The Art of Losing Isn't Hard to Master
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
 
For years, Bullets and then Wizards fans had to acclimate themselves to the routine, everyday disappointments of things like watching Rex Chapman attempt to play defense, or Gheorghe Muresan attempt to move. These disappointments led to routine, everyday losses: a kind of low-grade, corrosive misery that lurks in the background and aggravates the various disappointments life inevitably deals out in other, non-sporting realms. (No assists here!)

But just like E-Bishy in the villanelle from which I copped the title of today's post, we Wizznutzz are moving on up in the type of losses we must endure. Specifically, in Game 6 we were introduced to the huge, stabbing pain in the gut that results from the loss of a huge playoff game, with the nation as witnesses. How to process such pain?

If you've been a fan of a team that has achieved routine success, you probably have an idea, since you have to climb way up the tree to suffer a really painful fall. But just in case you've been a 'Zards fan your whole life (and started after '78), here's a quick rundown of proven strategies to cope with the aftermath of a big loss, along with pros and cons regarding their specific applicability.

Get soul-obliteratingly drunk.

Pros: You won't remember the loss the next day, or for a few days afterwards.

Cons: The entertainment sports-industrial complex will remind you somehow, whether through radio, cable, text messaging, restaurants, or the controversial Stephen A. Smith cochlear implant.

Blame anyone except the Wizards' own players/employeees.

Pros: Allows you to light a fire underneath what will eventually become long-simmering pots of hatred for referees, the Cavaliers, LeBron, and the entire city of Cleveland. These are typically pots of hatred into which many ingredients end up being thrown, along with the dried seasonings of suppressed resentment and remorse, making for a stew as bitter as it is soul-filling.

Cons: I have no idea where that metaphor just went. Plus when you're infirm and about to enter that Great Entertainment Sports Afterlife, you probably don't want your last words to your children to be, "Remember what I always told you: Queen James traveled!" Although if you did, that would be pretty gangsta.

Blame one or more Wizards.

Pros: While the offseason drones on, you can remind your friends that the Wizards' big men are all bums, such that you should be trading Andray Blatche, Antawn Jamison, Peter John Ramos and the 18th overall pick to Minnesota for Kevin Garnett and a barrel of used jockstraps.

Cons: Position tends to veer into intellectual inconsistency fairly quickly. The other possibility is that no one wants to watch games with you if they feature the 'Zards, which is pretty lame.

Blame yourself, for not adequately performing some ritual that, in the past, has ensured a Wizards victory, like wearing your lucky Arenas throwback jersey, exiling your wife from the basement for the entire game, or consuming no less than an entire 12-pack of Yuengling during the game (3 per quarter).

Pros: Allows you to take sole responsibility for success or failure of team, regardless of how specious that responsibility may be.

Cons: In the event that such a ritual should fail to work, you will develop additional rituals that must also be performed, to the point that your entire game-watching experience will constitute a slavish show of dedication to a self-invented sports mysticism, rather than watching the game. It's like if Native Americans performed dances to summon the buffalo to be hunted but neglected to actually hunt the buffalo.

Show no reaction whatsoever, following the Stoic philosophy, which counsels us to take no joy or despair from things we cannot control.

Pros: Results in remarkably small amount of psychological pain, assuming your spine is made of rebar-reinforced concrete, and (according to this picture of Zeno) you have no pupils.

Cons: Why watch basketball in the first place? You might as well be knitting afghans. In fact, you'd take more pleasure from that. Go back to your knitting, you knitter. Yeah.

Go to Cleveland and torch it.

Pros: Satisfying, both in the short and the long term.

Cons: How would anyone be able to tell if you torched Cleveland?

Stay here and torch something in Washington.

Pros: Just look how successful the University of Maryland men's basketball fans have been with this policy.

Cons: What would you torch around the MCI Center? Fuddruckers? The ticket booth for the Regal 14? Freaking Jaleo? I can't feel the drama.

Amortize the pain over a period of months, such that it gradually loses its valence and you forget where it came from. At some point, the original stab in the gut turns into a kind of low-grade, corrosive misery that lurks in the background and aggravates the various disappointments life inevitably deals out in other, non-sporting realms, but leaves your enthusiasm for basketball undimmed.

Pros: Proven to work!

Cons: None that I have ever been able to see.

If you Wizznutzz out theire have any further losing suggestions, drop 'em like they are hot in the comment section below.

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posted by Rex Immensae Majestatis Chapman
3 Comments | Permalink | Wizznutzz.com | RSS Feed

3 Comments:

medicinal marijuana

and i didn't break any of my own rules (right down to the aforementioned gil throwback). SO IT'S NOT MY DAMN FAULT! so can we just blame Joe Forte et. all and move on?

By Anonymous, at 11:33 AM  

the only thing I can figure that we are a "witenss" to from that commercial is the destruction of american manufacturing leaving a giant hole in the center of america that we fill up by eating agribusiness's carcinegenic biproducts, rolling through the streets looking for meth, watching coal fires burn on the horizon, and of course cheering the chosen one throw down a bunch of dunks while what appears to be outtakes from sokurov's days of eclipse float by in the rearview mirror.

By Anonymous, at 2:05 PM  

The Yuengling thing is my bad. Can't get any out here on the West Coast, so my playoffs were Yuengling-free. I really let the team down...

By zombie squirrels, at 11:32 AM  

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