After Laughter

First thing's first: I, along with 99% of those watching, loved seeing Derrick Rose and the Bulls complete their season sweep over the Heat yesterday. Rose is quite possibly the most likable star in the league (or at least second behind Durant), and one can feel the weight of the Chicago bandwagon getting ready to blow the wheels off the damn thing. Plus, everyone here knows that there’s no love lost between me and LeBron. So, no, I’m not above anyone.


But the level of Schadenfreude circulating last night and this morning was such that I’m feeling extremely uncomfortable being aligned with the Heat haters (the Hatles?). From ESPN’s “Crying Shame” headline to the stars of my very own Knicks team mocking the “unnamed Heat players” to the cackling Celtics fan blogs I could hear from 200 miles away, fans, writers, and players across the nation have been finding joy in the latest trials of a team that has had plenty as of late. It’s perfectly healthy for leagues to have teams that are widely and passionately hated. I’ve had those waves of happiness that come from seeing a Yankee look ridiculous being hand-fed popcorn on national TV or seeing a Blue Devil get called out for flopping. It’s natural to attach narratives, and someone has to play the villain.

What’s becoming painfully clear, though, is that there’s a decent chance that the Heat will never achieve the kind of success that truly justifies such feelings. The reason most people don’t feel bad for Yankees, Blue Devils, or Cowboys when things don’t go their way is because they’re franchises that have already won so much that one feels like members of their organization are somewhat safe from feelings of inadequacy and long-term failure. Whether that’s true or not on an individual level, it makes sense on a larger scale—these guys have won so much, we tell ourselves, that their shortcomings are important to keep them in check, to keep things interesting.

We don’t have that kind of logic at our disposal when we feel that way about the Heat. This is a team built on a foundation of lofty expectations, but it is also one that is still figuring out how to make a house in which they can all live. And with no history of success, no championship banners with which to dry their tears, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to gain any happiness when I see them fail. Yesterday’s post-game reports, tweets, and comments were especially hard for me to accept with a grin. Not just because there is always a certain level of homophobia and misogyny when men crying becomes a news item, but because in this case, we don’t know whether there will in fact be a silver lining for this team. There’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy, and it seems like that line is getting more and more dust-covered with every grain of sand kicked in these dudes’ faces.