khandor’s sports blog

The highlight of a very busy weekend in the world of professional sports?

… which included:

* The 136th running of the Kentucky Derby
* The beginning of the 2nd Round in the NHL Playoffs
* The beginning of the 2nd Round in the NBA Playoffs

What this fine young player from Northern Ireland accomplished Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon, on the PGA Tour:

Best get accustomed to seeing his face.

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Golf’s changing of the guard

To see Irishman Padraig Harrington, grinning wider than an Augusta fairway, in his civilian clothes, waiting for McIlroy after the round, throwing a paternal arm around the lad, telling him he’d just crafted “a good bit of stuff”; to see stoic Jim Furyk give him an earnest soul shake by the scorer’s table; to see Phil Mickelson’s caddie, Jim (Bones) Mackay, interrupt a McIlroy press session outside to congratulate the winner; to see Rory himself give the Euro-styled “hands over head” appreciation clap to the crowd … to see all that was to see a golf world embrace the new kid in town, and to read into that the existence of a little Tiger Fatigue would not be the wrong call at all.

Throw in a springtime rebirth for Mickelson – he followed his win at Augusta by beating everyone at Quail Hollow not named “Rory McIlroy,” then gushed about McIlroy to CBS afterward, trumping Tiger’s post-Masters pout – and you have Tiger wondering where he fits in at this party.

When a member of the traditional sports media SMACKS ONE CLEAR OUT OF THE PARK … by a country mile! … there is nothing left to do but distribute his/her words for others to consume.

Q1. What’s really wrong with the Toronto Raptors?

A1. Simply read on, courtesy of Mr. Lankhof.

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Why the Raptors will always be losers

For the Raptors, the secret to success — and much-needed swagger — is all in their heads

The Raptors have turned failure into an artform.

In 15 seasons, the franchise has reached the playoffs five times and advanced past the first round only once. There have been seven head coaches from the celebrated (Lenny Wilkens) to the unlikely (Kevin O’Neill) to the native son (Jay Triano) and none have been able to instill a passion and pride in being a Raptor.

Nobody in the front office, from the player-friendly Isiah Thomas to the more aloof Bryan Colangelo and the sincerest spirit this side of Dudley DoRight, Glen Grunwald, have been able to give this team a positive identity. None have been able to make the Raptors a franchise for which NBA players want to play.

The athletes that do come here either end up frustrated with the franchise’s inertia, or become mere basketball mercenaries putting in time until a better invitation beckons.

“Teams who are succesful have that swagger and believe that this is the way life is and that they have an entitlement to success. There is cohesion, a sense of fighting for the same thing, not just a contract for next year,” says Bert Carron, a psychologist and one of Canada’s most highly-regarded experts on group and team dynamics.

“Teams that are zero-and-20 never have team reunions. Success produces togetherness.”

The Raptors never seem to get it together compiling just three playoff game victories in the past eight seasons. The Raptors, says Carron, “from their inception, have had athletes trying to get out of town. That sense of this is a place to play and we’re as good as anyone doesn’t seem to be there.”

That was all supposed to start to change this year with new players and a new attitude.

Never happened.

Some blame Colangelo’s reliance of European players, noting they are soft. But, let’s be honest, this team hasn’t scared anyone but it’s fans in years, well before Colangelo went puddle-jumping.

The Raptors have been regarded as pushovers, particularly since the Vince Carter era. They have a reputation as a team that can’t — or won’t — fight through adversity or stand up for each other.

These guys kick butt about as often as the cute, cuddly kittens in those Charmin’ bathroom commercials.

Last November, Celtics’ Paul Pierce postured over a prone Chris Bosh after dunking over the Raptors’ best player and driving a knee into his crotch.

The referees assessed Pierce a technical for trash talk, Toronto coaches were up and screaming. Bosh’s teammates didn’t even bother getting off the bench.

This is a team in serious need of a make-over.

“Tell them I’m available anytime they want,” chuckles John Eliot.

A member of the faculty at Rice University and one of America’s most renowned performance consultants. Eliot helped turn a moribund Tampa Bay Rays franchise into a championship contender. He has worked with the San Antonio Spurs, NASA, the U.S. Olympic team and major corporations like Merrill Lynch. He is a proponent of the Phil Jackson school of coaching.

Teams, he says, spend too much time on the Xs and Os and not enough on winning the mental game.

“Until they (Raptors) make a fundamental shift like this they’re going to sputter,” says Eliot. “Players who spend all their time on the physical game only know how to block, run, lift, shoot, or swing. There are a lot of athletes who know how to do those things. Only a few really know how to win.”

