#UNDERRATED QUALITY: HIS CONTEMPT

[scalproie]

makes me think of that glance Subz gives Batman in his chapter in mkvsdc

look at him

[tcm]

I Could Have Danced...Danced...Danced All Night By Theresa Brown

No one can show sensual longing or manic desperation like Jennifer Jones. It’s all on full display in Vincente Minnelli’s MADAME BOVARY (‘49). For my money, Jones is one of the most underrated actresses of the classic era. Now, if you listen to the film’s trailer, the narrator will describe her as:

“Emma Bovary, this corrupt, loathsome, contemptible creature...this woman of insatiable passions...this monstrous creation of a degenerate imagination.”

That’s a bit rich. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything, but I’ve got to go the “glass half-empty / glass half-full” route with Emma. I disagree with what the narrator describes; I think she is a fascinating example of the lengths a woman will go for happiness in mid-19th century France, where all cobble-stoned streets are paved with roadblocks for women with few avenues for success laid out unless through a man. I think all women can relate to Emma, especially the women in the time period this MGM film is released. It’s 1949 and men have been coming back for their jobs after the war and Rosie the Riveter has to go back into the kitchen to bake cakes.

Emma’s lot in life as a peasant’s daughter offers no advancement in class and society, though she is “cruelly” blessed with uncommon beauty. (Jennifer Jones is absolutely beautiful!) Being fed romance novels and poetry in the convent, nothing is preparing her to make a living. Seeds of an unrealistic view of life are planted. When she’s back home, she’s like an 1850’s teenager with posters on her wall from Tiger Beat magazine – dashing illustrations of being swept away by love. Her view of reality is a bit skewed. When Charles, a new local doctor (Van Heflin) arrives to care for her father, it’s love at first sledgehammer for him...and an escape hatch for her. He is the first of several men she seduces and uses via withholding before submitting.

She’s terribly unhappy in her new married life. She gives it the good ol’ college try, fixing up their humble abode, charging materials from the local merchant – the start of living above her means via the merchant as ‘pusher’ who provides all...but then demands payment aka blackmail. Charles, the doctor/husband, cannot give her what she truly craves: riches, high society, passion. “Craves” is an understatement and his love for her is not enough. In one of her manic moments of breaking down, she desperately implores:

“Charles, I want a child. I want a boy, Charles. A boy grows to be a man. A man can be free. If he doesn’t like his life he can change it. If there’s anything beautiful, if there’s anything grand anywhere in the world, he can go out and find it. I want a baby, Charles. I want a boy.”

How sad. I’d love to say it’s the desperation of motherhood fueling her mania, but it’s really the desperation of wanting to escape. No suburban housewife could ever put herself in those shoes, right? Emma’s only hope is to live vicariously through a baby son.

So, of course, fate hands her a daughter.

Fate also gives Jones and Heflin an invitation to a fancy dress ball—the impetus of the story hence my title—where the die is really cast for her. See, it’s one thing to wish for things you never had. But when you are given a taste of something that is snatched away, can life be any crueler? Minnelli crafts a pivotally fantastic scene at this ball where not only is the full Monty of Emma’s beauty revealed, but it serves as a metaphor for so many things.

With its stunning production values, the scene is opulent and men can’t take their eyes off her. She’s sought for dances. But poor Charles is shunted off to the sidelines, never being allowed entry into the inner circle of the elite to spoil Emma’s illusion...delusion. He’s even looked down on by a waiter, while Emma is elevated to the belle of the ball. And right then and there, she is suddenly swept off her feet by the handsome and rich Rodolphe played by the drop-dead gorgeous Louis Jourdan in only his fourth American movie. Did I say gorgeous?! She is living the dreams she dreamt...being the center of attention, picked to dance by the handsome ‘prince.’ That whole dance sequence of Minnelli’s is a dizzying scene, serving as a sexual stand-in. And when the windows are broken...

Her beauty is her only currency. She seduces men. She pays the price for that. One man tells her:

“I am a fairly courageous man, Emma but I was afraid of you. You ask for something that consumes while it burns...that destroys everything it touches. I didn’t want to be destroyed.”

Should a woman be satisfied with her lot in life? She is trapped, with fleeting escapes that lead her right back where she started. Things close in on her. She’s in over her head. Everything is about to come crashing down on her. Jones does a fine job portraying a woman who is coquettish, calculating, seductive and trapped. She got me wondering if she could have played Blanche DuBois in Kazan’s capable hands. She only made 27 movies. She was a five-time Oscar nominee, winning her Best Actress Academy Award once for THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (‘44). She’s as different there as she was in CLUNY BROWN (‘46), as she was in the overwrought DUEL IN THE SUN (‘46), as she was in LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING (‘55) or as she was in my personal favorite, LOVE LETTERS (‘45). There’s a quality of vulnerability, sensuality and mania about Jennifer Jones. Yeh, I’m a fan.

I’ve finally come to respect Van Heflin though it took a long time. (Better late than never.) He could play so many different shades of men, I have newly come to appreciate him in SHANE (‘53), THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (‘46), ACT OF VIOLENCE (‘49), THE PROWLER (‘51), EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (‘49) or his Oscar-winning performance in JOHNNY EAGER (‘41). In MADAME BOVARY, he’s besotted by her, defeated by her, stern with her and wants to care for her. But ultimately, she is too much for him.

The movie is peppered with character actors we all know, like Gene Lockhart, Henry Morgan, Ellen Corby and John Abbott. Like my good friend always says about classic movies: Everybody worked. And you need only to IMDB director Vincente Minnelli to see the depth and breadth of his talent. He could direct a film taking place in modern times as with UNDERCURRENT (‘46) or the turn of the century like in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (‘44). He could do comedy as with THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (‘54); drama with THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (‘52); and the light touch of musicals like in CABIN IN THE SKY (‘43), AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (‘51) and his Oscar-winning GIGI (‘58).

