What The Playoffs Mean: The Gorgeous Opportunity To Lose

The playoffs are the sacred text, broad and malleable enough to explain any point of view. They are the way players reach immortality, the way GMs keep their jobs for another year. They are the reason Courtney Lee, Trevor Ariza, JJ Barea and Derek Fisher are kind of close to household names. They are why they play the games and why we watch. But they also mean a lot more than this, which is why we are here. From now until the end of the finals, we'll be here, toiling away, trying to unpack exactly what makes these games so great, exactly What The Playoffs Mean.

This post was written by Benny Nadeau, an editorial intern at The Brooklyn Game, student at Emerson College and a Nets fan who uses "we" when talking about the team. He loves Toko Shengelia more than anyone, and we love him for that. Follow him @bennyflyz.


As a New Jersey Nets fan for so long, there is something incredibly painless about losing now. The Nets haven’t made the playoffs since the 2006-2007 season, and it has made me as hardened as my father who grew up with the chokiest of Red Sox teams. I cried when we traded Jason Kidd to the Dallas Mavericks in 2008 so he could get a legitimate shot of winning a championship (he did) and learned to be unfairly skeptical about any NBA player with the last name of Williams (after drafting Marcus, Sean, Terrence). After enduring the miserable-record-setting 0-18 start to the 2009-2010 season en route to a horrifying 12-70 campaign, it was tough to see through the tears clouding my vision—but, to be fair, it was equally as hard to see through the paper bags as well.

Through all of this, there was hope: John Wall. The freakishly athletic would-be superstar out of Kentucky was the clear-cut top prize in the 2010 draft. And at a 25 percent chance at landing the number one pick and the savior to our floundering franchise, I decided to have an NBA Draft Lottery party. I invited all of my friends—the same ones who had given me reminders at every possible moment of the Nets’ futility—over to watch my team enter a new era of basketball.

I watched through my hands when the New Jersey Nets received the 3rd pick in the lottery. John Wall would go to Washington and the curse continued.

Its taken some time, but in an odd way, things have worked out.



Now, through all the insufferable letdowns, meltdowns and choke jobs, we’re in Brooklyn. For the first time in a long time, making the NBA playoffs wasn’t just a possibility—it was expected.

Well, then an even funnier thing happened: People started talking trash about the Brooklyn Nets. It astounded me; why were people worried about us? It came from everywhere, it seemed. "The Knicks or Celtics will still win the Atlantic!" Or: "You’re delusional if you think the Nets will make the Eastern Conference Finals!" To which I looked at them all and said, "Yeah, you’re right."

Frankly, I’m looking at the Brooklyn Nets inaugural season as a fresh start, as a new beginning, the first chapter to something great. After all these years of paper bags, Josh Boones and losing everything that you could possibly lose: I’m so excited for the 2013 playoffs. The Nets have no chance of beating Miami and, in fact, they may not even make it by Chicago (having gone 1-3 against them this year), and yet, I’m ecstatic. This is not the year that the Nets surprise anyone or make a deep run or even pass the first round—but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that we’re here at all.

The Brooklyn Nets are in the playoffs.

What the playoffs mean is a chance to feel excruciating pain, struggle and adversity. It means sitting on the edge of your couch with your heart in your throat. It means heartache and frustration and possible holes-in-the-wall from inadvertent punches after Andray Blatche decides to play point guard in a crucial game-deciding possession. It means resting all your hopes and fears on Deron Williams’ decision to pass it to Reggie Evans in the post instead of shooting another three. It means I get to be just as excited for the post-season as all my Celtics and Lakers fan friends did for the last six years.

The playoffs are a reason to believe; not in a championship, but in a future worth cheering for. Maybe next year will be better. Maybe next year will be the best.

In the last six years, New Jersey Nets fans became desensitized to pain and misfortune. We’ve learned to look in the mirror and say, "Well, I expected to lose." Or: "Well, I expected Sean Williams to throw a computer through glass window in Denver." Or even: "I expect the New Jersey Nets to break my heart." And then they broke our hearts enough times that we began to not care. It was a barreling fright train with Yi Jianlian as the conductor and we willingly laid right on the tracks for years.

But we’re in the playoffs now. We’re going to play the Chicago Bulls in the 2013 playoffs and we might win. We’re going to play the Chicago Bulls in the 2013 playoffs and we might lose. If you're hung up on the words win or lose in those last two sentences, you’re wrong. The only word that matters is this: playoffs. We’re in the playoffs and it feels so damn good.

Maybe we’ll beat Chicago and run into the human buzz saw of a team known as the Miami Heat. We’ll probably get swept and lose by combined 60 points, but you know what? Bring it on. Maybe Derrick Rose will finally come back and tear our jugulars out with his bare hands. But I want that. I want to feel pain again. I want to know what it feels like to lose a crucial game four, unable to sleep the night before an elimination game. I want to know what it feels like to lose home court and have your backs against the wall.

I want to care about losing again. We have home court advantage. Three years ago, we narrowly avoided having the worst NBA season of all-time. Three years ago, we were supposed to sign LeBron James, but instead got Johan Petro. Three years ago, we were perpetual losers, bound to float aimlessly in the raging sea that is NBA competency. But all of a sudden, we’ve been saved and as we spit up all the salt water we’ve been choking on for years, it’s hard not to be excited. We’re excited to be alive.

If we move on to the second round, I’ll be elated. Whenever we lose, I’ll probably cry. But it won’t be because I’m sad—it will be from overflowing pride. We could lose every game and I’d still be happy that we played at all. However, there’s no hypothetical or theoretical about this statement: The Brooklyn Nets are in the playoffs.

And it feels so damn good to care about something again.