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"Jake Voskhul has lasted a long time in the NBA with only marginal talent. But his one gift is fouling." |
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Rather than list a bunch of links this morning, I'm going to focus on this typically douchey Toronto Sun column from Frank Zicarelli that pisses all over Chris Bosh's Olympic parade. "While winning a gold medal and helping the U.S. regain its lustre on the international stage should be applauded, they mean very little when it comes to the NBA and the Raptors. This notion that Bosh will somehow benefit from playing at a high level is utter nonsense." Nobody's saying that Bosh winning the gold medal means that he's going to lead the Raptors to a championship next season. But out of the 12 guys on the Team USA roster, you could make a good case that Bosh will reap the biggest confidence boost from the experience. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant are certainly not lacking in self-confidence or leadership skills. The fact that Bosh proved to be equally as important as those superstars in leading the team to gold is something he can carry over to his mentality next season. How is that "utter nonsense"? Bosh being Bosh and knowing how the media game gets played, he'll talk glowingly about the Olympic experience when the subject inevitably gets broached. He'll say all the right things, but no one is going to remember his role in helping the U.S. defeat Spain. Allow me to speak for actual North American basketball fans (something tells me you're not one of them) when I ask that you don't try to tell us what we will and won't remember. The gold medal game was one of the most exciting basketball games I've watched in years and it thrilled me that Bosh was an integral part of Team USA fending off the determined Spaniards. So this is one person who will remember, you cocksmoker. No one is going to confuse Roko Ukic for Jason Kidd, Will Solomon for LeBron James or Hassan Adams for Kobe Bryant. Really, Frank? And nobody is going to confuse you with any sportswriter that actually has skill or integrity. What's your point? That the last three guys on the Raptors bench aren't nearly as good as three of the best players in the NBA? Brilliant observation, you disingenuous fucktard. Maybe this Olympic experience will help Bosh lead the Raptors out of the first round next season. Maybe it won't. I'm sure Frank will be thinking "I told them so" if the Raptors do anything less than make it to the Eastern Conference Finals. It's really easy to make yourself look smart with a column like this when only one of 30 NBA teams can win a championship in any given season and the odds are therefore stacked against any individual team winning a championship during any given player's career. That's why smart people recognize that Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing are still Hall of Famers even though they didn't win rings. Columns like this one are nothing more than lame attention-grabbers — a desperate cry for relevance coming from a dinosaur in a dying industry. "Everybody's patting Bosh on the back so I'm going to do the opposite and shit all over him so people will notice me! YAYYY, ME!" Pathetic. We see right through you, Frank. Edited to add: If I'm going to tear Zicarelli a new asshole for his idiotic column, it's only fair that I give props to Doug Smith for actually making some sense on his blog: "Speaking of Bosh, we all saw how well he played in Beijing and how his defensive intensity was off the chart. A word of warning: You are not going to see the same level of intensity every night for an 82-game season. Not going to happen. It's one thing to play that way for 20 minutes or so for eight games over more than two weeks; it's quite another to expect it on back-to-back nights in, say, Toronto and Milwaukee some Friday-Saturday in February. What you are going to see, I think, is a different Bosh in 'big games.' Important regular season games, playoff games, moments of tight games when they need a leader to step up on the defensive end. Then you'll see a new level of confidence, a new level of leadership that was born in the Olympics. Every night? Not going to happen. It can't. No one – not you, not me, not him – is wired that way." |
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