I was disappointed when the Oklahoma City Thunder won the NBA championship last year.
I was also worried.
For one thing, writing an annual column about my dislike of that franchise has become something of a bit for me. Perhaps even a crutch.
But more importantly, I feared the fact that OKC had won a title would dilute, maybe even eliminate, the intensity with which I rooted against that franchise.
Perhaps I’d feel the horse was already out of the barn, so to speak.
Turns out I underestimated my own commitment to schadenfreude.
I have watched every minute of the first two games of the Western Conference finals, in which the Thunder are facing the San Antonio Spurs.
I have howled in anger at Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s tendency to fall to the floor whenever he feels so much as a breeze. I think the three referees from Wednesday’s game ought to be sanctioned for the way they allowed Isaiah Hartenstein to brutalize Victor Wembenyama in Game 2.
But the most satisfying thing that has occurred so far was listening to the radio call from the OKC broadcasters in Game 1 when Wembanyama, a 7-foot-4 Act of God, made a game-tying 3-pointer from damn near 30 feet with less than a minute remaining in the fourth quarter.
I have listened to that clip at least 50 times, but I don’t want to be greedy so I will share it here:
The utter refusal to acknowledge the majesty of what just happened somehow makes it more satisfying.
So not only am I still rooting against the Thunder, but it remains just as fun as it was before they won a title, which is a relief to a small-minded hater such as myself.
I have a fairly good memory. I’m not sure I would call it great. It’s certainly not photographic, but it is — in my experience — better than average. Over the course of my life, I have used my memory to file away a whole range of perceived slights and implied criticisms.
This has not been entirely healthy.
And while listening to an interview with former NBA player Jeremy Lin, I was reminded that storing these feelings isn’t the only way to handle them.
You can actually talk about it, which I explain in this week’s edition of Grudgery:
Something happened in New York on Wednesday that chilled me to my core.
This is not easy to do.
I’ve been living in the city for six years now, and I have developed the protective shell of utter indifference.
Public urination? I’ll look away.
Argument on the subway? I’ll change cars at the next stop.
I have considered purchasing this hat to deal with the periodic requests to sign a certain petition or support some candidate for comptroller (whatever the hell that is).
For instance, on Monday, a man shouted “DESPOT!” repeatedly as I walked down Broadway. I’d guess he was about 100 feet behind me when I first noticed his hollering. It sounded like he was getting closer. I never once turned around, continuing two full blocks to reach the grocery store. After going inside, I stole a look using my peripheral vision and saw he was screaming into a cell phone. Then I bought shallots and a pork shoulder and headed back home.
But this? This caused me to audibly gasp:
There is nothing I fear quite so much as wet New York.
All I can imagine is all the trash, the rotten food remnants, and the urine (both canine and homosapien) swelling into a tide of pure hepatitis.
This city is dirty. Filthy. Full of unprecedented stenches.
When I moved here in 2019, I believed I had experienced the full range of foul odors that exist on this planet. I thought that cutting into a drainage pipe packed three-quarters full of food waste was as bad as it got.
That’s only because I’d never smelled whatever warm, sulphuric, and tangy concoction that periodically wafts up from the street vents here in Manhattan.
I get chills thinking about it.
But that’s nothing compared to the sheer horror of falling into the soupy mix that stormwater can create.
It didn’t rain all that hard in Manhattan on Wednesday night, but it poured over in Long Island and Queens. If I had been on that bus or that street corner and watched that woman, I like to think I would have jumped in to help save her.
I fear that I would have run while emitting a high-pitched scream of the truly terrified, though. For all my big talk about being a stone-faced New Yorker, I’m petrified of this place when it gets wet.
