On vacation till July 15th, gonna miss a couple Toronto FC games….

Later.

It’s time for a basketball media overhaul in Toronto. We’ve been suffering at the hands of inept media professionals in Toronto for well over a decade and although their lack of skill, judgment, knowledge and in some cases, passion, has been overlooked for all these years, it has started to become unbearable. The frenetic pace of the regular season is often a good cover-up for the lacking coverage and insight provided by local newspaper outlets, sports channels and radio stations but it’s in the off-season that we truly notice just how useless Toronto basketball reporters are to their fans.

It’s a shame that most fans in the city get their dose of basketball fix from RealGM or the rare ESPN story or even what Chad Ford said in question 6 of his chat wrap. If it’s not that, we hope Bill Simmons had a take on us in his Page 2 report. Leave to to MacLeans to speak for us and give us the credit and due we deserve. Quoting the great Simmons:

[The Raptors] have the most rabid fans of anyone in the league. There are more of them than you’d ever think, they take every slight personally, and they’ll absolutely keep sending emails to people like me until their team is given the credit they deserve.

For a fan base that is so passionate and begs to be fed basketball, what do we get? We get Doug Smith doing no real reporting and telling us his half thought out opinions which are probably created by him doing 10 minutes of Googling each morning. We get TSN which still relies on Leo Rautins to still explain to us how a blocked shot needs to stay inbound. Here’s TSN.ca’s list of columnists, do you see anyone that you might want to check out for your pre-draft coverage? Didn’t think so. We get hate-spewing, 100%-opinion-0% facts Dave Feschuk who is probably the most respectable of them all since you know exactly where he stands. On the TV side we get Sherman Hamilton and until recently, Norma Wick.

Aside from Michael Grange from the Globe and Mail, there isn’t a single basketball reporter in this town that is objective, honest and does his bit of research before picking up the pen. Unfortunately his bosses make him do other work besides basketball which is a shame.

I believe that the Raptors fan base has outgrown the media that is responsible for covering the team. Maybe it’s the executives that are to blame for not giving enough credit to the sport of basketball and its significance in the city, maybe if they had a sense to actually send a representative each to the NBA Draft, we’d have better coverage and wouldn’t rely on the ticker to tell us whats going on. Browsing on RealGM I found this video of Jorge Garbjosa recovering from his injury. Now it’s not nordique’s job to tell us Garbjosa’s inury status, this story should’ve been on Sportsnet or TSN last night.

Nobody seems to know anything about the Jason Kapono signing because nobody hass bothered to look into it. You know, do some reporting. What were his other offers? How long was BC targeting him? Sean Deveney from sportingnews.com has to inform us that the Raptors spent their entire MLE on Kapono, shouldn’t this news be coming from Toronto? It’s ESPN that breaks the stories for us, not TheStar.com. New York has an established group of reporters that comprehensively cover the good and bad of their teams, whatever you think of Vescey and the bunch, you can’t say that they don’t put in the time when writing their pieces. It’s that type of effort that we’ve come to deserve and expect but never get.

At this point I could go into details of how stale Leo Rautins is and how bad Paul Jones/Eric Smith are on the radio. I could discuss how Eric Smith spends 2 minutes asking a one line question, Chuck Swirsky’s homerism and all those would be valid points to harp about. But the general point I’m trying to make is that the newspapers, TV, radio all need to pick up their slack in covering the NBA and the Raptors to a degree where fans’ first impulse upon reading an article isn’t to mutter, What a moron!

Lucky finally favored Cunningham

How do you tell when a commentator is truly a fan? When he yells out Oh No! after the goalie comes way out of his line and is barely able to clear the ball. That’s Craig Forrest for you. After another great Sam Reynolds performance it was left to Srdjan Djekanovic to close out the game in goal after Reynolds had to be carried off the field with a leg injury. By the the skin of our teeth and by a hairs breadth did he hang on to the lead and give Toronto FC their first road win in Salt Lake City. On his first play Djekanovic came way out of his line and was lucky that Jamie Watson hit the crossbar on a beautiful lob. Soon after came the shaky clearance which almost gave Forrest a heart attack.

Let’s talk about the game, have you ever played FIFA or Pro Evolution against a lazy player who doesn’t really bother setting up any organized attacks but instead hopes the through ball goes through putting the striker in the clear? That’s how Real Salt Lake play, its almost fun to watch because the pitch is twice the size of BMO field and the play is as open as Annabel Chong. RSL is not a good team (1 win all season) and TFC had to know they could get all three points from this one. They were up to the task and why not, this is the type of game that they can thrive in and thrive they did early on, especially Jeff Cunningham who finally convinced lady luck not to screw him over. His run after what appeared to be a harmless Dichio header saw him in the clear and the strike hit both crossbars and went in to the surprise of everyone. He’s been in those positions all season long and finally he got to finish one off, his celebration spoke of relief rather than joy which was punctuated with a medium-sized FU at his former team.

