Drake, the courtside jester, seemingly has no boundaries.
Drake is no fool. He just plays one on Raptors TV.
The resident courtside jester, putting all his cutting rapster cred on the line every time he gestures and pantomimes and trash-talks the opposition, most especially the Milwaukee Bucks in this Eastern Conference NBA final.
To say nothing of the signature lint-roller, the Joel Embiid-baiting airplane, the reftrolling, the spotlight-crowding.
Basketball is a different creature, with its rollicking fan engagement and the bold-face hangers-on who clutter up the privileged seats, more often with the objective of being seen than watching. Nobody doubts home-boy Drake’s passion for the Raptors, but surely even the league, which does have a fan conduct policy, must have had a bellyful of the recording star’s antics by now. At least the likes of Jack Nicholson and Spike Lee have the good sense to stay in their chairs when not rising to their feet to cheer or jeer. They don’t mistake themselves for an extension of the team. And they act like they’ve been there before, you know?
But Drake is spectacularly uncool. Has no boundaries, apparently, and the Raptors have been allowing his ridiculous interference and intrusion as a pseudo-player, invading the team’s bench space, even shoulder-massaging coach Nick Nurse, as he did in Game 4 the other night at Scotiabank Arena. “I didn’t even feel it,” Nurse said on a conference call the next day. “I was so locked into the game.”
Justin Bieber attends Leafs playoff games, sticks to the richie-rich box and otherwise limits himself to an occasional bout of tonsil-ball with his new wife. When Bieber is the more mature celebrity in the room, then this city has a notorietyfame problem, as viewed through the prism of Drake’s mortifying buffoonery.
OK, Toronto is still an NBA outlier, with an ardent fan base that takes all kinds of whinge at every perceived slight by basketball commentators from south of the border. And sure, the city is squeezing every drop of awe out of Kawhi Leonard while he remains one of us, plugging our ears … watermelonwatermelonwatermelon … to speculation that the thunder-heart will pack up his dolls and dishes, move on, westward ho-home.
The league, brighter than all its pro sports brethren, knows how to sell the game; no point big-footing enthusiasm run amok when the cash registers jangle ka-ching ka-ching. Must be the Raptors have been cut some slack with their officially anointed ambassador, who’s six-ways-from-Sunday tangled up with the club, his powerful gold-and-black OVO brand adopted for alternate jerseys and likewise adorning the team’s practice facility, a.k.a. OVO Athletic Centre.
In last year’s playoffs, the league did have a word with the Raptors, suggesting they urge Drake to tone down his tomfoolery after he almost got into a fight with Kendrick Perkins of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The caution seemingly didn’t take.
As groupies go, Drake is the barnacle of blingy acolytes. And to be fair, many get a kick out of his shenanigans.
I don’t cover hoops, have no room in my small brain for another sport. But as a mildly interested spectator, not required to follow the play-byplay minutiae for a panicky deadline file, I do take notice of Drake and am monumentally annoyed by his clownish histrionics.
Quite apart from Drake’s indulged intimacy with the team … really, who the hell are you, my man, other than the most white bread of globally renowned vocalists, the Perry Como of rap? Straight out of Compton? Straight out of Forest Hill, more like.
“There’s no place on the court, and you know whatever it is exactly that Drake is for the Toronto Raptors,” Milwaukee coach Mike Budenholzer griped the other day, slyly cutting his nemesis down to belittled size. “You know, to be on the court, there’s boundaries and lines for a reason, and, like I said, the league is usually pretty good at being on top of stuff like that.”
Yet it wasn’t even Drake, apparently, who orchestrated the humongous PR-fail that had the singer and Raptors president Masai Ujiri starring in an ill-conceived photo op this week, the latter presenting the former with a gobsmackingly gaudy diamond-encrusted jacket lined with a Raptors jersey, valued at $769,000. Don’t know about you all, but I immediately wondered how many at-risk kids from underprivileged neighbourhoods could have rocked that kind of money at youth clubs and community sports facilities.
Also, must concede here that the Star was complicit (my opinion) in making a publicity mountain out of a self-serving decadence fart by devoting a chunk of Page 3 space to the marketing stunt.
This wasn’t news, it was promotion, most particularly for the designer and his tailoring outfit, Garrison Bespoke, the garish apparel donated to the team and to Drake. As a Star clarification subsequently noted, MLSE did not pay for the thing.
Like what Drake needs is free stuff, whoever footed the bill.
When contacted for comment, MLSE primo PR mook Dave Haggith said they’d been taken aback by the non-story story. “This was more Garrison to Drake than anything to do with MLSE. This is not something that we would be involved with.’’
Not something so lavishly manipulative, masterminded by “an over-zealous PR agency,” and, frankly, wrong-message-sending. “We didn’t appreciate it.” Far as the Raptors figured, it was just another bit of Drake Day embellishment, as in years prior — yes, he gets his own saint day — a bit of fun.
Yet they put Ujiri square in the crosshairs of a PR debacle.
One would have thought the slick Raptors organization was too woke for something like that.
It’s a symbiotic relationship, what the Raptors and Drake have got going. He infuses them with celebrity dazzle and they provide him with an extra dimension of eminence beyond the stage and recording studio. Even though he’s no more than a jacked-up fan with extraordinary privileges.
The mutual embracing has turned into a toxic folie à deux.
Time for a Dear Drake kissoff.