Hoop Hate

Today as I watched the Mavs, Spurs, Jazz and Nuggets, I was struck by the fact that despite the fact that all of these teams play well, play up tempo, and are very athletic... I just don't like them very much. And here's why.

Jazz... Probably the most red-statish and distasteful fans in the Association, starting with the no Sunday night game nonsense, and continuing with the overwhelming whiteness of the fan base, and ending with the overreaction to any foul call that goes against them... the fact that Carlos Boozer is a huge part of the team, and that he's only here after stabbing a blind man in the back on his free agency... that Jerry Sloan has been here for decades while seemingly never enjoying a minute of it... that they employ Kyle Korver and the unspeakable horror that is Kyrylo Fesenko...

Nuggets... Prone to more bug-eyed looks at the refs than any team in the league... employ Kenyon Martin, who has a lipstick tatoo on his neck and is a walking foul... perpetuate the myth that Chauncy Billups is a good option for big shots... don't get enough out of Carmelo Anthony, who should be one of the five best players in the league but usually isn't... will lose their first round series while talking about the loss of George Karl, as if he would have done a damn thing differently or better than interim coach Adrian Dantley...

Mavs... There's just something unlikable about Dirk Nowitzki... for all that people talk about Jason Kidd as some kind of aesthetically wonderful point guard, um, he can't shoot, has a terrible track record for off-the-court stuff, and is a definite coach killer... they could employ twelve wonderful human beings and I'd still want them to lose, just to see Mark Cuban pule... rooting for any team from Dallas is kind of anathema...

Spurs... The guy wearing Tim Duncan's jersey right now should be ashamed of the deception... Tony Parker is French and married to a person who thinks that the world needs to hear about her life... Manu Ginobili might flop more than any other very good player in the Association's history... The team has the ability to make even young and athletic players seem like they've been there forever, running the same plays... They manage to luck into ridiculously helpful players like Georg Hill and DeJuan Blair with low picks, which mock the idea that your terrible team can't ever get better...

And then it struck me... there's really no such thing as a team that you can't hate. Even the Thunder, who are young enough to be wildly entertaining and mostly unspoiled, had the lingering distaste of being a stolen team that's owned by a repulsive liar. The team that I actually root for (Philadelphia) is owned by a guy (Ed Snider) with decades of mismanagement to his credit, who contributes to new right wing news networks, and play in yet another unnecessary pleasure park to the rich that was a money grab from the taxpayers. And so on, and so on.

And yet the games are still great, even between teams that are kind of difficult to root for, because the game's the thing, really. Tonight's Nuggets-Jazz game was hopelessly choppy and foul-driven, not really close -- the Nugs couldn't draw to fewer than three possessions in the fourth, and the Jazz never looked shaky enough to really make it more interesting than that, despite Anthony getting hot -- and yet still in enough doubt to play the starters until the last minute, and watchable all the way through.

You just don't get the full push of likable teams and likable games. I'd rather have the latter anyway.