Sleep Forever or Die Trying

Come all ye faithful and triumphant, and embrace the bitter callous darkness of the Sports Fan's heart. It's the Season of Schadenfreude, a term so overused by non German speakers that perhaps we should use a likeminded sentiment instead, this one from Sweden: skadeglädje. The literal definition (injury joy) is probably a bit too on the nose, but evokes a queasy aspect irrevocably tied to professional sports, namely the knee-jerk urge to find the silver lining of men too physically damaged to play basketball. It's hopefully true that only the worst and weirdest scumbags are actually out in the streets shooting off bottle rockets to celebrate the respective misfortunes of Kevin Durant or Paul George or Bradley Beal. But seeing as how this is a both a business and a pastime certain reactions are impossible to suppress. You go to that dishonorable place and ask questions that no one can hear because you still want to believe despite everything that you are a good person. What does this injury mean for my team? What is the tangible benefit of this young man's broken leg for me? How will it affect playoff seeding in this one particular year? It's gross, but unavoidable. Shameful, but also expected.

Bradley Beal is injured. He's expected to be out of commission until late November. He's a player I enjoy quite a lot. He's explosive and cerebral. Kind of an Eric Gordon 2.0. Old soul eyes and a boyish grin that'll kill you. Basically, he's a kid. A kid who is great at scoring and just tall enough to capitalize on his skills in the best league in the world.  And yet, within a few minutes of hearing about his injury, I joked with a friend, "Well, the Wizards definitely don't have the best backcourt in the league now." That's a good joke, asshole. Good delivery. It really kills at wine and cheese parties. Anyway, it feels bad to dehumanize kids, though I have made worse jokes (content wise, as far as laughs achieved that is probably literally the worst joke I've made). Kevin Durant's fall is even worse news for the league, and tremendously depressing for fans of the Thunder or for fans of the universally accepted Runner Up Best Player In the World. It's no good when a titan is struck down (though is it actually worse than when JJ Hickson is struck down?), no good for us who live for extremely basic joys like made baskets, and certainly no good for the people actually making U-Boats full of money off this racket.

And of course the season seems incomplete when you lose a Durant or a Derrick Rose. When you thrash the Thunder or the Bulls you get an asterisks next to your to victory, and of course when you get shellacked it's all Shame City USA, Population: You. And speaking from a more primitive perspective, not only is Kevin Durant a great player, he's a fun player and I want to watch his long spider limbs do amazing spider things with the orange ball. And also, a month long interruption of all these pathos! Durant is a knight errant embroiled in a quest to throw the Mantle of the Silver Medal into the sun. And as far as household names go, he's tops when you factor in love (not cult like fanatical/creepy devotion!). Kobe Bryant is settling into a life as an fade-away jumpshot anachronism, LeBron James still inspires rage amongst a certain type of person, and Chris Paul is a person who punches dude's dicks. Durant is by all accounts the leagues universally beloved megastar. The world wants to see him succeed. The world wanted to believe in the dream of the Oklahoma City Thunder very much.  And yet there were thousands and thousands of fans, let's say fans centered in the Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Memphis, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Portland, and New Orleans that found their silver lining very quickly indeed when Durant went down. All for the possibility of moving up every so slightly in the pecking order of the Western Conference. Injuries are a fucking bummer. But don't forget, there is a cadre of sports wits rubbing their hands in anticipation of finally revealing to a dubious world that Russell Westbrook is no good at basketball after all! Oh the longform, oh the thinkpieces, or the blogspot bloviating! We'll get so much of that, whichever path Westbrook walks during those first few desperate games. Everyone is on a mission, but missions are stupid.

