Rattlers Look Rattled in Edmonton

The Saskatchewan Rattlers fell to the Edmonton Stingers by a score of 93-84 in front of a modest crowd at the unpretentious Expo Centre in the City of Champions. After three weeks of match-ups against Ontario teams, this was the Rattlers' first tilt that didn't require a connecting flight. Unfortunately, the Rattlers just couldn't connect when it counted.

Both teams took to the sky early and often, though not necessarily in a productive way. The highlight of the night came with the score 0-0, when the Rattlers and the Stingers collaborated on a sequence of three consecutive failed alley-oop attempts. The Rattlers hazarded the first, the dunk portion of the performance turning into an awkward layup that missed. Then the Stingers charged back down court, trying to get the alley-oop right, only to have it end in an abortive layup of their own. The Rattlers rejoined with a fast break leading to yet another alley-oop pass, the corresponding dunk attempt bounding off the rim. If the fans in attendance needed a reminder they were at a minor-league basketball game, this ostentatious hat trick of futility served it up in style.

The bright spot for the Rattlers was, as usual, Bruce Massey. The Headband Hotshot logged an inordinate amount of minutes yet remained tireless in his scoring efforts, putting down 35 points. But for Massey, as with the rest of the Rattlers, the shots just weren't falling frequently enough in the final minutes. To the Stingers' credit, they kept their proverbial foot on the pedal, maintaining a comfortable lead throughout the final three quarters. With the loss, the Rattlers, the CEBL's darlings (and championship weekend hosts), have fallen to .500.

Rattlers Up Schitt's Creek Against River Lions

The Niagara River Lions ended the Saskatchewan Rattlers’ winning streak at three with a decisive 108-91 victory on a raucous Friday night at the SaskTel Centre. The River Lions evidently sweat anti-venom, as this was their second road win over the Rattlers in the early stages of this 2019 CEBL season.

Tonight’s game was billed as the “Friday Night House Party” at the SaskTel Centre (a.k.a. the Snake Pit) and, just like a frat-house bash, the atmosphere was loud, chaotic, and at times bewildering. The most bewildered people in attendance were, by all indications, the men on the court wearing the home whites with green and wheat trim.

Speaking of “white” and “trim”, the pregame gave the venerable Venom Girls an opportunity to show off the latest lower-body modification to their costumes, as they have switched from black leggings to white booty shorts. They patrolled the perimeter of the court while DJ Charly Hustle spun the soundtrack—on this evening, fully uncensored hip-hop. Every man, woman and child who had settled into their seats before the tip-off could groove out to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” with F-Bombs and N-Bombs fully intact. Eventually, hype-man Gregor took to centre court to announce the arrival of Swish, billing him as “Saskatchewan’s number one mascot.” That is a highly controversial statement. One would have to think that the Riders’ insuperable Gainer the Gopher would rank higher on the Sask sports food chain.

In due time, the lower bowl (or horseshoe, rather) of the arena filled in with spectators, making for the most impressive crowd of the Rattlers’ season so far. When called upon to stand for the national anthem, the attendees were given no more than a canned instrumental of “Oh Canada.” One has to wonder: Is this a cost cutting measure? Can the Rattlers no longer afford singers? Is the team—and the league—in trouble?

The Rattlers players did not look particularly troubled early on. They jumped out to an early lead, and were all over the ball. Around the two minute mark, an errant pass went over the head of Bruce Massey and he made a valiant effort to keep it in the Rattlers’ possession, vaulting over the front row of upper middle class people at courtside and into the second row, sending several empty folding chairs clattering onto the concrete. The fans applauded in appreciation of the valiant effort. Indeed, Massey’s displays of leadership have not gone underappreciated by the Rattlers’ fandom and the media. On this very Friday, the Star Phoenix ran a feature on Massey, noting the passion with which he plays the game. That article’s author, long-time local word-wielder Darren Zary, even dedicated a few paragraphs to Massey’s tendency toward excess emotionality (something you could have read about here first on this blog, as your correspondent had that covered weeks ago).  

