It was an arid 35 degrees outside in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, on the evening of August 2nd, and the hometown Rattlers
managed to bring the heat inside the air conditioned confines of the SaskTel
Centre a.k.a. the Snake Pit. They were hot to trot against the Fraser Valley
Bandits, winning by a score of 83-73. With the victory, the Rattlers not only stretched
their winning streak to three games and snapped their home losing skid, but, more importantly, they found their new fan favorite.
Things started out strong even before the tipoff, as
the fans bore witness to a rare treat: a meaningful pregame ceremony. Twenty new
candidates for Canadian citizenship were led out to centre court by a Mountie
and a guy in a judge’s gown named Dr. Bill Weiser. Dr. Weiser explained that he
had led the incipient Canadians through the first half of the citizenship
ceremony earlier in the day, and now was doing the second half to make it
official right here before the tip. He led these twenty individuals through the
oath and they repeated after him. They were then sworn in as Canadians. That
brought down the house. The audience cheered rousingly and persistently, and you
could almost feel the ontological change as these twenty people officially transformed into Canadians. Though it was a dry heat outside, your correspondent surmised that, for many a person in attendance, there was a distinctly warm humidity in the
ocular region. Your correspondent can only speak for himself—seeing the
citizenship ceremony made him drop his adamantine façade of irony for several
seconds. After all, being Canadian is all about the matchless freedoms we are afforded,
such as that which allows us to blog crassly about minor-league basketball.
More people than usual sang along with “Oh Canada”
on this evening. When the designated singer finished, there was another stirring
ovation. Then Robert Plant’s introductory shriek from the “Immigrant Song”—an
ironic choice, perhaps—squalled out over the PA system, and it was time
to ball.
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| Shaquille Keith, the new soul of the Rattlers |
The Rattlers came out with uncharacteristic verve
early on, seeming looser—less uptight—than in previous opening frames. Threes
from Alex Campbell and Shaquille Keith, the latter of whom was making his home
debut, set the tone in the opening minutes. Keith, wearing the number 13 jersey, also fed one of his fellow forwards a behind the back pass to make it
20-13 late in the quarter. After one, Saskatchewan led 24-19.
In the second, however, Fraser Valley fought back.
They scored a flurry of points while DJ Charly Hustle was spinning Phil Collins’
“Sussudio.” The Rattlers didn’t get nervous or scared, however, and they knew
how to keep it close. Shaq Keith was at the forefront, at one point dumping
down a bucket and then hamming it up with his trademark flexing, a precedent he
set at the Rattlers’ expense when he was a member of the Hamilton Honey Badgers.
The Bandits couldn’t expand on their one point lead, and held on to it all the way toward
halftime.
In the meantime, the second quarter gave host Gregor
and the promotional team an opportunity to present two new “Cams.” The first
was “Karaoke Cam,” in which Charly Hustle spun, predictably, an instrumental of
“Livin’ on a Prayer.” Fans were encouraged to sing along, but few did, and the
segment ended up amounting to little more than Gregor screeching about how we’ve
got to hold on to what we’ve got, and how it doesn’t make a difference if we
make it or not. Later, “Titanic Cam” was introduced. Here a graphic of a ship’s
prow was superimposed on the bottom of the JumboTron screen, and pairs of fans were encouraged to
assume positions made familiar in James Cameron’s Titanic. Gregor and
Ssswish demonstrated, dreamily embracing one another as per Winslet and
DiCaprio. At this point, Gregor boisterously professed his love for Ssswish. Yet
again, your correspondent’s ongoing queer reading of Ssswish has proven to be
well-founded. Now, apparently, that queer reading can be expanded to Gregor as
well.
(Your correspondent just wants to make one thing perfectly
clear at this juncture. Do not, dear reader, mistake the aforementioned speculations
on queerness, etc. as “trolling.” When your correspondent uses the term “queer
reading”, he is not saying that the parties pertaining to said reading are “gay.” And, even if he were saying that, it would never be your correspondent's intent to put forward that being
gay or any other LGBTQ2S identity is negatively valued in any way.
