Appreciation

Here’s what I think. We need sports in our lives. A part of us feels like we need a distraction from real life, so we look to sports to take us away to something more fun to get angry about. But also maybe sports have become a metaphor for life and certain situations that occur in the middle of a game can help us get through those rough times in life. Or maybe sports are an avenue to see actually talented people succeed where we have failed and when they do not live up to the hype we cannot wait to tear them apart.  We become proud of these people and because they make so much damn money they should do their best at all times. And if not, then why should we waste our time and money on them? And this is the reason sports are so amazing: they are so polarizing but at the same time draw people in to the drama and excitement contained. Let us use basketball as our main example.

In this time, when the United States is in such a dire economic situation, even the President feels the need to take a break from the shit job he stepped into in order to pay attention to basketball. Never before have I heard the Commander-in-Chief make predictions about every game of March Madness as if he knows what is going on, as well as who is going to win the NBA championship. Interestingly enough, this is what all of us do. At least those of us that give a shit about athletic black men putting a ball through a hoop. We want to forget about that paper that we have to write for school, that problem that we are having with that significant other, or the fact that college is fucking expensive. We want to see men who actually have fun with their career, who get paid obscene amounts of money to do exactly what we would like to do. We attempt to live vicariously through them, commonly referring to our favorite teams as “we” as if we are the 12^th man on the roster who just isn’t traveling with the team. The reason for this is simply that if they were not there to entertain us with their talent, we would stress more about those everyday things in life. Arguments about more serious topics such as economic policy would be more common, rather than the everyday argument about whether Mike Brown is a good fit for the Lakers or if Kobe is still better than Lebron. Funny thing is who honestly gives a fuck about any of that. Those people live in the top .1% of the people in our nation. Their lives have nothing to do with ours. But they help keep our minds off of real life, if only for a few hours.

Now, how can things that happen in a basketball game possibly relate to real life? Let us attempt to figure this one out. First off, a jump ball. Like in life, the beginning of the game is a toss up. There’s really a fifty/fifty chance for each team to get the ball. And in life sometimes a person gets lucky and other times they do not. It’s really just a jump ball. Timeouts are like when a child goes and sits in a corner to think about what he’s done wrong. But more practically it’s when a man goes and sleeps on the couch because his woman is mad. He just needs a timeout in order to let the woman cool down, like when a team tries to cool down Dirk when he’s on fire. Fouls are like when a person does something wrong and gives the other person the right to take free shots. These fouls add up and can get you out of the game. Whoever has the most fouls has to be careful or they will be gone. A fast break is like having an orgasm. You reach the climax and then, well, it’s kind of just over. But you want to replay that moment over and over again. And finally, the buzzer beater. When everything seems to be a lost cause, someone pulls something out of their ass and saves the day. Doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s the best.

Finally, let us attempt to decipher the strange phenomenon of why we, meaning some of us, like sports so much. Part of me feels that our shortcomings are fulfilled through stars in the game. Our favorite players tend to relate to us in some way or another. Or at least we think they do. We think that if we were a little bit taller, more athletic, and lucky, we could take that guys spot. We enjoy watching what we think that we could be in another life. The problem with this is that we also tear them apart when they do not live up to the expectation, as if we could do any better. These guys are professional athletes for a reason. They are the best at what they do, most of the time. I mean sure people can make plenty of money overanalyzing everything. Which is cool, by the way. But at the same time, even as we point out where they failed, we could never do better than them. But in our imaginations, we know how to fix their problem.

All I am trying to say is that we need to spend more time enjoying players and their talents. Sure, sometimes they do not play as hard as they should. That is a problem, and I have no problem ripping a player to pieces for it. But let sports be a distraction. Let basketball stand for something slightly more than just putting a ball into a hoop. And let’s not overanalyze every player. I say we appreciate that year-round, there are people who have major talent and enjoy doing what we never could. And we should enjoy it with them.

That is all.