Hope you make the time to watch MADAME BOVARY. You can live vicariously through her, so you don’t make the same mistakes she made.

[vladimir-nabokov-official]

in a way i like bend sinister more than most largely because i’m a sucker for books that successfully and openly play with literary form and language. what is amusing about bend sinister though is how often it is regarded with a mixture of contempt and confusion. how could the author of lolita – that darling of the twentieth century – write this uneven, remote and obscure book? but it is lolita, in my opinion, that is the greater mystery in nabokov’s oeuvre. in fact BS seems to me the book with the greater continuity to the rest of VN’s work. his later russian and early english novels (all of which came before BS) exhibit tangible experimentations with style and writing that really pushed nabokov to write really challenging stuff. in other words, bend sinister is considered a dip in quality because it is the harder novel; it requires a greater amount of attention and readers aren’t quite so easily scandalised by it (a similar response is attributed to pale fire and ada, novels that appear to be above and beyond lolita’s much tamer narrative structure). and some of BS’s scenes are so terrifically brutal and at the highest level of imaginative writing that it seems to me one of the greater examples of nabokov’s underrated-ness. granted, there are bits in it that i don’t particularly care for (flashback scenes are a bit of a yawn like in pnin) but it is absolutely one of my favourite novels. and let’s not forget how well it pairs with kafka’s metamorphosis – kafka’s is clearly the more miserable, but VN’s contrasts nicely as a book in which, amid misery, goodness is the thing to believe in.

[alyas-basilio]

Over the course of the war, over a million Indian soldiers would be sent overseas to fight. Reception was undoubtedly positive during the war, given the advantages of extra forces for Britain. The King, and Emperor of India, George V, sent a message to greet them on their arrival: “I look to all my Indian soldiers to uphold the British Raj against an aggressive and relentless enemy. I know with what readiness my brave and loyal Indian soldiers prepared to fulfil this sacred trust in the field of battle, shoulder to shoulder with their comrades from all parts of my Empire.”

One particularly interesting letter to the newspaper a month later recognised their participation, urging readers not to forget the Indian soldier’s personal tastes: “The Indian native soldier would greatly value sugar candy (if possible the Indian Misri), candied cocoanut, aveca nut (Supari) cut in thin slices, cinnamon, and cloves. These things are all highly appreciated by the various Indian races.”

The combative qualities of the Indian troops certainly took the German army by surprise. In a letter home published by the Guardian, a German soldier wrote: “Today for the first time we had to fight against the Indians, and the Devil knows those brown rascals are not to be underrated. At first we spoke with contempt of the Indians. Today we learned to look at them in a different light … With buttends, bayonets, swords and daggers we fought each other, and we had bitter hard work.”

By Armistice day, soldiers from the subcontinent had won 11 Victoria Crosses. The Guardian reported the first two on 27 January 1915: Sepoy Khudadad Khan, one of the regimental machine gun section of the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis who single-handedly stopped a German attack during the battle of Ypres, and Naik Darwan Singh Negi, from the First Battalion 39th Garhwalis, who was the first of his regiment to help retake British trenches near Festubert, despite being wounded twice in the head.

India was not the only nation from which troops were recruited to aid war efforts. Somewhat less discussed is the African side of the story, despite a large loss of human life and major consequences for the future of the African continent. At one point, the paper put the number of natives for carrier work alone at 200,000 at that particular time, and acknowledged the ‘terrible death rate’ among those in East Africa. The primary responsibility of carriers was to carry supplies such as food and ammunition for soldiers on the front line. One young carrier, Nwoso, spoke of his recruitment and experience:

[shanroeform]

Thomas? Champion Hurdle 2020 Preview

Whilst last year’s Champion Hurdle did not exactly go according to plan, a simple comparison graph of excitement levels between today and this time last season would leave an uninitiated onlooker wondering what on earth has changed in such a short space of time. Unfortunately, a year is a long time in racing. Last year’s spectacular winner, Espoir D’Allen, is horribly no longer with us; the same owner’s Buveur D’Air has been forced out for the season with a freak injury; Apple’s Jade no longer looks like the formidable mare who racked up winter victory after victory; and Laurina, sent over hurdles, has left some wondering whether she was ever worthy of the hype bestowed upon her.

Indeed, the reality of the 2020 Champion Hurdle looks even bleaker when compared to expectations at the start of this season. Whilst we awaited the returns of the stars above, we also got extremely over-excited at the likes of Klassical Dream, Saldier and City Island being added into this mixture. With the amount of antepost bets which must be down the drain already, it seems like the only certainty in this year’s renewal of the race is that the bookies will come out on top.

In truth, last year’s Champion Hurdle was an anomaly in recent times. The two years prior to it were weak renewals, with Buveur D’Air going off 4/6 favourite in 2018 ahead of a Faugheen ostensibly in decline (having been pulled up in the Ryanair Hurdle and beaten by Supasundae in the Irish equivalent) and a Melon who had won just once, against Coquin Mans, all season. 2017 was intriguing more out of uncertainty than quality, with Yanworth going off 2/1 favourite and Buveur D’Air, who had begun the season chasing and having had just one hurdle race that season, winning cosily from the admirable My Tent Or Yours.

However, even in the context of these weak fields, the 2020 Champion Hurdle still looks like the cup of tea you have attempted to make after stumbling in from a night out and filling the mug with cold tap water. The current 3/1 favourite is Epatante, who flopped on her sole Cheltenham start (last year’s Mares’ Novice Hurdle), has had most of her success on flat tracks and whose best piece of form is an (admittedly impressive) five length beating of a Silver Streak who was running on soft ground despite only bringing his astroturf trainers.