At the professional level, athletes are all fairly equal in talent. The difference then between athletes who win and those who don’t (like the Raptors) is how they think.

“A player who can win the inner battle knows how to win. He knows his game will hold up under pressure. The outcome is determined by which players or teams have the more confident, relaxed, more quiet mind. When it’s do or die, its not a question anymore of who has the best cross-over or who’s fade-away happens to be working. The question is who will be able to keep their mind quiet in the pressure situation,” says Eliot.

“That’s why you see teams with all kinds of talent, teams with the best drafts, but they never win championships.”

Or, in the Raptors case rarely make the playoffs.

There have been innumerable examples of Raptors whose minds seemed to be in all the wrong places, including one instance when Chris Childs even forgot the score and blew a game.

Alonzo Mourning went one step further — deciding not to show up in either mind or body.

Bad karma all round.

Which explains why Vince Carter at the end was more concerned about his mother’s free parking space than his team’s playoff place.

“It comes down to pride,” explains Wesch. “There has to be a semse of belonging to something important. There has to be a change of culture and that starts at the top with the administration, with coaching, you have to instill a sense of pride, of passion, a sense of belonging, a sense of wanting to wear that jersey, of wanting to be part of that organization. That is who you are. That is your home and you will do anything to defend that territory with everything that you have.”

When Pierce stared down Bosh, nobody is suggesting the Raptors should’ve started World War III but they could’ve at least pretended to care.

“There’s no other way to say it — we just got punked,” said Raptors’ swingman, Antoine Wright at the time, in a rare display of disapproval amidst indifference.

There is pride in wearing a Celtics’ jersey.

There is tradition in a Lakers’ uniform.

A Raptors jersey is just filled with broken promises.

“When you look at the Raptors organization there’s nothing that screams out, nothing that makes a kid want to be part of it because there’s a tradition of excellence. If you can’t build that culture how can you inspire some kid (from the U.S.) who lives 5,000 kilometres away to want to play for you,” says Wesch.

“Success isn’t just a matter of skill. There are lots of skilled athletes. It’s about desire and heart, that respect and passion for the jersey. That symbol represents who we are as a team, as players, as people, as an organization and you don’t put that on the floor to get stepped on.”

The Raptors always get stepped on, like in losing to a broken-down Bulls team in the final week of a playoff race. At home.

Like in being out-hustled by a beatable Golden State team.

Like in getting out-muscled for rebounds.

Like in waving people by on defence like a traffic cop at rush hour.

Passivity has plagued the Raptors for years. During a game in Memphis when Sam Mitchell was coaching, Jamario Moon hit the court head first after a very hard and dirty foul by Hakeem Warrick.

Mitchell was the only Raptor who reacted that night with anything close to anger.

The Raptors have had talent. Carter and Bosh are all-NBA performers. They just haven’t had the intangible, call it intensity or a team with a hardened edge.

“It’s possible to have a lot of talent and still not succeed. Eighty to ninety percent of winning is the mental side of sport. The top players have that figured out,” says Craig Hall, a professor in Kinesiology at the University of Western Ontario, who specializes in imaging.

“You have to be able to imagine yourself being succesful. If you can’t imagine it, it’s unlikely you will be succesful.”

The Raptors have had nine players on the league’s all-rookie team and off the floor, Colangelo was named executive of the year.

But they have never had an inspirational team leader — a guy who would grab a floundering team by the scruff of the neck like a Michael Jordan in basketball or a Mark Messier or a Joe Namath or even a Pinball Clemons.

Never have they had a player who when his athletic ability was calculated, came up to more than the sum of his parts.

“Team leaders have a huge part in success. I’m talking about that E.F. Hutton in the locker room; he says something and everyone listens,” says Carron.

“A lot of people can talk but it has to be a team-first guy; if you’ve got no credibility nobody is going to listen. It doesn’t have to be a Hall of Famer but it has to be someone respected for their work ethic or their skill or both.”

Damon Stoudamire was rookie of the year. In between, Tracey McGrady was a star and Marcus Camby seemed a pillar on which to build.

Now there are Andrea Bargnani and Hedo Turkoglu. But Bargnani can score 20 one night and disappear the next. Turkoglu is enigmatic and by NBA standards, fragile. He’s had to come out of games for everything from fatigue to a sore tummy and at 31 looks lifeless instead of Colangelo’s Godsend.

Jose Calderon seems over-matched too many nights. To suggest it’s because they’re European is too simplistic.

OK, nobody plays defence. It doesn’t mean they can’t. They just don’t. Defence is more about will and toughness than pure skill. Again, it comes to mindset.