If anything, your correspondent think it’s positive and productive that in 2019
we can have minor-league sports mascots (and, for that matter, hype-men) who
are willing to essay some performative fluidity vis-à-vis the boundaries
of received categories of sexual orientation and expression.)
The halftime show could also be interrogated by way of a
queer reading, though that might circumvent some of the far more basic questions that it prompted. Among these
would be “what the hell is this?” and “why was this let onto the court?” Though
these questions will remain unanswered, the halftime show was, without a doubt,
the most puzzling of the season—and that’s competing against Die Harden’s wall-of-sound death
metal stylings and the magic show where the magician whipped playing cards. For
this halftime, a person of indeterminate gender came out dressed as Freddy
Mercury and, without any prefacing statements, started playing pantomime
keyboard to "Somebody to Love". He/she/they proceeded to gambol around the
hardwood, lip-synching a montage of various Queen hit singles, all the while shedding layers of clothing to reveal new costumes. Now, if this person had been a
Freddy Mercury impersonator who actually sang the songs, well, that would have
been passable or better. But this was just Karaoke Cam carried over to a bigger
stage with costuming and a fake mustache. Eventually, the venerable Venom Girls (at least they looked like the
Venom Girls) came out dressed in 80s workout attire, seemingly to save the faux
Freddy. Next to Freddy’s unbridled frolicking, the Venom Girls’ routine looked
unprecedentedly solid. Eventually, Freddy was ushered off the court and the
Venom Girls took over, transitioning into “the Evolution of Dance.” Their
performance lacked the Aspergers-ish punch and punctum of the original viral
video, but it still had its moments. Ssswish, for instance, joined in and
engaged in some surprisingly competent breakdancing. As for the audience, more
people were into it than you might expect.
Mercifully, the game resumed, the Rattlers trailing
41-40. Early on, Marlon Johnson threw a long, one-handed pass to Shaq Keith,
and the big man dunked with authority. That recharged the crowd, but the
Bandits didn’t bend, and managed to expand their lead. All the while, Charly
Hustle expanded his range, moving through “Bro Hymn” by Pennywise, “Check the
O.R.” by Organized Rhyme (in short, Tom Green rapping), and even the opening riffs
of “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson (who’s booked at the SaskTel Centre
alongside Rob Zombie for the Tuesday following). After those daring forays, Hustle
went back to the classic staple “Jump Around” by House of Pain and, after the intro, right at
the drop, Jelane Pryce drained a three for the Rattlers. This, arguably, was
the turning point of the game. The Rattlers pulled ahead soon enough, and led
60-56 at the end of the third.
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| Jamal Ray, seen wearing one white legging in an obvious cryptic reference to the white-hooded Texarkana Phantom |
Shaquille Keith started the fourth with a dunk, and he
and the Rattlers never looked back. The
Shaq attack continued when he drained a key three and then flexed for the fans
for an inordinately long time. The Bandits couldn’t keep up. Jamal Ray, the
Texarkana Phantom, tried time and again to glide into the paint. But the
Rattler D, unlike the Texarkana police circa the late 1940s, didn’t let their
man get away. On the other end, Shaq kept putting up points, and in the latter
stages of the game, with the Rattlers up by double digits, he was smilingly
slapping hands with the fans at courtside. With seconds left to play and the
score 83-73 for the Rattlers, Charly Hustle was spinning 60s soul music, and
Shaq was shuffling his feet sleekly.
And why not? There was a blissfully unfamiliar
atmosphere in the Snake Pit on this evening—the giddy invigoration of a win—and
both fans and players were feeling it. Shaq Keith had earned the right to
dance, because he had proven himself the new spiritual core of the Rattlers. In
that sense, he has filled the gaping void left by Bruce Massey’s departure. It is
fitting, then, that Keith should wear Massey’s old number 13. Indeed, with their
big win over the Bandits, the Rattlers got their soul back—and their winning
record, to boot.
