It was my best friend who broke it for tensely jumping up and down while the Los Angeles Lakers struggled to maintain the lead they wrestled from the Boston Celtics who ruled during the game’s first half.
My butt also barely touched my seat then but it was on a wooden bench. But should I have taken a plastic chair too, I doubt that I would cause the same damage. Besides, Brett is the great Lakers fan.
True enough, I also screamed “Lakers!” out our apartment window, shocking pedestrians below, when we became certain they bagged this year’s trophy. But to call myself a fan would be a insult to those who actually are.
This year’s NBA Finals, which culminated in a cutthroat game seven last week, saw the first time I watched a basketball game on television in full.
Never the sports buff, I only pretended to watch games when I was young to legitimize the share I take from my father’s bowl of chips or chicharon. Later on I complained about how the running commentaries seemed to lull me to deep sleep.
Soon after that I no longer bothered to watch and turned a deaf ear whenever my cousins engaged in animated conversations about Michael Jordan and, later on, Kobe Bryant.
I partly attributed the indifference to the fact that I have not played a single basketball game. And I reckon that if I blamed my father, a basketball player, for not teaching me, he would point an accusing finger on my mother, who protected her asthmatic son from dying of suffocation by keeping him indoors.
Since I am also easily distracted, I cannot keep my eyes on a television set for long. The commentaries really bore me too. I prefer watching live games, like that of my father’s during company sports fests or my cousins’ during summer breaks when basketball saves provincial teenagers from boredom.
But as if to indicate that I have matured, I watched the whole of game six of the Finals alone because I wanted to and without the ultimate Lakers fan forcing me to do.
When the Lakers won the Finals, I sent messages to my anti-Lakers father, a Utah Jazz fan, and a girl who, like me before this season, could not relate to all the Lakers-Celtics talk. My father replied, “Oo na, panalo na kayo.” But the girl doubted my blue and gold blood. “Nakiki-Lakers ka lang,” she said.
Over Facebook, I bannered, “It feels good to say this the first time: We are the champions. Lakers!” and I meant it.
I think now I understand why many find basketball worth watching: it is a religion.
In the same manner that people go to church to connect to a greater being, we watch basketball on television, following a team we identify with, to feel that we belong to something bigger.
We watch our team playing against another, cheered by a crowd we see on TV and many others like us who cheer from home. And although it would give us immense joy to see our team win, what really matters is that when we speak of the team, we use the pronoun “we.”
And as my best friend said, NBA gives us something to look forward to. And oh, the Lakers-Celtics match was indeed something.
When the two most storied franchises met this year, they fought for the 64th NBA championship, 33 of which were shared between them causing a tumult among their fans, which ranged from the tough hardworking men of Boston to the glamorous red carpet walkers of Los Angeles.
Itching to grab the trophy from the Lakers as they did in 2008, the Celtics offered intense competition to their longtime rival with whom they clashed for the Finals for 12th time this year.
Perhaps the match-up between Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett reminded older NBA fans of the faceoff between NBA icons Larry Bird and Magic Johnson who played for the same teams in the 1980s, providing the excitement needed to revive a sports losing its following for lack of vigorous competition.
Since Bird and Johnson last met in 1987, it was only in 2008 that a Celtics-Lakers match was seen, reigniting the rivalry we saw at play last week.
“You’re spoiled,” Brett once told me while we were talking about an upcoming game. He said I was lucky to start as an NBA fan in the heat of excitement caused by a cutthroat Celtics-Lakers match. “At may game seven pa,” he added.
And proof perhaps that I now truly identify with the Lakers is how I would like to think that they won because my beginner’s luck rubbed off on them.
In the 2010 NBA Finals, I was baptized in the NBA religion. And because it was between the Celtics and the Lakers, it came with a baptismal party.