The Rattlers maintained their moxie through most of the first frame, but the Niagara defense forced them to take a plethora of low percentage shots. The Rattlers’ missed most of these, and could chalk it up to good fortune that they only trailed by four at the end of the first.

Between quarters, Gregor led an adolescent boy out onto the court for the predictable promotional shot, the inevitable juncture in any professionally marketed basketball game during which the participating spectator is given the chance to shoot a basket for a prize. In this case, the prize was a Rattlers’ jersey. The Rattlers have been running this promo since the first game, but tonight they allowed the youth to shoot from the foul line, rather than from half-court. Gregor made some comment to the effect that this way people actually had some semblance of a chance. Still, the kid ended up missing the hoop by a wide margin. Regardless, Gregor gave him the jersey anyway. It all seemed very Canadian—polite and vaguely socialist; presumably, the Rattlers marketing team can write off the free jersey as a business expense.

Things fell apart for the Rattlers in the second. Within the first minute, they were down by ten points, and Niagara was unrelenting, continuing to pound the Rattlers inside. The River Lions racked up the easy lay-ins, leading by as much as 19 late in the second. Curiously enough, the crowd actually seemed more enthused in the face of a losing effort, at least relative to second quarters past wherein the Rattlers held leads. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact it was a Friday, and that by the second quarter, most of the adults in attendance had put down more than a few pints of grain alcohol. When Dance Cam made its gamely rounds and Gregor called upon the spectators to “get down”, people actually danced.

To say the crowd was “enthused”, however, is not to say that it was entirely into the game. There were a lot of baggy mothers and sallow fathers conspicuously parenting their kids in the aisles and other unoccupied spaces. At one point, a well-dressed, morbidly obese man was wiling away the quarter by guiding his toddling one-year-old in circles around the concrete no man’s land between the court and the hockey boards. When the child attempted to make some bipedal headway and then tripped up, tumbling to the hard floor, the crowd let out a collective “Aww”, which was two-thirds “isn’t that cute?” and one-third “is he okay?” Evidently, the crowd was more engrossed in this adorable scene than the increasingly lopsided game at hand.

There was no shortage of children in attendance. When Gregor made what is now apparently his customary demand from the parents in the crowd to hold up their children while the Lion King theme played—a ritual now known as “Cub Cam”—a bounteous crop of photogenic tots was harvested by the camera. Any given “Cam” ends in a lighthearted sequence, of course, and in this instance the camera found a grown man who was holding up another grown man (seated on his lap) by the armpits. Each man had a beer in hand, naturally.

At the half, the Rattlers trailed 58-44.

In terms of pathos, the highlight of the night was the halftime show. At this juncture, a band called “Die Harden” took to the makeshift stage at the curvature of the horseshoe. The lead singer and guitarist were jacked, short-cropped muscle-heads in tight shirts and camo pants; the rhythm section consisted of jean-jacketed longhairs. If the members of the crowd who’d remained in their seats had expected easy listening, they were sorely disappointed; Die Harden’s was not a sound for sore ears. The band started with a cover of Metallica’s “Fuel”, which proved to be serviceable, in that it was an earsplitting wall of sound drenched in generic aggression. At this point, most of those who had remained in their seats began filing out. Die Harden then moved into their “original material.” This accounted for one song—cookie-cutter screamo that cleared the rest of the surrounding seating. The concrete no man’s land in front of the band remained empty throughout the set, save for a few moon-faced dudes with hands stuffed in the pockets of their ill-fitting jeans. Swish made a brief stop in front of the makeshift stage, nodding his perpetually smiling, fanged head in summary approval and sporadically popping an empty thumbs-up. Die Harden finished its set with another cover, this time the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right (to Party)”. This salvaged the performance. To their credit, the band did something even Charly Hustle couldn’t manage to do on this evening: effectively censor song lyrics for all audiences. For the original, timeless lyrics intoned by Mike D at the summation of verse two, “Now your mom threw away your best porno mag”, the Die Harden lead screamer changed this to what sounded like “Now your mom threw away your best Rattlers’ swag.” If your correspondent heard right and this was indeed the change, then that right there is virtuoso bowdlerization. Mercifully, the cover ended and so too did the set. All told, Die Harden was a jarring disjuncture from the constant hip-hop that throbs throughout the gameplay.