In the NBA, the Spurs, Celtics, Phil Jackson in Los Angeles, and just recently Portland, have all adopted many of Eliot’s theories. Their records suggest it works. And, Eliot draws a parallel between the Rays’ history of chronic under-achievement and the Raptors.

“You had the same situation. I worked with the Rays for a couple years. They had Wade Boggs, Fred McGriff and they brought in plenty of talent. But the clubhouse, the front office, the culture around the team was, ‘Well you can’t win in Tampa Bay, you can’t get fans in Tampa Bay.’ There was a feeling that for some reason it would be harder there than anywhere else.”

Somehow the pieces to the puzzle in Tampa, as with the Raptors, never seemed to fit.

It wasn’t until the organization started to pay as much attention to the mental game as the technical side (the scouting, drafting, skill sets, game strategy) that it became succesful.

Meantime, it’s becoming evident the Raptors will lose Bosh to free agency. It seems unlikely that he can imagine the Raptors turning into a Cinderella team.

After watching his team lose 19 of the last 30 games in another disastrous playoff run, it is difficult to argue the point.

It is also difficult to argue that he would become the latest in a long series of leaders who, from Moses to Vince, has ended up in the desert rather than a promised land. That doesn’t make Bosh a bad person or a bad player but for whatever reason he hasn’t been able to transfer the passion and excellence with which he plays to his teammates.

Bloggers and fans are already critical of Bosh for — even before getting his face rearranged — “mentally” shutting it down.

But maybe the reality is that Bosh didn’t quit on the team but rather that the team quit on Bosh. It happens.

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What yours truly has LONG AGO identified as being missing from this franchise is a FUNADMENTAL commitment to …

not just to putting a “competitive” and highly “entertaining” product on the floor, which is capable of winning a relatively high number of regular season games, but …

achieving the PRIME OBJECTIVE of WINNING MULTIPLE LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIPS, which should be the Paradigm of every professional sports organization.

Until the “language” and the “actions” of the LEADERS at the top of MLSE’s pro sports sector actually begin to reflect THIS exact type of complete commitment … there will be NO major success in the future of the Toronto Raptors [or, for that matter, the Maple Leafs and TFC].

Kudos to Mr. Lankof!

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PS. FWIW … regular readers of this space … please know, as well, that the fee for services rendered by yours truly is a lot more reasonable compared to any of the noted “sports psych” specialists identified in this article by Mr. Lankof.

Despite the best efforts of this corner to assert otherwise over the course of the last 2+ years, there are still a fair share of individuals who would try to suggest that the image which exists of Toronto, Canada in the hearts and minds of most American-born professional athletes is that of a backwater wasteland.

Well … for the  benefit of those people:

Why Pro Athletes Love Toronto

Today, however, Toronto is a road trip just about every pro athlete looks forward to. Some say the city has a cool, international vibe that increasingly stands out. Some like the plentitude of cheap concert tickets—a boon for athletes with big posses—or the convenience of the must-be-19 drinking law. (Rookie guard DeMar DeRozan of the Raptors, who is 20, was ordering chocolate milk at dinner before his teammates told him the good news).

Athletes get a warm welcome at the city’s relatively libertine gentlemen’s clubs which, according to a spokeswoman for the Toronto Convention and Visitors Bureau, tend to “clear out the champagne room” for visiting athletes. And it helps that the tentacles of the tabloids and gossip Web sites rarely extend this far into the frozen north. “People like to come here to party,” says Raptors power forward Chris Bosh.

Basketball stars like LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Jamaal Magloire of the Miami Heat (a Toronto native) have come to Toronto for fun—even during the NBA offseason. Since the Buffalo Bills began playing annual games at Toronto’s Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome) in 2008, an increasing number of NFL players have started passing through “the 416,” which is the city’s area code. Baseball players, who’ve been coming here since 1977 to play the Blue Jays, have good memories.

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From a reputable source like the Wall Street Journal, no less.

Nuff said.

The Sunday afternoon a nation stood still …

… and, then, cheered as ONE.

The next instalment of the all-time great Canada-Russia hockey series will take place at 7:30 PM this evening during the men’s quarter-final match-up at the 2010 Vancouver Olmypics. 

Heroes come in a variety of different shapes and sizes.

Will there be a new one born tonight in the history of Canadian hockey?

Sometimes …

someone, although fairly non-descript by most other measures, simply seizes the moment, and somehow … 

Summit Series, September 1972

does something which is completely extraordinary.