Pentland Hills is second favourite with those firms not offering non-runner no bet at a best price of 5/1 and, with all due respect, if you back him then on your way back from the bookies please call into your nearest A&E and ask for a CT scan for that bump you must have suffered. He won a weak Triumph Hurdle last season which was extremely hollow after the awful loss of Sir Erec, and the second, third and fourth from that race have together won just two of 16 races since. Admittedly, his win against Fakir D’oudairies at Aintree was solid; however, since then he has been beaten comprehensively in a sub-standard (even in the context of a race won by Brain Power, My Tent Or Yours and The New One in recent years) International Hurdle at Cheltenham and was overtaken at the post by a staying on Ballyandy at Haydock last time out.

Honeysuckle is available at 9/2 with firms offering NRNB (elsewhere she’s available at 10/1). Some have been sceptical of this mare after her performance at Leopardstown but, in fairness, she rallied nicely after a mistake at the last and has the stamina to stay on up the hill. However, the proximity of Darver Star and Petit Mouchoir would give even the most ardent of anthophiles some cause for concern. Without wanting to admit it, their hedges also probably contain concerns that four of her six wins have come at Fairyhouse, a track about as similar to Cheltenham as bourbons are to custard creams. And this is all without even mentioning that she might not even run!

Benie Des Dieux is next in the betting at a best priced 7/1 (9/4 NRNB) but looks highly unlikely to run. The Mares’ and Stayers’ Hurdles appears better suited to her and Rich Ricci has Sharjah to run here.

Sharjah himself is a horse I love – I think he’s underrated despite being a three time Grade One winner and would be delighted to see him hose up. At 14/1, you’d have to consider him if the ground comes up good, but he does appear to be dependent on this factor (ironically his only win on soft came at the Galway Festival in August) and he’s thrown in two howlers this season which would be enough to make Ricci fans nervous. The days of the Ruby Tuesday guarantee look a long way away.

The horses above, then, look like the flakiest five-a-side team in history and you know that there’s a huge chance you’re going to end up paying at least double subs if you put your trust in them. As a result, this is a race to take a big swing at.

Ballyandy is a best priced 25/1, and, whilst scepticism towards him is justified, he’s worth at least the attention you’d no doubt give to a Dixy Chicken on the walk home, no matter how much contempt you’d look with in the cold light of day. Circumstances change – just as post-pint you does not reflect who your true personality, neither does the 2020 Champion Hurdle resemble the race won in the past decade by Annie Power, Faugheen and Hurricane Fly. Ballyandy’s record in graded hurdles reads 3214364231, whilst his Cheltenham record stands at 11344PP362 (including a half length Coral Cup third carrying 11-7 last season). This is form considerably better than Pentland Hills has ever shown, and indeed Ballyandy has beaten the second favourite both times they have raced this season. He clearly likes it at Cheltenham, seems to be coming back to somewhat near his peak after a lean period in which he was sent chasing and handicap hurdling carrying big weights. It would not surprise me to see him run into a place at worse.

Supasundae ran well at the Dublin Racing Festival, especially given his well-known issues first time out, and we know he likes Cheltenham having won a Coral Cup and finished second in a Stayers’ Hurdle. Whilst he has been consistently beaten over two miles, it has generally been by classy animals such as Buveur D’air and Apple’s Jade in their pomp and it does not look as though there is anything near their quality in this race. Whilst there are certainly reasons to back him at his current price of 20/1, I would be slightly put off by his age (he is 10 now) and the worry that he may still not be at peak fitness on only his second run this season.

Petit Mouchoir is another one who falls into the Supasundae category of exposed yet admirable horses. He has been resurgent this season, with form reading 223 in three Grade 1 races. He has a strong record over two miles at Cheltenham, finishing 3rd in both a Supreme and a Champion Hurdle, and the stronger stamina test posed by Prestbury Park in comparison to Leopardstown could be helpful a horse who ran in the Stayers’ Hurdle last season.

As much as I love these horses, I also love unexposed horses who have shown flashes of potential and signs that they will grab me by the scruff of my parka and hurl me over the edge of the cliff with them. It is for this reason that I have stuck Thomas Darby into my passenger seat and set the Sat Nav to Calais.

Olly Murphy, Thomas Darby’s trainer, is hitting form at a key point of the season. He has a 33% strike rate in the last 14 days (6/18) compared to 18% over the whole year. This includes the trainer’s first Grade One victory, with Itchy Feet so bored by the ease of his victory in the Scilly Isles at Sandown that he decided to hurl himself through some fences to make the most of his day out.

Whilst Thomas Darby struggled when sent chasing at the start of this season, finishing second behind Maire Banrigh and third behind Master Tommytucker, he came back to form with a victory in a Grade Three Ascot handicap hurdle carrying top weight which was more comfortable than the one length margin suggests. He travelled enthusiastically before demonstrating a great attitude to stay on over a trip longer than the Champion Hurdle distance (2m 3f) on heavy ground. His jumping when the pace kicked up towards the end of the race was eye-catching and sixth in that race was Pic D’orhy, who, as we know, has just won the Betfair Hurdle carrying 11-5.

As a novice hurdler last season, Thomas Darby ran a great race to finish second in the Supreme behind the very impressive Klassical Dream (who has unfortunately disappointed this season). This was his second showing at the track following a quiet thumping of Elixir De Nutz in a maiden. Elixir De Nutz, of course, proceeded to win the Grade One Tolworth Hurdle later than season, although he again has admittedly not displayed anywhere near that form this season.

There are certainly negatives to throw at this horse (although I am doing my best to drown those out by chanting a makeshift Yaya-Kolo tune containing Thomas Darby and Olly Murphy). His form this season has not been fantastic, he could be accused of needing softer ground to show his best, and the form of his novice campaign looks slightly creaky after his crop’s performances this season. However, there are also reasons to dodge these sticks: he clearly did not take to chasing, his Cheltenham defeat of Elixir De Nutz came on good ground, and the likes of Klassical Dream have patently not given their true running this season.

Other issues include uncertainty as to whether his regular jockey, Richard Johnson, will be around to ride him at Cheltenham and even whether he will target this race (with the County Hurdle also an option). However, he has shown enough to suck me in at 20/1 in the hope that he lives up to some of his potential on a track which suits him in a race in which you certainly do not require a pair of Cheltenham binoculars to see the holes.

