Why boo Carmelo? Why the hell not?
“Sports are fiction and fantasy, emotion and illogic. It’s our story. Our response to sports is supposed to be visceral and hardly thought out. It’s a realm not meant for reason. We love sports and we are guided by our passions. It’s simple. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
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Sports just aren’t the same without a bad guy. Carmelo Anthony is a bad guy. Let’s not over-think it.
Very smart people worked very hard penning wonderful columns for this morning’s Denver Post and the blog at Mile High Sports web explaining why Denver Nuggets fans should show appreciation for Carmelo Anthony when he makes his much awaited return to Pepsi Center tonight.
Columnists Mark Kiszla and Eric Goodman, both brilliant, detailed the resurrection of Denver’s NBA affiliate that resulted from the drafting of the braided one in 2003 and made the case that Carmelo was among the very best players ever to don a Denver uniform. Goodman made the argument that Anthony’s number 15 should hang from the rafters alongside Ray Borque’s number 77. Kiszla said fans should cheer him tonight.
As bright as the two scribes are, neither is a sports fan. In fact, both celebrate their lack of passion. It gives them perspective to comment neutrally and intelligently on sports issues without being blinded by the emotions a dumb fan chooses to embrace. They’ve each made a point of elevating themselves above the mire and are therefore each unqualified to speak on behalf of Denver fans.
Save the analysis. We’re booing.
Sports are fiction and fantasy, emotion and illogic. It’s our story. Our response to sports is supposed to be visceral and hardly thought out. It’s a realm not meant for reason. We love sports and we are guided by our passions. It’s simple. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Carmelo Anthony was the greatest Nugget of a generation and that’s precisely why we hurt. We embraced him as one of our own and he spurned us. He eschewed the crispness of the Rockies for the glamour of the East and it was his plan to do so all along. Denver was a greasy truck stop on the road to New York.
Not only did Carmelo Anthony force a trade, he took Chauncey Billups with him.
Eric Goodman referred to Nuggets fans in his column as “jilted girlfriends”. That’s not a bad comparison. We’re the girlfriends who found out that he was sexting with some starlet while we were out shopping for china patterns.
The fans of Denver invested a lot in Carmelo Anthony. We bought the shoes. Don’t expect us to thank him for being drafted – or for being gracious enough to accept the millions and millions of dollars he was paid to play here. Don’t suggest that we should cherish his memory just because he gave a solid effort every third night.
He’s just another NBA superstar who sees Denver as flyover country.
We had our good times, it’s true. But there’s not a chance that we will cheer for him tonight – or raise his number to the rafters. We have too much self-respect for that.
Besides, we’re only fans. We will cheer on our terms and boo on our terms and we don’t need anyone to tell us why.
Kiszla and Goodman don’t get it. That’s fine. They shouldn’t be expected to get it. They’re professional analysts. They can break down the game far better than we can and they can see things that we can’t see. That’s why they’re professionals. But for either of them to stand on a journalistic soap box and try to tell fans how to behave is simply ludicrous.
We will boo Carmelo and we will have fun doing it. If that’s not what sports is all about then we may as well stay home.
