Should You Switch Loyalty from the Knicks to the Nets? NO.
This is precisely the opportunity the Brooklyn Nets are providing for millions of New Yorkers. They’ve got a shiny (but also sort of rusty) new arena, a sleek new logo, and the support of the most famous rapper alive. You could buy a new hat! Maybe a t-shirt! While at the same time aligning yourself with the most in vogue of our five boroughs! And you’d never again have to think about James Dolan, or about any single aspect of the Isiah Thomas, Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry or Amare Stoudemire debacles.
It’s tempting, but you should resist.
This city is full of people who’ve reinvented themselves, people who were in a situation that was not to their liking and who reached deep down and found the courage to change it. It is without question the single biggest reason New York is such a great place. But this sense that New York gives you, that you can or should be able to just change every single thing about the world around you, is what makes us seem so spoiled, so disconnected from the rest of the country.
We have everything we could ever possibly want right here at our fingertips—we have great schools, great culture, access to jobs in any just about professional industry you can imagine. It’s the kind of place where you’re never stuck with anything. Don’t like your career path? Try a different one. Sick of the food options around you? Just walk a few blocks in another direction. Don’t like the old buildings around you? Not to worry—a developer will probably come in and knock them down anyway. I’m not suggesting you need to apologize for your wealth of options; hell, you were lucky enough to be born here or brave enough to have moved here, so good for you—all those options are your due reward.
But would it really be so bad to have one aspect of your life where you simply deal with the hand you were dealt? Where rather than correcting anything that could possibly seen as a flaw, some ugly mark on your otherwise perfectly cool and desirable lifestyle, you give yourself over to it entirely? Embrace the constant disappointment, find honor in it. Use it to learn about how the rest of the world lives, or about how you used to live before you broke free in all those other ways. Allow yourself to be stuck with something, to rely on that hint of promise when you’re thinking of jumping ship.
It’s only sports. But it’s also not.