Basketball makes me really emotional

I saw this tweet the other day.

Relatable.

I started watching basketball seriously during the NBA bubble in 2020. I was moving into my sophomore year of college. COVID was still raging, but I was fortunate enough to live with three awesome roommates, who would essentially end up being my best friends for that year, as they were quite literally the only people I could see consistently. We had to quarantine for a week after arriving on campus. We were eating food out of these shitty, cardboard boxes, ones I would eventually become near traumatized by. We didn’t have any furniture, so I naturally switched on the TV while sitting on a plastic moving box, flipping through channels, landing on ESPN.

Fall of 2020 was a really bad time for me. I mean, the whole pandemic kinda sucked. I used to be a very extroverted person, but the pandemic made me introverted. I still haven’t really recovered to this day. I became a little agoraphobic, not diagnosed or anything, but I began to feel the outside was an unsafe place. I had gotten out of a toxic relationship with someone who continuously used their own mental illness as a tactic to manipulate me. I kinda just felt like I was floating in a sea of emptiness, yknow, flipping through channels, not really having a goal in mind for anything. I felt numb.

I saw the Celtics were playing the Toronto Raptors. Out of curiosity, I stuck around. The first Celtics game I seriously watched ended with Jaylen Brown leaving OG Anunoby wide open on a game-winning 3, changing a potential 3-0 into a 2-1. Talk about a terrible introduction to a sport.

We won the series, and then we played the Heat, losing in 6. In retrospect, I wish I knew this would not be the only time. I blamed Kemba’s cooked knees and Gordon Hayward, and I assumed life would move on.

But for some reason for me, life did not move on. Almost overnight, my entire personality changed. I decided I love basketball.

And it hasn’t waned, over 3 years later. I’m a person whose hobbies and interests constantly change as I try to keep my brain energetic. I would guess about 10% of my waking time is spent thinking about basketball. This may not sound like a lot, sure, but consider how much time people think about anything. I love basketball.

And I really struggle to articulate why.

Maybe I was just vulnerable at the time, and Basketball served as a convenient place to channel my turbulent emotions. I needed to find something to love with my whole heart. Basketball was my,

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rebound.

Sorry, I just had to.

Maybe it’s because of my (medically diagnosed) ADHD. Basketball is a high-octane sport by its nature, and the advent of 3 point shooting has only increased the amount of variance each game has. There’s really no such thing as a safe lead anymore, sometimes you really do miss 27 3s in a row. There’s constant, hectic energy with the game.

Maybe it’s the storied history with it. Our franchise was fortunate enough to have Bill Russell (Rest in Power). Boston has a deeply complicated history with racism, and Bill Russell was subjected to horrific acts by the deeply racist city. Yet he persevered, was one of the most important people in the civil rights movement, and has a legitimate claim to be the person who integrated Boston.

Maybe I’m just into the drama. In all honesty, this is the most plausible explanation. I mean, this is just a soap opera for men. I have spent hours explaining NBA drama to my friends. They’re rightfully pointed out that, uh, it’s a little weird.

Maybe I’m just really into the analytics. There is a huge amount of basketball data out there. I am definitely a certified “spreadsheet boy”. Games are not played on spreadsheets, but it’s pretty damn cool that we can impute what’s happened in a game on a spreadsheet. I can’t tell you the amount of hours I’ve lost consuming data on stats.nba.com.

But I don’t think any of these are the sole reason. It probably is some of these, or a combination of these.

I don’t know

Basketball has an intimacy to it that other American sports don’t have. My theory, and I’m being serious, is that you can see their faces. When someone is on the court, you can watch their game evolve. You can see the expression of their bodies. You can feel the pain when they clank a wide open 3 pointer to win the game. You can watch the raw excitment when they hit a game winner. I saw Jayson Tatum’s game winner against the Brooklyn Nets in Game 1 in 2022, which eventually ended in a sweep, I mean this genuinely, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt happier. The players are “small” on the TV, but when you’re in person, you can see that they are really a full fucking foot taller than you.

Speaking of Jayson Tatum, I’ve watched that man physically grow. He’s only a couple years older than me. I don’t really view him as an idol or anything, he seems like a chill guy who takes care of his kid and really likes Kobe Bryant, but like, I’ve watched him grow. That’s crazy.

It’s become a meme that there’s one thing that 23 year olds can almost universally talk about. Lebron James.

Now, I’m a Celtics fan, there’s zero chance in hell I ever recognize Lebron James for who he is. Too much beef, sorry. But like, c’mon. He’s arguably exceeded the expectations placed upon him, which was “the chosen one”. He’s forged a career as arguably the greatest player of all-time. He’s done this with minimal (external) drama, he’s done this while inspiring hundreds of millions of people, and I dare say over a billion on the whole. Do you know how insane it is to be anointed as “the chosen one” and exceed those expectations?

And he’s literally just a kid from Akron.

Sorry, typing this is making me feel very emotional. I don’t really even like Lebron James. Yet, as Billy Beane once said, how could you not be romantic about baseball?

Speaking of that quote, I often wonder what’s really romantic about baseball. I personally don’t really care for it. Maybe it’s because I can’t see their faces very well.

I still struggle to articulate why I love basketball so much. It’s plausible that five years from now, my priorities will change and I no longer will love basketball the way I do. I can’t predict the future. The fact it could happen terrifies me. What could possibly replace my love for basketball?

Probably a wife or something. Sorry to my future wife, I cannot guarantee that I will love you more than basketball. It’s going to be an equal split. I’m not sorry.

But even if I do find myself out of love of Basketball, I just want to say, that I’m glad to even have had the experience of loving Basketball in the first place. I can’t necessarily say it’s lead to positive character growth in a real sense. I think it’s disingenuous to imply that everything you do must be good for you or must be bad for you. Basketball is just there.

But man, I really am so glad it’s just been there.