The Beautiful Games Part One - by Apollo

You would think that having three of the North American professional leagues off-season would give us less to comment on, but that would be wrong. The 2 Wise Men sometimes prefer the off-season for it allows us to eloquently wax on about sports without the distraction of actual games. You will all soon learn that "What if...." is one of our favourite questions. Whenever a change in management occurs, or a player is traded, we also begin to wonder and imagine what the impact of these decisions will be.

Recently, our not-so-beloved but much maligned Toronto Raptors hired their third coach in three years, Sam Mitchell, a former NBA veteran who spent most of his career as a mentor to Kevin Garnett with the Minnesota Timberwolves. It speaks to the desperation of this franchise and its fans when we are willing to settle on a new coach with zero head-coaching experience and give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he could not possibly be any worse than the other infamous failures that have run this organization. To his credit, Mitchell not only remembers what it is like to be an NBA player, but in fact played against many of the Raptors' core players, including Vince Carter, Jalen Rose, Donyell Marshall, Alvin Williams and Lamond Murray. I can just picture the practices now..."Hey coach, remember when I dunked on you?"

Mitchell has already said he wants the Raptors to be more of a running team and to push the ball at all times, which is music to the ears of fans who had to suffer through watching the Raptors use all of the 8 seconds allowed to walk the ball past halfcourt so often. Fans can bear losing to a certain point, so long as the effort is there and games are exciting. Nothing is worse than watching your team lose and being bored by it at the same time.

What then is more important in professional sports - entertainment or winning? Obviously winning, but I ponder this after watching my beloved France fall to the monotonous tactics of Greece at the Euro 2004 tournament. While Les Bleus certainly are to blame for falling embarassingly short of repeating their 2000 championship, Greece and coach Otto Rehhagel have drawn praise and ire for their defensive style, keeping as many players as possible around their own goal and relying on 1-0 and 2-1 victories. Let us not take anything away from Greece or any other country, and let us not forget that winning - in any fashion - remains key. However, does it take away from our enjoyment of sport when we are forced to watch the Raptors stumble their way to a 77-75 victory, or watch a neutral zone trap in hockey or a 9-6 field goal fest in American football or a 1-0 soccer game?

Of course, these questions are only asked when our favourite teams are eliminated. Partisan fans will espouse the resiliency and heart of their winning teams when a game turns ugly. Their heroes are suddenly victors in a defensive struggle or a match of wills as opposed to the reality that they in fact bored their opponents to death. Tactics are often used to compensate for a difference in talent, and that's fine. Still though, the sports fan in me, the one who grew up watching the offensive juggernauts of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Edmonton Oilers, the Dallas Cowboys and Brazil can't help but cringe when watching Hack-a-Shaq, or the left-wing lock or a nil-nil draw decided by penalty kicks. Defence does win championships, but usually top defensive teams still know how to score and generate offence.

It all comes down to what our idea of sport really is. A draw decided by penalty kicks is not soccer to me. Intentionally fouling a player in the dying seconds to prevent a game-tying shot is not basketball. Watching 25 aces is not tennis. Here's hoping then on the eve of Canada Day, that Portugal, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Greece can return to the beautiful game, and that once the Raptors season does begin, rookie Coach Mitchell can get his team running again.