I’ve never won anything in my entire life. I mean, when it comes to sports at least. I’ve never had a team I root for win a championship. Nor have I ever been on a team, from high school sports to intramural, that’s won. Some could say I’m cursed.
Maybe that’s why I took so much pleasure in watching the Miami Heat lose last night. After all, a team with three of the top ten players in the league (for the sake of argument, we can assume that Chris Bosh is a top ten player) should steamroll its way into a championship.
You see, I’ve always rooted for the underdog. I think it’s the Jew in me. Growing up, I would hear miraculous stories about come from behind victories by the Israeli army in 1948 and 1967. I would see Jewish nerds on TV and movies getting kicked around by presumably non-Jewish jocks.
So when I see the Miami Heat, with both Dwayne Wade and LeBron James (!), I just can’t imagine as a Jew that that is a team I can root for. It’s just too easy. Building that team is a cop out. If my Jewish upbringing has taught me anything, it’s that there are no hand outs and people are going to give you trouble on the way. And that trouble, in basketball terms, is the Miami Heat.
In other news, Omri Casspi and the Sacramento Kings make their season debut tonight. Root for them.
