Fall 2004
Love and basketball, love and war. All is fair in both. In my book, fair enough. I love the game of basketball, and to me the game is sacred. It is a game of ebb and flow, of maximum energy and athleticism, but cannot be mastered without a considerable amount of mental cohesion and intangibles.
I am a Los Angeles Lakers fan. No, not the kind of bandwagon fan that has little knowledge of the franchise's history preceding the three-peat Shaq/Kobe dynasty.
I know that without then-coach Jack McKinney falling off his bike early in Magic Johnson's rookie season and without Magic pulling strings to get succeeding coach Paul Westhead canned to bring in Pat Riley, the glory days of the 1980s might have had a much different landscape. I also know that in the mid-70's, the Lakers bamboozled the then-struggling New Orleans Jazz into accepting a trade which included great-but-aging Gail Goodrich for future draft picks. Which is basically how a scintillating, radiant magician guard from Michigan State became Lakers property in 1979. I also know who Mark Landsberger is.
The NBA's greatest days were in the Eighties, and the Lakers were the dynasty that ruled the league during that decade. The best playmaker in history, Magic, combined with the greatest (ageless) big man in history combined with the motivation seminar leader's dream, Riley, to finally propel LA past Boston as the NBA's most preeminent flagship franchise.
In other words, it was a hell of a lot of fun growing up during those days.
Oh yes, I adored Larry Bird (blue collar ass-kicker and green machine legend), Charles Barkley (mouth extraordinaire), Dr. J (valiant Sir Galahad of street-ball realm).
But the Lakers, see, were the transom that held the door to basketball fandom open and accessible, as far as I was concerned. They were the New York Yankees of basketball, and their purple and gold trappings, their celebrity fandom (Jack Nicholson, Dyan Cannon), the Fabulous Forum, and the Laker Girls (yes!!!!) signified to me pure royalty.
However, my fandom is put on trial every day in the ultimate sports fan's crucible. Let me explain why.
What makes this an innocuous allegiance is that I live in Sacramento.
Indeed--the whole of Northern California--does not like or respect anything affiliated with Southern California. The political spectrum, the water issues and territorial differences divide this state like a folded map. Hence, the Lakers are despised and hated.
Sacramento fans have a pathological hatred for anything Laker-related, and looking at recent history, it's easy to see why. The Lakers have been the one roadblock separating the Kings from greatness.
In 2000, the Kings stretched the Lakers to a decisive fifth game in the first round of the Western Conference playoff. LA won easily to eliminate Sacramento. In 2001, the Lakers swept the Kings in four games in the conference semifinals enroute to a second straight title. In 2002, the celebrated knock-down drag-out fight of the conference finals ensued with the Lakers winning in overtime in Game Seven to deny the Kings what would have almost certainly been a Finals win. Instead, the Lakers got to feast on underdog New Jersey for their third straight title.
Kings fans chose to ignore the fact that the team had several opportunities to unseat LA in that epic contest and failed. Most notably, poor free throw shooting and shot selection down the stretch did them in. Instead, Kings fans railed loudly that LA benefited from their supposed privileged status as one of the NBA's big market glamour teams, and therefore the referees and NBA officials would simply not allow them to be beaten. They pointed at the Kobe Bryant elbow given to Mike Bibby at the end of Game 6 and the wailing was as intense as any sour grapes ever vented in the aftermath of a crushing defeat. Ralph Nader was even summoned to imply that the Lakers did not earn the championship, but were given it by the powers-that-be.
Today, Kings fans' hatred for all things Laker burns as hot as ever. Though the intensity has cooled in the last two years since that bitter loss, it is not uncommon to see on bumper stickers around town depicting a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon style fan in a Kings hat urinating on the Lakers logo.
How, then, in the name of Reggie Theus did I become a willinng participant in Kings Nation?
This can only be explained by the fact that my job at Arco Arena dictates so. This fall, needing a job and looking to fill my idle hours with something meaningful, I went to work at Arco Arena, home of the Kings. An infiltrator in enemy camp.
September, 2004
Three weeks prior, I happen to look in a job newsletter and see that Arco is holding walk-in interviews for concessions. I fold the paper, make a note in my planner--any job will do at this point, any port in a storm--and pay it no mind.
September 23, 2004
Job hunting sucks ass. You gets the feeling you are a whore, spreading your legs for a john (job) for the money, whether you're in the mood or not. Grim as it seems, the alternative is having no money at all, unable to meet your basic needs.
