With only four teams left in this year’s NBA season and the final two spots for the championship on the line, it’s a strange time for many basketball fans, especially those who like or support one of the 26 teams NOT still playing.
As an LA Clippers fan it’s a reality I’m quite familiar with, since they rarely ever make the playoffs. That always left me obsessing over which team to temporarily support, specifically to defeat the LA Lakers.
As a true citizen of Clipper Nation I’ve been a card carrying Laker hater for most of my life, so most of the time I laid my playoff allegiances with whatever team posed the most serious risk to them. The most recent examples of that were the Boston Celtics and of course the heroic Dallas Mavericks, who sent them home in a glorious and shameful sweep.
Seeing them lose was great, but it then left me to ponder which of the remaining teams I most wanted to see win. Boston got eliminated the day after the Lakers and that leaves the Heat, Chicago Bulls, Mavericks and Oklahoma City Thunder, which brought me to the dilemma that faces many fans; who is it okay to root for once my team is done?
First off, there’s the obvious answer that you don’t root for the team that beat yours or any longtime rival, which would just be wrong. That ends up leaving a pretty broad range of options, varying from “I have family from that city” to stuff like “Derrick Rose is my favorite to use on NBA2K11” and any and everything in between.
For me, it’s boiled down to wanting to see LeBron James win a ring so he can silence his detractors to sympathetically hoping veterans like Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki finally capture a prize that has mercilessly eluded them throughout their careers.
On the one hand I’d love to see James – an athletic freak and potential all-time great – overcome all the negativity he’s encountered and free himself of the claims that he’d never be good enough to win it all. For him to do so in his first year with his new teammates would be a strong rebuttal to everyone who said them joining forces wouldn’t work and would give his resume even more depth.
But it would also possibly come at the expense of Kidd and Nowitzki, two guys almost unanimously respected and who don’t have nearly the years left that James, Wade and Bosh do. It’s pretty much now or never for the Mavs veterans and knowing that makes it hard to not want to see them write a few new winning chapters in their career’s history.
None of that takes the other two teams into account either, each with their own stories and group of guys all hungry to hoist up the Larry O’Brien trophy. Either way, even though I don’t think it’ll necessarily work out this way, especially with the Heat losing game one so badly , I’m going to be going for Miami over Dallas, even though I won’t be mad either way.
- Will.
The Sports Snob will be published once a week here on YouBeenBlinded.com. Will R. is a journalist/writer who covers sports, news and music for several websites. His music work can be found on www.WestCoastRydaz.com