Swish turns his back on Die Harden

While the end of Die Harden may have brought relief for its auditors, the second half brought little relief for the Rattlers. They made turnover after turnover, and Niagara consistently converted these into points. The Rattlers’ defense always seemed to be scrabbling and clambering, rendering them utterly porous on the whole. On the sidelines, the Rattlers’ craggy coach Greg Jockims was uncharacteristically animated, throwing up his hands lamentingly on at least one occasion after the Rattlers’ surrendered the ball. The morale started to hemorrhage even faster when Niagara’s Boucard, a prim and crafty Quebecois, landed a soul-crushing alley-oop dunk. Most if not all hope was lost.

One of the few bright spots in the latter half of the game came when Gregor led in the singing of “Sweet Caroline”—or more accurately the singing of the build up to the chorus of that song and then the chorus proper, with all the now-customary echoic phonemes and scat-talking uttered overtop. DJ Charly Hustle segued into a deft mashup of that Neil Diamond classic atop the beat from “Forgot about Dre.” That adroit remix marks him as the only winner on the hometown side on this evening.

The Rattlers trailed 90-64 going into the fourth, and while the score may not have had much of an effect on the persistently loud (and progressively intoxicated) onlookers, it apparently rattled the Venom Girls. We the male gazers in attendance were promised a floor-show from these serpentine sweethearts, but when the accompanying music hit, the Venom Girls just held unmoving in their original pose. As this went on and on, the crowd—especially the randy men—grew more and more agitated. Had someone in the sound department missed their cue? Were the Venom Girls trolling us, the fans, for not cheering louder for previous routines in previous games? Was this some kind of post-modern, Zen experiment bent on taking the art of cheerleading to strange new places? Ironically enough, the nagging questions and the nervous burble they aroused created more of a reaction than the Venom Girls received for any previous performance. Finally, they started into their usual unremarkable, step-aerobic themed capering, which ended abruptly due to what were by now pretty obviously time constraints. Apparently, someone had missed their cue.

The Rattlers made a bit of a push in the fourth so as to mitigate the damage on the scoreboard. They managed to get within ten, but the renewed hope was short-lived. At one point, before hope was completely lost, Rattlers’ forward Terry Thomas forced a turnover and streaked down court with an open basket in front of him. He went up for a one-hand monster dunk, and wound up slamming the ball onto the back of the rim. It bounded away and back into the hands of the River Lions, all to the collective groans of the attendees. This failed dunk synopsized the whole evening on and off the court—a bunch of loudness that didn’t ultimately do anything.

The final camera to make its rounds was “Flex Cam.” This climaxed in a shot of a slender, ropy forty-something ginger intensively flexing his beer-free arm, pushing up a taut mound of bicep. Gregor likened him to Scott Steiner, the unhinged, indubitably steroidal pro wrestler of yesteryear. The crowd loved it.

The score was 108-91 for Niagara at the buzzer, and still people cheered, seemingly as into it as when the Rattlers were winning in previous games—maybe even more so. From a marketing perspective, this is a big positive: the Rattlers have won over a substantial swath of hometown fans. But in being more intense and more “into it” in a losing effort, and potentially identifying more strongly with the team when they lose, does this not perhaps get at something deeper in the collective unconscious of the Saskatchewanese? Are we more ourselves when we are coming up short? Does a team, somewhat perversely, only become truly ours when they are coming up short, as we have in our lives outside arenas and stadia? Decades of cheering for the Saskatchewan Roughriders will do this to a person.

