You know, now that Brett isn’t doing scathing, vicious caricatures of all the worst things about television every week, we can just put up things that we like instead! Like this shot from The Truman Show. That is art right there, people.

Monday

The Bachelor concludes, but don’t worry—it’ll be back in about six months! You know, like herpes. (CFMT, 8 p.m.)

Gallery Girls is a reality show about seven women trying to make it in the New York art gallery scene and [oh god I'm not going to even watch this but I should mark this bit for later so I can go to a thesaurus, find some appropriate synonyms, and just pretend like I watched it like a real journalist would—remember to delete this bit] but I suppose that’s why they’re on a reality show and we are not. (E! Canada, 9 p.m.)

Tuesday

The Game Show Network is airing The Truman Show tonight, which we suppose is apropos enough even if it’s not their usual thing. We’re mentioning it because the movie really does hold up very well and Jim Carrey really did deserve to be nominated for an Oscar. (8 p.m.)

Hell’s Kitchen is back for yet another season of bumbling nincompoops who can barely figure out how to turn on a burner, Gordon Ramsay shouting, and the horrible Fox house production team, which guarantees that the exact same minute of footage will be shown before and after every commercial break because they think if you see that Kia commercial with the driving hamsters, you will completely forget what you were watching beforehand, as well as “what cooking is,” and just stare at your television in confusion. (City, 8 p.m.)

Meanwhile, as Hell’s Kitchen debuts, The Taste concludes. The season of Anthony Bourdain wanes as Gordon Ramsay waxes. Finalist chefs contend to create the perfect dish while new contestants elsewhere arise to try and boil water properly. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and people fall in love. (ABC, 8 p.m.)

19 Kids and Counting: Duggars Do Asia will be exactly what you would expect when a large American fundamentalist Christian family travels abroad. In short: they will stare at things a lot, and the phrase “well, we don’t have this back at home” will be said so often that it will eventually lose all meaning. (TLC, 8 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Poppa’s Got A Brand New Badge,” wherein Homer forms a private security service with Lenny and Carl. “You know, I’ve had a lot of jobs… boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty, baby-proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman, carny, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, country western manager, garbage commissioner, mountain climber, farmer, inventor, Smithers, Poochie, celebrity assistant, power-plant worker, fortune-cookie writer, beer baron, Kwik-E-Mart clerk, homophobe, and missionary. But protecting Springfield, that gives me the best feeling of all.” (Comedy Network, 8:30 p.m.)

World’s Worst Tenants returns for a second season of craaaaaaazeeeee tenants. Is there a World’s Worst Landlords? No? Well, there should be. I expect universal agreement on this point, as I cannot be the only renter whose landlord failed to repair a back door for an entire winter and thus was forced to simply duct-tape wood slats over what was supposed to be the fire exit in order to prevent some of the heat from simply going outside. Or the only renter whose landlord refused to give their full name for tax purposes and insisted on cash payments only. Really, I could go on. I’m sure many of you could too. (Spike, 9 p.m.)

Wednesday

Yukon Gold is appropriate fare for History Television because historically people mined gold in the Yukon, so if somebody does it nowadays that is practically, like, Black Creek Pioneer Village, or something like that. (10 p.m.)

Thursday

Similarly, Big Rig Bounty Hunters is historical because the big rig truck was invented in 1898, and that’s history. Also, bounty hunting dates back to the Middle Ages! See? There’s history all over if you know how to look for it! Now, if you will excuse us, we are off to pitch Amazon Mud Wrestlers to History Television, since the Dahomey Amazons really existed and wrestling dates back to Ancient Greece and mud, well, mud has been around practically forever, really. So historical! (10 p.m.)

Friday

The Toronto Raptors host the Charlotte Bobcats tonight, and we will probably win because hey, it’s Charlotte, and they’re the worst team in the league. (Although that did not stop us from losing to Charlotte back in the first month of the season.) Of course, as any Raptors fan can tell you, a potential win like this will not ease the pain of knowing that Bryan Colangelo wants to give Rudy Gay an extension when Gay is one of the most overpaid players in the league and any extension would have to, well, continue overpaying him. But then again, we are talking about the man who is already responsible for three of the worst contracts in the NBA, according to Bill Simmons (Landry Fields, Andrea Bargnani, and Hedo Turkoglu, who he eventually managed to trade away) and apparently just wants to keep adding to that number. Dear Maple Leafs fans: we’re glad you’re having a good season this year, but MLSE fired the wrong Brian. (TSN, 7 p.m.)

