Yesterday, while at Disneyland with my four year old, I wrote poetry all day, and it was glorious. Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER. The funny thing is that it wasn’t like I wasn’t present. I was super-present — completely on top of his whereabouts, safeguarding him from all kinds of shenanigans; at one point he flipped over a railing and found himself in a bed of flowers while in line for the Pinocchio ride, but I’m willing to let that one slide because it was an enjoyable activity that he clearly excelled in.
At one point, while watching Abby and Ilya zoom around in shiny, spinny circles while on the Dumbo ride, I somehow managed to get deep into the rhythm of this poem I was working on, and at the same time get lost in the climactic music coming from a Little Mermaid float on the other side of Fantasyland.
This was by far the high point of the day. When everything that mattered came together in one glorious moment: My wife and child on the spinning Dumbo ride, the poem at my feet, and Disneyland. Blissful irony.
After the Denver Nuggets were aptly annihilated by the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 2 of their series this past Monday; there was a lot of cat calling all over my various feeds. It seemed like, overnight, every basketball fan in America became a Minnesota Timberwolves fan.
There were calls for the end of Denver’s reign, questions on the validity of Jokic’s MVP trophy, bombastic chest puffing about how Denver was cooked now, etc etc up and down my feeds, so much so that I felt strange about putting out a message to support the Nuggets, not because I’m some Nuggets super fan but because I just found it odd that so many, seemingly out of nowhere, had jumped on the Timberwolves bandwagon.
And then it got me thinking. About what exactly, I’m not totally sure, but it has something to do with the desire of sports fans, and perhaps us Americanos in general, to witness an “upset.”
Passion for the underdog? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I’m guilty of it too.
I’ve always loved a good underdog story, starting with my years of rooting for the Buffalo Bills during their run of 4 straight Super Bowl annihilations.
There’s just something about wanting a team (that has always sucked) to win. To watch them topple the Goliath that gets us sports fans / you know, out of bed at night.
This bandwagon thing that was happening for the Timberwolves annoyed me. Not because I dislike the Timberwolves or Minnesota. I like them a lot. Their story, their team building process, their much maligned center; and of course Ant Man, who does have the essence of Michael Jordan in him.
There’s so much to like, and yet, the response was curious. Especially when your pair it with the radio silence coming out of the internet after the Nuggets kicked the living shit out of the Timberwolves in the next game.
I’m serious, I went onto social media hoping to engage with whoever about the comeback win the Nuggets were having in the series, and it was like, collectively speaking, everyone’s grandma died. There was hardly a peep of excitement for what the Nuggets were doing. Moreover, hardly a word about the mediocrity of the Wolves.
Within the space of one (1) game, one stinking game, it seemed like all of the Timberwolves fans had disappeared.
The Nuggets are not the Lakers or the Celtics or even the Knicks. They don’t have a storied history of mega-winning like some of these other franchises. They’re the Nuggets, from Denver, a mid-market team at best that has won literally one championship I think in my lifetime.
I have two memories of the Nuggets prior to Jokic. They’ve been relatively irrelevant outside of these last 3-4 years, and yet all of a sudden fans are acting like they’re some Goliath, and celebrating their foe as if they’re some Gandhi?
Maybe it’s because the Timberwolves are even less decorated than the Nuggets?
Now that the Denver Nuggets had won, perhaps it was time for this other team to get an opportunity? That would be in alignment with all kinds of modern trends, perhaps the internet was “making space” for a new team.
But then I thought, what if by watching the Minnesota Timberwolves beat someone who they weren’t supposed to beat, something even more relevant to society was happening: What if we were all living out a perverse desire to get something we don’t deserve?
Stay with me,
How neat would it be, everyone seemed to be saying, if this wish came true in the form of a historically bad basketball team? If the Timberwolves could come from nowhere and do it, well, couldn’t I do it now too?
I could become whatever I wanted because I felt like it. And it could happen out of nowhere, just like for the Timberwolves.
Of course it’s nothing new to desire the impossible. But the gloating way that need was suddenly being expressed, that was new. It was filled with a — “see I told you so” rubbing in the face of reality vibe that had finally found its ideal form of expression.
For a brief moment, reality had vanished and the only thing left was the Timberwolves.
Very few people wanted to slow down and consider the alternative. That perhaps Denver had just had a couple of bad games. That the series was not “over” as so many seemed to deign it was. That perhaps the series had just started.
Because the other team, the Nuggets, was so fucking good that they needed to lose to remember that, oh yeah, we might have to try if we want to win.
Nothing against the talent of The Timberwolves either, they are a formidable foe, and a phenomenal team, but so are the Nuggets, guys.
As game 3 showed us last night, there’s no easy way to beat a team like that. It’s not going to be a blow out. It’s not going to be some erasure, like Denver would just move out of the way because we had decided, individually and collectively, that we had arrived.
Game 3 was a game that Denver had compete control of, and the internet was a desert in response— the grief period I assume — that reality was going to be a lot harder than what it seemed it could be for a few glorious games when the Timberwolves made us believe that we could do something just because we felt like it.
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Rooting for the underdog is as American as apple pie. The knee jerk reaction to do so should be studied by anthropologist. *Also love the image of letting your child fall over a railing and into a bed of flowers. Hope @DILFs_of_Disneyland caught that. Lol
Nuggets are a beautiful team led by the truly original Nikola Jokic — a club who doesn’t care to be in the ballers club. Neither does any of the other Denver players either — or at least none have been invited in (via all star or award recognition). And mainstream storytellers just can’t work with this totally beautiful story. But they will have to one day.