Other times …

someone simply executes a relatively unsung role to perfection, and in the process, allows others to succeed in spectacular fashion …

Canada Cup,1987

To wit:

Keep your eyes on the far left of the screen, at the 1:31 mark of the 3rd period, when Wayne Gretzky, Larry Murphy and Mario Lemiuex begin their 3-on-1 break which eventually led to the winning goal. Pay particular attention to the ensuing slow-motion replays.

Do you see the hook play made by Dale Hawerchuk [future Hall Of Famer], on Russia’s #27, preventing him from completing his back-check?  

If Hawerchuk had not made this specific play …

Might #27 have been able to catch up to Lemiuex and disrupt the entire sequence of events?

If this infraction had been whistled by the official on the play …

Would Team Canada have still been able to score the winning goal, in the 2-on-1 situation with just Gretzky and Murphy?

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In team sports, there are always an infinite number of small, individual plays made in a game which contribute to one team, either, winning or losing.

What was once reserved exclusively for a cornucopia of US college football bowl extravaganzas has now been supplanted by the National Hockey League’s feautured regular season contest, played annually on this date, on an outdoor rink, where so many of us first learned to love the game. 

Nov 22 2003, Commonwealth Stadium

Jan 01, 2008, Rich Stadium

Jan 01 2009, Wrigley Field

Jan 01 2010, Fenway Park - Live Stream

If you’re a real “player” at-heart … it doesn’t get any better than this. 

Although this story first appeared last weekend, it deserves a special place [and a page of its own] in the “Site Map” of this blog.

The Leafs Abomination
“Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has massive resources, which is a good thing. I’ve seen a real lack of foresight in the use of those resources to really gain a competitive advantage. Personnel, scouting procedures, processes, development, all those things,” Button says. “I couldn’t fathom how pennywise and pound-foolish they were. I mean, if development and recruiting are going to be key parts of your operation – and they need to be – well, I’ll tell you what, you blanket the earth. You use your resources. If you can’t spend some of your resources on player acquisition (because of the salary cap), you spend it on developing players. You make sure you’re as sharp as anything. In my time there, I thought that was severely lacking.”

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Kudos galore to Dave Feschuk and Michael Grange, two of the best journalists who happen to patrol a sports beat in the Greater Toronto Area.

Mandatory reading for Maple Leafs and Raptors and TFC fans everywhere!

Related:

Winning Isn’t Everything

Burke rips into Heatley, agents
“For a player to quietly and professionally ask for a trade, that’s fair ball for me. For a player to pop off and say he wants out or leak it, in my mind you are now no longer interested in your team. If you’ve done that you’ve handicapped them, you’ve handcuffed the GM,” said Burke.

“As long as you are on that team, you owe them to maximize the asset, and once you’ve taken that step, sorry I don’t accept that.”

Burke said he would not deal a player who went public with a trade request.

“I’m not blaming Dany, this could be the agent,” said Burke. “When you have players come ask you for a trade, I tell the players, `Don’t finish that sentence, because once you ask, I’m going to move you.’ If a player says `I want out,’ you’re darn right you’re going. I’m not kissing anyone’s ass to play in my town, so to hell with you, don’t finish the sentence. My second rule is: If I hear about this, then you’re not going anywhere.”

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There’s a good reason Brian Burke failed to take the Vancouver Canucks to the Stanley Cup Finals.

There’s a good reason Brian Burke ran away from the Anaheim Ducks lickady-split in the aftermath of winning just 1 Stanley Cup … built largely on the backs of players who were mostly acquired by his predecessor.

Talk like what you see above, concerning this … i.e. “Don’t finish that sentence …” and, antiquated Rules of Engagement which read like, i.e. i.e. “If I hear about this, then you’re not going anywhere.” … are the characteristics of an ‘old school’ GM who is never going to succeed in a MAJOR WAY in the modern-day world of sport which exists today.

You can WRITE that call down in STONE.

Do you see Ken Holland making statements like THAT? How about Jimmy Devellano? Or, Lou Lamoriello? Or, Jim Rutherford?

Unfortunately, the Toronto Maple Leafs will repeatedly fail to re-build their once proud franchise under the mis-guided blustery Leadership Style of Brian Burke, unable to capture multiple Stanley Cups along the way … which they most assuredly have the resources to do … even though yours truly sincere hopes that that specific call is one that comes up nothing but snake eyes in the immediate years ahead.

Making a loud to-do over NOT having ANY interest in the acquisition of a player in the situation of a Danny Heatley, who is currently employed by ANOTHER team in the NHL?

Please.

Mr. Burke needs to give his own head a good shake and get down to the nitty-gritty business of actually building the Toronto Maple Leafs.