I’m going to be away for a while. I fly out this week for a 2-month backpacking trip through South East Asia. I’ve never taken a trip like this before, and the lead up to it has been a building sense of both excitement and unease. The excitement is obvious, and it’s been steadily present since the day I decided I wanted to get away and go someplace totally new and different for me. The unease, on the other hand, is a very recent development. Much of that unease is detail related. I’m a terrifically disorganized person and my fly by the seat of your pants, figure it out as you go along style has traditionally proved problematic with matters of logistics. The other part of the unease is more reflective of the realities of life I’ve only really just started to take note of in the past year or so. I’m going to miss things, because life is going to happen here without me. Much of that is fine; my friends, family, home and job will all probably (hopefully!) be here for me when I get back. But there are some things that are inextricably tied to time and place. I’ll miss my family in the sense of emotionally longing for them, but not in the sense of missing them like missing the bus, where if you’re not there to see it and catch it, it’s just gone. For me, one of the particular buses that I’m uneasy about missing is the bulk of the Toronto Raptors season.
It’s probably silly for a grown man to feel a genuine sense of unease and concern about missing a few months of his favorite basketball team’s season. OK, fine, it’s definitely silly for a grown man to feel this way. But I do. Over the last 20 years, I’ve watched the entire game or at least the highlights of almost every single game that the Raptors have played. There has never been a month of the team’s season when I haven’t known what was going on with the Raptors or where they stood in the standings. I hadn’t really taken stock of that fact until the last week or so as I got ready to leave and realized that I wasn’t going to see another Raptors game until sometime in mid March. I’m not going to see the first all-star game in Toronto. I’m not going to know if we can rally the twin powers of Drake and the Bieb’s Twitter accounts to retweet Lowry and DeRozan into that all-star game. I’m not going to see if DeMarre Carroll’s injury turns out to be an opportunity for James Johnson and Terrence Ross to find their rhythm and their place in the offense in expanded minutes and give Coach Casey a better feel for how and when to best play both, or if it turns out to be a blow that knocks the Raptors down a few spots in the Eastern Conference standings. I won’t see how Jonas Valanciunas comes back from injury and does or doesn’t find his place amongst the starters in a season where Biyombo’s inspired, if inexplicably offensively clumsy play suddenly has a vocal portion of the fanbase losing patience with the would be franchise centre.
[Listen: Raptors Weekly Podcast – Jan 11 – No Country for Jowled Men]
DeMar DeRozan has been playing the best basketball of his career in the last few weeks, playing intelligent defense, attempting more of his shots and getting more of his free throw attempts at the rim, passing more and assisting more and he’s even been trying to attempt and even hit three pointers more regularly. That is max player DeMar, and I’d like to keep on finding out first hand if it’s real. There is a trade deadline coming up too, and Masai has young pieces and a bevy of upcoming draft picks to play with, never mind the fact that he’s never been hesitant to trade anyone. Will anything happen there? Does James Dolan even have available first round picks to trade to him? I’m going to miss all of this.
Oh, I’ll read about it and hear about it once I get back. But that’s not the same. There is a reason that live sporting events are the most important media commodity. Sports are a live event that we experience together. The variety of new ways that we experience it has reinforced the importance for experiencing it live too. Twitter is a major part of consuming the NBA. So are forums, blogs, podcasts and vines. Sure, you can DVR a game if you’re going to miss it and catch up later. Maybe you’re working or at an event or doing any number of other legitimate adult experiences that annoyingly occupy what should be our sports viewing time. But if you don’t want it spoiled, you’re going to have to pre-empt any conversation you have with “I’m taping the game for later, don’t tell me the score!” Watching a DVR’d game once you already know the score is useless. It makes you god over a universe where you can literally control time and you know exactly how life is going to play out. In that universe, there are no stakes, interest quickly fades away and life becomes without meaning.
What a burden being a god is. It’s so much better to watch sports like a mortal: beholden to the moment and ignorant of how life will play out. So if you’re going to DVR and watch, you simply cannot let anyone or anything tell you the score. It turns into a nervous obsession, because it’s so often ruined by someone or another blurting out the result. It’s an anxious state of being that builds up towards a crippling emotional let down if the game is spoiled for you or, after successfully avoiding any news of it you finally sit down during time when you really ought to be doing something productive but watch instead only to find out that your team got blown out in an embarrassing performance that you feel obligated to keep watching despite the joy you feel leaving your soul, never to return. And you can’t go on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any other form of social media that dominates any or all idle moments we have. It’ll be spoiled there for sure. You’ll become troublingly aware of how often you check or post on social media when you have to specially avoid them for a game you’re taping. You’ll immediately take notice of how you’re constantly fiddling with your phone, pulling it out and then having to remind yourself to put it away again, else spoil the game, instead actually dedicating your full attention to whatever it is you are or are supposed to be doing while nervously flipping your phone around in your hand like you’re quitting smoking cold turkey but holding a pack of Marlboros. And if you have to wait more than a day? Pssshh, good luck. That sports podcast that you listen to every morning on your commute? Can’t do it, they’re talking about the game you’re not going to watch until tonight. This is really starting to mess with your routine now, and the fact that that is causing you real stress is really troubling you. How together do you really have your life if these things matter so much? Does your life really revolve around people writing and talking online about people playing a silly game? This might be a serious problem, and your ex-girlfriend may definitely have had a point. What an awful and depressing conclusion to suddenly come to, and all because you tried to DVR a game and then watch it the next day. Don’t do this to yourself, just don’t. Sports need to be consumed live, to be a part of the shared experience, the conversation and to save your sanity.
And so, for the next two months, I’m going to have to exclude myself from the conversation. After reading back over the last few paragraphs, maybe that’s a healthy thing to do. I wish I was taking this trip back when the Raptor’s main storylines revolved around hiring Jay Triano and the shooting of Jamario Moon and Jason Kapono. I don’t miss that season, but I’m going to miss this one. You can’t DVR life, so I’m going to try and experience mine for a change and find out about the team when I get back. I’ll talk to you guys in a few months; let me know how it went.
