Bryan Colangelo, president and general manager of the Toronto Raptors, is asked about Chris Bosh’s performance in the men’s Olympic basketball tournament and suddenly he is excited. A twinkle enters his eye and he is ready to share some scuttlebutt floating around the U.S. basketball team about his prized forward and franchise player.
Once again, Bosh was not a front-and-centre player in the gold-medal game, but he was an important player, entering the game in the final five minutes when the score was close and the coach turned to the players he trusted most.
“He has been as valuable a player as we have on our team,” Krzyzewski said when asked about Bosh. “He has played with such maturity and smarts. You can see it in his play, but if you could hear him talk to our team and talk to the other big guys, in practice, in games and on the bench …
“In this tournament, we are seeing an already outstanding player raise his game to another level. I’m very proud of him. He has been a real man for us.”
“I know I can score the basketball, but that wasn’t my duty,” Bosh said. “I had to realize that as a basketball player and do everything I could to affect the game some way.
“If they threw me a bone, I’d take it.”
The U.S. team needed unselfish players who did odd jobs, and that was Bosh.
“I think sometimes you have to have someone behind the scenes who does the little things,” Bosh said. “You have to keep everybody motivated. If we come out flat, I’m not afraid to say something. If we’re not playing well, I have to pick everybody up.”
Bosh admits it wasn’t easy, checking his ego, not taking shots he would take in the NBA and not looking at the stats sheet. But that was the pledge the U.S. players made when they bound together and decided that global basketball supremacy was more important than egos, shots and stats.
Soon after joining that class, Bosh finished his media obligations and was walking through the basement corridor of the Olympic Basketball Gymnasium when he spotted Raptors assistant coach Jay Triano, who is in China working for the CBC as a television analyst.
Still riding an emotional high, the player had a pep talk for the coach.
He repeated to Triano what he had said seconds earlier — “I just have to build on this momentum” — and pledged that when NBA training camp opens one month from now, Toronto’s franchise player will also be its most driven player. He said that every teammate will get the message, even fellow star forward Jermaine O’Neal, the Raptors’ major off-season acquisition.
“You going to be there?” Bosh asked Triano with a firm handshake. “We have some work to do.”
This has been the biggest accomplishment of my career so far. It’s such a great feeling because we worked so hard for all of these years and it’s paid off for us. We started this thing in 2006 with dreams of a Gold Medal in Beijing and now we’re to that point. Time flies so fast and I’m definitely going to take in this moment. It seems like it was yesterday when we were at the World Championships getting a Bronze medal. Now we have something better and we can put that behind us.
I have to give Spain all of my respect because they played an amazing game. They shot the ball extremely well and played some great defense. They were just plain hard to stop to be honest with you. They moved the ball well and they were very aggressive on both ends of the court. This was not the same team that we played in pool play.
It was funny because before the game, a lot of media kept asking if we thought it was going to be an easy game against them. That tripped me out because we knew it wasn’t just going to be an easy game. If you beat a team once, they’ll have motivation to play you even harder the second time around. Not to mention this game was for the GOLD MEDAL! All in all, they played well and I think that was one of the greatest International games in history.
Right after the game ended we went back to the locker room and changed into our outfits for the medal ceremony. We went up, got our medals, listened to the Star Spangled Banner while the raised the American flag to the ceiling (which was incredible) and then we had to go through media. All of that plus celebrating takes up a lot of energy, but it felt good though.
I’m living my dream and I’m very thankful to the man upstairs for this one. I’m about to go home and take some time off before I start back training for the season.
The score at Toronto Maple Leaf and Raptor games will be brought to you this season by London’s OES Inc.
The Blakie Road manufacturer has landed a deal to provide scoring systems for the Air Canada Centre, said president Paul Hogendoorn.
OES has supplied internal technology and software for the scoreboard as well as shot clocks, timers and even dressing room clocks telling players how much time remains before they go back out to play.
“We feel tremendous pride being able to do this and it helps our profile as a company. Our main market is schools and arenas, but it is nice to be the choice of the pros,” said Hogendoorn.
Though it’s one arena, the Raptors’ technology is more detailed than that for the Leafs, as NBA referees’ whistles are tied to the clocks to stop time, he added. “The NBA is more demanding, it is more complex in basketball.”
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