Stereo-typing

I'm a book lovin' gal. Not at all surprising, right? Oh, that Gwen and her nerdy sweaters, just by looking at her I can tell she's a bookworm. Maybe it's because of my social awkwardness. Who knows. But something about me, my appearance or mannerisms, says to the outside world in loud screaming caps BOOK LOVER. Along with that people are not surprised to hear that I like plants and hiking and coffee and bands like Cat Power and Portishead and Mirah and Neko Case, because somehow they can group those things into a similar category. Still nerdy. They are sometimes a little more surprised to hear that I run, maybe because that involves physical activity, which is not something that many readers and writers are known for. I think people assume we sit around all day in well-lit but cozy corners with our cats and our coffee and maybe a quilt over our legs and never get out anywhere. Except to wander around nature at a relaxed and easy pace, pondering the meaning of life and our existence. Running is almost a sport, which to many is the opposite of literary. Jock vs. Nerd. Junior high 101. So imagine the looks on people's faces when they see the quivering excitement when I talk about basketball. Books? Basketball? Huh? I talk about the two things equally enthusiastically, and you might even catch me wiggling or clenching my hands or jumping around a little because I can't contain the excitement. It's not like I just like a team and wish they would win. I follow them obsessively. I go out of my way to make sure that I see every game. I know statistics. I know where the players went to college. I know that when he got his big paycheck Travis Outlaw, #25, bought his dad a new Tractor and kept the old one for himself.

It all started when I moved to Oregon. I think a sports nut was always lurking in my brain somewhere. I played lots of sports when I was younger, but then as I went through high school I pushed that part of me back. I suppressed sports. I was on the newspaper and all my friends were in art club and math club. Jock vs. Nerd. I would be too much of an anomaly if I was both. So I told everyone sports were boring and jocks were dumb and explained that I was in Cross Country because it wasn't really a sport. It was just jogging. Then I graduated and dated a movie nerd and kept similar habits, partially because he made being a nerd look so good. Then I went to an art school where they didn't even have sports. Everyone there was glad. I was depressed and craved the outdoors.

Then all of my plans fell apart and I moved to Oregon and had to start all over again. I decided part of starting over was trying to figure out who I really was and what I really liked. I went running and read books and felt great. I started dating a guy who was really into basketball. I just wanted to make him happy. I agreed to go to a game with him and let him teach me a little bit about it. I was skeptical, but I decided to give it a chance. That was all it took. One game. One game and I fell in love. With basketball.

The Portland Trailblazers played the New Orleans Hornets and it was a close game. It was the season home opener and all the fans were excited. The year before, their golden boy, Brandon Roy, had been awarded Rookie of the Year (the best player in his first year in the NBA). Their record had improved by 11 games (they won 11 more games than the year before for all you non sports-nuts), and they had lucked out and snagged the number one draft pick (draft day is when they look at all the young guys who have been playing in college or around the world and pick new members for their team, the number one pick means they got first choice!), a promising Center by the name of Greg Oden. Their hearts were all broken when over the summer they found out he was going to have surgery on his knee wouldn't be playing for an entire year. There was disappointment, but still a lot of excitement hung in the air. They had gotten rid of a lot of former trouble-makers from years before and were starting over with new guys. They had the youngest team in the NBA (their combined ages added up to a lower number than any other team) and they were the smallest team as well (ditto for their combined heights). As I learned all this it added up to one thing for me. Underdogs. Unlikely heroes. The kind I like to cheer for. I always loved the unlikely heroes in the books, the ones who battled all odds and showed their inner strength and came out on top. And there was one more important thing. This team had class. They weren't cocky or showy. They weren't the kind of athletes who complain about their salaries and go out to play half-hearted because they only care about the money. They had heart. Unlikely heroes with hearts of gold. And the game was a close one. Against a team that was assumed to be better. And the fans really got into it. We jumped up and yelled and booed and threw popcorn and got really involved and invested ourselves emotionally and I could feel the adrenaline pumping and the stress mounting as the game stayed close and the minutes started winding down and then just like that, my team won! The elation! My team! I had a team! I felt excited and so proud of them.

I started following them, and following them from day today becomes like following a story. Sometimes they have good days, sometimes bad days. I started to notice patterns, certain guys that play a certain way. I got to know their game. I started to care. A lot. Because as I watched they showed their strength again and again. Even when they lost I was proud of them, because of how they reacted to losing. They came back stronger. They stayed classy. Then came a streak in December when they won 13 games in a row. I was through the roof. They were doing it! They were showing the world that even though they were the youngest and the smallest and certainly far from flashy, they still had what it took. They became the good guys and the other teams became the bad guys in an epic battle that lasted for months. Which is always the stuff of good stories. I was blissed out.

