REUTERS/Marc Serota
Caught this story on AOL Fanhouse where Toronto Raptors head coach Sam Mitchell had some comments regarding violence in hockey:
It's part of hockey. That's their culture. If hockey players go in the stands, it's hockey. Right? Seriously. Basketball players go in the stands? Ohhhhh, the sport is out of control.
Hockey players fight up in the stands! Basketball has one incident and all of a sudden... oooooohhhhhhh. It was a major thing. How long in history have hockey players been going up in the stands? Since time began. Why don't you all write about it like you when it happened one time at a basketball game? One time. I have my theories why, but I'm not going to comment.
I can understand Mitchell's frustration. He's the head coach in a city where it's All Leafs, All the Time and even with a winning team, the Raptors have a hard time drawing the same type of crowd the Leafs are able to draw despite being mediocre to down right awful most of the time. Plus, he works for MLSE so is probably privy to whatever clusterf*ck is going on in that organization half the time.
But like Fanhouser Greg Wyshynski pointed out in the comments, having violence and donnybrooks as part of your culture is hardly a flattering image to be saddled with. It makes hockey seem one dimensional and it's bad enough that the American outlets feel that the NHL is only newsworthy whenever these sideshows happen, even though they account for only a small portion of the game.
Like I pointed out in the comment thread, Mitchell is also inaccurate in suggesting people just shrug at hockey players going into the stands. There are boards and glass protecting the audience from the ice for crying out loud, so getting up there is pretty much a chore in itself and it has never and will never be seen as acceptable. The fact that the audience is protected from the on-ice shenanigans is why fighting in hockey is more acceptable and in basketball it isn't because there's no barrier between the hardwood and the audience. The debate can go on forever, but it also needs to be pointed out that there's a difference between two players with pounds of gear that resembles armour exchanging a few punches than two guys in shiny shorts exchanging punches.
Jiri T-Lusty
Deadspin caught onto this story a number of days actually and since nothing much came of it, I figured it would just blow however. However, living in the fishbowl and being privy to Leafs Media, the story of Jiri's Cameraphone was pretty hard to avoid. I'll just say this, even yours truly did a few stupid things when she was 18-years-old and quite possibly had too much to drink. I will say that it is always ill-advised to be snap happy in compromising positions when you're 'famous' because they will inevitably end up on the Internet but everybody just needs to calm down and relax. I'd find the fact that Bryan McCabe just gave another game away last night on a silver platter as a more troubling issue.
Cross Posted to Scarlett Ice Read More......
