This year has been a veritable triumph for the NBA, one in which more than two or three teams draw the casual fan’s attention and both the smaller and more sizable media markets have shared success. Heck, I bet you could even ask your racist, football-favoring dad who the Rookie of the Year will likely be and get an accurate answer about KIA sports cars and the lacking legitimacy of the dunk contest. Yes, all is well in Pro Basketball Land (outside of Miami, for the moment), meaning I should probably be relegating the Houston Rockets to the margins of my NBA experience as the contenders battle every Thursday and Sunday for our collective attention, yet I cannot help but feel as excited as ever about a group of middling young talent that will likely never win a playoff series as currently constructed in Houston. And if the reader has watched any of the messy, explosive ball the Rockets have put together in the two weeks since dealing two of its most identifiable parts, he or she knows that same bizarre tinge of uncertainty and curiosity, the one that might allow all Rockets viewers the chance to gladly plunge into the world of meaningless joy that this team can provide.
I’ve been reading a lot of Yago Colas recently, purveyor of the fine basketball/culture blog Go Yago! and professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, and he’s recently delved into the Free Darko-championed movement of liberated fandom, the idea of following or cheering for players and ideas rather than specific teams. While I feel less than qualified to add my own thoughts to the dialogue about the broader implications of this concept, my own experiences of this particular season as a Houston Rockets fan have felt somewhat intertwined with this greater discussion. For years, and up until a few days ago, I would tell anyone asking that my greater hope as a Rockets fan was to simply win, to see the brand and organization which which I had associated myself since childhood experience the kind of victory that I hadn’t seen since I had begun my experience as a devotee. I do not feel comfortable relinquishing these ideals entirely (I’m still trying to work out future deals involving Luis Scola and his soon-to-be albatross of a contract in my head), but something has certainly changed.
Maybe it’s been the sublime emergence of Courtney Lee, a man who has been unable to do wrong for what feels like eons. Maybe the somehow increased pace (from a team that has not exited the top 10 in that statistic all year) leaves me in a herky-jerky, dumbfounded trance. Could just be the mere existence of Goran Dragic and his gigantic… confidence. Or simply all the winning (7-3 in the last 10… yeah, that’s probably it). Whatever the reason, this incarnation of the Rockets has been pure magic, a team that I could watch lose several times while chuckling and shaking my head, wondering what crazy misadventure the gang would get into next week. Throughout this stretch, even the generally nail-biting-provoking close games have felt like terrifically stupid bacchanalia, chock full of occasionally aimless ball movement, sprees from behind the arc and a hell of a lot more dunking than was ever seen in the first half of this chaos of a season. Things are going awry nightly in the most delightful way. It’s like the 2006-07 Warriors came to Houston, except every sports writer doesn’t hate them. Well, maybe it isn’t quite that cool; still, a bubbling of enthusiastic anarchy keeps taking place every time a Houston Rockets team takes the floor right now, and the lot of us would be foolish to miss this, even if it only lasts a few glorious seconds, like all of the things in life worth remembering, experiencing and indulging.
This Rockets team likely won’t make the playoffs, and if it does, a decimation at the hands of the even-keeled, veteran San Antonio Spurs surely awaits. But damn it all; for once, this isn’t about that, at least not for me. If only for this instant, line-ups stocked full of the Chase Budingers, Hasheem Thabeets and Terrence Williamses of the world make absolutely perfect sense, and by that, I mean they make absolutely no sense. Just the way I like it, for now.
