Basketball may not replace hockey as Canada’s defining sport. But that might be because Canada has passed the point when any one sport can define it
It was a Wednesday night in November, in the middle of that hump season in Toronto when everyone is too hot in a parka but too cold in anything else. Inside the Scotiabank Arena, the Toronto Raptors, still somehow both underdogs and NBA champions, were five minutes away from tipping off against the league’s most anonymous squad. In the concourse outside the upper bowl, Shirley and Ross Regal were ushering their three sons toward their seats.
The Regals count themselves a basketball family. Ross and Shirley have been Raptors fans for decades. They endured, and even enjoyed, the bad years. They lived the ecstasy of the title run. They’re back this year, whatever may come. “It’s lively, man,” Ross Regal said, when asked what keeps bringing them back. “You come to a game they pump the music, they incorporate the fans.”
Basketball is also, unlike hockey, unabashedly unafraid of being fun. “There’s a cultural issue that stems from never wanting to stand out,” said Sean Fitz-Gerald, the author of the new hockey book When the Lights Go Out: A Season Inside a Game on the Brink. “Any form of self expression has always been frowned upon.” Turn the microphones on in a hockey locker room and even the most joyful characters can turn into monochrome stiffs.
In fact, basketball’s biggest problem in Canada right now might be accommodating all that new interest. Officials from Canada Basketball recently went across the country speaking to local clubs and organizers. The one thing they heard, over and over again, is “we need more facilities,” said Glen Grunwald, the president and CEO of the organization. “ We don’t have enough time and gyms available to meet the need that’s growing here in Canada.
But Fitz-Gerald doesn’t think that’s likely to happen anytime soon. “ockey remains, for the moment, the guiding light in this country,” he wrote in his book. “For all the ratings records the Raptors set, they were still only a fraction of the all-time record for Canadian sports. That record was set when 16.7 million Canadians — half the country — tuned in to watch Crosby score the gold-medal-winning goal for Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.
Swatch said the hockey experience so far has been positive. “The coaches we have, have been wonderful. They’re inclusive. They’re nice. The coach goes around and high fives everyone. It’s a really sort of welcoming space,” he said. He’s followed all the Don Cherry news and all the follow-ups about racial abuse, violence and bullying. He knows that’s still there in the game. “There’s a part of me that makes me think I don’t want him to do that anymore.
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