Canada Basketball got screwed by FIBA, Finland, and... Angry Birds?

A re-enactment of  the Rovio-FIBA "sponsorship".

It's a boring Saturday afternoon. I'm sitting here watching Team USA destroy Team Finland on the opening day of the FIBA World Cup, and I'm wondering "how the heck did this Finland team even qualify for this tournament?" Because they are getting absolutely pummeled. 

My next thought was "I wonder what group Canada is in?" 

Well, I must not have been paying much attention in the spring, when the qualifiers were announced, because Canada did not qualify for the tournament. That's right; Canada, Land of the First Overall Picks, did not qualify. Shameful, I thought. We should be watching Wiggins & Co. get pummeled by Team USA, not those blond-haired, blue-shirted Finns! How could this happen?

Baseball is Awesome: A Fan's Review of the Blue Jays 19-Inning Game

7 hours in 4 pictures.

19 innings. 7 hours. 39 hits, 19 walks, 43 men left on base. Two sunburned arms. And one severely damaged set of vocal chords.

Yes, I was one of the 46,126 fans at the Rogers Centre yesterday. Yes, I stayed for the whole game. And yes, I'm going to describe it here for anyone who did not have the pleasure of attending.

It started out like any other Sunday afternoon game, except there was a little more excitement in the air than usual. This was likely from a combination of a) Saturday night's comeback win b) the traitorous Tigers fans from across Ontario being in the house, and c) the number of young families at the Dome (primarily just to get a free hat).

The game started off how every Jays Talk-calling, Mike Wilner-annoying fan expected: Buehrle looked awful, offering tasty meatballs for the murderous top half of the Tigers lineup. Reyes seemed to bobble away any chance of stopping them. David Price probably felt very comfortable pitching against his old whipping boys, despite his new uniform. Errors and strikeouts were plentiful from the Jays. It looked like the sunshine and the free hat would be the highlights of the day for every Jays fan at the park.

But then, something changed. It seemed to start when David Price was hit by a comebacker in his knee-groin area. Now,I would never accuse anyone of being happy when a player gets injured - that's just mean. But it felt like we were the Rebels, and had finally found a vulnerability in the Death Star. There was no sympathy from the crowd.

The Loser of the Wiggins-Love Trade? Canada Basketball

Did Kevin Love and LeBron James hurt our chances of seeing more of this?

The trade that's kept the NBA world buzzing for the past couple weeks seems to have finally been finalized.

Cleveland will trade Canadian youngsters SF Andrew Wiggins and PF Anthony Bennett (who were drafted 1st overall in the previous two drafts) along with a draft pick to Minnesota for All star PF Kevin Love, who will team up with All Star PG Kyrie Irving and some LeBron guy to seemingly create a new "Big Three"for the Cavaliers.

The move has been rumoured for weeks, since James shocked the world and went home to Ohio, and Love started making it pretty clear he wanted out of Minnesota sooner than later. Then in his written-word version of "The Announcement," James' failed to mention new teammates Wiggins and Bennett, and as of last week still hadn't reached out to them. This week the trade was confirmed by the god of NBA reporting, Adrian Wojnarowski, despite the fact League rules say it can't be completed for a few days.

The consensus on the trade is that it's good deal for both sides. Love gets what he wants (out of Minnesota, onto a contender), LeBron gets what he wants (Love), Cleveland gets what it wants (whatever LeBron wants) and Minnesota gets what they want (the highest-upside rookie since Anthony Davis.)

Canadian Sports Week in Preview

Can you feel it? The end of summer is around the corner. But just as summer begins to wind down, the sports calendar ramps up, like a guardian angel shielding you from post-summer depression.

So let's take a look at whats on tap for the next week in the Canadian Sporting universe.

YA, TENNIS!

The Rogers Cup (Men's) - Toronto - through Aug. 10:

Tennis is an extremely underrated sport in Canada, or at least it's underrated by the average Canadian. Part of that is probably due to fact we haven't ever had a "local boy" to cheer for (sorry, Daniel Nestor. Nobody respects Doubles for some reason.) And another part is the yearly tradition of Tennis' biggest stars "sitting out" the Rogers Cup.

Both trends seem to be ending, though. Milos Raonic and Vaclav Pospisil have had unprecedented success of Canadians on the Men's side of things. And of the "Big 3" (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic) only Nadal managed to weasel his way out of playing in the Great White North this year - which could be caused in part by the aforementioned success of Ranoic and co., making Toronto more of a "destination".

Anyway, with the increased competition, don't expect a miraculous Canadian championship run at the Coupe De Rogers. Raonic, the brightest of the bunch by far, has a powerful serve that could carry him deep in the tournament, but just as we saw at Wimbledon, it likely won't be enough to take out a Djokovic or Federer.

The Wonderful Mysterious World of OVO Bounce

HOO the heck knew about this 2nd Annual OVO Bounce Tournament?

This weekend saw a lot of crazy stuff going down in the Greater Toronto Area - Caribana, bridges being taken out by drunken truck drivers, and boy band concerts. But the only one I'm disappointed I'm missing out on has got to be OVO Bounce - a week-long basketball tournament/festival leading up to OVO Fest. For those not in-the-know, OVO stands for October's Very Own - the name of rapper/crooner Drake's label, and OVO Fest has become an annual Toronto concert event featuring most of the hottest names in rap and R&B.

But the newest addition to the festival is what has me intrigued. From what I can tell as a far, far-outside observer, OVO Bounce is a 4-day, 8-team Pro-Am tournament held in the Ryerson University gyms, that features many of the biggest names in Canadian basketball. The tournament is a partnership between noted basketball fan Drake, and CIA Bounce, a Canadian Youth Basketball Development program that has been dominating tournaments stateside and pumping out NBA draftees for the last handful of years. Wiggins, Bennett, Ennis, Thompson and Bhullar all played for CIA Bounce, and were all involved in the Pro-Am that also included current Toronto Raptor Amir Johnson, Detroit Piston Brandon Jennings, and many more.