The Weekend

Playing With Fire focuses on Derek and Daniel Koch, a pair of twins who are former male models and “nightlife impresarios” (read: Kardashian-class professional partiers), and who have decided they now want to run a high-concept restaurant. But let’s be honest: they’re professional celebrity-rubber-up-againsters, which is why they have a show on E!. (10 p.m. Sunday)

Periodically, things happen in Toronto that demand more than one perspective. Enter the Torontoist Roundtable.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ontheleftside/2036413882/"}ontheleftside{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

CHRISTOPHER BIRD: As I write this, the Raptors have just lost to the Brooklyn Nets—a team that was itself on a five-game losing streak—by fourteen points. The Raptors are now a pitiful four-and-nineteen on the season. They’ve lost twelve of their last thirteen games. Were it not for the Washington Wizards generously losing on the same night, the Raptors would now be the worst team in the entire NBA. And remember, this was supposed to be a competitive season: Bryan Colangelo went looking for talent in the off-season and was very firm that this was going to be the Raptors’ year, and that we would contend for a playoff spot. (Sneaking in as the eighth seed might seem like a low bar for a “competitive season,” but this is a Toronto sports team we’re talking about here: the standards have never been lower.) At this point the playoffs seem nearly impossible: in order to even have a shot, the Raptors effectively have to win two out of every three games for the rest of the season. So: whose fault is this? And what do the Raptors do now?

CHRIS DART: There really is so much blame to go around here, but I think the bulk of it has to be laid at the feet of Bryan Colangelo. He came in with a reputation as a smart, shrewd executive, and while he’s made some brilliant moves, he also traded the pick that would become Roy Hibbert for Jermaine “No Knees” O’Neal, and more importantly refused to let go of the hope that Andrea Bargnani would turn into the next Dirk Nowitzki. More than any of his other draft picks, Bargnani was HIS guy, and he just refuses to acknowledge that you can’t build a team around a seven footer who refuses to rebound. He’s also sabotaged (whether intentionally or not) his own hand-picked head coach, by selecting a coach known for his defensive acumen, and then sticking him with Bargnani, who just doesn’t care about defense, and Jose Calderon, who, in spite of his best efforts, manages to make every opposing point guard look like John Stockton.

KEVIN SCOTT: Yup, Colangelo has to fall on his sword for most of this mess. It’s not as if the 2006 draft with Bargnani had the most talent or anything, but would the Raptors be better off if they had taken LaMarcus Aldridge instead? In hindsight, probably. First overall draft picks have a way of defining general managers, and this one has certainly helped to tarnish the reputation he had built with the Suns. It seems so long ago now that he was named Executive Of The Year. That was in 2007, when the team won the division. There was so much hope then. What everyone needed this past off-season was a reason to get excited again. Signing Kyle Lowry has produced some flashes of greatness, sure, but if Colangelo had managed to actually put together a deal that brought Steve Nash to Canada, there’s no doubt it would have created the kind of buzz in the city that we hadn’t felt in years.

CHRISTOPHER BIRD: Actually, I have to disagree with you there, Kevin. The problem with Colangelo’s entire reign as GM is that he has always gone for “win now” rather than “rebuild,” and that he doesn’t know how to “win now” anyway. He didn’t trade Chris Bosh when everybody knew Bosh was going to jump to Miami because Colangelo made himself believe that he could re-sign Bosh. He overspends on average players (Bargnani, Landry Fields, Hedo Turkoglu—the list goes on and on), because he convinces himself that if he does, somehow he’ll get stars: either the money he spends will turn them into better players or star players will see that Colangelo is willing to throw money around. But he’s been doing this for seven years and it hasn’t worked yet. God, what if he had succeeded in getting Steve Nash? We’d have used up all of our salary cap space on an ancient point guard who has been injured for essentially the entire season. No: I think if the Raptors are going to be successful, he has to do it through trades or drafting. So brainstorm for me: how do we trade/draft our way to a competitive team (even over a couple of seasons)?