And then me and the basketball boyfriend broke up and I was really in a bad place for a long time. It was winter and everything was grey and the whole world seemed down and out. But I was determined to keep doing the things I loved doing. I started really running a lot, training for a marathon. I started writing more. I was really paying attention to what would make me happy since I didn't have him there to help make me happy. And I started watching basketball with a friend from work and it became a social activity. I got to debate and tell people what I knew and they were impressed. I had payed attention to everything my ex had taught me and it was enough to go out and sound intelligent next to any Blazers fan. It gave me confidence. Not only did I love the story of my team but I loved how watching them made me feel and what it did to me. I think I was finally accepting a part of me that had been hidden for a long time. And I was completely hooked once I realized that I didn't just love basketball because I was trying to make someone else happy. I was doing it for me and I loved it. I went to as many games as I could, watched as many as I could at home, bought T-shirts and a sweatshirt that showed how much I loved my team and relished how well they were doing. By the end of the season they had improved their record to an even 500 (they won 50% of their games, with a record of 41-41) another improvement over the season before. When the season ended, I missed them. I watched a few other sports, and while I sort of liked them nothing could really compare. I scanned the news for word about new players and trades with other teams, and I probably knew as soon as anyone when they got a new Spanish guard who would go on to play in the Olympics over the summer. I knew about the draft picks from this year. The excitement mounted. I moved to a new town with a new roommate who wanted to get cable TV, a first for me in my own home, and somehow managed to talk the cable guy into free DVR for a year (kind of like TiVo, this amazing invention allows me to record things and watch them later). I was never going to have to miss a game! I anxiously awaited the day that I could get tickets to the first home game, and also got tickets with a friend to go to the next home game after that, against the Houston Rockets, a team we both respect that has a few players we really like to watch. The tallest man in the NBA is on the Houston Rockets team and, by the way, he's Chinese. He breaks the stereotype of short Asian men and does it well. With tickets in hand all I could do was wait. The first home game was on Halloween, and we won, against the San Antonio Spurs, a team that went all the way to the 3rd round in the playoffs the year before. I was so happy. 

And then came the Houston game. Houston is a very good team and I expected it to be hard to beat them. The game was so close! It came down to the very end. The score was tied at the end of regulation (the usual amount of time they give to play a game, 48 minutes, or 4 12-minute quarters), so they went into overtime. The first game I have ever gone to that went into overtime. My voice hurt from cheering and my jaw and back hurt from being so tense and there was more! An epic battle. The overtime started and the two teams pretty much traded baskets back and forth. Time was winding down again. It was looking like we were going to have another overtime because it was going to be tied again. The Rockets missed a shot with 8 seconds left and it was Blazer possession. They ran across the court. Then Brandon Roy (his nickname is The Natural) drove into the lane with defenders all around him, turned, and jumped back to make a 2 pointer to bring us ahead, 98-96 with 1.9 seconds to go. I jumped up and down screaming excitedly and celebrating, because I was sure we would win now, Houston had under 2 seconds to set something up. They called timeout. We all cheered and laughed and hugged. Houston came back out on the court. The clock doesn't start until they throw the ball in, so they were all running around and we were tensely waiting to see what they would do. In came the pass, Houston's Yao Ming (the fantastic tall Chinese man) threw it up and made a basket for two points. The game was tied. We were going to have another overtime. But wait... in all the commotion we hadn't heard the referee blow his whistle. Brandon Roy had fouled him when she shot the ball! (You aren't allowed to touch another player's hand when they are shooting because if you could they would all run around and grab each other and no one's shots would ever go in and it would become more of a wrestling match than a basketball game. They have to be allowed to shoot.) The foul meant he would get a free throw. We all held our breath. There were eight tenths of a second left on the clock. 0.8 seconds. If Yao Ming made the free throw he would get a point and they would be one ahead. And we wouldn't have any time to do anything. We screamed as he shot the ball, hoping to distract him so he wouldn't make it, but even though the entire crowd was against him he made that shot. 99-98. We lost. The Blazers called timeout. We sort of sat there and pouted. After all that tension we had lost. The Blazers only had time to throw the ball in and then throw it up, and they probably didn't even have time to aim. It was hopeless. I sagged. Everyone around me sagged. The Blazers came back out. Yao Ming (super tall) guarded the person who was throwing the ball in for the Blazers, Steve Blake (who is also the shortest). Time stood still. He waited to throw it in. Everyone on the court ran around couldn't get open and Brandon Roy ran far away from the basket so the ball could get thrown in and he caught it and turned and threw it up over Yao Ming and it arced high in the air and we all held our breath and time ran out (the players have to shoot the ball before time expires, and as long as the ball leaves their hand before it does the basket will still be good) and the ball was still in the air and it seemed like slow motion as it came back down and swooshed through the basket!!! The crowd exploded. We screamed louder than we ever had before. We were on our feet already, but we started jumping around and hugging and giving high fives and it was possibly the most elated I have ever felt. The roof blew off. They say we could be heard a mile away. People driving by looked, surprised, at the screaming they heard coming from inside. I don't know what the likelihood of that shot going in was, but I can tell you it was not good. It was from so far away, with such a small amount of time to catch and shoot. It was amazing.

After being a part of something like that, something that will go down in the history books as one of the closest games the Blazers have ever played, how can I help but be proud of my underdogs? If anything I talk about basketball even more now, and continue to puzzle people with my devotion. I'm known at one of my jobs as the girl who loves the Blazers. They all know I don't like to watch the games while I'm at work and I don't want to know what's going on because I want to watch them later (they all get recorded on my DVR) and if I know what happens it's less fun (how much fun is it to watch a movie, even a really good one, when you know the ending?). I'm the basketball fanatic who is still somehow more of a nerd than anything. And it puzzles them. They ask me how on earth I got into basketball and what it is that I like about it. It's always really hard to explain in a few words and they rarely get it. They usually shake their heads in disbelief and confusion and walk away.

I stand there smiling and know that by being part jock part nerd I am bringing two halves together, two opposites canceling each other out and making a whole.