If there’s one thing I love about the NBA, it’s how buttmad the fanbases of “good” teams get when they lose to “bad” teams. Observing the profanity-sprinkled meltdowns of the collective is satisfying in the same way those “Russian Winter Car Crash” compilation videos are. Even better is if the meltdown includes calls for management to blow the team up, or trade all the stars, or to fire the coach.
When the Nets were up big in the second quarter of this game, I was already licking my chops thinking about how negatively the Rockets’ fanbase would react to a loss to the lowly Nets. Joe Harris was torching them with threes and looked to be unstoppable. Rockets fans were simultaneously cursing his existence and secretly wishing they had him instead of Eric Gordon Who Sucks Now.
But I didn’t get what I wanted. The Nets ended up losing (because they’re the Nets) and it’s not much fun to observe their fans after a loss; all their fans are used to the losses, so they will, at most, provide self-deprecating statements bemoaning their own martyrdom, or jokingly request for somebody like Harris to take thirty shots the next game. That’s not nearly as much fun as Rockets fans discussing how much Chris Paul will get paid three years from now while crying into their computer screens.