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On the Exhilarating Irrationality of Being a Fan

If you are a Blazer fan do you congratulate the Los Angeles L*kers on their most recent championship?  Only if you’re at a party or a family get-together and you run into a nice guy who’s a L*ker fan and you want to be invited back.  Or the guy who’s doing your prostate exam confesses to L*ker-liking mid-procedure.  Or it’s the parent of the love of your life.  At other times, it’s probably not a moral failing to congratulate a L*ker fan.  But the whole point of being a fan is arbitrary commitment to a specific team.  And you can do this precisely because sports’ competitions are not matters of life and death.  You are a conscientious fan because you are aware—as, say, a nationalists is not—that your choice of teams IS a choice, that you are choosing to indulge yourself, to bring meaning to leisure through purely subjective, somewhat capricious fealty to one group against others.  In making them your team, you make them like family.  And just as you cannot be entirely objective about your family, you cannot be, you should not be, entirely objective about your Blazers. 

To adopt the Blazers is to adopt their story, a story that predates any of the careers of the present players or management.  It is to enter into the mythos of the team.  Central to that myth is the place of the L*kers.  They represent Tinsel Town, the Megalopolis of freeways, relentless sun and publicity, celebrity and superficial dreams.  They are from a city that is, in the myth, the very antithesis of Portland: genuine, rainy, intimate, overlooked, condescended to.  The L*kers span the basketball world with a sense of entitlement, matched only by the Yankees in baseball and Norte Dame in football and rightfully deserving of our ire for that reason alone.  But they are worse than that.  Their outsized egos have often been matched by outsized talents.  And their talents have more often than not barred the path of our team—the good, hometown Blazers—from Conference Championships and greater NBA Glory.  It is the age-old tale of the big and powerful surpassing, again and again and again, the smaller town guys. 

Congratulating the L*kers on their victory is a gracious thing to do.  Were I an Orlando player, I would do so.  But I am not.  I am a Portland Trailblazer Fan since creation.  Los Angeles and Kobe do not need my congratulations.  And, in my irrational devotion to my own team, I feel no need to do so.  I relish instead the prospect of soon witnessing my beloved Blazers delivering them bitter defeat at the end of the season.  Again and again and again.

And that’s the truth.



2 recs  |  Comment 6 comments

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I agree. Sports are the one place we are allowed to be irrational. They aren’t life or death. They are barely real. They aren’t a microcosom of life or the world or politics or religion. They are entertainment that we get to be real fired up about. If it wasn’t so early in the morning, this feels like a topic I’d write a couple pages about only to regret it later.

The cowards never started
The weak died along the way
Only the strong survived
They were the Trailblazers

by lukeyhere on Jun 15, 2009 4:13 AM PDT reply actions   0 recs

Ah, this exemplifies why I vastly prefer being an objective viewer of the NBA rather than a true "fan(atic)."

Even when I was a huge fan of the Seattle SuperSonics, I gave the Utah Jazz respect for its dominance in the late-‘90s. I’m a better man for it, too, although I still have an unhealthy disdain for Karl Malone to this very day.

by AK1984 on Jun 15, 2009 5:24 AM PDT reply actions   0 recs

I fully support the right to feel the irrational distain and disrespect you have for the L*kers

But i am willing to be rational and to say congratulations are in order not to the team but to the symbol that there accomplishment stands for. To show respect for the championship is in order. Respect gives people happier lives, pushes the hate away and helps us realize we are all part of a larger community..

"Knowledge will get you from A to B. Creativity will get you anywhere." Einstein

by Garden of ODEN on Jun 15, 2009 5:42 AM PDT reply actions   0 recs

I'm glad we have a good group of guys to root for.

I would be hard-pressed to root for a guy like Kobe if he was on our team. I respect him as a basketball player but not as a person.

There were a couple years of Blazer teams that I watched, but didn’t root too hard for, due to our bad apples. For me, character matters when I invest my time in a sports team.

by TallTimber on Jun 15, 2009 6:45 AM PDT reply actions   0 recs

screw the lakers

That's right, that's a picture of me with my new bff Joel Przybilla. He said my Billy Idol Karaoke was spot on.

by svlittle on Jun 15, 2009 9:55 AM PDT reply actions   0 recs

familiar sentiment

yet another pet peeve- why capatalize their team name if the a is substituted for an *? I believe capatalizing their name lends undeserved creedence

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,"
--Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.

by bow4meow on Jun 16, 2009 6:09 AM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

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