I really don't fit the all-encompassing Generation X rationalization "slacker", but there has been a growing undertone in my psyche in recent years that suggests I have not found my station in life, nor have I escaped the chronic underachiever stage where I really don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Of course, much of this problem is that I really haven't grown up yet.
We as Gen Xers are accustomed to settling for things that our parents would never have been caught dead doing---moving back home, for example. Working shitty jobs that barely provide a living wage may be good for the soul, but when you have a background and pedigree that suggests otherwise...that dog, sir, simply don't hunt. Most of us are spectacularly underrated activists and agents for change, which Boomers conveniently ignore; hence the "slacker" image.
Most of us will marry later in life, if at all. We saw our parents' divorce rates skyrocket and decided we wanted no part of the traditional nuclear family. Our sex and dating lives are tailor-made for our cynical, jaded selves--transitory, instant gratifying, and superficial.
Settling for mediocrity and quiet desperation seems to be our norm, but if there is anything to be taken from our legacy, it's fitting that we are the first generation in American history that has not gone through life by the numbers: graduate from college here, marriage here, first house here, kids grow up here, retirement here, death here. And here I am, thirty years old and to paraphrase a line from Pink Floyd: I missed the starting gun.
The Kings current home, Arco, is the third oldest arena in the league at the beginning of the 2004-05 season. Built in 1988, it is still serviceable and accessible, but not a money-maker. That's something the Maloof brothers, who won the team, are doing their best to change by trying to build an arena downtown, preferably with city and taxpayer money.
Heading north on Interstate 5, it is easily accessible, but the simplicity of the location and the building's design make it easy to see why rumblings are being made about the Kings needing a new home. It is a pleasant, modern structure, but a workmanlike one with few frills.
The ad said between 2 and 7 in the afternoon. I had an interview earlier today that I'm coming from, so I mosey in sometime about 2:30. There's a line, but it doesn't stretch too long. I'm still in my shirt and tie from the interview, and I immediately feel overqualified. I sit down at the long desk outside the security kiosk and begin to fill out a mundane application in which I state my vital stats, previous employers, references and so forth. I turn this in and am ushered to a back room where a group of people are sitting in chairs. Most of them are a wide cross section of society. Some have seen better days. After all, it takes little inherent skill to be a soda jerk for a congregation of rabid sports fans. Many are senior citizens on fixed income, many are black and low-income.
After a short interview and another foray through a line of paperwork, I can now officially say that I work for the Kings.
My mom reminds me that life works in mysterious ways, then urges me to take all my Lakers paraphernalia and distance myself from it as much as possible., I'm not going to go that far. Yet I understand the importance of keeping my true identity hidden. Job politics being what they are, I could very well be sent packing for committing the faux pas of revealing my Lakers allegiance in the eyes of Kings Nation. I have lost more than one job for committing similar offenses of uttering the just the wrong thing that got back to the wrong ear. Only this time the stakes are that much higher, because it won't be just a supervisor shitcanning me; I'll also have to deal with 15,000 crazed Kings fans on my ass.
Now I'm undercover. I am now a Lakers fan getting a Kings paycheck and the Kings are, for now, my employers.
Let the infiltration begin.
September 24, 2004
I've worked out a rationalization already. "Fuck the Kings unless it's on the first and fifteenth. Then I love 'em, 'cause it's when they're paying me," I tell my friend Karen, who takes this moment to announce she is a Kings fan, and proceeds to shower the Lakers with expletives, namely a repetitive phrase directed therein that leaves little to the imagination.
September 25, 2004
I have a confession to make. I really can't stand the Kings, also known as the Queens by us Lakers brethren. I hate their whining fucking fans that think the refereers are working in conspiratory tandem against their team, their lament that the Lakers "bought" the nail-biting 2002 conference finals by paying off the striped shirts, and their childish hatred of all things Laker. But now my anti-Kings antidote is being put to the test.
What if I catch this Kings Fever? Already, I'm envisioning myself being drawn to the purple and black colors of what has become one of the NBA's hottest selling merchandise teams. What if I find myself toying with the idea of making the Kings my other favorite team? Get caught up in the rapture of the rabid fandom that is Kings Nation?
The speculation is too ghastly for me to consider right now, but my stepdad thinks it's a good thing. How, I'll never know.
I shudder at the idea of strolling through a mall somewhere in town, hit with the affliction of Kings Fever, and searching the racks madly for a Kings jersey, my mouth salivating at the black and purple colors. I wake in a cold sweat and tug my Lakers cap a little tighter on my head.
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