and there's not much he can do about it, but that is part of his humble, hardworking everyman appeal. Please keep in mind he is doing this since he married a woman from Toronto, but still, it's pretty cool being a Raptors fan and seeing a former player return the adulation. It trumps finding that another former Raptors forward, Popeye Jones, has two sons who are promising hockey players, although that was pretty cool, too.

Related:
Bonner plays to play for Canada (Ryan McNeill, Hoops Addict)

Previous:
Red Rocket wants to wear red and white (Nov. 24, 2008)

You learn something new every day...

There's not much original to add, but canoe.ca, as part of Black History Month, is running personal essays all month from prominent black Canadians. The basketball player Tammy Sutton-Brown has written one. It's worth a click through, just to get a perspective on Canadian athlete who is little publicized.

The Indiana Fever centre claims, aside from her parents, her major influences are her Hall of Fame-nominated coach at Rutgers, C. Vivian Stringer, and her namesake, Tamara Dobson, Cleopatra Jones herself.

(Incidentally, Vivian Stringer's nomination caused one column in Springfield, Mass., home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, to validate the Masshole stereotype of dreaming up snubs where none exist and being kind of parochial. Namely, Rebecca Lobo, was not one of the two women's finalists over Stringer, a true builder in the women's game and, Cynthia Cooper, who actually has some name recognition among casual sports fans.

This in pretty much in keeping with the time that one Boston-based Sports Illustrated columnist referred to Howard Stern as Boston University's "most accomplished alumnus," either not knowing nor caring that Dr. Martin Luther King did his PhD at BU. C'est la vie!)

Hoops: Thompson takes game to Vegas

It's an ongoing commitment to keep up to speed with the teenage Canuck ballers who will lead us back to the Olympics one day. (Maybe so, maybe not, but let's at least perish the thought the hoops talent is lacking in Canada.)

Small forward Tristan Thompson is joining a top Las Vegas high school team that currently includes Toronto's Cory Joseph. Ours is not to question how Thompson could go from leaving a school in New Jersey to playing for Findlay Prep in Nevada; when you're on his strata as a player, this is pretty commonplace. His new team might not be done adding Canadian content, according to the Las Vegas Sun:

"Rumors now are also swirling regarding the future addition of sophomore guard Myck Kabongo, who currently plays at St. Benedict's and committed to Texas last month. He's also a childhood pal of Thompson and Joseph."

Again, it is something to be mindful of if you care about Canada's contributions to a game one of our own invented.

(Glove tap for the link to Ryan Wolstat at Courtside.)

Related:
Highly touted junior Thompson headed to Findlay Prep (Las Vegas Sun)