We should think hard about all this, but we won’t. And with that being as it is, the mood in the SaskTel Centre remained festive and upbeat even in the face of defeat, and the well-watered Rattlers’ fans staggered out to their cars not unsatisfied. 

Rattlers Sweeter than Honey Once Again

The Saskatchewan Rattlers swept their home-and-home tilt against the Hamilton Honey Badgers with a low-scoring Saturday evening victory in the steel city. Due to troubles at the official scorer's table late in the game, it's difficult to determine exactly what the final score was, but it can be safely said that the Rattlers won by 15±2 points. Again, the league is having some ongoing hiccups with stats, so we have to be patient. The Rattlers didn't get much from their big guns like Marlon Johnson and Tavrion Dawson, but instead relied on help from their bench. Big Chad Posthumus (pronounced like "posthumous") had a solid presence on this evening; a domineering dunk in the third quarter made clear that he's still got a lot to contribute in his living years. The Rattlers offensive displays did not, however, do much to mute the home crowd, which was paltry and verged on silence even when the Honey Badgers were up. The win is the Rattlers third in a row, a streak that started with their May 11 road victory over Guelph. For once, it seems, Ontario has been very good for Saskatchewan.

Rattlers Rout Honey Badgers for First Home Win

The Saskatchewan Rattlers improved to 2-1 on the season with their first win at the SaskTel Centre, an authoritative 113-95 decision over the Hamilton Honey Badgers.

The win was, in a word, stabilizing. There has been more than just trace amounts of uncertainty in Rattlers Nation over the past week. The CEBL website, for instance, was not able to provide statistics from its first week, and issued an apology to concerned nerds. Kevin Mitchell of the Star Phoenix, Saskatoon’s local reek-rag, painted a picture of precariousness vis-à-vis the incipient league when he wrote in his game-day column of how the CEBL was “chewing things over” and “feel[ing] its way forward”, with the Rattlers “a little more settled” in Saskatoon, “waiting to see what kind of crowd awaits them on Thursday.” Reading between the lines, the tone was at least a little bit foreboding.

Your correspondent must confess that he himself was not without apprehension. The Rattlers’ ticket office called mid-week and explained that they were reconfiguring the seating into a horseshoe pattern, rather than attempting to fill the lower bowl as they had for the home-opener. This meant that the season tickets of your correspondent and his associate would be moved to the other side of the arena. Ostensibly, the seating rearrangement would make the crowd appear less spread-out. But it also raised some questions. Did this mean that the Rattlers organization—or the league itself—was in trouble? Never fear, the team rep explained—they still had their sponsors.

Thankfully, the new seats were an improvement over the old ones, tighter to the hoop at an angle like unto that of the old 16-bit NBA Live games. Your correspondent’s personal parallax was not the only alteration of the evening. The Venom Girls had undertaken a costuming change, their white pants replaced with black. And while your correspondent claims no aversion to trunk-junk, the slimming black brought the excess back under control, looking on the whole a lot less trashy than the white.

Gregor the hype-man had also undergone a wardrobe change. His jeans, shredded on the thighs, fit with considerably more contour than the dad denims he’d rocked the previous week. Seizing on the Hamilton Honey Badgers’ team name—which is not a bad place to start—he opened his ongoing in-game monologue with a squalling quotation from the dotty 1989 Weird Al vehicle UHF. Your correspondent did not get the allusion and, gauging from the tepid crowd response, neither did most in attendance. Mercifully, Gregor explained the reference, which is always a great summation to a joke. Gregor then welcomed Swish, the Rattlers’ mascot, onto the court. Swish made a sprint out to center court, fanged grin bobbing all the way, while the inscrutable attendees greeted him with a golf clap.

Attendance appeared to be down from the home opener. But don’t take your correspondent’s word—take that of the loud-talking mother-of-three behind him, who pronounced very early on (and with a hint of satisfaction) that there were “less people tonight”. An official figure was never announced, so the extent of the drop-off remains in the realm of speculation. 

