Wow

For those who've missed the "Play off the Playoffs" so far:

Being a Fan

It's been a long time since I've been a true fan of any one team, no matter the sport. The closest woudl be when I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and cheered for UK basketball. Even then, though, I always had a sense that we'd really lost a sense of perspective. The zeal of the UK fan was that of a fundamentalist, which one can only truly appreciate after you leave the blue-blooded confines of Lexington and witness it from a distance. In fact, during in college, I ended up developing a special kind of hatred for the UK basketball fan, watching them be too obnoxious in victory (as though THEY had earned the glory) and too vindictive in defeat. I think this experience really warped my sense of sports enjoyment, to the point that I became a lover of sports without any real allegiance.

Sure, while living in Cincinnati I became partial to the Bengals, but this was always more sympathy for the hometown team than real fandom. Their playoff run in 2005 was more of a shock than a thrill. And yeah, I have a definite soft-spot for the Reds, having gone to their games since I was a boy, and will still even go to their games when they visit the West Coast, but I've never been completely sold-out on them either. I couldn't put name to face for 85% of their present roster.

Just prior to my move last April, I told a co-worker that I was going to start cheering for the Golden State Warriors. I'd long wanted a NBA team to rally around, they were lovable underdogs, and since they played in a terrific Western conference I'd get a chance to see a lot of quality teams play in my new backyard. To my surprise, upon my declaration, they went on a winning streak to end the 2007 regular season and squeaked into the playoffs. (I was still in Ohio at this time and thus didn't actually get to see this surge, but instead followed it with growing interest via box scores. I later learned this sixteen-game stretch is where the Warrior mystique truly came alive in popular NBA legend. Plenty of good YouTube videos to be seen chronicling their rise.)

The 2007 playoffs kicked off while K. & I began our epic seven-day trip across the country. While on the road, we watched the Warriors split the first two games in Dallas against the Mavs. I was impressed, but I wasn't hopeful. A number-eight seed simply doesn't win in a seven-game series, I explained to K. Something happned in Game Three, though. I remember watching it from our hotel room in Monterey, balancing an over-priced room-service hamburger on a napkin, and witnessing the strange synthesis of crowd and team at the Oracle Arena. I wasn't there, but I knew there was a "moment" happening -- one of those things that all sports fans watch sports for. This is where the regular script is thrown out and replaced with something infinitely more significant, even when it means your team doesn't win. Maverick fans loathe the Warriors, but I think they have to admit something special happened during that series. Golden State went on to win the series in six games, and though they lost the next round to the Utah Jazz, my absolutely arbitrary decision to become a fan had been solidified.

In many ways, I realize this may qualify me as a world-class bandwagon jumper ... but, I can deal with this aspersion of my character. Bandwagon or not, this has been the first full season of my being a true fan. I've not only watched a good 95% of their games, I've brooded mercilessly when they lost and cheered triumphantly when they've won. K. & I have hours-long discussions about playoff possibilities. She has consoled me mid-game when all hope looked lost; and I've counseled her from the brink when our team has let another eighteen-point lead dip to two. And even now, instead of looking for a job I'm reflecting on who they should draft.

With the joys of being a fan, of course, are the remarkable lows when things do not work out as hoped. To the NBA's loss, the Warriors were eliminated from playoff contention this week when they got beat by the Suns. It was hard to watch, especially after they were up eleven in the fourth quarter. I was without consolation Monday evening following the game. But as I reflected on this yesterday, I realized that I was entering uncharted emotional territory. I'd simply never felt that invested in a team's win-loss record. I don't know that I'd recommend it as a way of life -- knowing at least one Buffalo Bills fan, I can attest that it likely isn't healthy in the long run -- but there is something to devoting oneself even to a losing effort. There is, I now understand, a communal aspect to being a fan -- of the celebratory cheers and mournful moans held in unison amongst strangers.

Perhaps, in the end, what I disliked about my previous experiences in Lexington was that the fan experience was too individualistic. Maybe things have changed, but at the time UK fans were not feared because they could collectively will a team to win, or because their teams resembled their fans to the point that they were an organic whole, but because of the combined weight of their general animosity toward losing. This just seemed to breed a sense that they were owed success, and resulted in unearned bitterness when it didn't happen. (Just ask Tubby Smith.)

Out here in Oakland, though, it's safe to say that I've enjoyed my experience as a fan so far. I don't think I'm likely to extend it beyond the NBA right now. I have issues with the salary and talent distribution of baseball, so I can't take it too seriously; NFL has really begun to annoy me increasingly; and I've long ago turned my back on college basketball & football. In the ranks of professional sports, nothing comes closer to the NBA right now. I've said this before, but I highly recommend that you latch onto a team during this upcoming post-season -- maybe a young & fun 76er team, or a Hornets team everybody overlooked before the season. It's going to be a helluva ride. Who knows, maybe you'll fall ass-backward into becoming a fan, too.

West Coast Hoops

This is a week of confessions. Here's another: I've given up completely on college basketball. I've not watched more than five minutes of a NCAA basketball game this season, and may not even bother with the tournament. In its place, I've discovered the NBA.

If you've not been a NBA fan in the past, I can't blame you. But let me say this -- there's no better time than now to get into it. We're looking at a special era. Two icons in Kobe & LeBron, a renaissance in incredible point guard play (be it Nash, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Baron Davis, or the ageless Jason Kidd), and in teams like the Warriors, Mavericks, Celtics, Suns, Hornets & Trailblazers there is a new-found emphasis on actual teamwork.

A recent West Coast transplant from Ohio, being in a position to reall be a NBA fan is kind of new to me. It was a happy coincidence that K. & I were moving out here right when the Golden State Warriors were making their epic run against the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs last year. Watching the games from our roadside hotel rooms, eager but unsure of what awaited us in the Bay Area, we knew we at least had basketball to look forward to. The Warriors have not disappointed.