[flauntpage]

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts

FOH. F SI...#ProveEm.

The Toronto Raptors finding slights from the media, from simulations, or from the public at large has become an annual tradition of sorts. Leading the charge is DeMar DeRozan, forever underrated by the SI or ESPN or Name Your Outlet Top 100, forever indignant, and who constantly uses a perceived lack of respect as further motivation to return, year after year, even better than the theoretical ceiling he reached the year prior.

This is par for the course for the Raptors, a franchise that until recently had little familiarity with success or upward momentum. It was a fledgling organization that Damon Stoudamire bolted quickly, that only milked one playoff series victory from the early career peak of their greatest talent, Vince Carter, that spent two decades mired in mediocrity, and couldn't even bottom out properly when the time came for it. That part of the franchise DNA and identity have been a large part of the argument for the Raptors remaining good even without a true championship window and continuing to build important organizational equity. Winning is no longer a best-case here, it's an edict.

"Our expectation is to win," team president Masai Ujiri said in late September. "Every season we go into. I think as a basketball team and being competitive, our expectation is to win. I think the guys know that, the coaches know that, we as an organization, I think we all know that."

But there's a sense the skepticism should have stopped by now, that the work Ujiri, head coach Dwane Casey, and now-perennial All-Stars DeRozan and Kyle Lowry have put in over the last four years—unquestionably the best four-year stretch in team history by measure of victories, playoff performance, or any other scale of preference—should have cleansed the team of some of the sins of earlier eras. DeRozan is now a three-time All-Star and All-NBA honoree, as is Lowry, and the Raptors have won more games over the last four seasons than any other Eastern Conference team.

Still, there has been cause to take umbrage. DeRozan was once again unhappy with his ranking from Sports Illustrated, and now he'll look to turn the conversation about his potential as a playmaker and functional part of a more democratic offense on its head in response. He was also quite unhappy with a projected ESPN simulation dropping the Raptors to sixth in the conference and winning fewer games than they have since Before The Rudy Gay Trade. Again, it's old hat for DeRozan and the Raptors.

"Not too much surprised, especially guys who have been here. We've always been counted out, always been looked over, whatever you want to call it," DeRozan said last month. "It's on us to use that as motivation. We've been using it as motivation over the years, now it's time to just add that on top of everything else. As a competitor, you want that, you don't want the easy route, you don't want everybody to be bragging about you. It pushes you to dig deeper and find something in you that you didn't know you had."

The ESPN simulation was on the lower end of projections for the Raptors, but there aren't many instances of predictions—human or simulation—where Toronto is considered a legitimate threat to the East power structure. They're generally in the three-to-six mud, winning somewhere between 43 and 50 games, a part of the meaty middle with Washington, Milwaukee, and sometimes Miami, but a beat behind Boston and Cleveland.

"It's the same story as it's been the last four years," DeRozan said Tuesday, the day the 2017-18 NBA season kicks off. "Nothing changed. Same old thing. For us, we've got to go out there, worry about ourselves and at the end of the day, it don't matter what we do, pretty sure they'll say the same things."

It's the same old story, and the Raptors have more or less accepted it. For newcomer C.J. Miles, though, the contrast is striking, going from a playoff opponent who looked at the Raptors as a high-end team to being inside and noticing the public perception may not match his own.

"As a guy who's a fan of the game and watches games and watches everybody play, I looked at them as an elite team. And when I walked into the arena they felt like an elite team when you played against them," Miles said Tuesday. "I never really paid attention to what was or wasn't written about them. And then now you see it and it's like, wow, you look when somebody writes something and they don't say anything about the third team in the Eastern Conference?"

When you see the projections. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Fair or otherwise following whirlwind offseasons for more than a few teams in the East, the Raptors are once again in a position where they need to affirm themselves as a team in the 48-to-56 win range—the second tier, as it were—where they've lived for four seasons. In their minds, they haven't done anything to show they've dropped off. They've only lost to Cleveland in the postseason, after all, even if some of the wins to get there have been unsightly. And none of the East's other teams have a flawless claim to being a full step ahead of them.

"I think everything motivates you in some way," Lowry said recently. "You take all the negativity that they say and you just try to outgrow them or prove them wrong. You just go out there and do it. DeMar's ranking, it is what it is. He improves it every year. I think they just add fuel to his fire every single time they do that. It's somebody's opinion. It is what it is.

"We haven't won the championships. If we'd won the championship, the conversation would be completely different. Until you do, and even if you do, there will always be criticism. That's a part of the league."

The Raptors have made a habit of beating projections for the regular season, suggesting there's something in their anatomy that is going uncaptured. That they've regressed in the playoffs and played closer to their baseline speaks to that some, too. The changes promised at the offensive end—and the preseason was quite encouraging in terms of ball movement, if not shooting—are aimed to level out that quality of play.

Between those changes and a very young, somewhat inexperienced roster outside of five players, there's a tacit understanding that these Raptors may hit a few regular-season roadblocks they haven't in the past. That's relatively normal adversity, the kind that can forge growth but is more difficult to see, feel, and get riled up by. Outright disrespect, or reasonable enough predictions that can be perceived as such, are far more useful as a motivational tool, the type of us-against-them adversity that can hang on whiteboards, be barked out in the gym in the late hours of offseason workouts, and make random nights in an 82-game slough theatre for sending a message.

"I love it, I love the fact people underestimate us," Casey said during training camp. "They've done it every year and we end up winning 50. It's not about regular season, it's about us pushing through in the playoffs and getting over Cleveland, that's who's been our nemesis the last couple of years. I like the fact they slight us. We should be playing with a chip on our shoulder, we're that little team up north that they don't respect and we've got to get that and earn that. Get it back again, we did it last year.

