Why I Like Basketball
It’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of my disinterest in sports. I can’t tell how much of my opinion is shaped by growing up in Boston. Boston sports fans have a notorious reputation, one that overshadows most other aspects of their culture. Add being female to that; we are rarely allowed to play, let alone join the conversation on sports. Plus, I’m slow and lazy. I’m simply someone who doesn’t care about Deflategate.
Though I’m no jock, some of my earliest memories from childhood are sitting on my father’s lap and watching the Celtics play. I grew up during peak Jordan mania and would save Wheaties box tops to send in for a ball “signed” by Michael Jordan himself. There were big personalities on the court, Space Jam at the movies, and Shaq was anywhere that would hand him a check. Basketball of the 90s occupied a lot of pop culture real estate.
Getting older, my basketball interest wained. The Red Sox and Patriots started an upward trajectory, and while both sports were less compelling to watch, both proved simpler to feign interest in. Relating to guys was important; I was 18 and dedicated to getting any male attention. These guys didn’t need an equally enthusiastic diehard— it was easier to conveniently share the same opinion than devote myself to the necessary research and sports-watching. Then I moved in with a Celtics dancer.
I grew up dancing, often blaming this hobby for my disinterest in sports. The only team I needed was a strict dance teacher, nine or ten vicious pre-teen girls, and an unforgiving wall-length mirror. Dance was my first love though, and I gained genuine respect for the art. One fellow dancer from childhood classes, Meaghan, would end up sharing a dilapidated Beacon Hill apartment with me. We were barely 21 and the apartment was a bit of a hole, but perfect to host parties for our assorted college crews. Meaghan was a truly gifted dancer, long legs and neck, lithe, spindly and preternaturally graceful. She had continued dancing throughout school, while the rest of us earned beer guts and mediocre GPAs.
In 2006, Red Auerbach died a few days before the start of the season and (over his dead body) the Celtics introduced a dance team. Meaghan, looking for any dance gig available, auditioned and was chosen to be part of the squad. She endured spray tans and blow outs, while I reaped the benefits of her season tickets. At first, I’d go to the games for something to do. There was the promise of free vodka shots surrounded by gorgeous women post-game, which seemed much cooler than sitting on the couch watching pre-racism scandal Paula Deen. Then, despite the hideously embarrassing 2006–2007 Celtics season (second worst in Celtics history!), I began to love basketball.
My love was a slow burn. Wanting to catch up, I’d invite the guys from my freshman dorm to come with me to explain the basics. It didn’t take me long to develop a taste for dunks, crossovers, a swishy three-pointer. Sure, I never saw my team do any of that, but the excitement was there. I was in, watching these guys, no helmets or pads, several nights a week, playing hard. I began to learn more about the players and chose my favorites. This Celtics team had no shortage of personality with the oft-times unsteady Delonte West, a young Rajon Rondo and an injured Paul Pierce. There were some boring white dudes too, like Wally Szczerbiak and Brian Scalabrine, bounce-passing away to give a dose of delluded hope to the Boston fanbase. And since my love was new, it was also unwearied. It’s so easy to cope with a twenty game losing streak when you don’t know anything else! Isn’t it NORMAL to score 70 points a game? The games were bleak, but the Garden was fun. It brought together a cross section of Boston that I normally wasn’t around. I had suddenly become part of a club I didn’t know I wanted to join.
The season mercifully ended and I moved home to live with my parents. I graduated college in the midst of economic collapse and there was little employment to go around, especially for a 21 year old English major. I held onto my job at a posh women’s boutique, trying to figure out my next move. Meaghan left the Celtics dancers, psyched to hang up her booty shorts.
The Celtics’ 2008 expectations were riding on the chance of an early draft pick — Kevin Durant! Greg Oden! — but were shot down by a pitiful fifth selection. Another horrible year was written in the stars. It was a young relationship, so I didn’t feel the impact as hard as the more grizzled fans. Thus, I did not understand the magnitude of Danny Aigne’s coup. By trading for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the team was instantly ten times better than they had been the year before. Throw in a once-again healthy Paul Pierce and you have a “Big 3”. But as the Celtics began to turn things around, I grew distant. Without Meaghan’s tickets, I fell back into my jilted liberal arts grad routine, writing in coffee shops, listening to shoegaze, and luxuriating in post-collegiate ennui. But even the most uptight poets can enjoy a new banner and some big rings. I dove back in for the playoffs, along with the whole city, fired up to Beat LA. I went to the parade and exalted the great KG sailing down Boylston in a Duck Boat.
