It’s the lifeless of the offseason, that unusual desert the place no video games are performed and all we’ve received are hypotheticals and half-baked debates to maintain us hydrated. So I’ve been dipping into my little treasure chest of 101 offseason questions. Final time, I ranted about the speaker system inside PHX Arena, as a result of why not? This time, I’m wading into one thing just a little extra existential: would I nonetheless root for the Phoenix Suns if I knew with absolute certainty they’d by no means win a title?
Foolish query, proper? Perhaps. However foolish questions are sometimes one of the best portals into actual conversations, the type that dig below your fingernails and make you study why you’re right here within the first place.
So let’s get uncomfortably trustworthy. Why can we watch sports activities? Why can we join this countless loop each single 12 months? It’s not difficult. It’s drama, pure and uncut. Some folks tune into actuality TV, some lean on cleaning soap operas. Me? I mainline basketball. Sports activities has the identical beats as Hollywood. You’ve heroes, villains, heartbreak, and redemption. However the stakes are actual, the outcomes unwritten. There’s all the time a winner. There’s all the time a loser. Each sport is a narrative stitched collectively by sweat and technique, the place bodily capacity collides with psychological willpower to see who rises and who folds.
And in contrast to The Actual World (do they nonetheless make that present?), sports activities by no means get stale. Sitcoms recycle tropes, dramas run their arcs into the bottom, actuality reveals finally script their chaos. However each season of sports activities introduces new characters, recent narratives, and unscripted insanity. That’s the hook. That’s why we hold coming again, even when the ending, the championship parade, by no means arrives.
On this countless tug-of-war between profitable and shedding, the actual magic isn’t within the scoreboard. It’s within the characters. Sports activities, like tv, is a sprawling drama stuffed with arcs, betrayals, and heroes you swear by. Consider Sport of Thrones. You didn’t watch it passively. You pledged allegiance. Perhaps you flew the banner of Home Stark due to honor, or perhaps you lit the pyres with Home Targaryen since you craved hearth and blood. Generally it was the colours, typically the values, typically the chaos. However inevitably, you discovered your self aligned.
That’s what fandom is. It isn’t a assure of victory. It’s the bond you’ve stitched with a staff. Once they win, you are feeling such as you’ve been knighted in triumph. Once they lose, you demand solutions, dissecting the wreckage like a detective at a criminal offense scene, looking for the way it all unraveled and what would possibly rise from the ashes subsequent time.
So again to the query: If I knew the Phoenix Suns would by no means win a championship, would I nonetheless root for them?
Completely. As a result of sure, a championship is the mountaintop. The glittering prize. However to solely again a staff for the rings is to overlook the marrow of the factor. You strip away the arcs, the gut-punch losses, the comebacks that make your blood boil, and also you’re left with one thing sterile. One thing empty.
Our causes for fandom are as different as fingerprints. Geography, household allegiances, or perhaps as a result of purple and orange regarded rattling good whenever you had been a child. However the connective tissue is identical: this shared, collective trip together with your fellow believers. That bond doesn’t get cast in champagne parades; it’s hammered out within the trenches, within the years when the flames are low, within the nights you undergo collectively. That’s what makes the hearth burn hotter.
Wouldn’t it sting to know the Suns won’t ever hoist the trophy? In fact. You’d query your sanity, surprise why you stored feeding your coronary heart to one thing that may’t pay you again with the final word reward. But when the one cause you watch is for the coronation, you’re lacking the essence. The tears you shed when a title comes aren’t from the trophy, they’re from the scars of each season that attempted to interrupt you. I do know. I’ve felt that catharsis with the Dodgers. Ecstasy, heartbreak, rinse, repeat.
So, one final time: would I root for the Phoenix Suns understanding they’ll by no means win all of it? I might. As a result of with out that uncertainty, with out the battle, with out the absurd maddening hope, the story collapses. And what’s sports activities with out the story?
Foolish query? Perhaps. However that’s August for you.
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