Lakers – Celtics 2010: the joy of having no rooting interest

As the Lakers and the Celtics battle it out for the 2010 NBA Championship, many basketball fans are already bound by fanhood as to whom they’re rooting for in the best of seven series. If you’re a part of Laker Nation, this series only ends happily for you if your team pulls it out; if a player on the Celtics serves up one of the most heroic outings in NBA history, you’ll have no choice but to view it as a bad thing, even if you do marvel at it. I went through this scenario myself four years ago when my long suffering Miami Heat managed to make it to their one and only NBA Finals, a series which they came very close to losing before narrowly eking it out. I attended every one of the home games in that series, sweated out every Shaq free throw, cheered every Dwayne Wade bucket, and winced every time someone from Mavericks missed a shot (and admittedly, cheered when Dirk Nowitzki attacked that exercise bike in the hallway out of frustration). But it was like walking a tightrope for six games, because it would only end well if my Heat won, and if they didn’t, an entire postseason of rooting for them would have felt like a waste.

Not so with the current Celtics-Lakers series. I know enough about these two teams that I can name all their star players, meaning that I can enjoy watching the series without feeling like I’m watching a bunch of strangers (which is why I just can’t watch the NCAA Final Four anymore, by the way). And although I’ll probably get around to watching game two, I’m not sweating the fact that I inadvertently missed game one while working late; no seven game series was ever won in game one anyway. Would I rather my Heat were in the Finals this year? Of course. But we’ll worry about that next year, after LeBron James and Chris Bosh and Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul Jabbar all sign with the Heat as free agents this offseason and the team becomes unstoppable. For now, I’m comfortable with the fact that the 2010 NBA Finals are a comfortable viewing experience for me. I may indeed develop a rooting interest for one player or another (or even one team over another) by the time it’s over, but that would be less out of pre-destined loyalty and instead out of pure merit – the latter being something of a rare quantity when it comes to rooting interests on the part of sports fans.

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.