You recognize this phrase from our country’s Pledge of Allegiance, which you probably recited at the start of each school day for many years, and which is so ingrained in your minds it pours out automatically when called upon. Eventually, either by way of changing schools or schools changing, this daily routine was ruled out of your life – at about the same time you realized triumphantly that “Plegeuvallegance” wasn’t a real world – but it’s very beginning still holds weight in so much of what we do.
Every endeavor we undertake asks for our allegiance. If we pledge allegiance, committing ourselves to the cause, we often find “success”, whether material or spiritual. Over time though, we learn to temper our expectations, as devotion and hard work don’t always yield winning results. After all, there are others who are just a tick more devoted, or a tick harder-working, or a tick luckier. In these cases, we can either start again, or try something else: We can either remain steadfast, or change allegiances.
Standing alone, one decision isn’t inherently better than the other. But within some context – say, the struggling infielder abandons his position to become a dynamite pitcher - we can make sense of it all and weigh staunchness against inventiveness. Joe Nathan – along with Trevor Hoffman and Troy Percival – represents a case of ingenious “allegiance-switching.” But for every Joe Nathan, there are 100 souls who could not transcend anonymity. Souls who gave up one calling and failed in another. In this instance, inventiveness is seen as desperation and the critics claim they should have stayed the course.
The same goes for sports fans. And though our allegiances are to a team and not to staying on a team, the point remains the same. In some cases, a switch is justifiable. In others, it is horribly unwarranted. This is all relevant of course, because of the new basketball team in New York City. With the New Jersey Nets now officially the Brooklyn Nets – and with the team grabbing headlines like Dwight Howard grabs rebounds – basketball fans in the metropolitan area are faced with a significant question: Who to root for? And can I switch??
So we decided to draw up a criterion to separate the Knicks fans from the Nets fans.
One should/is allowed to root for the New York Knicks if he:
(a) has been a Knicks fan his entire life
(b) is still alive despite being a Knicks fan his entire life
(c) lives in Manhattan or The Bronx
(d) or basically anywhere not named Brooklyn or Queens
(e) knew who Jeremy Lin was before the cataclysmic strike of Linsanity ‘12
(f) hates any one of the following: James Dolan, Isaiah Thomas, Eddie Curry, Kris Humphries, Charles Smith, Jerome James, Stephon Marbury, Moochie Norris, Jordan Hill, Zach Randolph, Renaldo Balkman
(g) still asks his parents to check in the closet and under the bed for Reggie Miller
(h) cheers in the name of optimism.
If you do not meet one or more of these qualifications, you are not a Knicks fan and you are a healthy soul. You are also excluded from arguably the best fan base in American sports. Years of peacefulness, ease and logic versus never-ending pain, frustration and bafflement? Go to a Knicks game at the Garden and tell me that’s not the easiest choice of your life.
One should/is allowed to root for the Brooklyn Nets if he:
(a) has been a Nets fan his entire life
(b) happens to be one of those 5 people and happens to still be alive
(c) lives in Brooklyn, even if he has been a Knicks fan to date
§ This is an important distinction. It’s one of those perfectly valid “allegiance-switching” situations, where the assumed Knicks fan is not seen as deserting or abandoning the Knicks but rather as embracing the new squad in his city (borough). This is an honest, transparent switch and one that works in sports. It may speak to a lesser level of “fanhood” but it is defensible and understandable. If you long preferred one flavor of ice cream over all others and then one day a billionaire Russian created a flavor just for you, chances are you would side with the latter. It’s more … personal. HOWEVER, if that ice cream came with Oreo toppings and hot fudge sauce and was served in a waffle cone, and you were attracted to it for this reason only, then you are shallow and superficial and the switch is not justifiable. There need to be more wholesome reasons, i.e. incessantly dreaming as a kid about having a team of your very own, one that calls your home their home, and finally seeing that dream realized. Therefore…
(d) wears a MarShon Brooks jersey with as much pride as he wears a Deron Williams jersey and
(e) will love them with or without Dwight Howard
§ The people we are trying to eliminate here are of the Miami/Boston folk who become fans of the team when they are good and when it is fashionable to do so. Anyone who has already ordered a Joe Johnson jersey is part of this group. (They also happen to be asinine.)
· BDDC frowns on fairweather-ness/bandwagon-ing the way Tiger Woods frowns on fidelity.
(f) played the role of Jason Kidd and Vince Carter in the driveway and threw himself alley-oop passes, possibly switching jerseys in air
(g) is boys with Jay-Z.
If you do not meet one or more of these qualifications, you are not a Nets fan and you are also a healthy soul. You are excluded from potentially the most revolutionary, dramatic power shift in the history of New York sports. Seriously, the Knicks, who for so long cared more about the mustard on their fries than their cross-river welcome mat, are worried right now. The Nets are stealing their show, and nobody steals the show on Broadway.
But whichever show you watch, to whichever team you pledge allegiance, let it never be both. That’s worse than fairweather-ing or bandwagon-ing, and deserves less respect than all the glitzy Nets fan we are soon to meet.
0 comments:
Post a Comment