Written by Paul Flannery at SBNation.com
So, we need to talk about the weather because that’s all anyone really talked about this weekend. It was cold you see, really freaking cold. How cold was it, Kobe?
“It’s cold,” Kobe Bryant confirmed on Friday. “It’s really, really cold. Really, really cold.”
And that was before we got to Saturday when leaving one’s hotel felt like a truly courageous act, if not downright lunacy. The funny thing about the cold, the locals all said, was that it had been such a mild winter. And the really funny thing was that it would warm up just when the NBA’s All-Star carnival of marketing delights was set to get up on out of here. What can you do, eh? (No one shrugs about bad weather like Canadians.)
“Nobody believes me,” Raptor guard DeMar DeRozan said. “They think it’s cold like this all the time. But that’s not the truth. You’ve got to take the good with the bad. We’ve got an All-Star Weekend here. Everything’s here. We can’t complain.”
It’s true: no one believed DeRozan, but everyone did complain. The shame of it was that Toronto was a wonderful host city. It’s a gorgeous place, filled with fantastic restaurants and friendly, welcoming people. Everything they say about Toronto was true from the clean sidewalks to the oddly well-organized traffic congestion. No one wanted to be an ungracious guest, so we whined in private, put on Canada Goose jackets and tried to make the best of it. As Adam Silver pointed out, the very point of the game of basketball was to give people something to do when the weather turned brutal.
“Yes, it’s a bit cold here, but I’ve been reading up on James Naismith,” Silver said. “Dr. James Naismith, who, of course, was born in this very province of Ontario. And what I read is when he founded this game 125 years ago, it was because he thought there was an activity needed to keep young boys, young men active on these very cold winter days. And of course, he planned it as an indoor activity. So when I keep hearing about how cold it is, I keep reminding people that’s true, but our events are inside, so no big deal and we’re all enjoying it here.”
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