But there are so many more instances of shameful joy or joy of misfortune or enjoying calamity upon an enemy that take us in slightly different directions of gerrymandering our moral compasses! It's an exhausting world of the low impulses! Sometimes it is unworthy, sometimes just plain reactionary, but sometimes motherfuckers are motherfuckers and to hell with motherfuckers so let justice prevail though the heavens may fall. We've all got our own version of Nixon's Enemy List. Sometimes it is histrionic goofballs we disdain, though they're harmless more often than not and the knowledge that they'll soon be suiting up for the Sichuan Sharks ameliorates things a bit. Sometimes it's the poor hapless old-timer, a Mustache Pete like  Byron Scott and his almost troll-worthy efforts to push some sort of antiquated style of basketball that doesn't really make sense in this century. Plus it's just aesthetically displeasing and we hate it! We want him to fail, we want him to go down hard and clutch the earth beneath him and beg for mercy and then we want him to promise the next team he coaches will field a starting five of Stephen Curry, Anthony Morrow, Jason Kapono, Steve Novak, and Channing Frye. Then there are the half-cheaters who try to play the odds but almost always end up fucking up the act of purposefully fucking up. The 76ers tanked with the sort of aplomb usually reserved for masturbation after a long break and they ought not to be rewarded, and hey, Philadelphia fans booed Santa Claus and never appreciated Andre Iguodala so let them wander in the desert for another forty seasons. Jason Kidd attempted a curious power play against a Russian oligarch and now he coaches an absurd franchise called the Milwaukee Bucks. I wish the Bucks well, they seem like nice dudes mostly, but Jason Kidd's face has always annoyed me, he looks like a self-satisfied eagle just looking for the right moment to sucker punch someone. I hope you are fired, Jason.

Speaking of the Bucks, Larry Sanders, a darling of the NBA nerd caste, has been cited for animal cruelty. Say what you want about humans, we are awful and disgusting and cheat and lie and become politicians and bureaucrats, but animal cruelty is something that sticks in my craw at a primitive level (Grantland footnote: I am not a vegetarian sooo). It would not kill me if Larry Sanders never returns to form, it would not kill me if someday a dog bites his hand. Carmelo Anthony's continued mediocre achievements in the post-season are also just fine. Blue blood franchises like the Lakers, Celtics, and Knicks treading water or just drowning seems appropriate, fair, proper, and desirable. Lance Stephenson ruined the Pacers chance at a title with his silliness well fine, that just happens to be his punishment from the cosmos for throwing a woman down a flight of stairs. But apart from these little one-sided feuds that may or not have something to do with honor or revenge or some misplaced sense of justice, there are fans (or those that pretend to be fans) that just want to watch the world not burn per se, but at they at least want to see it buckle, bend, and threaten to break. People with myriad well nurtured grievances that feel nice and warm when LeBron fails to hit game-winners, or feel vindicated by Steph Curry missing open threes and turning the ball over, or delight at Dwight Howard bricking free-throws, or feel a little funny down there when James Harden falls on his ass whilst attempting to defend a towel boy slashing to the rim.

So, massive amounts of schadenfreude might just be unavoidable. That is to say, it's unavoidable for me. I allow for the possibility of people much less petty than I am, who take no sides and can look at OJ Mayo without becoming agitated. I also allow for the possibility of people much more petty, but also racist, violent, and cruel. Because the league is entertainment, but also non-fiction, as far as that goes, it's all too simple (and also fun) to fill in the blanks and start creating heroes, villains, scoundrels, missions, arcs, goals, victories (moral/actual and strategic/tactical), defeats (short term/long term), sub-plots, cliffhangers, and in general close relationships with the most familiar characters. But much of our construction is kinda bullshit or at best just a partial truth. As long as we can admit that, well then we can hate hard and love hard and hopefully pray no bone is ever shattered on the hardwood again, thereby absolving of us from having to momentarily rejoice that we might make the playoffs this year after all! A split second of shameful joy is still shameful, son, but just like mama always said, shame is like a box of chocolates; it's full of shame of different shapes and sizes and textures and perhaps ingredients and some taste good and some don't and as long as you don't eat too many pieces of chocolate you are not a piece of shit, just a person who eats chocolate from time to time.