In Your Dreams Team

Sports can be entertaining, in providing action, intrigue or suspense, but the emotional content comes from living vicariously through your favourite athletes or teams. You share in their experience of accomplishment or disappointment, based on their success or failure.  It's a silly thing to do,  but it's enjoyable, and I think it's not harmful, as long as it's done in moderation.  For instance today I feel good,  because I'm writing this after seeing my Blue Jays win.  In psychology, they call this Basking in Reflected Glory.

And this is why I think that one of the basic rules of sports fandom is that you have to pick a favourite and stick with him/her/them through thick and thin. Cherry-picking the best competitors of the era is a way of childishly trying to avoid the negatives of life.  That's why I've always looked down on:

• Yankees fans with no connection to New York,  
• people who get into European soccer and decide to support Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus etc. 
• anyone wearing clothing of a winning team based on the other side of the continent. 

But at least those fans follow the basic premise of living vicariously.  What I don't get at all are the fans that Bask in Reflected Glory of competitors they aren't even cheering for.  I first noticed the phenomena in high school when Michael Jordan was reaching his prime. Many of my classmates seemed to draw tremendous emotional energy from seeing his successes.  Keep in mind that this is small-town Ontario, so we not only had no connection to Chicago, but little connection to basketball.

But nevertheless, here were these teenagers getting pumped up watching a guy they didn't know dominate a sport they didn't care about. From time to time I still see it happen, say with interviewers more concerned with palling-around with the athletes they interview, or commentators who seem to get untold joy from gushing about the opposing team's star.

The reason I'm bringing this up is to give a warning to my fellow Canadians: There's basically no way a non-American can cheer for the US men's basketball team without sounding like an asshole. It's difficult enough for an American; but at least they can claim a connection. Sure, it may sound arrogant to the rest of us, but Americans do have as much right as anyone to cheer for their athletes.  Though if they’re going to be polite about it, they should follow up any boasts by emphasizing that they’d rather have a silver and no Trump.

For anyone else to joyfully revel in famous millionaires from another country humiliating anonymous semi-pros from a different country, you just sound cruel and a little desperate. Sure, you can appreciate when players from your favourite NBA team play well;  and I think that's the excuse for many Canadians, that Raptors' stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan are playing prominent roles.  Well then I'd better see you cheer just as much when Jonas Valančiūnas leads Lithuania to a narrow win.