CHRIS DART: Yeah, Steve Nash would have been a deathblow. The first thing they do is fire the GM. After that, Bargnani has to go. And I think we should be really, really realistic about what that’s going to look like. They’re not going to get anything good for him, so they have to manage expectations a little. If they can just get a player with a shorter contract, I’m sold there. Jose Calderon, on the other hand, does have value, as his deal is expiring. I feel like they should be able to leverage that into a mid-first round pick. From there, they can suck enough to get a top-three pick. (I’m currently working on a name for this year’s “Tank Nation” bandwagon. I’m down to “To the Cellar for Zellar,” or “Less Wins for Nerlens.”)

Then in the off-season they move Kyle Lowry—because there’s no goddamn way he’s re-signing here, and if he is, we don’t want him—ideally for a 2014 pick and a small forward, and amnesty either Linas Kleiza or Amir. (I’m thinking the small forward in this case would be Danny Granger, who expires in 2014 anyway.) With the two 2013 picks, they go best player available, probably Shabazz Muhammad, then try to nab a point guard with the second, ideally CJ McCollum, because there’s no way a guy who plays in the Patriot League is a lottery pick. I’m just not buying it. The new GM will probably fire Dwayne Casey, which sucks because I like him, but that’s life. They should replace him with Mike Brown. Now, we’re looking at one season of intense pain—this one—and then a core of DeMar, Jonas, Ed Davis, Terrance Ross, Shabazz Muhammad and CJ McCollum, plus the veteran leadership of Danny Granger, Mike Brown as coach and a pick to replace the one they gave up to get Lowry in the first place.

KEVIN SCOTT: It’s not that a move to land Nash would have made any real sense in the bigger picture, though I am sure Lakers fans will tell you it certainly helps if said ancient free-agent acquisition can actually stay healthy (thumbs up in your direction, Peyton Manning). It’s more that casual fans like myself who aren’t able to provide any real insight into which of those draft picks has the most potential upside are getting increasingly frustrated and—let’s face it—a little bored by the kinds of teams being assembled each year. At least when we had marquee names like Vince Carter, Chris Bosh, or even Damon Stoudemire, there was a sense of having one player the fanbase could rally around. They could say, “At least we have that guy.” It always felt then as if the front office was no more than a few moves away from putting the winning pieces together. That’s why staring down the barrel of an overhaul is so disheartening. It doesn’t help that free agents now seem increasingly wary of considering Toronto as an option given our track record. Should we just acquiesce to Vince Carter’s suggestion that he might return or does that feel too much like some sort of devious ruse where he comes back only to figuratively (or perhaps literally) douse us in pig’s blood a la Carrie?

CHRISTOPHER BIRD: Not Carter. Vince Carter may have reached the point where Toronto fans might only want to secretly murder him in the dead of night rather than stage an open sacrifice in the Air Canada Centre, but he’s still Vince Carter. More importantly, he’s Vince Carter of 2012 (a capable sixth man) rather than in-his-prime-superstar Vince Carter, which is what Toronto fans crave. Besides, we’re not going to get a superstar by spending money on a free agent anyway, because NBA players are wary of Toronto—both because of its losing stigma and because the city itself has gained a reputation for being a bad place to live during the season (cold and wet, not exciting like New York). That latter is honestly kind of unfair, because Toronto doesn’t have any climate issues or lack of excitement that, say Chicago doesn’t have (e.g. yes, it’s cold and wet in the winter, but it’s a fun place), but then again the Bulls have six championships and we don’t. So we draft or we trade.

I tend to be sympathetic to the idea of tanking, but I am mindful both of casual fans’ reaction and also the potential interference by the NBA itself in any trade we might make that is too obviously a tank trade. (Example: we trade Lowry to Orlando for injured Al Harrington and multiple draft picks. Works for both teams, but for us it’s too obviously a tank move and would have a good chance of being vetoed by David Stern.) I agree with Dart that a rebuild will need multiple picks. The problem, though, is that 2013 is a fairly thin draft year. Dart mentioned basically everybody who justifies tanking, and that’s a short list. Toronto needs to pick sure things, not make-work projects like Terrence Ross.