"DeMar took whatever that ranking was—I don't even know what outlet it was but said he was 36th or 40th or whatever it was, it's not even important—he took that and used it as motivation. I don't know how you go from second to sixth and you have your same starting unit back. I don't know how they disrespect you that much. We've got to use that as motivation, just to prove to the league, come out with a chip on our shoulder."

The Raptors aren't being slept on in the sense that they're not listed as championship contenders. They're not, and this season is as much about learning whether they have the supplementary pieces to get closer within this three-year window as anything. LeBron James and the Cavaliers are what they are, and beyond them are the Golden State Warriors, inevitabilities in a league predicated on uncertainty. But the Raptors feel they're being overlooked as the gaze shifts a little further down the ladder, that they have to look a little too far to find their names, that they're not among the biggest threats to the established power structure.

Right or wrong, the Raptors clearly love it this way. They are a team built on responding to this type of contempt and of fighting up hills. They've led the league in double-digit comebacks in two consecutive seasons. DeRozan's entire career has been one long #ProveEm adventure. Lowry was quit on more times than perhaps any eventual All-NBA star. Casey has had public calls for his job almost annually. Norman Powell has said the words "motivate" and "grind" more through two seasons than any player in NBA history. Fred VanVleet carries the same quiet fire as an undrafted free agent. Alfonzo McKinnie was playing in Luxembourg two years ago and paid to try out for the G-League last year, and so on.

The Raptors weren't even supposed to get good in the first place, and they've built a remarkably successful long-term marketing campaign around being the other. Around being the NBA's slept-on outpost. It's hard to be North Over Everything if everyone's in on the north.

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts

FOH. F SI…#ProveEm.

The Toronto Raptors finding slights from the media, from simulations, or from the public at large has become an annual tradition of sorts. Leading the charge is DeMar DeRozan, forever underrated by the SI or ESPN or Name Your Outlet Top 100, forever indignant, and who constantly uses a perceived lack of respect as further motivation to return, year after year, even better than the theoretical ceiling he reached the year prior.

This is par for the course for the Raptors, a franchise that until recently had little familiarity with success or upward momentum. It was a fledgling organization that Damon Stoudamire bolted quickly, that only milked one playoff series victory from the early career peak of their greatest talent, Vince Carter, that spent two decades mired in mediocrity, and couldn’t even bottom out properly when the time came for it. That part of the franchise DNA and identity have been a large part of the argument for the Raptors remaining good even without a true championship window and continuing to build important organizational equity. Winning is no longer a best-case here, it’s an edict.

“Our expectation is to win,” team president Masai Ujiri said in late September. “Every season we go into. I think as a basketball team and being competitive, our expectation is to win. I think the guys know that, the coaches know that, we as an organization, I think we all know that.”

But there’s a sense the skepticism should have stopped by now, that the work Ujiri, head coach Dwane Casey, and now-perennial All-Stars DeRozan and Kyle Lowry have put in over the last four years—unquestionably the best four-year stretch in team history by measure of victories, playoff performance, or any other scale of preference—should have cleansed the team of some of the sins of earlier eras. DeRozan is now a three-time All-Star and All-NBA honoree, as is Lowry, and the Raptors have won more games over the last four seasons than any other Eastern Conference team.

Still, there has been cause to take umbrage. DeRozan was once again unhappy with his ranking from Sports Illustrated, and now he’ll look to turn the conversation about his potential as a playmaker and functional part of a more democratic offense on its head in response. He was also quite unhappy with a projected ESPN simulation dropping the Raptors to sixth in the conference and winning fewer games than they have since Before The Rudy Gay Trade. Again, it’s old hat for DeRozan and the Raptors.

“Not too much surprised, especially guys who have been here. We’ve always been counted out, always been looked over, whatever you want to call it,” DeRozan said last month. “It’s on us to use that as motivation. We’ve been using it as motivation over the years, now it’s time to just add that on top of everything else. As a competitor, you want that, you don’t want the easy route, you don’t want everybody to be bragging about you. It pushes you to dig deeper and find something in you that you didn’t know you had.”

The ESPN simulation was on the lower end of projections for the Raptors, but there aren’t many instances of predictions—human or simulation—where Toronto is considered a legitimate threat to the East power structure. They’re generally in the three-to-six mud, winning somewhere between 43 and 50 games, a part of the meaty middle with Washington, Milwaukee, and sometimes Miami, but a beat behind Boston and Cleveland.

“It’s the same story as it’s been the last four years,” DeRozan said Tuesday, the day the 2017-18 NBA season kicks off. “Nothing changed. Same old thing. For us, we’ve got to go out there, worry about ourselves and at the end of the day, it don’t matter what we do, pretty sure they’ll say the same things.”

It’s the same old story, and the Raptors have more or less accepted it. For newcomer C.J. Miles, though, the contrast is striking, going from a playoff opponent who looked at the Raptors as a high-end team to being inside and noticing the public perception may not match his own.

“As a guy who’s a fan of the game and watches games and watches everybody play, I looked at them as an elite team. And when I walked into the arena they felt like an elite team when you played against them,” Miles said Tuesday. “I never really paid attention to what was or wasn’t written about them. And then now you see it and it’s like, wow, you look when somebody writes something and they don’t say anything about the third team in the Eastern Conference?”

When you see the projections. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Fair or otherwise following whirlwind offseasons for more than a few teams in the East, the Raptors are once again in a position where they need to affirm themselves as a team in the 48-to-56 win range—the second tier, as it were—where they’ve lived for four seasons. In their minds, they haven’t done anything to show they’ve dropped off. They’ve only lost to Cleveland in the postseason, after all, even if some of the wins to get there have been unsightly. And none of the East’s other teams have a flawless claim to being a full step ahead of them.

“I think everything motivates you in some way,” Lowry said recently. “You take all the negativity that they say and you just try to outgrow them or prove them wrong. You just go out there and do it. DeMar’s ranking, it is what it is. He improves it every year. I think they just add fuel to his fire every single time they do that. It’s somebody’s opinion. It is what it is.

