A funny thing happened last week when I turned on the Lakers-Mavericks game. There were eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, and Los Angeles was down 14. Kobe Bryant was fouled and stepped to the line. Inexplicably, the crowd at the Staples Center started an “MVP” chant.
Normally, this might make sense. After all, Kobe is one of the best players in the league and won the NBA Finals MVP award last year. That night, however, Kobe was hardly an MVP.
The Lakers fans must have been too busy checking their BlackBerrys and looking for B-list celebrities to notice that Kobe had 15 points and was 5/18 from the field at that point. Hardly MVP numbers. Yet, as Lakers followers will happily tell you, Kobe Bryant is the greatest player to ever live and always plays well. Always.
This all feeds into my overriding point: Contrary to popular belief, Lakers fans really aren’t that great. The national media treat the Lakers as one of the premier franchises in all of sports, and the team’s fans are often lumped into that category as well.
The truth is that many Lakers fans pretend that they’re dedicated, but most of it is just an elaborate put-on. Sure, they’re on their feet when the game starts and Kobe makes his first shot of the game. But at the first sign of adversity, a couple missed shots or a bad pass, they fall noticeably silent. As ESPN’s Bill Simmons has written, “They don’t stand unless it’s the last two minutes of a big playoff game, or the Staples Center is on fire.” They might throw an MVP chant in every once in a while, but that’s more out of blind love for Kobe than passion for the team itself.
Take, for example, opening night against the Clippers. The Lakers had come out a bit flat after their triumphant ring ceremony, and the Clippers were down by only one in the fourth quarter.
The creepy automated voice that haunts every arena urged the crowd to get into the game. “DE-FENSE, DE-FENSE,” the emotionless man droned. Normally, a crowd that actually cares about the game would drown out the robotic voice and cheer its team on. Not this time. As they so often are in crunch time, the Lakers fans were mostly silent, allowing the automated voice to continue awkwardly in the background.
Watching in disgust, I imagined what two Lakers fans might have been doing at the time.
Fake fan #1: “Man, we just need Kobe to score 100 again like he did that one time.”
Fake fan #2: (Looking intently at tmz.com on his BlackBerry) Yeah … (finally looks up) hey, isn’t that Tobey Maguire?”
Yes, Spider-Man is one of the many celebrities who attend Lakers games and pretend to watch the game when all they really want is to be noticed by people and seen on TV for five seconds.
Of course, not all Lakers fans are famous. There are plenty of Kobe-worshippers who are everyday people, just like you and me. The thing is, most of them aren’t much different from the celebrities in terms of how much they care about basketball. They go to games because it’s cool, the celebrities do it and they just might be seen a few rows
behind Denzel!
It also doesn’t hurt that the Lakers routinely put great teams on the floor and have won 15 championships. I’ll admit, there are plenty of Lakers fans who do care about basketball and pay attention when they attend games. But, seriously, how many of those people would still be “die-hard” fans if Kobe Bryant had never come to town and the team wasn’t a perennial contender? You’re kidding yourself if you think the majority wouldn’t jump ship at the first sign of trouble.
How do I know this? Because almost all of the Lakers fans I’ve encountered barely watch any games when the team is good! They float through the regular season, spitting plenty of game about how good their team is but never bothering to watch them in action. Then the postseason rolls around and suddenly they are glued to the games, holding onto every play like it’s between life and death.
As a Cubs fan, this drives me crazy. How is it that my franchise, with loyal fans who actually know what they’re talking about, manages to go 101 years without a championship while the Lakers win four in 10 years? And what about Trail Blazer fans? They haven’t won a title since 1977, and as an impartial observer I can tell you that their fans are 100 times better than Lakers’. Such is life, I guess.
To the four or five (if that) true Lakers fans reading this: I apologize. I may be wrong about you. Just know you’re in the minority. Most of the “fans” around you are just like Jack Nicholson: they’re great actors.
