How Fantasy Leagues Are Killing Fandom
With both sports and TV, the impulse is the same: to get an insider perspective on an entertainment we love. The idea of simply accepting these products at face value—thinking about Sam and Diane as characters, accepting the cartoonishly heroic image of Michael Jordan that the NBA served up—seems impossibly unsophisticated. We’re no longer content to sit back and watch the product on our screens. Now, we constantly have one part of our minds on the meta-narrative, the game outside the game.
None of this is bad, necessarily. It just means that we watch the game with a slightly different eye, our perspective increasingly aligned with the graying men sitting in the owner’s box rather than the athletes on the floor. It’s telling that the best sports movie in years, Moneyball, is about a general manager who learns to harness the power of analytics. The quintessential sports hero of the modern age isn’t the plucky underdog who comes up with the clutch play in the big moment. It’s the guy who trades that underdog the instant he starts over performing, freeing up cap space by flipping the asset for a first-round draft pick.
At the Raptors game, Dave and I kept talking deals. It was so clear: Ross was a decent trade chip that we need to cash in to make an upgrade at a key position. The smart fan, like the smart GM, knows to an even-keel. Don’t get carried away by your emotions and lose sight of the real game. Discard childish hero-worship in favour of an attitude closer to that of the ruthlessly efficient factory owner.
Somehow, later that quarter, Ross once again got free on the baseline. Lowry caught his eye and from just past half-court tossed an arcing pass high into the space just next to the backboard. Ross took a step past his defender, leapt into the air and seemed to hang there for a moment before contorting his body, taking the pass and slamming it through the rim.
I stood and cheered along with the rest of the building, banging my hand on the railing in front of me in appreciation. Watching a game with an eye to business makes perfect
