Raptors, Heat take crowd for ride
Only a few phones are still ringing at this hate-a-thon. When the Miami Heat ran out onto the floor pre-game Friday, there were boos. This team would catch boos at a funeral. But they felt perfunctory.
Like most everyone else in the league, Toronto can’t be bothered hating the Heat or Chris Bosh much any more.
“A lot less boos,” Bosh, something of a connoisseur of this sort of thing, agreed afterwards. “Until I fell.”
Yes, Toronto does love a cruel laugh, but can you blame the city?
Bosh has become that ex-girlfriend you can’t waste any more emotional energy on.
Toronto doesn’t care how much fun Chris Bosh is having or how cool his new friends are. Toronto didn’t even realize he was in town again. Honestly. When Toronto saw him at the ACC, Toronto was going to be big about it and say “Hi” first. But he pretended he didn’t see Toronto and walked right by. Whatever.
Anyway, Toronto is totally into its new crush — Dwane Casey. Dwane Casey and Toronto do everything together. It’s getting really serious.
Upon introduction, Bosh didn’t get it any worse than Lebron James or Dwyane Wade. Jeering these guys has become a sports gag reflex — there is no volition involved.
Bosh gets a touch straight off — boos. Bosh scores — cheers.
Say this for a Toronto sports crowd: They hit their cues.
For their part, the Heat’s big three have developed their own coping mechanisms. They cope by ignoring everyone in the world but each other. When you’re metaphorically this big, you cannot do things the way the little people do them.
That’s why James doesn’t wear headphones. He hangs them at his locker, maxes the volume and creates a reverse-engineered boom box. Then he makes it worse by singing along. We’ve finally discovered a talent James doesn’t have.
That’s why Wade doesn’t wear pants in the locker room. Maybe that’s a media deflecting strategy. If that’s what it is, it’s working.
Wade doesn’t talk pre-game. While the game is on, it’s reported that Wade’s nephew has been shot the previous day. His ill humour makes retrospective sense.
Shane Battier is forced to answer questions about Wade while Wade sits 18 inches away staring into nothingness. “These guys make the game look easy,” Battier says of his trio of professional betters. “The last time the game was easy for me was high school.”
After the game is over and he’s holding the talking stick, Wade looks around the room.
“These are my brothers,” he says. “Anything we go through away from this, with our families or whatever, we go through together.”
His arm sweep includes everyone, but even in this family the star system has created a hierarchy.
Wade, Bosh and Lebron James seem psychically tethered. They arrive together. They stand together for the anthems. They trade little jokes during the game. When it’s over, the other 10 members of the Heat file in first. The big three stay on the court for a bit and leave with their arms draped over each other’s shoulders.
If they are targets for animus, they aren’t helping themselves. There’s no helping it if you’re better than everyone. It’s annoying when you show that you know it.
When the third quarter ends in an unlikely tie, the crowd changes tack. Everyone has decided it’s more fun to cheer the underdogs than boo the alphas.
As usual, it all goes wrong in the fourth. The fourth-quarter Raptors couldn’t get a call if they worked a switchboard. Jose Calderon contrives to get a foul and a technical after being socked in the face by Wade. The crowd lays off the Heat and turns on the officiating crew. The captain of this angsty cheer squad is coach Casey.
The final scoreline looks worse than it was — 113-101. It ends with a cheer — for pizza. Speaking of boo-worthy impulses.
“For the most part, (all the anger) has died down. There’s not as much hype as last year,” Bosh says. “Either that or we’re used to it.”
That’s the point — everyone’s used to it now.