Just like politics
Iwatched most of Tuesday’s Game 5 of the finals of the National Basketball Association (NBA) between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers virtually alone, with my son, whose classes started only on the next day, busy with the computer and my wife doing some household chores. My son is a Lebron James fan and never glanced at the TV set when the Warriors led.
I already thought the Warriors would close out the Cavs in that game because not only were they a superior team, they had homecourt advantage. But, as we Cebuanos would say, “lingin ang bola.” Still, an advertisement by a firm selling paint in the ABS-CBN coverage of Game 5 kept reminding me of one reality. It proclaimed, “Ang number 2 talo sa number 1,” or words to that effect.
In this NBA season, the Warriors had been the number one team so that when the finals came the odds, and most experts, favored them to snag the crown. I am not a Warriors fan but a Miami Heat fan even after Lebron James left the team. I stuck to the Heat because of its coach, Filipino-American Erik Spoelstra. Without the heat in the playoffs, I thus was open-minded in the NBA finals although I liked the Warriors’ chances.
What struck me as I followed the Warriors-Cavs tussle, however, was the lack of objectivity and the emotionalism that fanatics of both teams possessed. In this manner, one can say sports is like politics. Present a fanatic with statistical and therefore objective analysis and he would cling to his “alternative truth” with such a passion you are eventually forced to steer clear of him.
That’s why while the series was ongoing I joked that the NBA finals debate among Filipino basketball fanatics was almost like that between socalled “Dutertards” and “Yellowtards” in the 2016 elections. The difference is that basketball fanatics can present a facade of “lightheartedness,” sports being a less serious activity than politics. Even losers in bets can laugh about it in the end.
I remember that time when I was a young man thirsting for knowledge. In 1980, I became enamored with dialectical materialism and historical materialism (the good old DM-HM). We spent time discussing the philosophy, even in meetings where the topic was about other things. One meeting was held when the legendary boxing champ Muhammad Ali, who was at the end part of his career, had a fight.
The Larry Holmes vs. Ali world heavyweight fight, billed as “The Last Hurrah” featured a young undefeated champion in Holmes (he was 30 years old) against an aging former three-time world champion who came out of retirement (Ali was 38 years old). Holmes was also Ali’s former sparring partner. Aside from the age difference, Ali already had the early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease at that time, although this was withheld then from boxing fanatics like me and the public.
I listened to the coverage of the bout during breaks in our meeting, rooting for Ali. But it ended up as total annihilation by Holmes of my idol. “That’s the new overcoming the old,” quipped a fellow DM-HM learner. That’s the truth and a natural law. The old is replaced by the new. But sports—and yes, politics—have a way of making us cling to what we believe is true–our alternative truth.