Apparently I am a hater.
That's a term that is commonly applied to me in basketball circles. As far as I can tell "hater" is a basketball fans way of saying "person who is saying negative things about a person I would rather not acknowledge negative things about" or "person saying things which are probably true but I would rather not acknowledge so I am going to force a negative bias on the source". That's not to say that there are no basketball players/teams/personalities that I dislike. I would very much like it if Skip Bayless were taken off the air and if he ends up being the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I hate Carmelo Anthony's smiling face during Knicks losses. I hate Andrea Bargnani's mouth-breathing, his Primo pasta commercials and basically everything about the way he plays the game of basketball. I hate the way that the media latches on to narratives and I hate the way that fans accept them with no critical analysis, mostly because there is no accountability; if that narrative ends up being completely wrong the people who pushed it don't lose any credibility. I hate the anti-intellectualism that we see being directed at the use of advanced stats. I hate hero ball(but at the same time, I fucking LOVE hero ball).
I scoff at the "hater" label and am somewhat sarcastically using it here because while I do admit that there are negative feelings inside me I like to think that I'm honest and more or less objective with my opinions. I may dislike Carmelo Anthony but I will acknowledge that he's a tremendous scorer who has had a hell of a season and is actually putting in a great deal of effort on the defensive end relative to what he has done in the past. I will acknowledge that Andrea Bargnani....well, there is no bright side there. Sorry, Raptors fans.
Mostly I scoff at the "hater" label because if there is one thing in the world that I love(outside of my immediate family) it is basketball. During a girlfriends birthday party there I was, sitting in a corner by myself with my Macbook and League Pass Broadband watching the Nuggets vs. the Knicks while everybody else celebrated. Why didn't I do the required readings for my english class? Because I had to rewatch the previous nights Wizards-Bucks game. Many an hour has been spent shirking my responsibilities at work because I was trying on ESPN's Trade Machine trying to my ideal Knicks-Bucks-Nuggets-Rockets trade to work under the cap. It seems like any time I have any idle time or want to put off doing something that I don't particularly want to do basketball is where I turn to fill that gap or take the place of what I should actually be doing.
Basketball is one of the few things in life I have found consistently enjoyable over the years and it's one of the few things that has consistently made sense to me as I go through all of the ups and downs of life and navigate through the complex series of interpersonal relationships we all seem to have and the responsibilities that go with them. I love incredible displays of athleticism, the crossovers, the dunks, the drama of the close games, etc. but what has always kept me close to the game is the fact that when everything gets unsettled and nothing seems to make sense to me I can turn on a game of basketball, let everything else melt away and lose myself in the artistry of the game for a few hours.
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