However, even if some of the intractable Saskatchewanese have given up on the team already, some of the new Saskatchewanese are at least giving it a chance. Seated in front of your correspondent were two full rows of East Asian and Sudanese expatriates. They were under the stewardship of an ebullient young woman, exceedingly pretty in a non-venomous way, affiliated with something called the “Global Gathering Place”, which apparently does Yeoman’s work for immigrants and refugees. The group seemed very enthused by the game, which could not always be said for the locals…at least not early on.

The Rattlers took to the court in their green jerseys, the Honey Badgers in their natty yellow with black pinstripes. The biggest cheer early in the evening came not for Swish or for the various Rattlers as they entered, and certainly not for anything Gregor said, but rather for Charleston Hughes, defensive lineman for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He was entrusted with the ceremonial opening tip, and, after being announced, getting all the cheers, and waiting for two to three minutes to receive some sort of prompting, he finally just went ahead and did the tip-off. After he strode off the court, the game began in earnest.

Early on, the Honey Badgers demonstrated some estimable hustle on the hardwood, pounding the paint and building an early lead. Meanwhile, DJ Charly Hustle pounded the AC/DC during the game-play, “TNT” and then “Highway to Hell” in the first quarter alone. It was as if the fan focus groups after the first game had come back loud and clear: “too much hip-hop.” Again, prairie folk can only handle so much beat and not much bass.

The Rattlers were a bit out of sync in the first quarter. Marlon Johnson, who had eschewed the headband-and-cornrows look in favor of going full fro, missed an early dunk attempt, much to the disappointment of the fans, who seemed to be set on seeing him recapitulate his tomahawk slam from the home opener. Also out of sync was Gregor, who made (without exaggeration) seven or eight attempts at getting a “Let’s Go Rattlers” chant going, with nary a success. Of course, in the first quarter, there wasn’t much to cheer about for the home fans, as it ended with the Rattlers down four.

The Rattlers got down to brass tacks in the second quarter. They put up 30 points, in no small part due to innumerable ball-battles won by Bruce Massey, and key threes drained by Negus Webster-Chan. Charly Hustle continued to go to the AC/DC well too often, though Marlon Johnson redeemed both himself and the DJ when he slammed home an alley-oop with “Back in Black” as the backing track. Charly Hustle helped his own cause by way of a mashup of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” with The Sheepdogs’ “Feelin’ Good.” (At least your correspondent assumed it was a mashup—the two songs have remarkably similar chord progressions.) Gregor persisted at trying to accomplish the “Let’s Go Rattlers” chant, and he continued to fail. I realize the CEBL website has had its difficulties with stats tracking, but when and if that all gets that figured out, I’d be interested in knowing how many times Gregor attempted that chant over the course of the game.

Eventually, Gregor would turn his attention to other distractions. First off, he staked himself in section R and implored the crowd to “dance”. It’s a rough estimate, but your correspondent would guess there were maybe two or three people in attendance who actually followed Gregor’s somewhat stilted lead. “Your dance moves need some work,” he intoned as he ended the segment. After that, he called upon crowd members with offspring to hold up their children. When a few people responded, gripping their infant spawn under the armpits and holding them out at full span for the camera, Charly Hustle dropped the needle on the Lion King theme, which occasioned many a titter throughout the crowd.

By the end of the quarter, Hamilton needed a savior to emerge. Their three-point attempts just weren’t falling; in fact, one even got wedged between the hoop and the glass. Pacing the sidelines as halftime neared was the Honey Badgers’ coach, Chantal Vallée, her team down by 13. And yes, you have read that name and the pronoun right—both are gendered feminine. It is, of course, progressive and reassuring to see a woman coaching a professional sports team. At the same time, there’s a certain pang of ambivalence elicited by the stark contrast between the singular, powerful woman clad in a pants-suit on the sidelines and the pom-pom pistoning plurality of exploitatively clad Venom Girls all around the perimeter behind her. But who is your white-male correspondent to judge? Self-determination for all!

