“Die Michael!” read the homemade cardboard sign that I violently shook in front of the TV. Exhaling came easier with each Clyde Drexler bucket. Jordan’s Game 1 39 points felt like a slap to my comprehension of the concept of hope.
That 1992 NBA Finals were exhilarating. As an eight year old Romanian (look it up) immigrant, I was years away from truly understanding even the basic rules of basketball and had only played it briefly in PE. (To this day, I can’t seem to catch a ball with anything but my head). To this day, that Bulls/Blazers series stands out as the peak of my love for basketball. As a kid, those guys weren’t professional athletes; they were gods.
So what happened?
Well, like a lot of you, I simply got jaded.
Salaries, controversies like the “Jail Blazer” era, and simply being exposed to more and more of the sport simply changed my outlook of the game. It’s difficult to enjoy the game as I did back then. In place of that rather crude sign I passionately made in an attempt to curse the Bulls is an iPad, or at the very least, a Miller Lite. Instead of living and dying by every shot, part of my mind is thinking about that email that needs to go out first thing at work, or how I’m out of toilet paper and know that at least two guys have been hitting the bean dip.
Becoming an adult changed my appreciation of sports. Take Michael Jordan for instance: At age eight, I recognized that he was by far the most talented player in those Finals and that if he played well, the Blazers were doomed. Even as a villain of sorts, he was one of those guys that you love to root against. Think more Darth Vader than Kim Jong-Il. This guy was so good that he captivated me despite my desperation for a Trail Blazers win. The very next year I was rooting him on against Barkley and the Suns. How can you not love that?!
Flash-forward twenty years and it’s impossible to see Mike the same way. He’s still seen as arguably the best player in league history, but now there’s another side of him. The gambling and adultery allegations. His failures as a team owner. The fact that he still wears a hoop earring. Realizing that he never used his position as a celebrity to really do much other than sell sneakers. Man, and doing that Haines commercial with the Hitler mustache didn’t help matters either.
Jordan is just one of many examples across all sports. Think back to your earliest memories of watching your favorite sports and compare them to now. When did you have more fun, now or back then?
We, as fans, need to get some of that pure, child-like excitement back when watching sports. It can certainly be fun to look at games from a very critical vantage point. After all, it’s probably the reason why you’re on this site. Checking stats on fantasy sports and yelling about missed Timbers goals with your buddies are all great fun, but we’re missing a key part of the game: these guys are more than mere mortal men.
The average NBA benchwarmer, who you boo relentlessly, could crush 99.9% of the general population in a one-on-one game. (Look around, probably more like one-on-seven game). The amount of practice they put in to reach that level in unfathomable. The amount of work that a top-tier player puts in on top of that is almost sickening.
Ever get close to giving someone a fender bender because you were texting? Or perhaps you struggled when your car started to slip during the last snow storm? Both of those situations can occur at five miles per hour. Meanwhile, there are guys out there who drive faster than your speedometer even reads for three whole hours while avoiding forty two other cars. Bumper-to-bumper takes a bit of a different meaning.
Or perhaps you decided to try to go for a run, started feeling the Grim Reaper’s icy breath, and went back to a walking pace before you hit the first mile. Usain Bolt’s very existence is the universe humbling you.
There are countless examples but the message is this: all of these athletes are incredibly gifted and before we critique them, we should take a moment and appreciate how remarkable they are. Then, and only then, can we hope to ever relive some of those cherished childhood memories of joy from watching sports.
Still feeling that you’re too grown up and too jaded to ever be able to get in that mindset again? In that case, take a step further back. What are you even watching? A bunch of grown-ups in flashy, often revealing outfits playing games for a living when there’s unemployment, hunger, and wars.
That’s not a bad thing.
Sports are meant as a distraction for us. They’re a place to unwind after a long day in the office. To let loose. They give us a reason to party and to bond. To encourage us to exercise. To imagine that we could be that great at…something. After all, when people buy Air Jordan’s, they are buying the idea of being “Like Mike” as much as they are buying a pair of shoes.
When we take sports too seriously, we miss the point. The riots in Vancouver last summer are an extreme example.
Professional athletes are the modern gladiators. As a kid, the ‘92 Blazers weren’t the real life Ninja Turtles, but damn they were close. These men and women work extremely hard to chase a dream, or be one of the lucky few who can honestly say that they love what they do. By taking a moment to appreciate this, we can get some of that lost joy back from our youth.
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