Strategist1 wrote:mtcan wrote:Don't forget Chris' parting shots back in July...
Remember...on ESPN...comparing his time in Toronto to being a wolf stuck in a cage, while he watched other wolves eat steak.
Remember...
""I didn't want to go there," Bosh said.
"It was different. All I knew was Vince Carter was there and I never saw him play on TV. It was a whole different country, and it was just different. I'm 19 years old, I didn't know anything about culture and being away from home. All I know is the States.
"Toronto's a great place, a fantastic city. It's a metropolitan area, but you could tell you're somewhere different. You could feel it, you could look at it, you can smell it. Everything. All your senses tell you you're somewhere different."
We give you 7 years of love and the moment you leave...we get this.
He handled his exit horribly and unfortunately, that tarnishes his reputation and legacy.
Boo him. Bring out the Mikki Moore posters and RuPaul cut-outs and plaster them all over the Miami Heat dressing room. Everyone should be waving RuPaul pictures when he takes free throws. Someone sitting behind the Miami bench should whisper "RuPaul of big men" to him whenever he is on the bench. This should be a spectacle that makes ESPN. You want to be on ESPN while in Canada...this it your chance, Chris.
The wolf in the cage comment implies that he was stuck on a losing team while watching other players go deep in the playoffs.
The comments about being young and 19, and how everything is different here what's what was going on in his mind as a 19 year old. If you're 19, going out of your country from Texas to Toronto its totally different. If you were to go to Texas from Toronto at 19, you'd same the same thing. I've been to places down in the Carolinas, Kentucky, Florida...and yes it is TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I'm sure Dallas is totally different too.
Bosh noted Toronto is a great, fantastic city. All he said was that it was different. His quotes were taken out of context IMO.
I think a lot of ppl defending Bosh should stop defending him. I had always been neutral on his departure even with his list of smart-ass comments to justify his leave to the US media. What happened between Bosh and the Raptors organization + all the fans, is essentially a breakup. Instead of a typical one-on-one breakup, we are talking about one man turning his back on an entire fanbase.
In the real world, when one person for whatever reason (championships, fame) places his own personal values or goals above a group of people without their consent, he will be seen as selfish regardless of how he does it. Honestly, I believe he would've been booed even w/o everything else he said afterwards, which in all honestly just added fuel to a fiery fanbase. Maybe his comments were neutral and the media did take them out of context, but it came at a sensitive time during which ppl were quick to pick up any slightest hint of negativity. Any comparison of Toronto and Canada with the US will be taken as offence unless it is an explicitly positive statement like "Toronto is a great, fantastic city". By saying it's different and the whole crap about how he knew nothing about the culture when he came to town at age 19, what he was trying to do was to defend himself and his decision. When you are openly giving yourself and the public reasons why you ditched them due to these unconvincing reasons, ppl will take them as a knock on the city.
Yes, Colangelo failed to put a in place a good team. We all should blame BC for that. If Bosh openly expressed and emphasized that reasoning, i think fans would have been more sympathetic of him and it would have been a lot better for him than stating how different Toronto is. Instead of showing his excitement as a "wolf out of the cage", if he just said " i am very excited to be join the Miami Heat with a chance for multiple championships", then the fans will also be more reasonable. But he didn't, In all his quotes, some way or another, he manages to carry a negative connotation in connection to the city. That is a failure on his part in terms of his management of public relations.
So far, I only mentioned the surface, the direct and open meanings that he conveyed in his numerous post-trade interviews. But underneath all that, I believe the most important reason for his departure, from his point of view aside from championships, is the media attention he seeks in the US. We can argue that some of it has to do with patriotism (likely brewing inside him since his 2008 Olympics performance). We should all respect that, but we can never be certain about how much of it is cultural difference and his love for his country or how much is based on his personal reasons and ambitions. If the former is indeed the case, we as Canadians, in supporting an American athlete and adopting him as basically the son of Toronto for seven years, also share our own patriotism and loyalty toward the organization, the city and the country. Because his way is not our way, we are bound for conflict.
Comments made by Colangelo and Triano, while seemingly unprofessional on the surface, do have a personal element in them. They were the guys in the organization, they had closer ties to Bosh than the fans. I am sure they were more affected by Bosh's decision than all of us. They are the ones with a public profile. They had to voice their displeasures, not only to side with the general fanbase, but also because of their own personal ties with Chris. No matter how unprofessional they sound, their feelings conveyed through their message were real.
I am not saying that Bosh is by any means chained to this city. He certainly had the right to leave. He left but he did not keep his mouth shut. He tried to defend his departure. In doing so, he angered the fanbase who were just initially sad that their adopted son left them. While booing is really a personal choice (I would boo), there is certainly no justifiable reason to cheer him on when CB4 is wearing an opposing jersey.
