Hatred Against Our Players Has To Stop (Bargnani Situation)

[Brinbe]

I think Toronto sports fans are the worst of any teams fans in North America.

Thank God that i'm not a fan of the Leafs.

Steve Kerr�@SteveKerrTNT

If there are two fan bases that deserve a winner, I'll go with Golden State and Toronto. Rowdy crowds every night- even during lean times

I meant by the way they treat the players on their teams. No player would ever want to sign with a team where their own fans boo the hell out of a player on the team.

Seriously, get over yourself, Toronto is hardly the only city that does anything like this.

And thinking on it, what are you even talking about? We support the Leafs, Raptors, and Jays despite decades of incompetence. We made the likes of Reggie Evans, JYD and Matt f'n Bonner cult heroes, we recently gave Rudy Gay a tremendous debut reception (something that was noted by even national press in the US). We treat players well here, if they deserve the love.

Players like T-Mac, Vince, Turkoglu, Hoffa, and Bargs are the only players in recent memory to get that treatment and there are valid reasons for booing all of them. Bargs is a league-wide joke that we don't want anymore. How hard is that to understand?

[hillbilly hare]

If I go to a restaurant and get a crap meal, in a certain sense I "boo" when I demand to see the manager, make my complaints, sometimes heatedly, and then refuse to pay.

wow. refuse to pay...
as someone who is very involved in Toronto's food and drink scene, if i saw you pulling the shenanigans you're describing, i would automatically side with the restauranteur, not you. those who demand something should never get what they demand. those who politely request and look for resolution should hopefully have their problems addressed. mistakes can happen and everyone has an off night. it is how one addresses the off night - that is what's important. a restaurant should comp your meal. you should not demand to be comped. and if Andrea is dogging it, he should address it an apologize. we should not be booing him and demanding an apology (or his head)

Could we expect as much from the Raptors? Seriously, should we be able to ask for a refund if the product, advertised as professional basketball, doesn't meet that standard? Or Andrea, like the opera singer, shouldn't get heckled and booed? Being Italian, he should understand.

ah yes, being Italian, he should understand. and perhaps we should start to cheer for Jonas in a way that "his people" would understand? same with Gay and Lowry, I guess? come one, dude...

and if you want sporting events to work where you can demand a refund based on a player or team's outcome, then you really are nuts. maybe demand refunds if you don't like how a movie ends. demand a refund from Wonderland because there wasn't enough excitement or "wonder". demand a refund on part of your wedding expenses from your wife's family because you didn't dig how she banged you last night. if you want, i can insert more ridiculous examples. but you paid to go to an entertainment event. if you were not entertained, you don't go again. but the term "caveat emptor" applies appropriately to one who buys a ducat to a sporting event. you are not guaranteed to be entertained. you are not guaranteed to see a win. it is the lottery ticket of entertainment. and you most certainly don't boo the Lotto 6/49 attendant when you pay good money to win $15 million and your ticket doesn't win, do you?

Wow.

There is no fun in mudville when the mudslingers lose their sense of humour.

You really are scrapin the bottom of the barrel with the Andrea and "his people" bit. Political correctness rears its beauty-challenged head. Calmer heads might've had an inkling that irony was being served alongside the ossobuco when Andrea and opera singers were squeezed into the same sentence. As to Andrea's people, they are my people, if such a phrase should be used in the 21st century, and even if I wasn't Italian I'd still make mine the right to poke fun at fat opera singers and beanstalk b-ball players. As you say so eloquently, "come on, dude".

Or "lighten up", or some such other pearl that I'm sure you flash so frequently. I get that you're serious. You're the torch bearer at the bonfire of the banalities. You're the capital I in the Importance of being earnest. You're the president of the Larry Gopnik Fan Club. You are a very serious man. On a mission, maybe. To root out the booers. To stop all those whose booing might give Andrea a psychological boo-boo.

The retort to all your pseudo insults in your various posts might be to turn it around and, for all those who look down on booing as Neanderthal and idiotic and nuts, call them the meek, silent, self-effacing, throw poo in my face and I won't complain Larry Gopnik schmucks of the world.

See you at Mickey D's, Larry.

[Pooh_Jeter]

"Toronto offered me a very generous contract and I fit in seamlessly with their starting line-up. I have a great relationship with the coach and management and the city is beautiful. I think it's a no brainer for me to sign with the Raptors."

"Wait, the fans booed Andrea Bargnani? Tear up the contract!"

In terms of on court production, booing a player is certainly not going to help him turn things around, but this isn't a bad 7 game stretch. This is 7 years of inconsistency and false hope. The team is on the verge of an identity shift and Bargnani is really the last of the remnants of the old guard. If the fans completely turn on him at least it assures that he will be moved/amnestied in the off-season.

I think the whole "Toronto sports fans are terrible" argument is completely bogus. You can't use the bipolar RealGM boards for proof of this. Thanks to the internet there is always going to be a segment of a fanbase for anything that will go over board for criticism.

It's not as though Gray, Fields, Anderson, Lucas, etc. have started getting booed when they struggled. In fact, when a player shows something positive the fans are extremely quick to support them. Stop mistaking some negative threads on a message board as proof that the fanbase has turned on a player. This whole Bargnani thing has been a long time coming.

[RapTelligence]

Andrea brought alot of what is happening on himself. Everyone knows he will not be here for long. But if stopping the booing is going to maximize the chances of the team making the playoffs then the booing is not smart nor productive.

[Reg00]

Nope, its the Fan base. Toronto sports fans are pretty annoying to begin with (coming from a Sens fan perspective) and its very annoying that with all the time the Raptors have been here they still don't know basketball.

Bargnani is an easy target for dim-wits who can't show their passion for the game in meaningful ways. Also, they are showing how pathetic they are in that they had to wait till the "next great thing" came along to then start booing Bargnani when he gets called into the game. After a missed shot?! Does he have to shoot 100% in order for these cheese-balls to give him some slack?

Just keep cheering for your pizza pizza and hoping for your slam dunks (what's when something good happens!).

[carl_english]

I think it would be nice to be known in the league as the fanbase who run scrubs out of town.

[Yoga]

I think it would be nice to be known in the league as the fanbase who run scrubs out of town.

Euro scrubs?

[TheBargnaniRule]

Pretty disgraceful way to treat a franchise cornerstone, regardless of how he has been performing recently.

[rapsfanhere]

so you visit your dentist. the hygienist does her work on your mouth. she's done and you're not satisfied. this isn't the first time that you didn't like the work she did. you pay for your cleaning and, once you are done, you start to boo her. relentlessly. right there, in her work place. "BOOOOOO! YOU SUCK!" you yell.

you go for dinner. order a burger. you don't like it. quite disappointed with it. so you pay your bill, walk into the kitchen and start booing the staff.

in those above cases, if you did that, you would be considered a lunatic.

Context? You would look like a lunatic if you cheered for your food as well.

i'm not going to stop the guy to my left from booing. he's not going to stop me from taking a crap in my pants if i want to do that. but ask yourself: would Portland fans - considered to be the class of the NBA - boo Oden during one of his many comeback attempts? you know that the answer is no. so just let the guy be.

I do recall Felton being booed in Portland when he was dogging it. A much better comparison to the Bargniani situation than Oden.

http://www.bloguin.com/crossoverchronic ... booed.html

http://www.sbnation.com/2010/3/15/13735 ... act-summer

[darth_federer]

I wish I could shake the hand of every fan who booed Bargnani. He only has himself to blame.

[RandomRaptorfan]

This man has been getting booed year in year out and this is what he makes of it



step your trolling game up bargs