2014, though—2014 is an insane draft year, and I think the Raptors need to focus on it. Mostly this is because of Andrew Wiggins, who is—say it with me now—Canadian, and also heralded as either the next Lebron or the next Kevin Durant depending on who’s doing the heralding that week. A superstar-level player who’s also from Thornhill should be a no-brainer. The Raptors want a superstar brand? There you go: “Maple Jordan.” (It’s an awful nickname but unfortunately Vince took “Air Canada.”) The problem with this plan, though, is that everybody else wants Wiggins too, even though the 2014 class has multiple other players on or near his level. The second problem is that draft picks are NBA trading gold, and we’re not going to be able to offload Calderon straight-up for a pick because half a season of Calderon is not worth a first-round pick. And the third problem is what Kevin identified: we can’t be sure that casual fans be willing to wait to see if the Wiggins game plan pans out.

KEVIN SCOTT: Sorry if I’m messing up the rotation, but it seemed like my cue to jump in here. Realistically, we’ve reached a point where it becomes awfully hard for the casual fan to care any less, really. As far a rebuilding process goes, look: the Raptors have invested in high-profile players before—the Carters and the Boshes. They come through town, establish names for themselves, then leave with barely a note on the pillow. So fans are forced to settle for proverbial Milhouses in Bargnani and Calderon, players that are devoted enough to the cause, but inherently limited in ability. It’s going to take some time before casual fans are ready to fully commit to another bright young prospect.

That said, the Wiggins plan would appear to be a slam dunk (sorry), at least on paper. Is this a situation, then, where the team’s best option is really to experiment with a long-term tank plan (The LTT, or Super Tank, are possible catchy nicknames to consider) to be sure we can nab him? If that’s the case, it might be a good idea to try and latch on to some crucial piece of temporary deadweight to ensure failure. Maybe Lamar Odom. Or can they convince Hakeem Olajuwon to come out of retirement? A lot can happen in the time before the 2014 draft, so it would seem foolish to put all of the team’s eggs in that one basket. But if Wiggins should become a Toronto Raptor, it will instantly make an entire nation full of people who previously had no interest in the sport take notice.

What really seems to be lacking at the moment from this team—and maybe from every Raptors team in the history of the franchise—is a killer instinct. It’s evident in the way they lose so many overtime games and consistently blow halftime leads. After a while, a sports team starts to carry this stench of failure, the way the Cleveland Browns do in football, the Chicago Cubs in baseball, and our Leafs in hockey. It’s the kind of culture that perpetuates losing, accepts it as if the alternative was never to be expected anyway. It’s important that the Raptors shake this reputation, if only so they won’t be limited in luring players to town. Also, the fans aren’t as resilient as Leafs die-hards. They won’t keep showing up just because there’s a game to be played.

CHRIS DART: First of all, don’t get me started on David Stern. I have a huge hate-on for that man. Secondly, I think a trade would have to be a lot more flagrant than Harrington and picks for Lowry to get vetoed. It would have to be something ridiculous, like Aaron Williams, Eric Williams, the remains of Alonzo Mourning and two crappy picks for an in-his-prime Vince Carter. (Wait a second…) Also, just so we’re clear, the trades I just proposed are just me spitballing. I haven’t really thought them out in depth. They were just things I tossed out there to give folks an idea of the level of tear-down and rebuild this team needs. Also, I feel like Calderon’s expiring deal is worth something, even if he’s not.

The thing about “casual fans” is that by definition they come and go. The team has an unusually high number of them right now because the Leafs are locked out, but generally speaking, there aren’t a ton of casual Raptors fans. You’re either into them, or you’re only vaguely aware of their existence. They’ve been too crappy for too long to have casual fans. Every time Bryan Colangelo came out and told the fans this team was a Hedo Turkoglu or a Shawn Marion or a Jermaine O’Neal away from contention, he lied. That said, they also haven’t been quite bad enough to get a really transformative pick. They’ve just sort of limped along, consistently just missing the playoffs and consistently getting late lotto picks. As a result, they have two genuine NBA quality starters in DeRozan and Lowry, two more players that could turn into legit starters in Davis and Valanciunas, and a handful of decent rotational players. Let’s get off the treadmill. Let’s have a fire sale and start from zero.

