Sport Whining, or, The Lament Of The Mighty Who Have Fallen

Bill Simmons, only the most entertaining sportswriter in America, whines about his Celtics doing as poorly as they possibly could in the NBA Draft Lottery last night.

Two points. Firstly, I have no sympathy for a team that tanks. Say what you want to about the Sixers, who are nominally my hometown team. They are terribly managed, not particularly well-coached, and spent an unbelievable amount of money last year locking up Andre Igoudala, who has perennial 'about to make the leap' All-Star written all over him. But they try. When Iverson was there, they busted their undersized, incompetent humps to get into the playoffs. After he left, they played even harder, with less talent, and hosed their lottery chances. You know what? At least they get to be sitting today, with a little pride left, if not Kevin Durant. Also, it helps that they all make millions of dollars to be only middling at their jobs. That would be sweet.

The Celtics, on the other hand, blatantly tanked games late in the season, with one of their players admitting as much in a nationally-televised postgame interview. Now they have shamed the sport, their franchise, and they're still going to suck next year. So nyah.

Secondly, and this is the more important point: Simmons says, with regards to fans of perennial also-rans

You can't even fathom the pain. Everyone believes Celtics fans get a free pass with this stuff because we won 16 titles in 30 years. Actually, it's the opposite. Long-suffering fans of perennial losers don't know what they're missing. After all, how would they know? You can't miss steak if you've never eaten steak, right?

This is, pardon ma francais, bullshit. I speak from a position of some authority here, being a default fan of teams from a city that hasn't won a title in any of the "Big 4" since 1983, when I was 6 years old. And it's much more like sitting in a restaurant where you can see people at the next table over having steak, and the table past them, and the one behind you, and even over there you can see the people just sitting there, enjoying the steak they had 3 or 4 or 10 years ago.

But you can only have a pastrami sandwich. Nothing wrong with a pastrami sandwich, and there are times when that's really all I want (especially with a nice half-sour pickle, mmmm...) But when everyone around you is having steak, and you can see just how much they're enjoying it, your normally satisfactory pastrami pales by comparison.

Incidentally, this is a fundamental problem with economic measures of wealth vs. happiness. By any reasonable standard, I am approximately infinitely more wealthy than even an industrial robber baron of 100 years ago. JP Morgan could not have bought a cell phone, no matter how badly he wanted one, whereas all I have to do is give Verizon $100, sign a contract that says I will pay them $50 a month or give up my firstborn if I void the contract, and voila! Cell phoneage!

But humans are incredibly adaptable to their external circumstances. Put someone in the ghetto and they'll adapt to that way of life, learning to live on whatever money they can scrape up, and consider their lives pretty okay, but boy wouldn't it be nice if they could just have a few more bucks a week to pay the bills. That would help. Give them a bazillion dollars and they'll buy a floating mansion and hire a few dozen servants, and manage to scrape by on a few million a week, and consider their lives pretty okay. But boy, wouldn't it be nice if I could just hire a few more people, maybe get a slightly faster jet, or buy my own island. That would help.

Either way, they generally end up living close to their means and thinking that their lives are okay, but could be better. We've long since learned that happiness is not really to be found in increasing economic means. It's nice not to starve, and to have a house to call your own, and a little security. Beyond that, eh, it's just more stuff. But economists continue to claim that maximization of economic opportunities is how to maximize human satisfaction, and while it's a nice story to tell, it simply ain't true.

In the same way, obviously winning 16 championships in 30 years hasn't made Simmons a satisfied sport fan; he just wants more. I'm not jealous of him, really. I take my victories where I can get them (an unexpected Eagles win, Ryan Howard hitting well for the Phillies even though he resembles nothing so much as a cream-filled eclair) and consider my sports life good enough.