Fans are the lifeblood of the NBA

There are no sports without fans. The NBA and leagues around the world are realizing that playing doesn’t mean much when there is no one to play for.

There really is no other American sport like basketball from a fan perspective, especially the NBA. Live spectators can literally be on the same plane, or court, as the players and so close that on any given night, hundreds of millions of dollars can fall in your lap, douse you with your own ridiculously priced beverage and then ask if you are okay before running away to chance it happening all over again. Players, while not encouraged to interact with fans during games, sometimes do, resulting in moments both famous — Reggie Miller and Spike Lee’s interaction during the choking away of a playoff game at MSG — and infamous — the malice at the Palace in Detroit in one of the NBA’s darker hours.

Yes, as fans, we can be unreasonable or irrational or over-emotional or delusional. We can say some awful things that for some reason we think are permissible when around people making lots of money, but generally we just want to add a little excitement and unknown and spectacle to our known lives and the routine of the everyday. We want to be wowed. We want to be appreciative of that which we know we can never attain to be. We want to celebrate the dedication and focus and raw exceptionalism of certain individuals who we can never truly understand.

That’s why we pay our hard-earned money to see games and to buy the stuff that’s splashed across our whatever screens, advertised to us, the masses. It’s why we fund billion-dollar businesses, make owners and players millions, provide jobs for thousands, give our collective hope and belief or some basic human emotion to something that becomes alive and greater than our individual needs for investing ourselves in it in the first place. It’s why when basketball or any sport is broken down to its basic core element, it’s the fan that is the tiniest atom, the first molecule, the base of the food chain that gives life to the system that flourishes above it.

Let’s look at the NBA in anatomical terms and think of the league as a human body. The coaches and executives would naturally be the brain, making the decisions about players and playing style. The players are the heart and soul of the league, literally in this comparison and figuratively outside of it. Without the players, there is no league or reason for fans to give their money, time and effort for. Teams, we can assign various body parts. The bottom dwellers of the NBA can be the parts that their fans probably think of them anyway as they throw their heads back in anguish, threaten the TV screen with violence and declare their team is playing like s***, and we all know where s*** comes from.

The best and most popular teams can be that great hair or the high cheekbones, the square jaw or the six-pack abs. They are attractive to casual fans and godlike to their ardent supporters. All the support staff is like the nervous system, firing rapid responses and reactions to stimuli that ensure the smooth function of the overall system. While the body cannot live without each and every one of those muscles or synapses working in conjunction with each other, there is an underlying current that gives life to all of these parts and systems. Without blood, all of these components would be starved of their life force and eventually cause the body to shut down and wither away.

Fans are the embodiment of this force, the very lifeblood of the NBA and all sports. Fans create the energy that permeates to the players, that provides work for the support staff, that lines the abyss like pockets of sports owners and stars. Fans transport all the aminos of anticipation, the vitamins of vitality and the enzymes of energy and excitement that players are itching to perform for. Would LeBron James throw talcum powder into the air if no one was there to see it? Would Kobe Bryant have given us that famous gnash of his teeth while pulling aside his jersey to show us that his heart and the Lakers’ were one and the same? Aren’t the celebrations tempered, the highlight dunks diminished or the displays of unnecessary, but awe-inspiring skill eliminated altogether when no one is in the stands to be hyped-up?

Sure Basketball and sports can go on without fans, but they are lifeless shells of what they used to be. They become just zombie beings that mindlessly go on and seek out brains, sorry I mean wins, without knowing or caring why they are going after them except that’s all they know how to do. Without fans, basketball and sports are drained of the life force that we bring, that we offer, that we are willing to give of ourselves in energy and expenditures to make a system greater than ourselves function and thrive. I don’t know when the NBA and sports will be back to normal, but you and I as fans, have everything they need to be great and full of vitality once again when they finally do. Stay strong, laugh, smile, call your folks and hug your kids because we will get through this like sports, every last little part of them, has shown us how to:  together.