CHRISTOPHER BIRD: I think you’re overrating DeRozan a bit (as opposed to Bryan Colangelo, who overrated him a lot). He’s still inconsistent. Maybe not Bargnani-level inconsistent, but he’s not NBA starter level yet, except by the lowered Toronto standard. I like DeRozan, because he hustles all the time and because as a Toronto fan I am obligated to love a player who hustles, but hustling cannot make up for a lack of talent. DeRozan, while not untalented, is also probably not going to develop into a Rajon-Rondo-like “five years later he’s a star and nobody expected that at the beginning.” He could surprise me and have a higher ceiling than I expect, and I truly hope he does. But if he doesn’t, it’ll just be the latest in a long line of athletes who fit into the Toronto-fan mold of “we like him because he’s a hard worker so who cares how good he is.” That’s the attitude that lets the Maple Leafs put shitty teams on the ice every year so long as they put a few Domi-style grinders out there, and it’s one area where the fans truly are to blame, and it’s at least partly the reason Colangelo can get away with giving DeRozan $10 million a season for four years when DeRozan hasn’t earned it yet (to put it mildly).

And that brings us back to Colangelo. Here’s the thing: on an individual level most of his decisions aren’t truly bad or stupid except in 20/20 hindsight. Trading for Jermaine O’Neal could have worked out great if O’Neal hadn’t broken down almost immediately. A lot of people thought signing Turkoglu was a good idea. Trying to keep Bosh, picking Bargnani over LaMarcus Aldridge, signing Landry Fields in order to get either Steve Nash or Jeremy Lin to sign here—individually, none of these is a firing offense, and many of them are at least defensible. But the thing about sports is that nobody is unlucky all the time, and when someone has had as many unlucky moments as Colangelo, there’s something more than luck playing a part.

CHRIS DART: Wow, DeMar isn’t even an NBA starter in your mind? Damn. That’s harsh. I think on a good team he’s a solid third option. Anyway, yes. My core point is that as bad as this team is, they’ve never been bad enough to get better. They keep limping on with the lie that they’re a player or two away from “competing.” (So we’re clear, “competing” in this context doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to compete for the championship, just that they’ll be able to make games competitive, instead of an instant “W” for the opposition.)

That lie needs to be put to bed, and its primary perpetrator, Bryan Colangelo, needs to be removed from the GM’s chair immediately. The apathetic, defensively-challenged, rebounding-averse symbol of his regime, Andrea Bargnani, needs to be traded for whatever we can get, or barring that, deported back to Italy. Then, they need somebody to come in and tear this thing down to the ground. It’s not like a terrible season will kill the franchise. They’re already having a terrible season, and they’ve been having terrible seasons since the franchise was founded. Even when they were “good,” during the Vince Carter era, they were actually just slightly better than average. All I’m asking for is a controlled burn. No more building a team with the goal of sneaking into the eighth playoff spot, no more bringing in aging veterans as window dressing. Let’s blow this sucker up and start over.

KEVIN SCOTT: As much as the notion feels painfully familiar, it does seem like blowing this team up again would probably the best bet at this point. The idea of Colangelo being the guy behind another rebuilding, though, is a ludicrous one. Even as being he’s dragged away, I’m sure Colangelo will be yelling, “Just give me one more chance! I swear I’ve figured it out this time!” I’m sorry, Bryan, but you only get so many chances to build this house. As Bird said, after this many attempts, it can no longer be chalked up to luck or, even if it could, it doesn’t matter. These are sports we’re talking about here, and the only way to gauge success or failure is by the win-loss column. There can never be excuses.

Which brings us to the universal truth of the matter: winning has a way of solving nearly everything here. If they start putting together a couple of worthwhile seasons (and I recognize this might be a few years from now), those same players who wanted nothing to do with this mess will suddenly be interested in being part of a franchise on the upswing. Dart’s point about the Raptors not having any more casual fans is valid, too. There are two camps here: the loyal die-hards who will root for the team no matter what and an increasingly apathetic group whose interest wanes with each losing year. The latter group is not entirely lost, though. Many of them were once faithful supporters. Now they’re just waiting for a reason to return to the ACC, for a team worth cheering for. People will come, Ray—I mean Chris and Christopher—people will most definitely come…

CORRECTION: December 14, 2012, 5:20 P.M. This post originally contained the following parenthetical sentence: “I’m currently working on a name for this year’s ‘Tank Nation’ bandwagon. I’m down to ‘Bomb It for Muhammad,’ ‘To the Cellar for Zellar,’ or ‘Less Wins for Nerlens.’” It has since been pointed out to us that “Bomb it for Muhammad” (which was also repeated a second time, later in the article) can be construed in an offensive—and completely unintended—way. That phrase has been removed from the post. We apologize.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiogabe/5452261831/"}Gabriel Li{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

This is the time of year in Toronto when fans of the Raptors have traditionally found their thoughts drifting from basketballs to ping-pong balls. As the NBA regular season winds down and the playoffs carry on ahead, the Raptors have—year after year—asked fans to turn their attention to the draft lottery, and to resign themselves to dreams of next season, where hope springs eternal.

