Finally, a rich guy version of getting your calculator to spell BOOBIES. 

That sucks. He was the guy giving the Raps fits all series and his free agency was going to be very interesting.

Here’s my papers:

I guarantee that the response to that will be that maybe the Raptors didn’t win because they were better, they won because they were tougher.

I know. They had every chance to fold and they didn’t. It’s hard to process.

I read this profile and one of the things that stuck out was when he was talking about Simmons, and this brought to mind the extremely uncomfortable podcast he and Simmons did when ESPN hired Reilly where he said the same thing, is that he still thinks the entire thing about him vs. Simmons was the length of the stuff…

Yeah. My graduating year was the last OAC year. 

So I went to a Science and Technology magnet high school that was just starting out and in my freshman year, I was on the Baseball team. Because it was just my school’s second year of existence it only had Grades 9 and 10 and because, in my province, we had five year high school that meant it was a team of 14 and 15…

Thing is, if the reaction to the criticism was “Yeah, maybe we stepped over a line but we were caught up in the excitement of the World Cup and that’s understandable” the story would be dead. Basically any reaction but “FUCK YOU, LOSERS! USA! USA! USA!” and it’s a non-story. 

I laughed.

Thing is, that’s not always possible in interational competition. Some countries are bigger and richer than others and will always be at a significant competitive advantage. I don’t think any players on Thailand’s team were unaware that the Americans are one of the best teams in the world. I don’t think they needed to…

I like America very much. My father, who’s almost entirely the reason I’m a sports fan, is American as is half of my family. I genuinely have no antipathy towards America or American accomplishments.

Ok. I said a couple posts back that your opinion here is fair enough. I can say it again if you’d like.

I like this story because in a way it’s uniquely American. It’s about sporting excellence, pride in your accomplishments and not even pretending to understand the concept of moderation.

Like I said, I don’t think it’s an all or nothing proposition. I think there are still concepts of being graceful in victory that apply no matter who is making what money. Is it the end of the world that these celebrations occurred? No. Is it ok that some people saw it as bad sportsmanship? Yes. 

The thing that I don’t get is the idea that there seems to be no sort of middle ground between “Sometimes people are overly critical of the way athletes celebrate” and “There’s no such concept whatsoever of sportsmanship and being a graceful winner.”. Like, both of those things have truths. 

I mean, if your perspective is just that so long as someone is getting paid any amount of money they’re a professional and as such are fair game for any amount of celebration then fair enough. I think some people see this as sort of a team of well-funded and established professionals celebrating over a team of…

I don’t know a lot about soccer at all, let alone women’s international soccer, but if the women on Thailand’s international team are, in fact, well compensated professionals then there’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying. 

Like I said to someone else. If it was, say, Canada vs. Russia or the States or Sweden and Canada won, even it was 12-0 then, yeah, go nuts.

I think it’s entirely about the tenor of the “celebration”. I just watched those highlights too and once the game got out of hand, the reactions to the goals were just a hands up and then a little bit of a team handshake. They certainly didn’t react to those goals as if they were a big or important goal and they’re…