A Sad Day for Sports?

I’d not wanted to do two sports articles in a row, for variety’s sake, but after the events of last night I felt pressed to comment.

My favorite basketball player of all time—Tim Duncan—won his fourth NBA Championship ring with the San Antonio Spurs roughly twelve hours prior to my writing this post. I watched the game sitting on our living room couch, my Dad was asleep for most of the game—it’d been a long few days at work—but he was there to watch it with me as always. His sleeping had more to do with his exhaustion than the fact that the Finals this year were atrocious.

But this post is not going to be about the Spurs or Tim Duncan or LeBron James or how bad the Finals were. Rather, this post is going to be about the aftermath.

Obviously pleased by the turn of events that I had just witnessed on ABC, I didn’t go straight to bed. I went to ESPN.com and saw a link to their “conversation” page about the Spurs winning their fourth championship this decade and joining the Celtics, Lakers, and Bulls as the only teams to win more than three NBA Championships.

Now, I am not your typical sports fan. I attempt to approach sports with an air of rationalism and an analytical mind; I like the thinking parts of the game. The reason I like to watch games with my Dad is that the two of us banter back and forth and break down what we’re watching—why can’t Tim Duncan make a shot? Why haven’t the Cavaliers picked up the tempo and tried to force the issue, because grinding it out isn’t working? Why aren’t the Cavaliers putting James back on Parker, the only person who almost slowed down the soon-to-be Finals MVP? So while we most certainly have a rooting interest—Tim Duncan has been my favorite basketball player since he came to Wake Forest and as the Bobcats aren’t a contender yet, nothing pleases me more than Tim Duncan amassing a large ring collection—we try and approach the game for what it is, a simple game of basketball, for it’s a game that we love.

And so when I click on the link to go to the conversation page—I’m not going to use any direct quotes—but I find every third post is in all caps, while others are mere insults to other posters or one of the two teams. Quite frankly, I was embarrassed to be a basketball fan at that moment. These were my peers. These were the individuals that, like me, had stayed up until midnight to watch the game, and instead of appreciating a gutsy win by a great team, they took all of their time explaining how the Suns were the best team in the league, how LeBron James is awful, and how bad the Finals were. No one said anything remotely constructive. The only talk was that “LeBron has to learn to shoot,” “Robert Horry won the Finals two rounds ago,” and “basketballposter111 that doesn’t make up for the fact that you’re gay.” Of course, it really looked more like: “LeBrick lrn 2 ****ING SHOOT!” and “ROBERT HORRY 1 THE FINALS 2 RNDS AGO!!!!!!” and “bbp111 ur still GAY!!!!” and other equally painful sentences.

Up until last night, I’d never really gotten why so many people hate sports, but I think I get it now. I realize now that this is the culture. It’s a culture of generalizations, hate, and fickleness; where whoever shouts the loudest inherently wins—it’s not a matter of enjoying basketball on any level. Admittedly, the NBA Finals were awful this year and something has to be done—David Stern himself is pondering this, if you’ll believe his appearances on two podcasts yesterday—but basketball is basketball and we should be celebrating it, not tearing each other to shreds. I don’t know this for a fact, but I guess I’m the minority. I guess nobody cares that two teams played great defense and competed and some shots didn’t fall here and there, so the games were ugly. I guess nobody cared to look beyond that, to try and find something within the competition of two good basketball teams with good basketball players.

And all I wonder is: when did that stop being enough?