Greed between the lines in TV mess

I don’t have to upgrade my cable package to get all of the Columbus Blue Jackets or Vegas Golden Knights playoff games, but I do if I want to see all of the Raptors. How can this be so? — Paul M. It is so because the Raptors have the single-most screwed up broadcast situation in all of North American professional sports and it’s not even close. I quite like and admire and respect all the men and women who work on the shows and it is not their fault in the least, but it’s a stupid system. The blame lies solely with ownership because they are understandably selfish and want to protect their own financial interest, and I cannot imagine it changing. But as long as there’s TSN1, 3, 4 and 5 and separate TSN2 and Sportsnet and Sportsnet One and Sportsnet East, Central and West — or whatever the actual titles — and Bell and Rogers and the cable providers have the ability to gouge viewers in “packages,” it won’t change. Is Joel Embiid at risk of going down the Dwight Howard path? It seems like he’s at a crossroads between becoming a dominant player or spending his time trying to be a big goofy kid. For Howard, that meant a career where he is now viewed as an unfocused professional who underachieved based on his talent. Too harsh? —J.M. A bit too harsh, yeah. I am not at any level a Dwight Howard fan, nor am I a big Embiid booster, but at least Embiid has expanded his game. Howard is no better an offensive player today than he was in his longgone prime and when they write the list of the most disappointing players in the game for this era, he’s going to be at the top of any legitimate list. Howard, however, was much more a “character” than Embiid can ever hope to be, for what that’s worth — and it’s worth nothing in my opinion. Embiid bores me and Howard didn’t. If the opportunity arose to trade Kyle Lowry for a decent younger point guard, would you advise it? My idea of a dream guard would be Kemba Walker. — Raven Lowry is a very interesting case and I don’t know how it will play out. I believe he is the team’s heart, but if they do have to move on to another era, moving him for a younger piece would make sense even if it was a tiny step back. In your view, how has players’ perceptions of playing in Toronto changed since the early years of the franchise? I guess if we could bucket players, kindly differentiate between superstars/all-stars vs. role players. — Mark D. The only thing — and I will take this to my grave — that stood between the Raptors and top free agents for more than a decade between, say, 2002 and 2012 was that the team wasn’t very good. Sure, in the SamBryan era in the mid-2000s they were OK, but so were a lot of teams. The Raptors went through a stretch of muddled management and muddled rosters and muddled coaching that would automatically turn people off. And that hasn’t been the case in the last five or seven years. It’s always been a great city, and they were always willing to spend if they could, but the winning and, yeah, the culture wasn’t there.

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