NBA is back, time to pick a new team!
The NBA season starts tomorrow, we will have Christmas Day games and then no one will care about the NBA until after the Super Bowl…but that’s not the point. What the NBA being back means to me is that I get to pick another team to rout for! Growing up in a city without an NBA, I have never truly given a true dedication to one team. The Raptors never interested me because they played in another country, the Cavs ew and I hated all New York City teams, besides the Yankees obviously, so the Knicks were an automatic dub. When I started to pay attention to the NBA the Pistons were good, so I latched on and watched them win a championship. I stuck around for a few years and then they traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson and that was it. You traded the best player on the team for someone who could barely make it up and down the court, and my fandom with the Pistons ended.
Now a fan free agent, I was on the market for years, waiting for a team to watch on a regular basis and just genuinely rout for. I toyed with the Bucks in the early Giannis days, but I cannot like a player with the jump shot of an unborn child, so off the bandwagon I went. I went to a few Raptors games, bought some merch and told myself, they’re the closest team to me, why not rout for them. Then LeBron came back and shut that shit down and back to fan free agency I went. Then I said fuck it. Why subject myself to just routing for a team all the time. Every year I would pick a new team. If I wanted to keep the team from the previous year as my team, who was going to be there to tell me no?
Then the league shakes up and Kawhi goes to Toronto via trade and just like that I’m back to being a Raptor fan. Also, the fact that Lebron had just went to the west and I’m thinking maybe the Raptors have an actual shot at making it to The Finals and I can reclaim some of that joy from when the Lakers got swept in 5 games. (RIP Kobe) Look at me with impeccable timing, the Raptors made the Finals. I remember game 5 of that series because, I was on a flight from LA and JetBlue is wonderful enough to offer free tv on their flights. I remember Kawhi taking over, scoring every point, having his moment and looking behind at my friends saying, “Fuck Buffalo, drop this plane off in Toronto.” Well, they didn’t win that night but won a few nights later and just like that I am a fan with 2 NBA Championships under my belt. That’s more than most franchises have and 2 more than my friends who rout for the Knicks have.
Then Kawhi leaves for the Clippers and I’m not following him there; the Clippers are nasty. So, I decide to do one more year with my friends up north. They lose a hard-fought series with the Celtics and I look myself in the mirror, imagine all the time Siakam did a spin move to the basket and throw up a little in my mouth. I am once again a fan free agent. Up to this point I have picked teams exclusively with the idea that they were on the right path to championship glory and maybe now its time for a change. See, the Buffalo Bills they’re good now and the void of sports despair isn’t currently there. I have nothing to complain about, the championship window is open, and I could care less about the draft. Now if you know me, you know that’s a problem. I need something to feel frustrated about in sports. I am happy, when I am un-happy with my teams. The thought of always figuring out how to make the team better and draft picks, is what made me the man I am today.
So, I looked across the entire NBA landscape and now I am happy to announce that for the next 2 years, I will be a fan of the Charlotte Hornets. They have a talent in LaMelo Ball, someone I could see getting better every year. They have the wonderful problem of having 2 of the same players at 3 different positions. Graham and Rozier at point guard, Washington and Bridges at power forward and Martin and Martin (They are twins) at small forward. They just signed Gordon Hayward, who is already injured to an awful contract and overall, they suck but I see the potential in them to get better over time and I want to be there to see them get better or fuck the whole thing up. So, if you see me randomly tweeting about a Hornets game in the future, you know why!