They really are in the best position this side of winning a championship. A good team that can beat anybody on any given night (as witnessed by the spanking they gave the Hornets this week), and even take a series if they're hot, but not a team that anybody expects to say so hot as to win it at all. Expectations are reasonable, and the style of play is balls to the wall fun. I defy anybody to watch the Warriors play and not enjoy themselves. Purists will scoff, sure, as Baron Davis jacks up a three-pointer during a three-on-one fastbreak. But I bet even some of these right-thinking basketball fans would come around to at least appreciating the energy with which the team plays. It helps, too, that they're style of play really lends itself to close games that neither team are ever out of.

For those of you not following but know something about basketball. The West is so tightly bunched up right now, in terms of talent and in the standings, that the addition of Chris Webber to the Warriors is actually expected to make a significant difference. Bizarre. Well, that is until the Lakers trumped it completely, to the point of making the addition of Webber laughable, by trading for Pau Gasol. The only thing to get in the way of the Lakers making the Finals now is Kobe's ego.

Sir Charles

I've been a fan of Charles Barkley ever since he actually made Auburn's basketball team fun to watch back in the early '80s. Even as a nine-year-old I could appreciate the sheer athleticism of somebody so fat -- at one in his college basketball career was weighing 300 lbs, all carried in a 6'4 frame. He, of course, went on to become one of the greatest NBA players of all time. And, in all likelihood, one of the most entertaining.

Fortunately, Barkley has not become an embarassing shell of his entertaining self like Michael Jordan. TNT was very wise to pony up the big bucks to land him on their Inside the NBA studio show, and it is consistently one of the most fun things to watch on tv. I suspect that even non-basketball fans might enjoy it, if only because it's so rare to see people on a live set actually seem to enjoy one another's company and have a good time talking.

For those who do not know him very well, Barkley is the consummate court jester. He is, though, also pretty insightful, as this interview proves. Much of it can be ignored, but he does hit on something in crystal-clear, "blue-collar" language what I think is the fundamental truth about the world today (not just America):

So is that what interests you primarily--economic issues?

America is divided by economics strictly. You know, people always talk about race, and we have racial problems in this country. Of course we do. But the real issue is the rich against the poor. We've got to get poor white people and poor black people and Mexicans [sic] to realize they are all in the same boat. If you in one of those three groups and you are poor, you are going to be in a bad neighborhood, you are going to go to a bad school, and you are going to have strikes against you. You can't commit crimes in good neighborhoods. They will get your ass. Their kids go to private school, or they go to school in a good economic area. But the poor people, they are all in the same boat but they divide you based on race or stuff like that. A lot of these politicians say things like "We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants.

Has your perspective on these issues changed in the last few years?

Yes, when I realized that rich people will always be rich and the poor people are like crabs in a barrel. They are going to fight with each other, but they are really in the same boat. They want you to argue about gay marriage. They want you to argue about the war in Iraq.

Well said.

A Little Basketball

As many of you know, this was the first year of a new rule in the NBA that requires kids just out of high school to wait one year before they will be allowed to play professionally. The problem, near as I understand it, is that team owners were increasingly frustrated by the fact that they had to invest money in unproven talent. Of course, nobody had a gun to their head when it came to drafting kids just out of high school. And, of course, for every Lebron James who came out of high school and became an instant All Star there were at least three players like Sebastain Telfair who will almost certainly end their career playing in Europe. Nevertheless, no team owner wanted to take the risk of passing up on that high school phenom who might be the next big thing. They're fun to market, they're potentially very lucrative (i.e., they put butts in seats), and they can revive an organization (for a while) if they're great. After several years of rolling the dice, though, the owners finally decided to change things up. Let the kids play college ball for a year, or sit on their butts playing with their Nintendo Wii, they said, anything but enter the draft.

This year, the rule has been almost universally regarded as a success for college basketball. It's brought long-time NBA fans back to the game, and it's turned football towns into basketball towns (e.g., Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas). Between Kevin Durant down in Texas and Greg Oden at Ohio State, NCAA Division I basketball was bursting at the seams with awesome talent. It was, in my estimation, a golden year for college basketball. Durant and Oden were choirboys, loved by their communities and colleges -- they said all the right things, even down to the obligatory "I might come back next year" lie. Of course they're not coming back next year, but we'll give them credit for playing along with the illusion of honesty and integrity that compels so many to adore college basketball.

All along, though, there have been naysayers to this new rule. Take for instance, Bobby Knight. For all his personal flaws, Knight is an educator at heart. College basketball is not, for him, a NBA minor league; nor is it a junior circuit. Kids are given athletic scholarships ... in order to go to school. The fact that they are athletes of the highest caliber is secondary. Obviously, then, he doesn't take kindly to kids coming in for a year only beause they have to. He contends that what you have is a bastardization of college athletics as a whole.

"Because now you can have a kid come to school for a year and play basketball and he doesn't even have to go to class," Knight said Monday during the Big 12 coaches call. "He certainly doesn't have to go to class the second semester. I'm not exactly positive about the first semester. But he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball.

"That, I think, has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports."

Now, I don't know what Oden or Durant's academic schedule or grades look like. But, on the whole, Knight makes a pretty good argument here. Thus far, though, both players have been such class acts that's it not really been a big issue to too many people. What happens, though, when a high school kid without their apparent maturity comes along -- who understands the illusion of integrity in college basketball, but who revels in openly flaunting it rather than repress or deny it? What happens when a kid comes along who will not say the things we want to hear, or play along the way we want; who understands the college game purely in terms of his pre-professional marketing; who has his coach wrapped around his finger? What happens then?

We'll find out next year.