I was sitting in my favorite chair Sunday afternoon, watching Game 7 of the Pacers-Cavaliers NBA Playoffs series.
I also had my phone in my hand with my Twitter feed open, and it was filled with Pacers fans filling the screen with their pregame and in-game input.
Most of it was what you would describe as “Pacers support.” It was died-hard Pacers faithful saying things like “Let’s do this!” and “Today’s the day!” or “Kick the King off the throne!” (referring to LeBron James).
I am a Bulls fan by nature, but I covered the Pacers in college and I really appreciate the way this particular edition of the Pacers has gone about its business. It’s good team basketball with a lot of guys who you haven’t heard much about doing whatever it takes and not being afraid to fail.
So I have been cheering for the Pacers since about Christmas, but I would have been cheering for anyone who was playing Cleveland Sunday. As a matter of fact, I make no bones about the fact that I hoped the Cavs would go 0-82 every season for the last five or six seasons.
Why? LeBron James, of course.
I could write an entire column just on why I hate him – but I won’t waste your time with that.
But I will point out to you that I used the term “hate” intentionally, and I want to explain why I did and what that means.
I hate LeBron James. I hate the St. Louis Cardinals. I hate the Packers and the Patriots. I hate Michigan (the Wolverines, not the state). I hate Plymouth.
Your eyes are no doubt very wide right now.
Let me explain.
That kind of hate is “sports hate.” It’s a very different kind of feeling than, say, we are feeling generally in America right now. The hate we Americans have been wielding on each other since the Bush-Gore election almost 20 years ago is hatred with prejudice. It’s an anger and a frustration that goes beyond the line of civility. It’s mean-spirited with an intent to injure. It’s pain inflicted with no consideration of apology or second-thought.
It’s bad.
“Sports hate” has some of the same characteristics of the other, but there is a point at which it ends.
I have a lot of friends who are good friends and dear friends, people who I would do anything I could to help. They’re people who cheer for the Packers, Michigan and the Red Birds. I love those people, and I would never not love them. Above all, I would never endanger a friendship over sports.
I hate LBJ. Hate him. He gets every call, every benefit of the doubt, and gets that because the NBA is afraid of him. The Pacers-Cavs series could have ended Friday in Indy if not for a string of officials’ calls down the stretch of Game 5 in Cleveland.
And I cannot stand to watch a man who is 6-foot-8 and 260 pounds and getting preferential treatment not only whine to the game officials about not getting every call, but walk over and stand in front of them in a physically intimidating pose. That’s bullying, and we’re not supposed to celebrate it anywhere.
But here is the difference. There is a point at which that feeling stops. I don’t live that. I don’t lay awake at night trying to figure out how to make my sports enemies’ lives worse or inflict injury or pain on them. I hope they lose every game, but I don’t hope some sort of real calamity on them.
Our politics and world views don’t afford that same kind of grace.
It used to be that you would go to games (pick a sport) and you’d endure some dude who wears a 5X shirt in every other area of his life but wears a 2X jersey to the games and has convinced himself that he has the ability to get into the opposing team’s star players’ heads by launching a never-ending barrage of taunts, insults and jeers in their direction.
Oh, and alcohol is generally the fuel that makes that engine run.
But now you cannot escape it when you get into your car and drive home from the stadium.
It’s on social media. It’s on TV. It’s on sports talk radio when they open up the phone lines to take callers.
And we often cloak irrational speech by calling it ‘passion.’ It’s not that at all. And, being 100-percent real, some of it is racism.
No matter what it is, it is beyond the line of being a human being.
So I take no offense when my friend Kent says “I hate the Cubs.” I know him and I know what he means, and it makes me smile, because I feel the exact same way about his team.
Unfortunately, too many other people don’t get it. They either don’t understand where the line is or just don’t care enough to look for it.