Early in the third quarter, another Hamilton shot got stuck between the hoop and the glass. The Honey Badgers couldn’t buy an honest bucket, so they at least tried to steal some free throws. When forward Ricky Tarrant Jr. came up against Bruce Massey’s elbow in the paint, he went down as if shot. The crowded booed roundly, and the barrel-chested Indo-Iranian man two seats down from your correspondent was prompted to scream “We’re way past Oscar season, buddy!” The Honey Badgers managed to cut the deficit back a bit, but the Rattlers were coalescing, conjoining, and cleaving through the D. The game was theirs; the only real debate was whether or not Gregor could get the “Let’s Go Rattlers” chant going. Periodically throughout the third, Charly Hustle was playing a pre-recorded “Let’s Go Rattlers”, which sounded like it had been laid down by a bunch of unconvinced Saskatchewanese (oh, to be in the booth for that session). Gregor and Hustle even collaborated on working a chant into “Thunderstruck” (song #4 on the AC/DC tally), the hype-man substituting “Ratt-lers!” for “Thun-der!” as the song made its build towards the first verse. It did not take.

But that’s not to say the crowd wasn’t into it. The Rattlers’ successes on the court did far more for crowd involvement than the chant, Gregor’s personal white whale. After one particularly smooth alley-oop layup, Bruce Massey threw up his hands, waving them around so as to beseech the crowd to screech. And screech they did.

Bruce Massey (13), on the verge of draining a free-throw

Kiss Cam made its cursory tour around the horseshoe. It eventually cut to Swish, who was standing next to a Venom Girl. He immediately swallowed her whole blond head in his cotton-fanged mouth while she writhed, presumably jokingly. While this development may run counter to the spirit of our ongoing queer reading of Swish, it doesn’t necessarily obviate that reading either.

As the fourth quarter progressed, it became obvious that Hamilton was tiring. The Rattlers’ energy, meanwhile, was only burgeoning. Bruce Massey executed a beautiful spin layup to make it 89-76, and then stole the ball on the Honey Badgers’ ensuing inbound, promptly splashing in an easy jumper. That was the dagger. The dying minutes consisted mostly of Massey just sprinting past the D to get easy buckets. He put up 30 points, tied for the team lead with Tavrion Dawson, and seemed to be in considerably better spirits than in the last home game. Massey was a microcosm of the arena. The mood was upbeat in the SaskTel Center.

As the Rattlers dribbled down the clock, the crowd voiced its approval for a game well-played, a well-earned 22 point win. The fans could not pooh-pooh the product no matter how hard their ingrained prairie pissiness insisted that they had to. The people who attended, though there may have been less than last game, unmistakably liked what they saw. Two fireworks shot off simultaneously to celebrate the victory. The sustained cheers, however, said something the paltry, impotent fireworks could not: basketball is back in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and it might just stay for more than a couple weeks.

Rattlers Rattle Off First Win

The Saskatchewan Rattlers picked up their first win of the 2019 CEBL season in convincing fashion on the road against the Guelph Nighthawks. The Rattlers, clad in their home whites for some reason, took it to the opposition for all four quarters, pouring in 130 points to the Nighthawks not unimpressive 110. The Rattlers' offense was led by the nimble Alex Campbell, who assumed the role of alpha dog when captain Bruce Massey ran into foul trouble early on. Such is the consequence of Massey's constantly agitated style, which leads him to compulsively question call after call with arms outstretched at full span and voice plaintive. The only entity more animated was the Nighthawks' mascot Swoop, a blue-feathered hawk with a facial expression that appears to be stuck irreparably in mid eye-bat. His mincing and preening on the perimeter of the court easily made him the most energetic Nighthawk in the Guelph region on this evening.

CEBL Season Opener Satisfies

In the beginning, there was awkward silence. 

The Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL) inaugurated its existence earlier tonight in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the hometown Saskatchewan Rattlers taking on the visiting Niagara River Lions, and the mood early on at the SaskTel Center was one of inert reticence. Perhaps the local fans could still hear the echoing death-wails of failed low-tier professional basketball teams of the past—the Saskatchewan Storm, the Saskatoon Slam, the Saskatchewan Hawks. Perhaps they couldn’t hear anything over the thunderous hip-hop beats that throbbed throughout the warmup. Either way, when called upon to “make some noise” in the predictable, generic sports idiom, they were initially hesitant to whoop at full throat.

Of course, they were still getting to know all the players—and by “players” your correspondent is not referring to the members of the Rattlers’ roster; rather, he is referring to the armada of personalities perpetually stalking the perimeter of the court. First, there was Gregor, a microphone-brandishing hype-man in Rattlers apparel and dad jeans. Then there was the Rattlers’ all-Callipygian cheerleading team, dubbed the “Venom Girls”. (You can just picture the marketing meeting: “we want strong women who are eye-candy, yes, but also fierce!”) Then there was the Rattlers’ mascot, rather predictably an anthropomorphic snake in basketball attire. He goes by the handle of “Swish”, which is of course a delightful onomatopoeic pun vis-a-vis the sound of a successful jump shot, but is also just begging for a queer reading; presumably the marketing team was going for the former more than the latter. Swish spent an inordinate amount of time fondling Rattlers’ bench players during the warmup. And of course, not to be forgotten was the Rattler’s DJ, under the cognomen Charly Hustle, manning the turntables with region-atypical deftness. It was refreshing to hear hip-hop in the usually country-fried SaskTel Center; your correspondent will take the urban stylings of Onyx over Keith Urban any day. Mr. Hustle wasn’t all about the hip-hop, though—in a truly virtuosic turn, he blended a pumped-up version of Ace Frehley’s “Back in the New York Groove” with Billy Squier’s “The Stroke.”

Swish accosts fans

Also, the pre-game offered a chance to get to know some of the personalities who aren’t on payroll. The standout here was a heavyset man sitting courtside wearing a Rattlers’ green away jersey with hockey-mask to match.

Even as game time neared, the fans still appeared to be figuring things out. DJ Charly Hustle adeptly played, with derision, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to welcome the River Lions, but apparently a lot of the onlooking Saskatchewanese didn’t get the joke, as they began clapping along to the dozy beat. They did manage to muster up some hearty cheers as the Rattlers were introduced, most of them American or Quebecois, and gave a particularly warm welcome for the sole local boy, Saskatoon’s own Michael Linklater.

Two suits emerged from the audience and were introduced as the founders of the CEBL. They thanked the fans, and then the CEBL was tipped off into existence. The Rattlers scored the first basket, eliciting a rousing cheer from the local crowd. Even with the Rattlers jumping out to and sustaining an early lead, the crowd still didn’t sound like it knew precisely what it had paid for. One Stentorian blowhard attempted to start a “Let’s Go Rattlers” chant, but it died without a single repetition...like, not even from the initiating blowhard. The biggest crowd reaction in the first quarter came when a River Lions’ player missed an attempt at an alley-oop dunk. If there’s one thing prairie folks don’t like, it’s a hot dog, and true to that spirit, they cheered with veritable disdain.

But for all the fan caginess, the product of the court was very good. The game was closely contested through the first half. The rhythm of the game-play synched well with the Interscope-wrought hip-hop instrumentals that played all throughout. (The Dre and Eminem dominated score was a welcome surprise for those of us who came fully expecting Kanye to the hilt.) For the most part, the refs stayed out of the action, calling a pretty loose game and letting the players play. The zebras were not, however, perfect, and missed at least one instance of goaltending for either team. Most of the shots went down from both sides, making for an eminently watchable game. Tavrion Dawson did particularly well from the floor, and he led the Rattlers in scoring at the halftime buzzer, at which point the Rattlers led 51-45. The crowd was growing more responsive, if not entirely involved, and gave a solid applause as the teams left the court for the break.