“We haven’t won the championships. If we’d won the championship, the conversation would be completely different. Until you do, and even if you do, there will always be criticism. That’s a part of the league.”

The Raptors have made a habit of beating projections for the regular season, suggesting there’s something in their anatomy that is going uncaptured. That they’ve regressed in the playoffs and played closer to their baseline speaks to that some, too. The changes promised at the offensive end—and the preseason was quite encouraging in terms of ball movement, if not shooting—are aimed to level out that quality of play.

Between those changes and a very young, somewhat inexperienced roster outside of five players, there’s a tacit understanding that these Raptors may hit a few regular-season roadblocks they haven’t in the past. That’s relatively normal adversity, the kind that can forge growth but is more difficult to see, feel, and get riled up by. Outright disrespect, or reasonable enough predictions that can be perceived as such, are far more useful as a motivational tool, the type of us-against-them adversity that can hang on whiteboards, be barked out in the gym in the late hours of offseason workouts, and make random nights in an 82-game slough theatre for sending a message.

“I love it, I love the fact people underestimate us,” Casey said during training camp. “They’ve done it every year and we end up winning 50. It’s not about regular season, it’s about us pushing through in the playoffs and getting over Cleveland, that’s who’s been our nemesis the last couple of years. I like the fact they slight us. We should be playing with a chip on our shoulder, we’re that little team up north that they don’t respect and we’ve got to get that and earn that. Get it back again, we did it last year.

“DeMar took whatever that ranking was—I don’t even know what outlet it was but said he was 36th or 40th or whatever it was, it’s not even important—he took that and used it as motivation. I don’t know how you go from second to sixth and you have your same starting unit back. I don’t know how they disrespect you that much. We’ve got to use that as motivation, just to prove to the league, come out with a chip on our shoulder.”

The Raptors aren’t being slept on in the sense that they’re not listed as championship contenders. They’re not, and this season is as much about learning whether they have the supplementary pieces to get closer within this three-year window as anything. LeBron James and the Cavaliers are what they are, and beyond them are the Golden State Warriors, inevitabilities in a league predicated on uncertainty. But the Raptors feel they’re being overlooked as the gaze shifts a little further down the ladder, that they have to look a little too far to find their names, that they’re not among the biggest threats to the established power structure.

Right or wrong, the Raptors clearly love it this way. They are a team built on responding to this type of contempt and of fighting up hills. They’ve led the league in double-digit comebacks in two consecutive seasons. DeRozan’s entire career has been one long #ProveEm adventure. Lowry was quit on more times than perhaps any eventual All-NBA star. Casey has had public calls for his job almost annually. Norman Powell has said the words “motivate” and “grind” more through two seasons than any player in NBA history. Fred VanVleet carries the same quiet fire as an undrafted free agent. Alfonzo McKinnie was playing in Luxembourg two years ago and paid to try out for the G-League last year, and so on.

The Raptors weren’t even supposed to get good in the first place, and they’ve built a remarkably successful long-term marketing campaign around being the other. Around being the NBA’s slept-on outpost. It’s hard to be North Over Everything if everyone’s in on the north.

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[fawnrolland974-blog]

Boy Eliminates Mum And also Rips Out Her Bronchi.

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[flauntpage]

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts

FOH. F SI...#ProveEm.

The Toronto Raptors finding slights from the media, from simulations, or from the public at large has become an annual tradition of sorts. Leading the charge is DeMar DeRozan, forever underrated by the SI or ESPN or Name Your Outlet Top 100, forever indignant, and who constantly uses a perceived lack of respect as further motivation to return, year after year, even better than the theoretical ceiling he reached the year prior.

This is par for the course for the Raptors, a franchise that until recently had little familiarity with success or upward momentum. It was a fledgling organization that Damon Stoudamire bolted quickly, that only milked one playoff series victory from the early career peak of their greatest talent, Vince Carter, that spent two decades mired in mediocrity, and couldn't even bottom out properly when the time came for it. That part of the franchise DNA and identity have been a large part of the argument for the Raptors remaining good even without a true championship window and continuing to build important organizational equity. Winning is no longer a best-case here, it's an edict.

"Our expectation is to win," team president Masai Ujiri said in late September. "Every season we go into. I think as a basketball team and being competitive, our expectation is to win. I think the guys know that, the coaches know that, we as an organization, I think we all know that."

But there's a sense the skepticism should have stopped by now, that the work Ujiri, head coach Dwane Casey, and now-perennial All-Stars DeRozan and Kyle Lowry have put in over the last four years—unquestionably the best four-year stretch in team history by measure of victories, playoff performance, or any other scale of preference—should have cleansed the team of some of the sins of earlier eras. DeRozan is now a three-time All-Star and All-NBA honoree, as is Lowry, and the Raptors have won more games over the last four seasons than any other Eastern Conference team.

Still, there has been cause to take umbrage. DeRozan was once again unhappy with his ranking from Sports Illustrated, and now he'll look to turn the conversation about his potential as a playmaker and functional part of a more democratic offense on its head in response. He was also quite unhappy with a projected ESPN simulation dropping the Raptors to sixth in the conference and winning fewer games than they have since Before The Rudy Gay Trade. Again, it's old hat for DeRozan and the Raptors.

"Not too much surprised, especially guys who have been here. We've always been counted out, always been looked over, whatever you want to call it," DeRozan said last month. "It's on us to use that as motivation. We've been using it as motivation over the years, now it's time to just add that on top of everything else. As a competitor, you want that, you don't want the easy route, you don't want everybody to be bragging about you. It pushes you to dig deeper and find something in you that you didn't know you had."

The ESPN simulation was on the lower end of projections for the Raptors, but there aren't many instances of predictions—human or simulation—where Toronto is considered a legitimate threat to the East power structure. They're generally in the three-to-six mud, winning somewhere between 43 and 50 games, a part of the meaty middle with Washington, Milwaukee, and sometimes Miami, but a beat behind Boston and Cleveland.

