The future of basketball in Canada was dealt a blow when the men’s national team failed to qualify from the Americas tournament in Mar del Plata, Argentina, for the London 2012 Summer Olympics.
Steve Nash, the best player ever produced by Canada, was conspicuously absent from the tourney. Back in Vancouver, he was showing off his soccer skills for cameras at a Vancouver Whitecaps practice. The photo opportunity was smartly timed to keep the last-place Major League Soccer club he co-owns top-of-mind amid the surging BC Lions and the returning Vancouver Canucks.
The national team, like the Whitecaps, wears Bell’s wordmark on its jersey. But even that wasn’t enough to draw Nash back into the fray, while he waits to learn whether the National Basketball Association season will be shortened or cancelled by the owners’ lockout of players.
Canada’s last medal in a summer Olympics’ team sport was silver in men’s basketball at Berlin 1936, and the drought is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Own the Podium.
Nash went to Twitter to plead his case with fans.
“I was asked to do a lot for the (Phoenix) Suns and after 13 years with the national team I felt I had to choose one or the other to prolong my career and the NBA is my livelihood,” Nash wrote.
“The moments and memories I had playing for Canada are the best of my career. It wasn’t an easy decision nor one I wanted to make to stop playing for the national team, but something had to give. I was 30, playing year round, carrying injuries into both seasons.”
Meanwhile, Nash’s commercial juggernaut continues and shows no signs of abating. On September 13, he opened the trading day at the Toronto Stock Exchange to promote Liquid Nutrition Group, a chain of six Montreal juice and natural foods bars that has designs on expansion to Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles.
Other athletes on so-called “Team Liquid” include East York, Ontario-born New York Yankees’ catcher Russell Martin, Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback Matt Ryan, Norwegian golfer Suzann Pettersen and Australian gold medal halfpipe snowboarder Torah Bright, who won on the Cypress halfpipe in 2010.
Nash isn’t just a celebrity endorser. He owns a piece of the company. Team Liquid’s board of directors includes Brandon Kou, general manager of Steve Nash Enterprises.
Nash, 37, has played in the beverage world as an endorser for Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater and has his name on the Steve Nash Fitness World and Sports Clubs chain. He’s also part of the BC Hydro Team Power Smart, appearing in one ad as a bobblehead. Time is running out for the two-time NBA most valuable player to earn a championship ring, but his prime earning time is now. His number 13 is more famous on a global scale than Wayne Gretzky’s 99 ever was, simply because basketball is played and watched more widely than hockey and because Nash is a star of the Internet era.
Board room
Don’t expect to see baseball anytime soon in BC Place Stadium.
BC Pavilion Corp. chief executive Warren Buckley is still waiting for Major League Baseball to respond to a request to rule on whether a game could be played despite the giant centre-hung video board.
“The reality is we’re not designing this for baseball,” Buckley said. “Nobody’s out there trying to acquire a major league baseball franchise, but we’d like to do some exhibition games.”
He said a likely scenario would be to temporarily remove the board, but conceded it wouldn’t be practical.
“If you look at what the cost of what it would be to try and enhance the stadium to accommodate three games a year,” Buckley said. “I think most people would say, well, that’s a wise investment not to do it.”
The video board might be the most important element for generating revenue at the renewed stadium, scheduled to open September 30. BC Place will join New Yankee Stadium, Cowboys Stadium and Rogers Centre in employing the Cisco StadiumVision video and digital content distribution system. At New Meadowlands Stadium, shared by the National Football League’s New York Jets and Giants, the use of 2,200 IP-linked screens means the venue can be rebranded depending on the tenant.
That will be essential in Vancouver, where anticipated stadium naming rights sponsor Telus and Whitecaps’ sponsor Bell will be uneasy bedfellows. •