From Boston, I decided to move to Los Angeles. Friends working at talent agencies promised me a job in a mailroom. I thought the mailroom is where I would land my adult job. Where I would lean in, claw my way up the ladder and smash the glass ceiling with fistfuls of cash. And I didn’t really have anything better to do. When I was in LA, I surrounded myself with East coasters. LA felt raw and unfriendly, and I grasped at any threads that would connect me to other people. But driving down Wilshire Boulevard into Santa Monica, I spotted the proverbial shining city on the hill for lonely Bostonians — a sports bar called Sonny McLean’s. Easily identifiable from the caricatures of Boston sports logos covering one full exterior wall, Sonny’s wasn’t much more than hard bar stools and sticky floors. But in addition to room temp Bud Light, Sonny’s offered comfort, familiarity, and NESN. I felt like I had just left Ellis Island and stumbled into Little Southie. Other New Englanders at the agency would come together to watch games and drink away the pain of babysitting our sociopathic bosses. Lakers fans had apparently been allowed to clock out at 4pm, filling up the sports bars, while we’d crawl away from our desks much later and land at any bar or restaurant with a TV. One of my fondest LA memories, a real defining moment, happened in a sushi restaurant after the Celtics were handed their last L of the 2010 series. A Lakers fan felt inspired to begin a “Celtics suck” chant (so catchy! how clever!). I stood up, leaned into his face and said, not asked, “WHAT”. Due to either disinterest in starting a fight with a clearly unstable young woman, or the laid back Cali vibes, my new enemy sat back down and didn’t say another peep. Despite the loss, I was very proud to have my reputation precede me.
I moved home from LA after my harrowing entertainment industry stint, self-confidence at rock bottom. My family had gone through a bunch of shit while I was gone and I wasn’t around to help. I was uninspired and exhausted. I set up shop in Boston again, got a simple admin gig, and made some new friends. Along the way, I met my now fiancé, Allen. We had our first date in early fall before NBA season was full swing. We met at a bar where a TV was playing a Red Sox World Series game. I asked Allen why everyone at the bar was so excited. He laughed. Another chick who didn’t care about sports. It endeared him. I think he was relieved to not be dating a Red Sox fan. We went to a few Celtics-Pistons games, Allen being a native Detroit boy and serious Pistons fan. We were on our best behavior, no trash talk, both practicing great restraint. We are no longer able to go to games with each other. Much like Mary Matalin and James Carville, our relationship survives despite a great ideological clash.
That Christmas Allen took me home to meet his family. We converged at their lake house in Michigan without a whole lot to do but eat, nap and watch television. I was introduced to the family (family meaning “Allen and mom”) tradition of watching every Christmas day NBA game. His mother was also a lifelong Pistons fan, with bizarre allegiances to other players in the league and a particular interest in guys with neck tattoos and difficult childhoods. She was sick at the time, but was still able to trade NBA gossip with Allen. She was optimistic about Stan van Gundy coaching her team, but wasn’t very impressed with many of the players. She was pleased with Kevin Durant’s success. It felt good to be included in this holiday custom.
Allen’s mom was sick for a while. She had the energy to give Allen a hard time and dote on her sweet husband, but things were heading south. I’d see her a few times after Christmas over the years, and each time she was a little sicker. In March, the week of spring break, Allen’s mom was in the hospital. Sounding like it would be her last trip, we booked plane tickets for that evening. At the airport bar, we watched a Spurs game and laughed at the cheesy spring breakers trying to hit on a very patient bartender. We took the night shift at the hospital, giving Allen’s dad a chance to sleep at home for a few hours each day. We were so lucky to have the NBA that week. Counting on enough games to watch through the night, keeping the volume down but turning all the chairs in the room to face the television. Allen would lean down at his mom’s side, talking her through the games, holding her cold, puffy hand. There is no imaginable way he could have dealt with this during the off-season.
The reliable consistency of playoff basketball and the intensity of a soon-to-be legendary Warriors team helped dull the pain of the proceeding months. In two years, I would be in the same situation, binging endless hours of NBA games to avoid leaving the house in the weeks after my mom died. My sister, father and I began a group text, discussing the Celtics’ playoff run. Marissa is an even bigger basketball fan than me, listening to all the games on the radio because she doesn’t have a TV. In those months, she leaned on the players to cheer her up, calling them her “large sons”, imagining herself as team mom and wishing she could bring players homemade cookies after wins AND losses. My dad, once a fan and always a fan, started to tune in more and form a few questionable opinions of his own (Marcus Smart is not their best player). We had a shared interest, something that had nothing to do with cancer. The games felt incredibly high-stakes. It was a relief to pour my emotions into something other than SAD and basketball was my something to look forward to.
I love basketball now, and I love my team. I listen to podcasts, follow players on Instagram, and read most of the takes Twitter has to offer. I’ve found some of my favorite writers reading about basketball. It’s my go-to conversation starter in a Lyft. It’s how I connect with friends’ boyfriends, who are not super into hanging out with me. I cannot play. I don’t know all the rules. But that hasn’t seemed to matter. For a few months a year, I have a love that is frivolous and entertaining and dramatic, pulling together the people I care about the most. It’s not knowing someone’s free-throw average or who’s the third best college player in the country. It’s about sharing a love and connecting with a bunch of psychos in green jerseys who all truly believe that Tommy Heinsohn is the greatest living person and will gladly buy his watercolor paintings.
