It was a wet and relatively warm Tuesday morning in downtown St. John’s when the new president and CEO of Canada Basketball, Glen Grunwald, dropped into Mile One Centre to announce the details of an upcoming pair of FIBA international hoops games in February.
Grunwald was back at Mile One for the first time in 15 years. The last time he was in the rink, the weather outside was the same.
On Oct. 23, 2003 — almost 15 years ago to the day — the greatest disappointment in the history of Newfoundland sports occurred at Mile One Centre, with the cancellation of an NBA exhibition game between Grunwald’s Toronto Raptors — he was the team’s general manager then — and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
It was the first basketball game scheduled in the two-year-old building.
Warming up at one end of the court was the Raptors’ Vince Carter, then one of the league’s top young players who was coming off an all-star campaign. Down at the other end of the court was the Cavaliers’ 19-year-old star-in-waiting, LeBron James, the No. 1 pick in the draft that year who already had a $90 million shoe deal.
The St. John’s exhibition was to be James’s first game as a pro.
And then it happened.
Rain and fog that day and evening, coupled with balmy 18 C temperatures, led to the condensation buildup on the hardwood at Mile One, a condition which might have been accelerated by the layer of ice under the floor.
Just prior to tipoff, the floor started to get slick, prompting Mile One officials to increase the building’s air conditioning capacity.
At the scorer’s table, directly in front where now-retired Telegram sports writer John Browne and I were sitting, 10-year veteran NBA official Tony Brothers, who was the crew chief that night, was whispering his concerns to those seated at the table.
Players were told to return to their respective dressing rooms.
Many Mile One workers and ball boys/girls took to the court with towels in a futile effort to dry the floor. Dozens of children came out of the seats to help.
You got the feeling they’d do anything if it would help get the game started.
The teams returned to the court again, about 45 minutes after the scheduled start and tried to warm up, but to no avail.
Before Glenn Stanford, then manager of Mile One, shuffled to centre court to deliver the bad news to the 7,500-plus who came downtown for the big game, the Cavaliers had already left the building and were on the way to the airport.
“I’d actually arrived late to the game,” said Grunwald, who spent seven years as the Raptors’ GM. “I looked out (at the court) and people were trying to dry up the floor. I didn’t know what was going on until I learned there was a condensation problem.
“I know we worked to try and make the court playable. Then it was up to the referees to determine if it was safe enough to play on. And they made the call that it wasn’t.
“I remember being under the stands and talking to Richard Peddie, who was then the president of MLSE (Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment) and him saying, ‘Glen, we’re going to have to call this for safety reasons. But go out there and tell them we’ll be back again.’”
It was actually Stanford who was the bearer of bad news, but it was Grunwald who assured fans the Raptors would return in 2005, though he couldn’t guarantee that James and the Cavs would be Toronto’s opponent.
For the most part, Newfoundland and Labrador basketball fans handled the news well.
No one was tearing seats from the floor, but there was certainly a merging of anger, frustration and sorrow, and Stanford and Grunwald were drowned out by a chorus of boos and catcalls.
One leather-lunged fan in section 110, it was reported, bellowed, “This is a Newfoundland joke!”
It might have been a sign of what was to come for the Raptors that season. Toronto stumbled to a 33-49 record, and missed the playoffs for a second straight year.
Grunwald was fired with two weeks left in the season.
Two years later, following the 2005 hockey season, MLSE pulled its American Hockey League team from St. John’s, relocating it to Ricoh Coliseum, a slapshot from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ downtown digs.
If there was a glimmer of hope the Raptors would come back to hold an exhibition game, it was all but dashed with the Leafs pulling the plug on St. John’s.
In 2006, Grunwald resurfaced in the NBA, hired as vice-president of basketball operations with the New York Knicks, and he’d remain on Broadway for seven years.
All along, he kept in touch with Stanford.
“To his credit, he didn’t forget about St. John’s,” Stanford said. “He tried to do something.”
“I had always been a bit guilty that I was never able to deliver on that promise,” Grunwald said. “Eventually, I’m working as the general manager for the Knicks, and I have the Washington Wizards and the New York Knicks scheduled to play in St. John’s. And then I got fired again.
“I guess it’s my fault,” he says with great laughter, “because I couldn’t keep a job.”
There was plenty of blame thrown around in the days and weeks following the game that never was. Some in Toronto alluded to the fact Mile One couldn’t control the temperature because of the weather outside, although the Raptors’ morning shootaround and a couple of youth basketball games that day went off without a hitch.
But the game was Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment’s show, and as such, it had full control of everything that went on that evening.
Refusing to pass the buck, Stanford shoulders some blame for the condensation buildup inside the rink.
But there are others who’ve hinted it was MLSE people who might have messed with the gauges.
“I don’t know,” Grunwald says today. “I’ve heard different stories. It was the first basketball game played here, so that probably could have been part of it. And it was very humid outside, which I know played a part in it.
“But now we’re safe. The (St. John’s) Edge haven’t had any problems (in the National Basketball League of Canada). And I know we won’t have any problems.”
Canada Basketball will be playing host to a pair of FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Americans Qualifiers, leading up to the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup Aug. 31-Sept. 15 in China.
“It’s great to see this city and province really get behind basketball,” he said.
Robin Short is The Telegram’s Sports Editor. He can be reached by email [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TelyRobinShort