"It's the same story as it's been the last four years," DeRozan said Tuesday, the day the 2017-18 NBA season kicks off. "Nothing changed. Same old thing. For us, we've got to go out there, worry about ourselves and at the end of the day, it don't matter what we do, pretty sure they'll say the same things."

It's the same old story, and the Raptors have more or less accepted it. For newcomer C.J. Miles, though, the contrast is striking, going from a playoff opponent who looked at the Raptors as a high-end team to being inside and noticing the public perception may not match his own.

"As a guy who's a fan of the game and watches games and watches everybody play, I looked at them as an elite team. And when I walked into the arena they felt like an elite team when you played against them," Miles said Tuesday. "I never really paid attention to what was or wasn't written about them. And then now you see it and it's like, wow, you look when somebody writes something and they don't say anything about the third team in the Eastern Conference?"

When you see the projections. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Fair or otherwise following whirlwind offseasons for more than a few teams in the East, the Raptors are once again in a position where they need to affirm themselves as a team in the 48-to-56 win range—the second tier, as it were—where they've lived for four seasons. In their minds, they haven't done anything to show they've dropped off. They've only lost to Cleveland in the postseason, after all, even if some of the wins to get there have been unsightly. And none of the East's other teams have a flawless claim to being a full step ahead of them.

"I think everything motivates you in some way," Lowry said recently. "You take all the negativity that they say and you just try to outgrow them or prove them wrong. You just go out there and do it. DeMar's ranking, it is what it is. He improves it every year. I think they just add fuel to his fire every single time they do that. It's somebody's opinion. It is what it is.

"We haven't won the championships. If we'd won the championship, the conversation would be completely different. Until you do, and even if you do, there will always be criticism. That's a part of the league."

The Raptors have made a habit of beating projections for the regular season, suggesting there's something in their anatomy that is going uncaptured. That they've regressed in the playoffs and played closer to their baseline speaks to that some, too. The changes promised at the offensive end—and the preseason was quite encouraging in terms of ball movement, if not shooting—are aimed to level out that quality of play.

Between those changes and a very young, somewhat inexperienced roster outside of five players, there's a tacit understanding that these Raptors may hit a few regular-season roadblocks they haven't in the past. That's relatively normal adversity, the kind that can forge growth but is more difficult to see, feel, and get riled up by. Outright disrespect, or reasonable enough predictions that can be perceived as such, are far more useful as a motivational tool, the type of us-against-them adversity that can hang on whiteboards, be barked out in the gym in the late hours of offseason workouts, and make random nights in an 82-game slough theatre for sending a message.

"I love it, I love the fact people underestimate us," Casey said during training camp. "They've done it every year and we end up winning 50. It's not about regular season, it's about us pushing through in the playoffs and getting over Cleveland, that's who's been our nemesis the last couple of years. I like the fact they slight us. We should be playing with a chip on our shoulder, we're that little team up north that they don't respect and we've got to get that and earn that. Get it back again, we did it last year.

"DeMar took whatever that ranking was—I don't even know what outlet it was but said he was 36th or 40th or whatever it was, it's not even important—he took that and used it as motivation. I don't know how you go from second to sixth and you have your same starting unit back. I don't know how they disrespect you that much. We've got to use that as motivation, just to prove to the league, come out with a chip on our shoulder."

The Raptors aren't being slept on in the sense that they're not listed as championship contenders. They're not, and this season is as much about learning whether they have the supplementary pieces to get closer within this three-year window as anything. LeBron James and the Cavaliers are what they are, and beyond them are the Golden State Warriors, inevitabilities in a league predicated on uncertainty. But the Raptors feel they're being overlooked as the gaze shifts a little further down the ladder, that they have to look a little too far to find their names, that they're not among the biggest threats to the established power structure.

Right or wrong, the Raptors clearly love it this way. They are a team built on responding to this type of contempt and of fighting up hills. They've led the league in double-digit comebacks in two consecutive seasons. DeRozan's entire career has been one long #ProveEm adventure. Lowry was quit on more times than perhaps any eventual All-NBA star. Casey has had public calls for his job almost annually. Norman Powell has said the words "motivate" and "grind" more through two seasons than any player in NBA history. Fred VanVleet carries the same quiet fire as an undrafted free agent. Alfonzo McKinnie was playing in Luxembourg two years ago and paid to try out for the G-League last year, and so on.

The Raptors weren't even supposed to get good in the first place, and they've built a remarkably successful long-term marketing campaign around being the other. Around being the NBA's slept-on outpost. It's hard to be North Over Everything if everyone's in on the north.

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts

FOH. F SI...#ProveEm.

The Toronto Raptors finding slights from the media, from simulations, or from the public at large has become an annual tradition of sorts. Leading the charge is DeMar DeRozan, forever underrated by the SI or ESPN or Name Your Outlet Top 100, forever indignant, and who constantly uses a perceived lack of respect as further motivation to return, year after year, even better than the theoretical ceiling he reached the year prior.

This is par for the course for the Raptors, a franchise that until recently had little familiarity with success or upward momentum. It was a fledgling organization that Damon Stoudamire bolted quickly, that only milked one playoff series victory from the early career peak of their greatest talent, Vince Carter, that spent two decades mired in mediocrity, and couldn't even bottom out properly when the time came for it. That part of the franchise DNA and identity have been a large part of the argument for the Raptors remaining good even without a true championship window and continuing to build important organizational equity. Winning is no longer a best-case here, it's an edict.

"Our expectation is to win," team president Masai Ujiri said in late September. "Every season we go into. I think as a basketball team and being competitive, our expectation is to win. I think the guys know that, the coaches know that, we as an organization, I think we all know that."

But there's a sense the skepticism should have stopped by now, that the work Ujiri, head coach Dwane Casey, and now-perennial All-Stars DeRozan and Kyle Lowry have put in over the last four years—unquestionably the best four-year stretch in team history by measure of victories, playoff performance, or any other scale of preference—should have cleansed the team of some of the sins of earlier eras. DeRozan is now a three-time All-Star and All-NBA honoree, as is Lowry, and the Raptors have won more games over the last four seasons than any other Eastern Conference team.

