A conversion
The NBA season has started, which means I now live with someone whose entire reason for being is to follow the movements of a bunch of extremely tall men. Every year I face this dilemma; every year I start the season determined to humour Rhys and watch a few.
I always start by being bored, because I have always found sports kind of boring. An NBA game basically consists of two teams chasing a ball up and down a court, trying to get it in the basket before twenty-four seconds is up. It lasts an incredibly long time — forty-eight minutes officially, but it turns into hours with all the stops for ads and cheerleaders and fouls and time-outs. Ominous ascending semitones play the whole time to drum up suspense. What could possibly be more banal?
Then there comes a point around the end of the first quarter when I start becoming invested in spite of myself. By then, I’ve had all the players named for me ten times, and the names are always excellent: Kentavius Caldwell-Pope, LaMarcus Aldridge, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Lonzo Ball. But I also start to notice how beautiful the players are. They are all enormous without being graceless, which strikes me as rare. Without exception, they are parodically athletic, their arms like pieces of art, their faces radiant with good health. Many of them are possessed of a certain stylishness — I’m thinking of Kelly Oubre Jr.’s gravity-defying afro and sleeve tattoos, or Kyrie Irving’s consistently outrageous shoes — but they are discussed by commentators without reference to how they look. Indeed, this is part of the appeal of watching men’s basketball: hearing bodies assessed for something other than their sexual worth.
The players bob and leap for the basket, as fluid as surfacing dolphins; the best of them look so effortless, their shots appear to be pure will. Many times I have been moved not by the excellence of the basketball but by the grace of the spectacle, something that passes a real fan like Rhys completely by. Even after watching 100+ games, I still don’t really know what constitutes a foul. But the drama of a basketball game — the obscene amount of money circulating; the antipathy between two stars; the almost uniformly Black players next to the almost uniformly white officials — is so unexpectedly complex, so multivalent, so Shakespearean, I could never find it frivolous now. Last year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, players wore singlets sporting racial justice slogans where their names would be. Perhaps a true basketball fan could never be distracted from an impressive defensive play by the contortion of the words “How many more” on someone’s back — but I was, every time.
It’s also about the comfort of it. Every basketball game, no matter how ecstatic the win or embarrassing the loss, is four quarters of twelve minutes each. The game is always intercut with ads for either burgers or insurance. At half time, there is always a comically American show involving a furry mascot, a cheerleading squad, and some sort of game — can you jump the highest? do you know LeBron’s vital statistics? — for spectators to win a crappy t-shirt. When there’s a time out, a camera pans the crowd, settling on random spectators who are always delighted to be in the spotlight, something which never fails to horrify me, and begin dancing. Someone is always visibly sloshing their beer. Everything is taken very seriously, but somehow you never forget that basketball is basically play — something safe; something fun. In the same way the conflict in a Jane Austen novel is couched in a certainty things will end with marriage and clarity, the conflict in a basketball game is couched in a certainty things will end with handshakes and respectful but unsmiling nods and Crazy in Love playing at top volume. Both promise that everything will be all right, which is a reassurance I seek hungrily. Both are the perfect thing to consume before bed.
By the end of each game, it turns out I maybe, possibly, love basketball. I love the commentators with their okey-doke language, and the players giving their pointless post-game interviews, every one some spin on “we just gave it what we had, you know?” I love the constant squeak of basketball shoes on laminate floor, which in its silliness makes the beauty of the visuals somehow incredibly moving, and the shoes themselves, in fluorescent yellow and magenta and ice green. I love the polo-wearing mop boys who dart in after a player has hit the ground to squeejee the sweat patch. I love the raw genius of the stars, which even I can see. I guess every pursuit is like this, not just basketball, but I love the way every new game is a variation on the same theme — efficiency; achievement; cleverness; grace — but never quite the same. The way its players have all practised and practised the tune, so they might unfold some higher music.
Mostly I think basketball reminds me of how many things I don’t yet know I could love. This sort of reminder keeps life interesting; the notion that tomorrow you could see unexpected depths in aikido or the science of gin-making or, God forbid, dancing for the camera at a sports game. I’m finding it kind of disarming to unlearn a lifelong prejudice against team sports — but I like to think it’s teaching me something other than LeBron James’ vital statistics.
In the meantime, I’m rooting for the Brooklyn Nets.