Scintillating CEBL action

Soon after play resumed, however, the Rattlers began to falter, making a few questionable ball-handling decisions. The DJ also made some questionable choices, drifting far afield from the hip-hop catalog and letting Cher’s “Life after Love” besmirch the PA system during a Rattlers’ offensive rush. Charly Hustle would later redeem himself with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, but Cher’s throaty bray may very well have demoralized the home squad, as they gave up the lead for the first time late in the third.

The mood was lightened, if only momentarily, when the cursory Kiss-Cam made its rounds through the crowd and Gregor commentated with perfunctory glad-handing banter. The camera stopped on the hockey-masked super-fan at courtside, and he was forced to unmask in order to smooch his sweetheart. Turns out that it is indeed possible to wear a hockey mask out of the house and still manage to procure a girlfriend. How about that? All hope is not lost.

Speaking of hope, the Rattlers have lanky forward Marlon Johnson. With the Rattlers down, Johnson ravished the Niagara D, stormed through the key, and slammed home an inspiring one-arm jam, singlehandedly retaking the lead. The crowd went wild, and with that there was a tectonic shift in the SaskTel Center, so palpable it was almost ontic, to borrow a phrase from Heidegger. It was at that point that the Rattlers truly became the home team.

The next big cheer came when Michael Linklater checked in. He was only in the game for a couple minutes, but he played hard, fully embodying the concept of ball-hawk, chasing after the opposing forwards with his prim queue flying behind him all the way. He managed a hard-fought basket in the paint and got a well-deserved ovation.

Soon afterward, the hockey-masked guy was named “Fan of the Game.” In this correspondent’s estimation, none of the 3400 in attendance was in shock.

Soon after, the Rattlers would give up the lead yet again, this time on a lackadaisical inbound that the River Lions intercepted and promptly bucketed. It seemed as if mental fatigue was setting in for the Rattlers. The River Lions’ Guillaume Payen-Boucard was particularly hard on the home town team, draining basket after basket, many of them free-throws.

The situation turned grim. The River Lions were creating offense from defense, forcing turnovers and consistently beating the Rattlers to the inside. Even the ensuing promo giveaway, in which Venom Girls fired mini basketballs into the crowd while Bon Scott minced through “Big Balls” on the PA system, offered little levity as the game moved out of reach. With 2:30 to go, the Rattlers found themselves down by 10.

The Rattlers, however, fought back valiantly, led by Marlon Johnson. He connected on an alley-oop to pull the Rattlers within 2. With the score 99-97, the Rattlers got possession back with six seconds left. However, hesitation to advance the ball past half-court left them with less than two seconds to put up a last-chance J. The inopportune 3-point attempt at the buzzer, for the win, went off the rim, and the Rattlers lost their opener. The disappointment was tangible in the arena, especially from the Rattlers’ Bruce Massey, who appeared to be animatedly chiding his teammates in the aftermath.

Nonetheless, this was good. You see, this was not the usual Saskatonian disappointment of desolation or desperation. This was the disappointment of dissatisfaction—passionate dissatisfaction at that—which contains within it a hope for something better. So often what holds Saskatoon and Saskatchewan back is a lack of passion, and a resignation that what’s best is what currently is. Something better may very well come to be for the Saskatchewan Rattlers and Saskatoon itself.

Even though they came up on the losing end, the Saskatchewan Rattlers have, then, left us with something we haven’t seen since  before the days of the long-gone Hawks: a good game of pro basketball. We are also left with questions. Can the CEBL sustain itself? Can Saskatonians handle the hip-hop aesthetic over the course of four months? Will the fans, thrice-bitten basketball-wise, continue to be more than a little shy with their support?

Your correspondent apologizes for the predictable close, but it needs to be said: game one of the Rattlers’ season did not send us home snake-bitten.