Still, there has been cause to take umbrage. DeRozan was once again unhappy with his ranking from Sports Illustrated, and now he'll look to turn the conversation about his potential as a playmaker and functional part of a more democratic offense on its head in response. He was also quite unhappy with a projected ESPN simulation dropping the Raptors to sixth in the conference and winning fewer games than they have since Before The Rudy Gay Trade. Again, it's old hat for DeRozan and the Raptors.

"Not too much surprised, especially guys who have been here. We've always been counted out, always been looked over, whatever you want to call it," DeRozan said last month. "It's on us to use that as motivation. We've been using it as motivation over the years, now it's time to just add that on top of everything else. As a competitor, you want that, you don't want the easy route, you don't want everybody to be bragging about you. It pushes you to dig deeper and find something in you that you didn't know you had."

The ESPN simulation was on the lower end of projections for the Raptors, but there aren't many instances of predictions—human or simulation—where Toronto is considered a legitimate threat to the East power structure. They're generally in the three-to-six mud, winning somewhere between 43 and 50 games, a part of the meaty middle with Washington, Milwaukee, and sometimes Miami, but a beat behind Boston and Cleveland.

"It's the same story as it's been the last four years," DeRozan said Tuesday, the day the 2017-18 NBA season kicks off. "Nothing changed. Same old thing. For us, we've got to go out there, worry about ourselves and at the end of the day, it don't matter what we do, pretty sure they'll say the same things."

It's the same old story, and the Raptors have more or less accepted it. For newcomer C.J. Miles, though, the contrast is striking, going from a playoff opponent who looked at the Raptors as a high-end team to being inside and noticing the public perception may not match his own.

"As a guy who's a fan of the game and watches games and watches everybody play, I looked at them as an elite team. And when I walked into the arena they felt like an elite team when you played against them," Miles said Tuesday. "I never really paid attention to what was or wasn't written about them. And then now you see it and it's like, wow, you look when somebody writes something and they don't say anything about the third team in the Eastern Conference?"

When you see the projections. Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Fair or otherwise following whirlwind offseasons for more than a few teams in the East, the Raptors are once again in a position where they need to affirm themselves as a team in the 48-to-56 win range—the second tier, as it were—where they've lived for four seasons. In their minds, they haven't done anything to show they've dropped off. They've only lost to Cleveland in the postseason, after all, even if some of the wins to get there have been unsightly. And none of the East's other teams have a flawless claim to being a full step ahead of them.

"I think everything motivates you in some way," Lowry said recently. "You take all the negativity that they say and you just try to outgrow them or prove them wrong. You just go out there and do it. DeMar's ranking, it is what it is. He improves it every year. I think they just add fuel to his fire every single time they do that. It's somebody's opinion. It is what it is.

"We haven't won the championships. If we'd won the championship, the conversation would be completely different. Until you do, and even if you do, there will always be criticism. That's a part of the league."

The Raptors have made a habit of beating projections for the regular season, suggesting there's something in their anatomy that is going uncaptured. That they've regressed in the playoffs and played closer to their baseline speaks to that some, too. The changes promised at the offensive end—and the preseason was quite encouraging in terms of ball movement, if not shooting—are aimed to level out that quality of play.

Between those changes and a very young, somewhat inexperienced roster outside of five players, there's a tacit understanding that these Raptors may hit a few regular-season roadblocks they haven't in the past. That's relatively normal adversity, the kind that can forge growth but is more difficult to see, feel, and get riled up by. Outright disrespect, or reasonable enough predictions that can be perceived as such, are far more useful as a motivational tool, the type of us-against-them adversity that can hang on whiteboards, be barked out in the gym in the late hours of offseason workouts, and make random nights in an 82-game slough theatre for sending a message.

"I love it, I love the fact people underestimate us," Casey said during training camp. "They've done it every year and we end up winning 50. It's not about regular season, it's about us pushing through in the playoffs and getting over Cleveland, that's who's been our nemesis the last couple of years. I like the fact they slight us. We should be playing with a chip on our shoulder, we're that little team up north that they don't respect and we've got to get that and earn that. Get it back again, we did it last year.

"DeMar took whatever that ranking was—I don't even know what outlet it was but said he was 36th or 40th or whatever it was, it's not even important—he took that and used it as motivation. I don't know how you go from second to sixth and you have your same starting unit back. I don't know how they disrespect you that much. We've got to use that as motivation, just to prove to the league, come out with a chip on our shoulder."

The Raptors aren't being slept on in the sense that they're not listed as championship contenders. They're not, and this season is as much about learning whether they have the supplementary pieces to get closer within this three-year window as anything. LeBron James and the Cavaliers are what they are, and beyond them are the Golden State Warriors, inevitabilities in a league predicated on uncertainty. But the Raptors feel they're being overlooked as the gaze shifts a little further down the ladder, that they have to look a little too far to find their names, that they're not among the biggest threats to the established power structure.

Right or wrong, the Raptors clearly love it this way. They are a team built on responding to this type of contempt and of fighting up hills. They've led the league in double-digit comebacks in two consecutive seasons. DeRozan's entire career has been one long #ProveEm adventure. Lowry was quit on more times than perhaps any eventual All-NBA star. Casey has had public calls for his job almost annually. Norman Powell has said the words "motivate" and "grind" more through two seasons than any player in NBA history. Fred VanVleet carries the same quiet fire as an undrafted free agent. Alfonzo McKinnie was playing in Luxembourg two years ago and paid to try out for the G-League last year, and so on.

The Raptors weren't even supposed to get good in the first place, and they've built a remarkably successful long-term marketing campaign around being the other. Around being the NBA's slept-on outpost. It's hard to be North Over Everything if everyone's in on the north.

The Toronto Raptors Are Still Fueled By Your Doubts published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv