Fandom is a funny thing. Sports are one of the few places on earth where people legitimately have no idea what is going to happen on a given night. They’re the one subject in which we’re allowed to turn off most of the more rational parts of our brains and let loose. The combination of these two things lead to people getting far too emotionally attached to sports, as the ebbs and flows of games and how organizations operate serve as a bit of an escape from the hell that surrounds us on a daily basis.
This emotional attachment can be good. It’s what leads to the communal experience that makes sports such a wonderful and unique thing — parents sharing the cultural tradition that is fandom with their children because they felt it with their parents, cities rallying around teams and players, etc. This does not exist anywhere else unless, like, you’re from New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen releases a new album.
On Thursday, we got an example of where this can be a bit of a bad thing. Kawhi Leonard made his return to San Antonio, suiting up in his old building for the first time as a member of the Toronto Raptors. The Spurs went on to run Leonard and co. out of the building, but not before the Spurs faithful booed Leonard like the fate of the world depended on it despite Gregg Popovich’s wishes that this would not happen and the organization’s attempt to quell the situation with a tribute video to Leonard and Danny Green.
It, of course, stems from the fact that Leonard wanted out of San Antonio following a lost 2017-18 season in which trust between team and player was, apparently, irreparably broken over a quad injury. Leonard said he wanted out, Leonard got out, and both sides are better for it than they would be if he stuck around this season and bolted in free agency. As we’ve seen in the NBA a handful of times over the years — Leonard in San Antonio, Paul George in Indiana, Chris Paul in Los Angeles — big name players are increasingly deciding to say they will seek greener pastures when their contract is up instead of waiting until free agency to leave.
This is, almost certainly, the preferred approach for players to take if you’re an NBA team.
Uncertainty is something no major organization wants to deal with unless it employs LeBron James or Kevin Durant — it’s why no one in their right mind thinks the New Orleans Pelicans will hold onto Anthony Davis if he turns down a supermax extension this upcoming summer. In the case of the Spurs, they were given the opportunity to pursue a deal for Leonard instead of agonizing over whether he was going to leave in the summer of 2019, so they did, and in exchange, they were able to get a superstar on a lengthy contract in DeMar DeRozan and a young, solid role player in Jakob Poeltl.
Still, Spurs fans booed on Thursday, making it clear that Leonard — an NBA Finals MVP who went toe-to-toe with James and the Miami Heat in the Spurs’ title win in 2014, his third season in the league — is a snake for wanting out. It goes back to the cultural element of being a fan, one in which we place the importance of our team and what it represents over what might be the best path forward. One can argue Leonard asking for a trade was a way for him to say he did not think the Spurs were good enough for him.
For anyone who views themselves as part of a team — and, in a way, fandom is exactly that, as evidenced by the fact that everyone you know says “we” when they talk about their team for which they’ll never suit up — that’s an awfully hard thing for anyone to reconcile with.
The deep irony of this stems from the fact that the Spurs basically had two courses of action when Leonard said he wanted out: Keep him around and hope for the best before he left, or get something back. Perhaps they attempted to go through course one, but they ultimately chose to pursue course two, and it could not have worked out any better. The former runs the risk of a team being in the position the Cleveland Cavaliers were in both times James left, the latter gives teams the chance to stay the course — just look at how the Indiana Pacers are one of the most complete teams in the league after trading George, or how the Spurs are among the hottest teams in basketball right now.
Is booing someone for requesting a trade and getting it silly? Sure, but fandom is a silly thing. We attach our hopes, dreams, and aspirations to something we cannot control, in which people with whom most will never interact are judged under the harshest microscope possible. People are always told to do what is best for them, but that goes out the window when it involves an athlete in another one of the weird contradictions people face when they like sports.
What Leonard did was the better thing for himself and for the Spurs long-term. If everything goes the way it should between now and the end of his career, he is going to get his jersey retired, and he will deserve it, because he is one of the best players in team history. In a way, the cathartic experience that many San Antonio fans felt on Thursday was an important first step in the process. Hopefully one day that leads to him getting cheered, because like most messy breakups, things hurt for a while, but eventually, time heals all wounds.
