DOUG SMITH: Just let the kids play,
Let me get this straight.
It’s 6 o’clock on a summer evening, at least a couple of hours before darkness comes, and precisely the time we should be encouraging our kids to be out of the house and running around and getting exercise and having fun.
And that’s what they’re doing, getting up shots and playing pickup basketball games and working on skills both physical and social that will hopefully turn them into fit, productive, inclusive members of the greater society, and some grumps think it’s too loud, too disruptive to their tiny lives and decide it should be brought to a halt?
Kids in the park hooping at dinner time on a summer eve when so many of their contemporaries are transfixed on gaming monitors or their phones or Fortnite or Minecraft (whatever they are) is a bad thing?
My goodness gracious. What on Earth is going on? The idiocy is next level.
The grumpiness of the spoilsports who complained — perhaps because they enjoy the solitude of their sedentary lives just a little too much, perhaps
SMITH continued on GT6
because they don’t have kids wwho need the social interaction aand physical fitness — the level of incompetence — yes, incompetence — and blatant lack of common sense in the whole ugly mess of ripping rims off backboards in some city parks is so astonishing, so incomprehensible, that it’s hard to fathom.
The viral video of Wednesday night, showing city workers tearing rims down while kids were actually PLAYING and getting up shots, created a wave of indignation and outrage that was, to many, most welcome.
Forget for a moment the city reversed its small-minded policy Thursday.
Please save any praise for the civic leaders who only righted a shocking wrong because someone happened to capture a moment on video; the lunacy of the idea of ripping rims off backboards every night should never have happened in the first place.
“I opt in favour of positive, ffun, healthy activities for kids in our neighbourhoods,” Mayor John Tory said on his verified Twitter feed. “In some parks, staff were taking down basketball nets at the end of the day … They have suspended this practice immediately.” Well, duh! How someone thought in the first place that it was a good idea to deny kids a chance to shoot hoops in city parks after 6p.m. is beyond me. This was a stupid policy from the get-go and no one should laud civic leaders for retroactively correcting an egregious wrong and changing a policy that should never have been in place to begin with.
We first got full wind of this lunacy Tuesday at the year-end chat session with Raptors president Masai Ujiri, when someone asked him about a planned protest against basketball in city parks that night. He was incredulous, we all were incredulous and, I swear, I thought someone had to have it wrong.
How, now, having seen what basketball can do to galvanize a city and bring people together, could anyone think it should be stopped?
“Are you guy serious? This is going on?” he asked, genuinely mystified by the suggestions. We’ll take those courts to Africa. We’ll build them somewhere else. I don’t know what the details of this is. but my first f reaction is anywhere there’s good thing.”
He wasn’t alone, of course. Canada Basketball, so instrumental in providing opportunities for kids to play and learn the game, chimed in.
Friends of mine closely aligned with the sport were flabbergasted the city would deny kids the chance to play into the e evening.
And, as Uriji said, it is a good thing. An important thing.
Two things jump out to someone who’s been around the NBA level of the game here for two decades and has seen the explosion of interest over the years:
These parks and school playgrounds and baskets hammered above the garage or erected at the end of the driveway have always been vital, important parts of neighbourhood lives.
They did not just pop up because the Raptors won an NBA championship a couple of weeks ago. They have been t there for years. It’s where kids get to know each other and perhaps become more accepting of each other.
We’ve said this a hundred times since the Raptors began their championship journey: The sport is reflective of our society and the city’s diversity and taking away the opportunity to play is simply irresponsible.
This whole issue has been a stain on what should be the realization that kids need to be kids
We saw it in the crowds outside the Scotiabank Arena watching the games — men, women boys, girls, white, Black, brown, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish and whatever, a true commingling of cultures and backgrounds coming together in a common sporting moment.
Maybe it’s altruistic to think that carries over into city parks and playgrounds, but maybe it’s not. And for the city — any city — to deny youth that opportunity is abrogating responsibility that’s shameful.
But maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised at either the whiners whose peace may be momentarily disrupted or the civic “leaders” who enabled them by allowing workers to rip rims off backboards every night. As far back as 2008, there were “leaders” like former — thankfully — councillor Giorgio Mammoliti trying to have all baskets removed because of some misguided notion that drug dealers were somehow running the courts. That speaks to far greater, far more serious societal ill. But equally important is this. We need to promote and support kids figuring out how to be physically active on their own. The social benefits are incalculable, the health and fitness benefits monstrous in keeping kids active and doing something they see as fun so that they grow up living active lives.
This whole issue has been a stain on what should be the realization that kids need to be kids, to have fun, to play the game g they enjoy and, yeah, maybe make some noise bouncing a basketball and take shots and, well, being kids.
It was idiotic to take rims down from backboards each evening to begin with. And it’s good that saner heads prevailed.