What If I Watched 82 Warriors Games?
What I Learned
Preseason Game One: Warriors/Lakers:
Preseason Game Two: Warriors/Lakers
Preseason Game Three: Warriors/Kings
The scores are irrelevant, treat it like a t-ball game
Here I sit, at the one year anniversary of when I started this project, a week away from the start of the next NBA season. A Game At A Time was started as a personal science project, a What Happens If. I saw 82 regular season Warriors games start to finish. So what did I learn?
About Basketball
At the start of last season, I tried to name a player from each NBA team and came up short on five teams. I ran a quick test now and although I still couldn’t come up with players on three teams (Houston, Cleveland, Indiana), I could easily name multiple players on every other team - a task that would have taken me an entire evening last year. Remembering things is not my strength. When I was trying to think of Celtics players I first thought “Deuce’s dad, what is the name of Deuce’s dad?” Yes, another thing I learned is the names and faces of all of the Warriors kids and Deuce Tatum.
Less impressive is the fact that I can retrieve the ages of the starting five of the Warriors faster than I can retrieve the ages of my nieces and nephew. I’m not proud of that but it’s true. I know the colleges of all the Warriors. I probably know a story about them from their personal life. I recognize the names and/or faces of their wives and partners. I know the names of the coaches who sit in the second row. I recognize Steph Curry’s bodyguard. I recognize some of the refs.
So, I have a lot of new useless facts. But basketball wise, I was hoping I’d learn more. I know each player’s strengths and weaknesses, where they like their shot and their common mistakes when they are having an off night. I’ve learned other random information about the game like fines from technical fouls go into a fund that pays out to nonprofits of the NBA’s designation. But I don’t understand basketball any more than I did before. In theory I know what a pick and roll is but when it’s happening in real time, I can’t identify it. (In fairness, the Warriors rarely do this so maybe if I saw it more often, I’d recognize it). When announcers describe what’s happening, I don’t see it. When I watch the slow motion replays I still don’t see it. When Draymond Green explains on his podcast, I sometimes understand but it never translates into anything during a game.
I’m the person who’s following the ball around but can’t see the plays, and I certainly can’t see the game behind the game. I had hoped that watching so much basketball might translate into a deeper understanding of what’s happening. That’s an open question for you all. Do you have any ideas of how I can better understand what I’m watching? What do I need to do to be a person who understands the game?
About Me and Basketball
I can watch a lot of basketball. I kept a rough count and between Warriors, UConn Men and Women, Michigan Men, March Madness and the Playoffs, I watched over 200 basketball games, not counting the WNBA. And while it felt like I was watching often, it never felt like too much basketball or I wish I was doing something else with my time.
That’s not to say that it was simple all the time - just because I love it doesn’t make it easy. I planned my life around basketball games - phone conversations, work meetings, showers, all happened after consulting the basketball schedule. Everyone has an organizing principle for their life. Mine is the Warriors.
I learned that I have to watch the game live or as close to live as possible for maximum enjoyment. I watched every Michigan and Warriors game within 90 minutes or less of the game time. The UConn games I watched later and even though I didn’t know the score, it wasn’t the same.
I often went too far. More often than not I was watching the post game show and then the post post game show and then the twitter feeds of journalists for hours. I’ve listened to many multi-hour podcasts with Klay or Steph and then I’ve listened to them again. I’ve spent too many hours picking out the perfect video clip for a post. I have gone way into the weeds following the trade deadline or the draft or the Steph/Klay golf match or the Crawford Pro-Am. Many many times I became a fan I didn’t want to be. I almost never made the right choice. I can’t promise I won’t do it again–I’ve already done it this week– but at least I can recognize it occurring. Isn’t that the first step?
I learned that the off season is looong when your team doesn’t go to the finals. The WNBA is fun but not the same for me because although there’s lots of players I like, I don’t have a team I’m rooting for. I watched a lot of basketball shows to scratch the itch - and I recommend Swagger, which is loosely based on Kevin Durant’s childhood.
