Net Losses: T.O. Hoops Disappear With No Rim Or Reason
Posted November 7, 2007 1:25 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Last Wednesday the Toronto Raptors opened their 13th season with a win over the Philadelphia 76ers in front of a sold-out Air Canada Centre.
On Sunday, another 19,800 watched the NBA’s most “international” team take on the Boston Celtics and when Sam Mitchell’s club welcomes the Orlando Magic on Wednesday, there again promises not to be an empty seat in the house.
The attendance figures reflect the excitement surrounding the Raps, and mean great things for the profit margins of owners Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
But while the buzz grows around a team that likely represents the city’s best shot at a championship in the next three to five years, you’d never know it to visit some of Toronto’s playgrounds and schoolyards, where the opportunity to play looks to be diminishing rather than increasing.
It seems like more and more the basketball courts in the city’s public spaces — while always a distant second to any ground that might serve for ball hockey or anything on ice — are slowly going the way of the buffalo.
On the one hand Toronto’s NBA franchise could be mere months from commanding the attention of the basketball-loving world, on the other I constantly see bare backboards on schools and in parks, where once there were rims, and if you were lucky, maybe even some mesh.
At Jackman Public School where I was until Grade 6, only recently did the hoop that for years sat mounted on a fence surrounding a tennis court, meet its end.
Where I learned how to play, where I practiced jump shots for hours on end from the first thaw until the first snowfall, is now, well, just a fence. The tennis courts house portable classrooms, the post lies in a pile of trash (bottom photo).
At my high school, Malvern Collegiate Institute, there never were any nets that anyone had heard of. When I showed up in 1996 there were two naked posts facing each other. To the best of my knowledge they were casualties of being wedged between the parking lot and the library and in that sense they were especially doomed.
But it’s a reality on the rise, no pun intended. At Frankland Public School and Holy Name Catholic the scene is replayed just as it was at fellow Riverdale institution Withrow and Little Italy’s St. Francis of Assisi, where the nets only came down during the summer months, and after all who plays basketball then?
Well my friends and I did, sometimes until two or three on a hot summer morning when the police or an angry neighbour finally chased us off.
And maybe kids like us are part of the problem. Just as I see rims topple, I also see many perfectly functional courts dormant on beautiful days, and in the eyes of the greater population of the Greater Toronto Area perhaps they do more harm than good in our ever-expanding downtown.
But the irony is painful, because as the Raptors grow alongside the game internationally with their multitude of foreign-born players, the team will undoubtedly enjoy an increase in attention, that is so long as the wins keep coming.
However anything beyond that seems unlikely unless the kids are out there on the hard top for generations to come. Which isn’t to say basketball isn’t trendy in this city right now, just the opposite.
But there’s one question that remains as the Raptors and super executive Bryan Colangelo forge onward towards an NBA championship: Can Toronto ever really love its basketball team, if Torontonians don’t even really like basketball?
Tell me what, if anything, you think is happening to our hoop dreams – aaron.miller@citynews.ca.
I too have noticed the decline in basketball hoops around the city. Roughly 5-10 years ago, in the building complex I reside in at Brimley and St. Clair in Scarborough, a playground was taken down and a basketball court was paved and a net put up. I think the hoop stayed on the net for no longer then one summer. The reason? The building complex was private property, and once word got out of the net there were car loads of people flocking from all over to make use of the court. Vandilism rose, as well as noise complaints at night, outdoor/public alcohol consumption, and so on in an ordinarily quiet area.
This is why the decision was made to take down the hoop, as several residents complained. I know of many public schools who’s janitors will put the nets up each weekday morning and take them down as the school day finishes, as not to punish the students. The reason? No one wants vandals or tresspassers on their property. As long as people chose to ignore rules, and as long as acts of vandalism, violence, etc occur on the courts, the nets will continue to come down. That is my opinion.
Darren B.
In response to your article about missing basket ball hoops, I believe the problem lies not with our youth not liking basketball but some of our society not liking our youth. I live in a small condominium townhouse community in Scarborough and we had a basket ball net set up by our recycling bins for awhile but when residents complained of youth hanging our there (playing basketball) and the fear of trouble and damage arose the net was abruptly removed and the happy pastime of my sons and other young enthusiasts became a pastime of the past. They bought their own mobile net and asked if they could set them up in our underused tennis courts which was granted briefly until once again the fear of a group of teens together enjoying themselves incited mob fear and the net disappeared. So I conclude it is society’s fears of gangs and youth that is responsible for our dormant basketball courts and our children are simply losing motivation for having to fight to be allowed to play in today’s cynical world.
Karen W.
