If You Can't Stand the Heat...

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LeBron Takes (a) Charge...

As many of you might have noticed, I am a fan of the televised sporting event.  As a form of in-home entertainment, it is near perfect for mikey HQ, meeting my needs and expectations while providing a minimum of annoyance.  The problem, if it can rightfully be called one, is that as much as I enjoy many of the events (there are some sports I just find unwatchable - I'm looking at you, hockey), I am really only invested in two teams.  Born and raised in Marin County in Northern California, I live and die by the San Francisco Giants and The San Francisco Forty Niners.  When those teams are playing, that is the game I watch, and I'll pay pretty close attention (except during my mandatory in-game nap, of course).  But when the game on the TeeVee is between two different teams, I'll still watch it, and I'll still find it entertaining, but I go into the experience with no real interest in which team will win.  This tends to make the games less interesting, so over the years I've developed a methodology to determine which team to root for.

There are lots of teams I don't like.  Whether it's due to a historical rivalry with a San Francisco team, a particularly venal ownership, a loathing for a specific player or just a knee-jerk dislike for the organization, by this point in my life all the teams that play major league sports that I like to watch exist on a continuum of hatred.  With some it burns with the fire of a thousand suns, while with others I just get slightly irritable and toss out the occasional desultory insult.  But the net result is, when watching games that do not include the Giants or the Forty Niners, I find that I am actually rooting against a particular outcome rather than for a team to win.

Which brings us to the recently concluded NBA playoffs this year.  I usually don't watch regular season NBA games - at most, watching the last five minutes, which takes half an hour, is sufficient - but I really enjoy the playoffs.  The seven game series' develop a narrative all their own, and each game either changes or reinforces that narrative in a way I find fascinating.  And this year, the finals were everything I could have wished for.  Oklahoma City, an almost likable small market team, with the shy Durant, the fiery Westbrook and Harden's fabulous beard, against the detestable bullies, the Yankees of the NBA, the Miami Heat with the gifted but arrogant LeBron, the eternally unhappy Wade and the Camp Follower Bosh.

Going in, I really thought OKC would win.  Miami had a history of falling apart in the bright lights, and OKC had so much talent up and down the bench that it would be a case of 8-on-3 for 48 minutes and hey, you take the 8 every single time, right?  Well, so much for that line of reasoning.  Don't think so much, you'll only hurt the ball club.

So it was kind of painful to watch, and it certainly wasn't an outcome that left me laughing and celebrating, but there was something kind of enjoyable and uplifting watching LeBron James finally growing into the shoes he's been trying to wear for seven years.  It has always made for the best of sports drama to watch someone who just simply refuses to lose.  So, with the NBA finals at long last behind us, we have the Olympics up next and then baseball's stretch run.  And there is no televised sporting event more fun than September baseball...
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