For those of you who know me personally (and a lot of you do), a fun surprise was connecting with you. Some of you learned that I am a huge sports fan when you didn’t know I watched sports at all. Some of you wrote me back. Some of you started watching more Warriors games yourselves. Some of you made clear that you have no idea what I’m writing about but thank you for the book recs.
Which brings me to the books. I learned that reading during the timeouts and halftimes was a genius idea. There is a lot of non-basketball time during a game and before I started reading, I was probably on twitter or instagram or my email, checking, checking, checking. All of which only served to drive that dopamine busyness cycle. I’m not into that. But reading. Reading mellowed me out. Memoirs are by far the best for timeouts and halftimes. My guess is that that’s because the plots are fairly simple-at their core every memoir is “here’s what happened to me, probably in order”. And we are in an era of fabulous memoirs. This might not work for folks who are watching the game with others but as a solo game watcher, reading was wonderful.
I learned that I metaphorically want my dessert before dinner. How can I explain this….watching the Warriors is one of my favorite things to do. There have been many times when the list of chores was long and all my upbringing was saying “do the list and then watch the game as a treat.” Turns out that’s not my scene. If watching the game depended on doing the chore, I would never do either. But watching the game first often meant that I would handle my business later on.
About Me
Before this all started I was worried about my ability to do this consistently because of my health which fluctuates, sometimes many times within a single day. I worried that I would not be well enough to watch games, much less write about them. Instead the reverse happened. Watching a game made me feel better. Even when it was a heartbreaking loss. Even when it was a boring game. And even more interestingly, no matter how crappy I felt when I started writing, it always made me feel better to write, and often, that flow thing happened. Migraines disappeared, nausea vanished, aches and pains became memories. Watching and writing about the Warriors improved my health.
The biggest thing I learned I’ve alluded to in other posts. The specific question I had last year was: what happens if I watch 82 regular season Warriors games? But the larger question was: can I commit to something I love and prioritize it above all the other things asking for my time and attention? Can I trust the voice in my head that says: try it - it’s gonna be amazing. It turns out that prioritizing the things I love makes a huge difference. It turns out to be transformative. It seems that life gets easier, health improves, mood improves, attitude improves. Not one downside.
Here’s the thing - those crazy ideas, those things about you that are uniquely you, those quirks that you have, those things that you love beyond all measure. They matter. Chase them. Those weird ideas are telling you something that doesn’t have to make sense in the moment. Follow them and see where they go. They led me here.
For this next season, I am doubling down on my challenge - watch all 82 Warriors games even though my favorite player is no longer on the team. I’m curious about what that will mean or not mean. And then also watch all Wizards games with my favorite player even though they are going to lose a lot of games. And write about that experience. To be clear, I’m not going to write about every Wizards game but I’m also not going to pretend that Jordan Poole has vanished.
Timeout Books:
Since it’s the preseason and there are no rules, I’m doing something different. A twisted game I sometimes play on Sunday nights is to listen to Sufjan Stevens song “The Ascension” and see how long it is before I start to cry. I’ve yet to make it through the first chorus. I’ve wondered why I do this to myself so often. This week I realized that it’s not to see if I can listen without crying - it’s to make sure I’m still crying by the chorus. On Sunday nights, I test my humanity—is it still there? An author who does the same thing for me is Ross Gay. A friend of mine told me that when he is asked for movie recommendations he doesn’t say his favorite favorite ones since he has a personal connection to those and doesn’t expect others to share it. Ross Gay is like that for me-it’s personal. Time and again he writes things that are aimed directly at me, I’m sure of it. He writesof his friend Don Belton who was my favorite college professor and to hear him write so beautifully about this man, well, may we all have friends who write poetry about our friendships. Here is one of his poems “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” with music from Bon Iver. The end of the poem, well, it does that magic that great writing does where somehow you are left without words.
Next week the season starts. This week or next week the WNBA finals will end. But until then, poetry!
The Spotify Playlist for A Game At A Time (i.e. the songs that pop into my head while I’m writing this)
For the first time ever, no songs, no fragments of songs, no melodies at all in my mind while writing. See? Things are already different in the new season. I wonder what else will happen.