This year, of course, is no different. Before the Raptors closed out their season at home on Thursday night, Toronto-born centre Jamaal Magloire grabbed a microphone and addressed the Air Canada Centre crowd. “We are going to improve,” Magloire promised, “and we are going to make the playoffs next year.”

Bold words from a man whose team lost nearly twice as frequently as it won this season. But there is reason to believe that Magloire might not be entirely delusional.

Raptors fans have become great connoisseurs of bad basketball teams. They have sampled a different kind every year—with precious few exceptions over the course of the Raps’ 17-season history—from the fledgling franchise’s mid-’90s growing pains to the unravelling of the Lenny Wilkens and Vince Carter era, and right up to the present day.

But what was refreshing about this year’s bad basketball team was the quality of their losses. For the first time in a long time, the Raptors were honest losers—usually defeated by a lack of talent, not a lack of effort.

Credit for this transformation seems due to Dwane Casey, who took over head coaching duties after the firing of Jay Triano in June 2011.

An assistant to coach Rick Carlisle with last year’s championship-winning Dallas Mavericks, Casey arrived in Toronto vowing to do what his recent predecessors had attempted in vain: to change the mentality of a team that had for years been developing a well-deserved reputation throughout the league—cast in iron after the Boston Celtics’ Paul Pierce dunked over then-Raptor Chris Bosh in 2009 while kneeing him, with impunity, in the groin—for its milquetoast defence.

Miraculously, Casey seems to have kept his promise. Unlike the lackadaisical groups that all too often loafed indifferently through games for Triano (and Sam Mitchell before him), this season’s Raptors were downright scrappy, regularly hanging tough in close games against line-ups far better than their own.

The team’s once-porous defence tightened up, and ranked among the top 10 in the league in terms of both opponents’ scoring average and opponents’ field-goal percentage—categories in which last year’s nearly-identical roster ranked 26th and 29th, respectively, out of 30 teams. Even the chronically nonchalant Andrea Bargnani started to show signs of progress in this regard.

Of course, the Raptors struggled mightily in other areas. Bargnani, the team’s most effective scorer, missed more than half of the season due to injuries. Young shooting guard DeMar DeRozan showed flashes of brilliance in his third year, but was inconsistent. Ditto sophomore Ed Davis, who has the potential to become a defensive anchor for the Raptors, but will likely need to bulk up in the off-season first.

There will be plenty of opportunity to add additional talent by the time next year’s training camp gets underway. Tied for the NBA’s seventh-worst record at season’s end, the Raptors are guaranteed an early first-round pick from what is being billed as a very deep and talented draft pool, plus two selections in the second round.

The team should also get a huge boost from the much-anticipated arrival of centre Jonas Valanciunas, the Raptors’ fifth-overall pick in last year’s draft, who has been playing until now for Lithuania’s Lyietuvos Rytas, and was recently chosen by FIBA as Europe’s top young talent in 2011.

Whether the Raptors will be able to improve their roster enough to make Magloire’s pre-game address into prophecy remains to be seen, but there are some early signs that things are looking up. Shortly after Magloire spoke to the fans, his team closed out their season with a wire-to-wire thrashing of the lowly New Jersey Nets. Even with seven Raptor regulars sitting out what was an utterly meaningless contest, third-string point guard Ben Uzoh recorded the team’s first triple-double since 2001, seldom-used Solomon Alabi pulled down 19 boards, and Toronto held the Nets to a paltry 67 points on 30 per cent shooting.

Perhaps it was a preview of things to come. But whatever becomes of next year’s Raptors, all we can do, for now, is try to savour the last effort of a bad basketball team that was more palatable than most.

