This is usually the time of year when one of the most compelling and most devastating of events occurs for men everywhere, young and old...draft time for the upcoming fantasy basketball season. As every true hoops fan knows, fantasy basketball creates such a division in everyone who plays - the desire for your favorite team to succeed (fan) versus the need for those on my fantasy team to succeed (fan.tasy) and more often than not these two desires conflict in a very real way.
Take me...having recently drafted for one of my two leagues, I know eagerly await the start of the 2010-2011 NBA season. I happen to follow the OKC Thunder, and was lucky enough to draft Kevin Durant to my first team. But after that, I have no other players from the Thunder on my roster. I do have several players from teams in the Western Conference that I know will play the Thunder several times, including Chauncey Billups, Manu Ginobili, Baron Davis, and Andre Miller. I now am in the unenviable position of wanting to root for my favorite team to win, but also wanting these individual players to do well for my fantasy team (though the end result of individual success could lead to my favorite team losing.)
I find this position unique, and nearly unacceptable. While I know intellectually that the players will play, and the outcome is never predetermined, I find my fan-dom is too often swayed by my current fantasy teams standings in the league. When I do well in fantasy, I don't mind that the Thunder may lose, so long as Durant "gets his." But if the opposite were true, and if the Thunders success came at the expense of Durant deferring to his teammates more, or if their defense shuts down the players I noted above, then I am aggravated by their increasing win total. This is not the way it should be. I find that fantasy ruins the purity of fan-ness such as that I have in baseball, where I follow my beloved Mariners semi-religiously, but avoid fantasy baseball like the plague. It helps me to stay focused on the game, and what it means to be a Mariners fan. I just wish my obsession with hoops would allow me to enjoy either one or the other, without taking on the pains of both. Fantasy hoops kills the spirit of the true fan, where you root for your team to win, no matter who scores, who grabs the most boards, or no matter who they play that night.
Maybe I'm taking it too serious, but I wonder if the next time I check my smartphone for the scores, I look to the win/loss column first, or the stat lines from each game. As any NBA player will tell you, basketball is a team sport, not one played by a group of individuals.
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