We were all once fans, captivated by what we believed to be magic. The mark of childhood is devotion to the magician — the athlete’s transformation into an idol, a deity, a hero to be defended unceasingly against criticism. This was me. Kobe Bryant was my hero. I named our German Shepherd puppy after him.
In his book “Rockin’ Steady,” Knicks legend Clyde Frazier said, “Adults ride with the winner. If you lose you’re a bum. But kids live and die with you. They make excuses for you.” What Clyde points to is a moment where this changes — when you recognize the flawed humanity of your heroes and see that you were under their spell. In a real sense, this shift marks the end of childhood.
The moment I learned that Kobe couldn’t be my idol marked the end of my childhood.
But what happens to the magic when you learn to stop making excuses for the magician? In my case, after my disillusionment with Kobe, I lost it. My displaced energy bloomed into a different sort of fandom — one based in criticism and examination, on learning and understanding. I stand behind this; everything about the NBA interests me: the “poker game” of roster construction (as Sam Presti calls it), the chess match between coaches and, of course, the game of basketball on the individual and interpersonal level. I love the fact that the closer you look, an infinite regress of games within games is revealed.
But where is the magic in that?
My analytic fandom lies in constant tension with the fandom of my childhood. At its core, this tension is the compulsive tendency of analysis to reveal any magic as machinery. When you look for magic in the same places, you will normally only find disappointment. We passionate, informed fans often complain about the present state of the league because we struggle to sit with the absence of magic in our fandom. In my own emptiness, I am forced to question fandom entirely. I sit, inescapably troubled by the passivity of fandom and its very real financial, temporal, energetic and attentive costs. I want to play basketball, not watch it. There, I know I will find what I am looking for. I crave the perfection of the ball, the grime, the burn, the passion and rapture of pickup.
On the couch, I often feel reduced.
But what I have realized is that the magic of fandom never went away. Growing up doesn’t destroy it but rather transforms it. As you grow, you cannot expect to find it in the same places as before — certainly you won’t find it in NBC’s cute appeals to 1990s nostalgia. Rather, magic appears in the gaps and cracks of what you know to be machinery, emerging in the unlikely places. Investigating these places and their properties is my project in writing the ‘Intangibles.’ This is my theory of ‘Intangibles’: Can we really know them? What even are they? That question I leave unanswered, for defining the word itself is paradoxical — pinning it down is futile. Yet what I do know is that I am affected by them, not in spite of my criticism, but precisely because of it. Through the intangibles, I maintain and deepen my faith in the majesty and magic found in sports fandom. I work towards a reaffirmation of the lost fandom of my childhood.