Before we talk about Alecko’s momentary revenge, lets switch over to Collin Samuels, aka The Fat Man. That’s not meant as a slight towards the ample forward but as a compliment because it is this fat/strength that allows him to put defenders on his back, make a great turn and do something positive with the ball. Him, Cunningham and Dichio are very good at controlling the ball with their backs against the defender and then trying to pick out a run. Cunningham probably has the best first touch of the three and it shows on the pitch. Samuels played aggressive defense, correctly predicted the flow of plays and got to the ball first seemingly every time. He must’ve made at least four tackles which were purely based on timing. Great addition so far.

Chris Pozniak got really lazy after Eskandarian managed to latch on to the ball in the area, Pozniak was caught giving Esk a nice backrub along with some knee on knee action making the penalty call too easy for the ref. The yellow card added additional insult but what surprised me was Pozniak’s willingness to debate the call. Alecko shot to the left of Reynolds who had guessed right and once the camera focused on the goalie, his lips were yelling F**K. Eskandarian’s visage during his celebration spoke of his long awaited first goal for RSL. This happened right before halftime so it sort of put a damper on my halftime entertainment which included watching my wife pack while complaining about my lack of involvement in the process.

On to the second half and Cunningham is hurt in the stomach area, he’s out. The injuries are piling up and Mo Johnston is hoping and praying Copa America and the U-20’s get canceled so he can get some players back. They were talking earlier about the altitude of Salt Lake and how it can negatively affect visiting teams because they aren’t used to playing there and get tired. Well, there was no sign of that, au contraire, Toronto FC was controlling play for long stretches and at one point strung together what appeared to be 20+ passes. Despite the open play no team got any real opportunities with most of the attacks getting cut off short of the danger area, as I said before, hoping to get through balls across was the name of the game today.

But all that talk about the altitude started to make sense after the 70th minute when Toronto FC really started making some plays which made one question if someone hadn’t spiked their punch. Wayward passes, ill-advised throws and just silly old mistakes that a better team than RSL might have punished. Fortunately nothing of harm came and it wasn’t until Samuel was brought down by a trip a foot inside the area that the excitement began. He slotted one home in the exact same area as Eskandarian giving us a 2-1 lead. The goalie fiasco followed and the rest is history.

Here are some thoughts to munch on:

• Mo Johnston did not make substitution despite the team being clearly tired in the late stages of the game. Lucky for him it worked out.
• Collin Samuels appears to be very effective when playing down the middle as a lone striker.
• Tyrone Marshall was impressive in his debut, smart clearances and a short glimpse of a turn and shoot that makes me think he might score some goals for us.
• Very physical game, lot of animosity between Cunningham and his ex-buddies but what was surprising was how pissed off Ronnie O’Brien gets in the game. I like the “I’m on the edge baby, don’t f**k with me attitude” of the Irishman.
• Maurice Edu has been invisible of late, the only time I saw him do something productive today was when he cleared the ball in the area once, no joke.
• Jim Brennan is holding the fort down defensively and needs to get some ink for doing that, he was solid as usual and always seems to be there whenever things are on the verge of breaking down.
• I rarely noticed Todd Dunivant’s name being mentioned, which if you’re a defender, is a great thing.
• The pitch in Salt Lake City is brutal, they’re playing in a university’s stadium and it looks awful. Can’t tell the touchlines from the football lines and you can’t even see the near touchline. The ball gets lost (seriously) between the boards on the near side because there’s no room down there. Thank God they’re getting a new stadium, their fans seem like they deserve it.

We get our first road win, Man of the Match for me is Sam Reynolds, honors go to Collin Samuels. It looks like we’ll be without Reynolds for a few games although nothing is quite official. So this means Djekanovic will get another chance to prove that he can get his footing and positioning right for a change. Hopefully he can come through for us over the next week or so.

I’m off to sunny Spain and Morocco for 10 days which means I’ll miss the next couple games which sucks. Both my readers will be terribly distraught but fear not, check out Mistake By The Lake and The Offside for more fan commentary. And of course there’s always Red Patch Boys and Go Toronto FC. If you use an RSS reader, be sure to get the feed.

Thanks for reading. Later.