Just one month short of a year ago, the Saskatchewan Rattlers were crowned CEBL champions, and all was right and decent in the world. Flash forward eleven months, and we live in a nearly full-blown dystopia. In view of a global pandemic, we can't travel or gather in public places, and when we do leave the house, we don a mask...if we accept the coronavirus is real. Indeed, a significant portion of society believes that COVID-19 is a conspiracy concocted for purposes of resetting the economy or keeping Donald Trump from further terms or some other comparable nonsense. And so the virus spreads unabated. As a consequence, sports are played in empty arenas in "bubble" cities.
The CEBL champion Rattlers should have been opening the season at home with the ceremonial unfurling of the 2019 championship banner from the rafters at the SaskTel Centre. Instead, with the virus not fully in check, the Rattlers had their "home opener" in the Meridian Center in St. Catharines, Ontario, home of the Niagara River Lions and the CEBL's designated "bubble" city. Here, the Rattlers will embark upon defending their crown in a "Summer Series," a single round-robin among the CEBL teams with playoffs to follow, all the games for TV viewers only. Their first opponents? The "visiting" Niagara River Lions. We suffer this unceremonious start to this stripped-down sophomore season in the interest of public health.
From the warm-ups onward, things looked much different for the Rattlers. The only returnees from the 2019 championship squad are Jelayne Price, Shane Osayande, and the venerable Negus Webster-Chan (hereafter NWC). More noteworthy were the absences: Chad Posthumus has entered his post-Rattlers life, and Marlon Johnson has left approximately seven feet of emptiness in the Rattlers' roster. Marlon Johnson made the Saskatchewan Rattlers. His absence is nothing less than a disruption of the psyche for Rattlers' diehards.
When the game commenced, the atmosphere was different, too. The CEBL referees are now using electronic push-button whistles rather than risking saliva-based coronavirus transmission via more conventional means of blowing down fouls. This has had only minimal impact on gameplay. More jarring, at least from the perspective of the Rattlers' faithful, was the empty arena. The absence of fans in the stands marked only a slight drop in attendance from typical 2019 games in gloomy Ontarian burgs like Guelph and Hamilton. Kudos to the CEBL for not putting cardboard cutouts in the empty seats, or for piping in crowd noise as per Major League Baseball. These innovations have succeeded only insofar as they have made the baseball experience uncanny, desperate, and surreal.
More daring is the CEBL's adoption of the "Elam Ending," an Asperger's-ish alternative to the usual conclusion of basketball game. While the last portion of the fourth quarter conventionally devolves into strategic fouling and becomes decidedly drawn-out as such, the Elam Ending, named for the Mensa member/middle-school principal who invented it, diverges dramatically: the game clock is rendered meaningless after the first dead-ball with less than four minutes remaining. At this point, a "target score" (T) is determined by the formula T = n+9, where n equals the number of points held by the team in the lead. The two teams then shoot it out to reach this number and end the game. This guarantees that every game will end on a basket, rather than a bunch of pedantic intentional fouling. Moreover, it gives a glimmer of hope to teams down by a lot with only a little time remaining.
In the first quarter of the Rattlers' season opener, the home team (that is, the Rattlers) came out a bit flat, going down 13-5 after four minutes of action. The mood at the Meridian Centre was moribund. Girded in exposed pipes and industrial heaters, the St. Catharines arena gives the impression of a boiler room (at least on livestream). But the Rattlers came to life by the middle of the first quarter and snatched back the momentum, galvanized by none other than NWC. They took a convincing 50-39 lead into the halftime.
The River Lions showed some ferocity early in the second half, but couldn't claw back. Their perennial star, Guillaume Boucard, was conspicuous by his lack of offensive contribution. Meanwhile, former Rattler Ryan Ejim was as butter-fingered as ever beneath the basket, reminding us all of his Saskatchewan days. The Rattlers took an 86-67 lead into the Elam Ending, making the target score 95. Elam time dragged on, as the Rattlers couldn't buy a bucket, missing shot after shot. Both teams looked tired, particularly the River Lions, who'd played their series opener the day before. But in due course, Kemy Osse put the River Lions out of their misery when he drained the winning three-ball for Saskatchewan.
And so the game ended 96-79 for the Rattlers, marking an impressive start for the Saskatchewan side. The CEBL and the Rattlers are back, and so the world regains some vague semblance of decency. But with that said, so much was missing in this "home opener": there was no Ssswish stalking the sidelines, no Gregger running inane promos, and no Venom Girls twerking in synchrony (which may in fact be a progressive deletion). Alas, it's far better than no CEBL at all.
