Tag Archives: NBA

Confession of a Fair Weather Fan

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Yep, I’m “that guy.” I’m that much-maligned bandwagon sports fan who tunes in when his favorite team is winning and unapologetically tunes out when it is losing. 

In other words, now that my hometown professional basketball team has made the playoffs for the first time in a long time, swept a team that owned them during the regular season, and won the first two games of the second round series on the road against the world champions, I’m here to add my full-throated “WOLVES IN FOUR! and “REFS YOU SUCK” chants.

I admit, I wasn’t there to cheer on the likes of Mark “Mad Dog” Madsen, Michael “Candy Man,” Olowokandi , and Earvin “No Magic” Johnson. I just couldn’t. But I am here for this talented, disciplined, deep, and successful team.

“Real fans,” the ones who in good times and bad dig deep to buy season tickets, TV packages, and closets full of gear, ridicule guys like me. But I maintain that my selective approach is the only sane approach to sports. Life is too short to put too much faith into billionaire Wolves owner Glen Taylor finally figuring it out.

Photo credit: CBS News Minnesota

If you see sports as strictly entertainment, as I do, it only makes sense to show up when it is entertaining for you.

If you see it as the path to self-actualization, I guess I could understand the passionate commitment to blind loyalty that I hear on sports talk radio. But that just doesn’t strike me as particularly sane or healthy.

Therefore, I have only recently shelled out something well into the two figures for the Bally Sports add-on to my DirectTV streaming service and my single Wolves t-shirt.

Who knows, if things are going well tonight in the pivotal Game 3 — and by “well” I mean a non-stress-inducing Wolves blow-out — I might even tune in until halftime! Even if that happens, at half-time my wife will serve me my warm milk and tuck me into bed in my nightshirt at the appointed bedtime. As I have so many times before, I will set a recording and watch the second half tomorrow, if, and only if, my morning headlines scan indicates that I will find the second half to my liking.

And if my favorite team brings me joy again on Sunday? Well, then I might even move to the next phase of bandwagon fandom, and purchase that face paint I’ve been eyeing. You know, the water-soluble, easily removed kind? LET’S GO WOLVES!

LeBron James Clanks a Free Throw

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I really don’t know a damn thing about basketball. But I for sure know that LeBron James is up there among the best known and respected people … on the planet. The guy has Muhammed Ali-like cred with the population of this pale blue dot.

So it’s sad to see him, of all people, fumble and bungle a response the NBA’s “issue” with China.

If you’re not following this, a week ago an executive with the Houston Rockets tweeted support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators. Personally, I found that startling enough. Sports executives are notoriously reluctant to say anything remotely controversial politics-wise. (The NFL as usual being the worst of the bunch.)

Anyway, as soon as that tweet went out the shit-storm descended. The executive in question, clearly feeling (intense) pressure from the league and owners and everybody making a merchandising buck off the NBA, quickly rescinded the tweet and backpedaled into deep mumble-mouth.

The reason of course is money. Gobs and untold gobs of money. There’s a body of deep-thinkers who believe the NBA, as popular as it is, has maxed out the American market, and it’s current popularity in China has the league’s marketing gurus thinking they have a juicy angle at a market … three times the size of the USA. And that folks, is a consumer base corporate America treats like the sacred host of God Himself, something you never screw with … ever … in any way.

The trouble is of course that the NBA, a league composed of mostly black players and supported by a huge black fan base, has been commendably open in its defiance of the racist stupidity of Donald Trump, with players — including LeBron — and prominent coaches fairly regularly barking back at Trump for his persistent vulgarities.

Point being, there’s no real downside to that. Trump’s a fool and the league has earned poins for daring to say so. It set us up to expect better from the NBA.

China though, with literally billions in the offing, is a whole different matter. LeBron to this point in his storied career has done everything and more you could ask of a mega-superstar. He’s been generous with his philanthropic work and, despite railroading out a few coaches and teammates he didn’t care for, he’s been a model performer, an unequivocal leader.

The point here is that no one — and I repeat, no one in modern pro sports — has more cultural capital than LeBron James. The demonstrators in Hong Kong aren’t out there complaining about trash collection or pay raises for pubic employees. They’re putting their lives on the line for the quintessential American notion of freedom. It really is as basic as that.

China, it’s glitzy towers and sprawling factories pumping out instantly disposable crap for Walmart (and Target and Best Buy and … ) withstanding, is a crude, brutish autocratic disaster and should be persistently reminded of that fact by everyone doing business with them. (Needless to say, Trump hasn’t made any effort on behalf of the Hong Kong demonstraors.)

What LeBron should have said is, “I too support the pro-democracy demonstrators of Hong Kong. The NBA, through which I have become a wealthy man, would not have risen to its status under a repressive government like China’s. Free men and women, especially men and women of influence, have an absolute obligation to speak out in support of democracy wherever we see it under attack, which it is in Hong Kong today.”

The bulk of mainland China’s population lives behind tightly restricted media inputs. Think FoxNews for 1.4 billion people. State TV portrays the Hong Kong demonstrators as “terrorists” and could quickly concoct an explanation for why the NBA has suddenly become a menace.

But here’s the thing. These state-sealed media bubbles are getting more and more porous. People within them who know and care have ways of finding out the truth, and in turn admiring and respecting allies for their full freedom.

The NBA’s mega-Chinese payday may take a near-term hit. But its standing with every democratic society and every pro-democracy fan and non-fan in the world will only increase by being brave enough to risk that payday by doing and saying what’s right.