To the casual observer, the hoodies the full-time crew wear might seem a bit ubiquitous: all black, emblazoned with the word “conversions” across the front, a white outline of a dragon on the chest, and a nickname along the hood. It’s the kind of custom apparel you’d expect from a rec-level sports team: it says camaraderie, while hinting at a shared inside joke.
Nobody knows we exist, members of the crew explain, laughing, as they describe the relationship they have with their daytime co-workers (or lack thereof). “When they leave it’s hockey, and when they come back it’s basketball. They don’t know how it gets done.” The job, they continue, is a mystery to most—which is why they decided on a dragon for the hoodie—a “mythical creature,” heard of, but never seen.

On an average night, the ACC has 20 to 25 unionized employees working a changeover, half full time, half part time. “It’s all labour intensive,” says Chris Jennings, the ACC’s overnight conversion supervisor. “If we don’t have the bodies, it just slows us down.”
The schedule is punishing. During the regular season, almost all of the ice-to-court conversions take place at night. When we stayed over in late March, the crew was looking at 11 conversions in 13 days—which, explains Brent Wynne, the ACC’s manager of facility services, “isn’t unusual.”

Photo by Miles Storey/Torontoist.

A typical night-time ice-to-court conversion begins at 10 p.m. and usually ends around 6 a.m. “You can trim it a bit,” explains Wynne. “But it’s pretty tight.” After the final whistle, the crew starts by cleaning the ice. A Zamboni then goes out and scrapes it, roughening up the surface so it’s easier to walk and drive on. Next, a team heads out with a forklift and starts to manually lay down what’s called ice deck—a black, inch-thick insulated sheeting that protects the ice, while keeping the cold in. When they’re on the court, explains Wynne, the basketball players are only about two to three inches away from the ice. “You could go out there in sock feet and walk from one end to the other, and you probably wouldn’t feel it. But if you stood there, you might start to feel [the cold].”
After the ice is covered and the deck is firmly in place, the crew starts removing the glass and boards, and drops the safety nets that hang behind the goals. At the same time, the seats in the west end are manually retracted, opening an entrance to the back storage area. The pitch and height of the seats in the east end are also realigned for basketball using an automated multi-million dollar spiral-lift system (a series of giant hydraulic Slinky-type things that move the seats up and down). The court is smaller than the ice surface, so when the ACC shifts into basketball mode, it gains about 1,000 seats, for a total of 19,800.
Next, the players’ benches and the penalty boxes are removed from the north and south sides, and seating units are dropped in their place. After installing additional manual seating sections on the east and west ends, the crew starts to put down the court. To make sure it’s straight, a chalk line is drawn on the deck as a guide, and a sledgehammer and block are used to tap the floor into alignment. The installation mirrors hardwood flooring, except the court sections are larger, and each piece is hooked into the one before it. In total, there are 195 sections of court, 13 deep and 15 across.
Once the court’s down, the basketball nets are installed and adjusted, and courtside seating is set up around the edges.
“Really, our challenge most of the time, is time, and just the number of conversions,” says Wynne. “We don’t have any room to make mistakes, and these guys have got it down to a fine art.”

Photo by Miles Storey/Torontoist.

Out of the sporting events the ACC regularly hosts, hockey to basketball conversions (and vice versa) are the easiest, as the crew has the most experience with them. Lacrosse to hockey takes the least time, as the boards and seating stay the same, while lacrosse to basketball takes the longest. And the worst? Arena football.
Back in the early aughts, Toronto had an arena football team called the Toronto Phantoms, which were based out of at the ACC. To do a conversion for football, the crew would have to retract the east and west end seating back to the wall, install turf right to the edges, and construct massive screens that hung from the ceiling. The whole process often took more than 10 hours. “Back in those days I was still working on the crew, and we hated them,” says Wynne. “It was ugly.”
Usually though, it’s the special event conversions that cause the most trouble. According to Wynne, back when the ACC opened in 1999 someone thought it would be a good idea to hold snocross in the arena (that “sport” where tricked-out snowmobiles race and go off jumps). Snocross, as one might guess, requires snow—tons of it. “When we converted back to hockey, the ice was destroyed,” he laughs. “We did it twice in the first two years, and we haven’t had it since.”
Concerts can also cause problems, particularly if the tour’s new and the setup hasn’t been tested, or if complex pyrotechnics are involved.
The crew’s biggest challenge to date came this year, in the form of the Junos. “We had a stage that actually went all the way into our storage area,” explains Jennings. “We nicknamed it “stagezilla.” It took three days to build it, and we had to send off all our equipment that wasn’t being used, just so they would have enough room.”
Unlike many sporting venues in North America, the Air Canada Centre doesn’t have much in the way of storage space—a trade-off for being downtown beside a highway, instead of out in the suburbs. To cope, every inch is used to its fullest, which means storing a lot of the equipment under the seating units. Still, the ACC’s space limitations don’t seem to be slowing it down.
“We probably average, in a good year, 20 to 22 conversions every month,” says Wynne. “Once we take the ice out it’s a bit different, because we’re not as busy, but for eight months it’s non-stop. People have no idea how busy we are.”

Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.

Unless the Leafs make the playoffs—an event that’s now as mythical as the crew—the ice is usually removed sometime in early May, which, says Wynne, makes summer concert conversions a lot easier. The ice is then built up again in September over a three to four day period. “It’s just like you would do on a backyard rink with a hose, you build it layer by layer,” explains Wynne, adding that unlike most backyards, the ACC has a glycol piping system that runs under the ice to keep it frozen. And once the ice is in, it stays there till the end of the season.

During a conversion, the Air Canada Centre feels like a different place. Games are loud and raucous affairs, while changeovers, though not exactly quiet, are eerily calm. (At least the one we experienced was.) So much so, that when you’re standing on the ice deck you start to notice other sights…and smells.
For one, the floor reeks of sweat—especially near the players benches, which are just gross in general: littered with junk food, discarded surgical gloves, and bloody tissues. The basketball nets also stink of sweat, which suggests that they’re not cleaned very often.
Not surprisingly, sports fans are filthy, filthy creatures. Beneath the spiral-lift seating system in the east end, we discovered hundreds of discarded peanut shells, wads of gum, mountains of popcorn, and lots and lots of spilt beer. If you walk under the seats during the game, says Wynne, there’s a good chance that you’re going to get hit by a “beer shower.”
Speaking of food, each night the ACC throws out dump trucks worth of it, much of which is perfectly good. There’s always “lots of untouched leftovers,” says Jennings, especially in the corporate boxes, the media gondola, and the players’ rooms. Thus, every game night, the conversion crew goes on the hunt for free food. Rarely do they come back empty handed. A few weeks ago, laughs Jennings, Rick Mercer came to do a conversion story, and when he ate cold pizza with us at 3 a.m., we knew he was “one of us.” (We didn’t find any pizza during our stay, but we were treated to leftover pasta and salmon, courtesy of the Buffalo Sabres.)
Perks aside, the job, says the crew, comes with sacrifices. “It’s tough on the body,” it’s hard on “relationships,” and it “kills your social life,” they explain. That said, it’s a job they still like.
“I’ve worked with these guys for 20 years,” says Wynne, who started his career in 1980 at the Gardens sweeping the stands part time. “Even though I’m their boss now, I’ve worked with them, I know their work ethic…odds are, that I’m not getting a call at 3 a.m.”
“We haven’t missed an event yet,” adds Jennings. “And we don’t plan on it. We know that the show must go on.”
Video shot by Miles Storey and Christopher Drost; produced by Miles Storey.

I would like to share a story with you about something that happened with the Spanish National Team that someone interpreted incorrectly. It happened in the photo session where the Spanish National Team was introduced; one of our sponsors asked us to pose with a “wink” to our participation in Beijing, we made an oriental expression with our eyes. We thought it was something appropriate and that it would always be interpreted as somewhat loving. Never the less some of the European media did not see it this way.
From here I would like to declare that we have a huge respect for the East and their people, some of my best friends in Toronto are from China and one of our Spanish National Team sponsors is the Chinese brand Li Ning. Anyone who would like to interpret this differently is absolutely confused.

A representative for the Chinese clothing company Li Ning, one of the team’s other sponsors, tempered the criticism directed against the men by telling the Associated Press that “the gesture shows that the Spanish team is so humorous, relaxing and cute.” Seur, meanwhile, “has no immediate plans to withdraw the ad, which is scheduled to run on selected days until the end of the games.” And according to El Pais (via the Times), the Chinese embassy in Spain found the ad “ni racista ni ofensivo.” So everyone’s happy! Except for Chinese spectators, who booed the Spanish basketball team relentlessly at Tuesday’s Spain–China game. Can’t win ‘em all, though, right?
Public domain image of the Marca ad via DigitalJournal.