Arsenalist

A couple weeks ago Norma Wick was let go (fired) from Raptors TV. After two weeks of serious thinking, soul searching and staring into the lake at my reflection I’ve concluded that it was probably long overdue. Norma Wick is a fine lady, a gentlewoman, an articulate hard-working reporter that can also be considered easy on the eyes by some, but what she is not is a basketball analyst. It’s not really her fault that we had to listen to her ramblings in the Raptors TV studio for an entire season causing many of us great discomfort. The blame should be on the people running Raptors TV who thought us basketball fans were naive enough to not see through Norma and her “insight”.

Now Norma didn’t help herself either with her “he was great tonight” lines after every game and probably never deserves to see an inside of a basketball studio ever again. But bad as she was in the studio, she was a passable sideline reporter who at least knew how to ask the cliche post-game questions like “How does the win feel?”. And of course who can forget Norma maintaining a 2 inch distance from the players when doing those interviews - it was almost romantic. I’d put her on par with the flamboyant, possibly-homosexual Craig Sager when it comes to reporting talent, I’d even go so far and say I’d rather have Norma interview Duncan after winning the title than Sager. So since Norma’s out of work I encourage her to go to wordpress.com and start a blog about the Raptors, I’ll guarantee it’ll be popular.

As with anything in life, RealGM has a take on who should replace Norma and the list consists of nothing but half-decent eye candy disguised as sports fans. I say enough of hiring female objects to do sports reporting. If I wanted to see hot girls having something to do with sports I’d go watch reruns of those Best Damn Sports Show specials but that’s not really what I’m looking for after a nerve-racking loss or a euphoric win. Here’s hoping Raptors TV gives Jack Armstrong about 50% more work, hires a real anchor man in the studio (more like Ernie Johnson, less like Suneel Joshi), lightens the colors in the studio and stops treating the audience like they don’t know what a back-court violation is. If you look at their Talent Roster you’ll realize that there are maybe three people there that you wouldn’t slam the door on if they started talking basketball. One of those guys, Brian Heaney, just ditched them for a real job at Acadia University so the talent on that “roster” just got even sparser.

Did I just mention Suneel Joshi in the previous paragraph? I did, didn’t I? Well how do you like that. That’s the man who completely destroyed any chance of brown people ever having a shot at those kinds of jobs. While we’re at it let’s also thank Farhan Lalji and his donut-eating, milk-shake-guzzling ass for ruining it for brown people in Vancouver. The only brown guy (at least I think he’s brown) still holding a decent sports job is Adnan Virk over at The Score.

Not much to discuss in Raptor land these days unless you want to speculate on how Tim Donaghy might’ve screwed us in Game 6.

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