What We Root for When We Root for (or against) Another

In preparation for the finals, I wanted to speak to you a little about the process of rooting for another team, other than your home team. My view of sports is that your home team is pretty much your team for life. The roster can change, the coaching staff can change, the stadium can change, the owner can express infuriatingly stupid political views you disagree with, your former star players can do horrible stuff (no just kidding, here), but you will still support the franchise. And I expect to keep doing so well into adulthood. There are a few reasons for doing this, none of them are perfect. Rooting for your home team (or the team you've always rooted for) connects you to your love of sports in childhood. It also allows you to follow events going on in the whole league, as you can pay attention to things from a single constant vantage point. Without looking through one team's journey, I think things get too confusing, and you get lost in too many details (much more true of all sports but football). For a lot of people, I think rooting for their team is a way to bond with their fathers. That's why Californians will root for New York teams and so on. And it is, in the end, a way to express loyalty to something and to feel part of a community.

Rooting for another team is a different kettle of fish entirely. It usually occurs, in basketball at least, only after your team has ended their season. Since '07 I have happily been rooting for the Celtics as my second team. But my rooting for them has only really become whole-hearted after the Jazz have been eliminated from the playoffs. It pays, I think, to root for a team that's in a different division than yours. Last year I rooted for the Nuggets in their battle to defeat the Lakers (they were much closer than the Suns). That team was fun to root for: they had a great story. A rag-tag bunch of talented athletes who had all been a little aloof, a little un-team like, coming together under the experienced guidance of Chauncey Billups (a great guy), having Carmello begin to blossom under his tutelage, and making a run at The Finals. I didn't, however, let myself fall too deeply in love with them. And this was wise and it allowed me to disassociate with my past, as the Jazz played them in the playoffs this year.

When rooting for another team besides your own I don't think you can ever root for a franchise. You have to root for good sports stories. You have to root for players and coaches. And you have to root for the team that can exact revenge on your behalf. This Celtics team has not disappointed. They have a great come back story, having been counted down and out in every round and having effectively chopped the heads off of increasingly "difficult" and "the best" teams, starting with the Wades in Miami, then attacking the Lebrons, moving on to their complete dismantling of the Howards (the funny thing is, these last two teams were the Cavs and the Magic, respectively, until they met the Celtics in the playoffs and largely resorted to their superstars and a collection of others), only to culminate (?) in their mirthless and professional destruction of Kobe Bryant and his over sexed lifeless zombie entourage. It's a very kill bill thing, they're working their way up the ladder and leaving piles of bodies at each step. These Celtics also have a plethora of personal stories. Garnett's return, Rondo's coming out party, and the slow and steady professionalism and heart of team captain Paul Pierce are all worth chattering on. Not to mention secondary stories like Nate Robinson's acceleration to the stratosphere, Doc Rivers' quiet gift at coaching personalities, and Rasheed Wallace's ability to turn it off one last time in the playoffs. That last comment on Rasheed capture's this team's larger arc rather nicely I think. I think of this team like the prospective experts in a Heist movie. Many are old and battered, but they've come together one last time for total domination. We will see if this is Rififi, a heist noir tragedy in which their flaws (or the Greek fates) lead to their downfall in the end. I'm starting to get the feeling, however, that this is Ocean's 14: Ocean's Beach Party the plot of which isn't too clear, but it ends with LA blowing up and everyone rich (Rondo is Damon).

I'm not rooting for the Celtics because Bill Russell once played for them (though my grandparents living in the area doesn't hurt). Similarly, I'm not rooting against these Lakers because of a longstanding grudge. I liked the team alright as recently as when Shaq played for them, and have come to hate them for their individuals not for their history. Kobe Bryant is obviously, if not a uniquely hateable guy in sports, the biggest asshole playing basketball today. He is surrounded by a crew of talented, but personality-less people. A further post will further elucidate this point. Suffice it to say, Lamar Odum used to be someone semi-interesting. Now he's married to a Kardashian. Fisher has become a smug dude, he's in commercials, and acts singularly relaxed with a pretentious air of having earned his place as a great (way to be on Kobe's team). Fisher also wants to have it both ways. He acts like a statesman, an ambassador to other players, an advertisement about sportsmanship and being a team leader. Then he makes the cheap tackle fouls. There's nothing wrong with those fouls. Rodman did them, the only difference is Rodman didn't claim to be doing them for his daughter. Pau Gasol is a hard case. He's extremely talented, a very good big man, but he's also a huge bitch. A dude who is quite tall and athletic, but who can not really throw down against other good big man. He's frequently soft when it counts, and hard when it doesn't (like when Boozer is lying on the ground and Gasol's yelling at him). There's the junk squad. And, or course, Phil Jackson. The man who took one of the world's great religions and improved it by applying its principles to a game with a ball. A guy who smugly tries to intimidate refs every game. And who is oft sighted as the best coach ever in the world for his ability to win with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neal. All and all they're a bunch of smug, human refuse, pieces of garbage that only the soulless money culture of LA could support. I like Magic Johnson and Pat Reilly. It is this particular group of Lakers, the one that knocked my team out of the playoffs for the past three years, that I hate so much. My hatred for the team is even more than the sum of its parts.

I hope that come Thursday, Garnett whipes the fancy floor with Gasol's chicken ass. That Fisher tries to foul Rondo and overextends his arm. That Phil Jackson gets fired. That Ron Artest gets confused and bites Jack Nicholson. That Kobe gets mad, goes all out, and still looses. When you're still watching sports after your franchise has lost, it gets personal. And personally, I completely hate one team, and completely love the other. If the Celtics lose it'll be worse than any other possible outcome (Magic, Cavs, Suns, someone else losing). But if they win, I won't have to live up to my pledge of spitting in Gasol's face should I ever meet him. He'll already have spat in it himself.