Who is fact checking these Raptors articles?

Okay, I don’t want this to be a post about the pitiful Toronto sportswriters, but I gotta say, at least with the NBA, the Toronto sports-writers are downright pitiful. These guys are supposed to be getting paid to write about the NBA, so how hard is it to at the very least get the facts right? Writing a boring article is excusable, but getting some important facts completely reversed is just ridiculous.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately especially before the season started when they were writing about the spots remaining on the team roster. They kept saying there were three guys competing for one remaining spot on the roster (Jamario, Juan and Luke) when in reality there were two spots and three guys. If that was confusing to me, a fan of the game, I can imagine a casual reader would probably have stopped reading two sentences in.

So when I read the gross misrepresentation today in the Star, I thought I had better get my thoughts out there. If you read the “Run ‘n’ gun” story about the Warriors in today’s Toronto Star Doug Smith mentions the Warriors as being the highest scoring team in the league and he cites them as averaging 116.3 points per game (and giving up 109.3 points per game):

“How do you prepare for them?” Mitchell wondered about the Warriors, who average 116.3 points per game but give up 109.3 per outing. “They’re not going to run but two or three plays. As a coach, you like to be able to prepare.

Immediately I was confused because I thought the Utah Jazz were the highest scoring team in the league. With a 1-6 record I was perplexed at how the Warriors could be scoring that much more than their opponents and have only won one game. Hmm, did they win one game by 40 and lose the rest by one point? Were they counting last years stats? What gives?

I didn’t have to look very far to see the errors in Doug Smith’s ways…directly to the right of the article is a game preview showing the Warriors GIVING UP a league-worst 116.3 points per game, but scoring on average 109.3 points per game. Ahhh, now that makes sense.

I know the story was probably written late last night and with all the big events happening today, maybe nobody read it over, but man o’ man…that was just un-acceptable. The average score was a critical fact for the theme of the “Run-n-gun” story. Now 109.3 points per game is still a run-n-gun team, but it is a lot different than 116.3 ppg. Dougie boy, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Sidenote: I checked some more papers, and the Sun reported that the Warriors are indeed the highest scoring team in the league, so I’m trusting that two papers wouldn’t get that fact wrong. After the Raptors held the Jazz to 92 points in the loss on Wednesday, their ppg must have dropped.