I’m a huge reality television fan. As such, I love Survivor. But I hate – I mean loathe the season finale. I always want to find out who wins, of course, but before getting to the big announcement, you have to endure watching a bunch of spiteful, vindictive, suddenly holier than thou castoffs address the finalists in a segment that has, over the years, morphed from a question and answer session into a sickening soapbox session. Ugh. It happens every season. In recent years I’ve even begun to wonder if it’s inevitable. I mean, if I were on the show, would I turn wicked prior to voting for the winner? Well, that’s if I wasn’t a finalist, obviously. But, I digress.
It all reminds me of the current NBA Finals. In this series, the bitter castoffs are recast as bitter Cavs fans. Seriously. I watched a story on Fox6 Wednesday night that talked about how Mavs merchandise is flying off the shelves in Cleveland. And it’s all because they got burned. Burned by LeBron. My favorite featured t-shirt from the story read “Quitness.” Love me some play on words. (Remember? A year ago that whole town was sporting “Witness” Ts. You love it too now, right?)
I get it. I mean, I don’t hate LeBron. My mom’s always said hate is a strong word. Still, I hated “The Decision” and I hate that Miami – of all NBA cities – has been granted a competitor. Miami, who, from the looks of it, didn’t even fill their stadium during many regular season home games this year, and now finally does so with a crowd that, due to the coupled effects of moderate cheering and their franchise provided “White Hot Heat” t-shirts, looks like a bunch of members of a creepy cult.
Still, I have to admit that I ended up actually wanting the Heat to advance after the semi-finals. But that was by default. Originally I wanted the Bulls to make it to the finals, but Joakim Noah’s incident made it all but impossible for me to continue to support Chicago. Suddenly, Miami was the lesser of two evils. And that’s a whole other post.
Now I’m rooting for the Mavericks right along with the entire city of Cleveland. But such decisions, for me, are not made lightly. If my team’s not in it, I gotta give it some thought.
What are your thoughts? I know some people go with the representative of their league, division, or conference one their team’s knocked out. But just the possibility that I might have had to support the Vikings in their Favre “era” is enough for me to swear off any such hard and fast rules. And, in that way, I guess I’m not that unlike Cavs fans, or even (gulp) the Survivor castoffs.
