I have a profound sense of cognitive dissonance watching the Oklahoma City Thunder. Let me first say that I consume sports-as-entertainment in such a way that the actual results of a game (in terms of wins and losses) have minimal impact on my ability to enjoy it. Until VF21 passed away, I was spending most of my time in here because when people come into the NBA folder, it's usually to discuss games/teams for which they have little-to-no rooting interest. Which, in turn, means that they were just watching games for the sake of enjoying the games themselves, without the need to attach whether they enjoyed the game to whether or not their team won. Which strikes me as the superior way to consume sports-as-entertainment, in my Personal Record Book™. If a game is competitive, I'll enjoy it. And, if a game is not competitive, I still might enjoy it, out of sheer appreciation for whatever the winning team is doing to make the game non-competitive. I was absolutely fascinated watching the Grizzlies/Thunder game, just because I wanted to see how thoroughly Oklahoma City could dominate Memphis... If I have an unpleasant experience watching a game, ninety-nine point nine-nine repeating percent of the time it's because other fans ruined it for me.
I said all of that to say this: the Thunder are a team that I feel like I would root for and like to succeed, in a vacuum. But over the last decade I have been so soured by other fans watching these guys with hearts in their eyes, and wanting their GMs/ownership to copycat what they're doing, that I want to see them fail, just out of spite.
