Barrett’s Bucket Reminds Us Why We Love Sports
A bunch of fans were fortunate enough, for at least a little while last night, to only care about the outcome of a meaningless game.
The game (New York’s riveting 108-105 victory over the Celtics) was incredible, with more twists and turns, heroes and villains, than an entire season of Game of Thrones. But we’ll get to the X’s and O’s and the stats and all that other stuff in a separate post.
First, I want to talk about the love affair we have with sports, and why we’ll never break up with her, even when she’s unfaithful and disloyal and treats us like shit.
Late in the first half of last night’s game, the Celtics were blowing the Knicks out of the building, extending their lead to as much as 24 points. Although the Knicks made a couple of spurts, Boston had re-established a seemingly insurmountable 20-point lead halfway through the third quarter.
I noticed that more than a few Knicks fans took to social media while New York was getting pummeled to voice their anger and frustration, many of them furiously declaring, “I’m turning off this BS!!” or “I’m not wasting my time anymore,” or some similar sentiment. They’re the type of assertions we make to our friends or spouses or co-workers during the depths of fandom when our favorite team is struggling, and it seems the only light at the end of the tunnel is that of an oncoming train. When you’re a fanatic and your team loses, the ripple effects impact not only you, but your loved ones.
We insist that we will no longer allow ourselves to remain in this type of abusive relationship, where we invest our valuable time and energy, watching game after game, only to be left bitterly disappointed and dissatisfied. Or spend our mornings reading about possible trades or potential free agents, yet no savior ever arrives to deliver salvation.
And, make no mistake, Knicks fans have been “down bad,” as the kids today might say. The ‘Bockers haven’t won a championship since Richard Nixon was in office. And these past few decades have been particularly morbid and macabre. The Knicks have lost more games this century than any other team in the NBA.
Yet, night after night, year after year, fans still flood into Madison Square Garden. Knicks fans around the world still tune in to support a struggling team. Sure, it would have been easy to jump ship and head across the river to Brooklyn once the Nets brought in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, and added James Harden for good measure.
But, nope, Knicks fans would have none of it, the vast majority of them choosing to stick by their team. The psychological reasons behind fandom have always fascinated me. What keeps us close? For some, it’s an homage to a father or uncle that introduced them to the game. For others, being part of a larger community of like-minded fanatics provides a type of extended family in what can be a cold, isolating world. (That’s a story for another day, and another newsletter, I suppose.)
Anyway, shortly after R.J. Barrett’s improbable game-winning buzzer-beater splashed through the net Thursday night, I thought back to those folks that had tweeted earlier that evening they’d had enough. So I went back and checked, and, sure enough, many of those same fans posted exclamation points and cheerful profanities commemorating the miraculous shot. Of course they hadn’t abandoned their squad. Sometimes a buddy will boisterously complain about his wife over a couple of drinks on a Friday night, but will then quietly say a prayer of thanks when she fixes him a cup of coffee to help with his hangover the following morning.
The second half of last night’s miraculous Knicks victory was a quintessential reminder of why we love sports. Like the weekend golfer that plays like dogshit for most of the first 17 holes but hits a breathtaking drive, dead straight down the middle of the fairway, on 18. Barrett’s basket is the stuff that keeps us coming back.
Those final 15 minutes provided an incomparable experience. It’s often said that a sporting event is the best form of “reality TV.” Thursday’s game sent fans on a roller coaster of emotion, complete with unimaginable highs and lows, uncertainty, anger and excitement, disappointment, and ultimately, jubilation.
Those few unscripted, unpredictable and unimaginable moments are why fans endure years of agony and decades of distress.
There is so much awfulness in the world right now. It’s almost impossible to read the news nowadays and not walk away dejected, if not depressed. All of us know someone infected with this damn virus we’ve been battling for two years. Politics have ripped apart families at the seams. It’s cold out this time of year; the days are shorter. Here in New York, it seemed like the sun didn’t peek its head out for more than a half-hour over the entire month of December.
However, many of the 17,529 folks in attendance inside MSG last night, and the millions watching around the country, likely forget about all the sad stuff in their lives, even if just a little while. Fans had the privilege of focusing their attention solely on the outcome of a meaningless game, played by men they don’t know. When Barrett’s shot dropped, fans, from Montauk to Manhattan and Bayshore to Buffalo, let out primal screams.
Yes, RJ Barrett, who has played poorly this season and was having an awful game prior to the final 1.5 seconds, needed that fallaway to fall. Julius Randle and Evan Fournier also badly needed that bucket. But so did Knicks fans, and the entire start of New York, for that matter.
A fan named Drew tweeted me, acknowledging that he woke up his neighbors. Another, by the name of Eric, sent me a video of his son exuberantly running around their living room.
Back in 2015, I penned a column for Sports Illustrated about my love for the hapless Detroit Lions, which attempted to answer an existential question: “Is Being a Fan Worth it?” In the column, I wrote, “Being a fan is one thing. But being a fan of a perennial loser injects cruelty into the equation.” I added, “being a fan means dealing with despair, but there are also moments of unrepentant joyfulness that can’t be described. It’s such a rewarding feeling when that down payment of pain pays off in an unexpected victory.”
I didn’t cover last night’s Knicks game (my wife recently tested positive for Covid, so we are all quarantining), but I am fortunate enough to know how the Garden sounds, how it rocks and sways and shakes, in moments like that.
And … that’s what keeps us coming back.
