Ball Is Life... And Now I Can Go Back To Living In Peace

A reflection on and reclamation of bizarre, niche NBA fandom.

“I like basketball, but in, like… a weird way,” has become the way I reflexively explain to people my entrancement with the NBA basketball.  It is not in my nature to be a fan of a team, yet I am extremely partial to my city which has brought about a deeply confused and conflicted experience for me experiencing the brief saga of the Kawhi-era Toronto Raptors.

It certainly makes sense why most sports fans are “tribalistic” sports fans; the structural elements of competitive team sports are designed to perpetuate this tribalism.  Teams are geographically designated; develop a distinct iconography and mythos; anoint heroes and swear hatred for villains; and seek conquest over other tribes. Participation in this both pulls a person deeper into the tribe while also fortifying the tribe.  It’s not as if I find this objectionable (in fact I broadly support it, thus garnering my distaste for multiple teams residing in the same city; looking at you, Nets and Clippers), but nevertheless I am here, with a wholly dead soul, never uttering “this is my own.” 

Perhaps it’s my insecurities that precludes me from just swearing my sempiternal loyalty to a tribe and preparing myself for war, but there are always things in basketball which I would prefer to happen and those which I would prefer not happen.  Perhaps it’s my contrarian nature about life which prevents me from enjoying basketball the conventional way, but, of course, if I was really that big of a contrarian I wouldn’t adore basketball as I do, but instead I’d be Canada’s biggest sepak takraw fan -- and yet I’m not.  Perchance it’s my cynicism that blocks me from just being a normal fan, but how could a cynic love as I do? How could a cynic wake up and fall asleep wondering about the true nature of a dumb game about putting a sphere through a ring with diametre equal to two of said spheres?  No, as it turns out I’m not an insecure contrarian cynic, I do in fact have a native land of my own -- it’s the whole.

The 30 tribes of the NBA cannot exist independently; without the Hornets to play against there is no Magic.  It is the complex interplay between the teams which gives me life; it’s the bizarre stories; it’s the heroic legends; it’s the woeful tragedies; it’s the cunning schemes; and it’s the seldom visible minutiae which makes the NBA be “this league.”  All of this felt so distant to me in a brief blizzard of euphoria this June and the only way for my footsteps to turn away from this foreign strand seems to be misery for all of the other basketball fans in the city.

It’s probably regrettable that I have such a negative disposition; I don’t like happy music -- I don’t even think being happy makes me happy.  So if we’re going to argue some type of utilitarian evaluation of this then obviously my discomfort is less important than the joy of millions, but what should I do when I feel so empty in the presence of overwhelming jubilation?

It was strange meandering through the overflowing Yonge Street the night the 72nd NBA champion team was declared.  The force of the exhilaration penetrated the entire world around me, but could not breach my steadfast fortifications.  It seemed like because I presumably knew so much more about the NBA than most of the people in the mass that I could not get lost in the rapture of a tribal victory.  As if I had sold my ability to love for knowledge, but alas my nature allows nothing else. I have a very difficult time enjoying things casually; either I don’t care about something or I want to know every single shard of minutiae of something.  That’s how I went from not caring about basketball at all in 2014; to knowing a detailed history of the league in 2015; to knowing about obscure rules pertaining to NBA player contracts in 2016; to now where I’ve spent the past few months attempting (and failing) to dissect the true meaning of manifestation of basketball and what perfection means in this context.

The biggest fear I had when I felt nothing beyond mild satisfaction about being right, as 24 years of angst dissolved into celebration around me wasn’t that I couldn’t be of the tribe, but rather after 5 years, I might be over basketball and just lose interest.  Even as I cried multiple times while I toiled at Nathan Phillips Square; first when they played O Canada (although this is also complicated and deserves further examination) and later when I saw all of Kyle Lowry’s burdens abated, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a labouring denouement to my enjoyment of basketball.

But I rejoice!  I am alive once more; my inferno radiates in anticipation of this looming October.  July 1st set me ablaze once more and early on the 6th I was set free. I presume a northern reincarnation of the Process is coming and I can’t wait (although, hopefully it won’t be as cursed as Hinkie’s triumph was).  If the Raps’ casual fans are lost in time like tears in wet precipitation, then I need not maintain my flimsy charade; should they stay, then they will by necessity morph into broader, more niche-focused fans, in which case all the more people who will come close to understanding my obtuse ramblings about tanking.

I can only live my life after all; basketball is war for most people and that’s the intent of the design, but if I only lived as it was designed I would never be free.  Ball is still life, but if it isn’t in a weird way it won’t be my life.