Sunday Stats - Raptors' Attendance and On-Court Performance

Personally, I only really started really closely following the NBA once we got the Raptors. As I watched our team develop and grew to know the rest of the league, my knowledge of the reputations of each team grew. That is when watching the game became much more interesting for me, different from the feelings when you play the game.

I must admit though, the best times to be a Raps fan were during the early Vince years. I remember telling anyone that wasn’t a fan already to just watch one game and that they would see at least 3 things that would amaze them. There was real debate whether VC was the best player in the game, even VC-Kobe trade discussions.

Since those days it has been a bit of an exercise in patience. Bosh always seemed like a pro and a great building block – but he wasn’t a player that you could use to convince non fans to watch a game. The team has really lacked heart for quite a while. I think most TO fans want to have a big tough C, dynamic high flying wings and playmaking PG’s. That hasn’t been the make up of our team for a long time, and guys like Hedo, Kapono, Bargnani, TJ, much of the team really – were just hard to like. I never really found Bosh very charismatic either. His nerdy, multimedia branding may have been a good theory but didn’t work for me in practice – even the used car salesman thing. He was a pro and until recently, gave nothing to bash him for – but he wasn’t inspiring by any stretch.

I am hooked on the crack now, and will continue to wait. I hope BC’s can keep adding parts to the team. I even like the Euro concept, so long as we can get a few tough Euros included in the mix. The Young Guns are fun, especially off the court, my only worry with them is that they won’t actually turn out to be as good on the court as we all want them to, though one of them may be an all star someday. Living in Scotland I can’t go to games, but I hope TO keeps lining the pockets of MLSE, it just feels good to think that we have good fans.

I hope the Raptors don’t follow the Jays gradual downward spiral in terms of interest from Torontonians. I am not a huge baseball fan and I have to admit that the late 90s era Jays were pretty painful to watch. However, I didn’t mind the Ricciardi era. They played .500 ball and had a few players that made the games exciting(especially Halliday when he pitched). This season, I am really enjoying watching a relatively young team(especially the pitching staff) outperform expectations. The team has a young GM in the Presti-Pritchard mold, who is even doing the thing I like best in a baseball organization which is to put together a good farm system and scouting staff (if you don’t have megabucks where else are you going to get your talent from? JP any opinions on that one?) Getting to my main point, the Jays have an “exciting young team” (IMHO), but I don’t see the fans supporting it much. What gives? I don’t live in Toronto, so it is hard to know the pulse on the street. Is it bad marketing? Baseball is not trendy anymore? The recession?

Anyway, I hope that the Raptors can avoid whatever mistakes the Jays have made and keep the fans engaged while they gradually put a new nucleus together.