After I attended a Washington Wizards open follow at D.C.’s Capital One Area earlier this month, the main focus was extra on spectator leisure than Rocky-style exercises. The season opener was every week away, and the gamers ran drills at half pace and engaged in foolish expertise competitions for followers, together with a basketball model of Join 4. However as a lifelong Wiz devotee, I used to be having an awestruck, love-you-man second. Right here I used to be posing for a photo with Phil freakin Chenier. Franchise royalty. My childhood idol. Again within the Seventies, when Chenier was draining jumpers and sporting a Richard Pryor mustache, the staff routinely chased titles. As of late? Not a lot.
Being an NBA fan who loves the Wizards is slightly like being a foodie who adores turnips: It simply doesn’t make sense. Because the 2000–01 season, solely the Knicks and Timberwolves have lost more games. The franchise final superior past the second spherical of the playoffs in 1979 (again after they had been known as the Bullets), they usually’ve missed the playoffs 16 of the past 25 years. We followers have endured 40-plus years of frustration and disappointment, primarily from the standard points—dangerous protection, dangerous draft picks, dangerous trades—however generally from … weirder ones: One All-Star participant was charged with a gun felony involving a teammate, and one other was as soon as suspended with out pay for being chubby. It’s all #SoWizards, to make use of a Twitter hashtag.
And but, I made it out to the open follow with just a few hundred followers on a Tuesday night time, sporting a Wizards T-shirt and feeling the faint, irrational heat of preseason hope. Anybody can root for a winner. That’s straightforward. Final season, the NFL groups with the top-selling merchandise had been the Cowboys, 49ers, Patriots, Steelers, and Chiefs. Every staff completed with a successful file. In Philadelphia, the at present undefeated Eagles and the World Collection–sure Phillies have generated a 20 percent or more increase in enterprise for native eating places, sports activities bars, and memorabilia shops.
However rooting for the middling Wizards takes guts at finest and is downright masochism at worst. Nonetheless, regardless that the staff is extra prone to carry me agony than elation, I can’t fathom supporting another franchise. The identical is unquestionably true of my fellow Wizards followers—and lots of followers of different perennial losers (hey, the Detroit Lions one way or the other nonetheless have followers). So why can we keep hooked?
My Wizards fandom started within the D.C. suburbs within the ’70s, after I was a Bullets-crazed child devouring field scores on the sports activities web page, capturing jumpers on a yard grime court docket, and pretending to be Chenier. I used to be 12 when the Bullets paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to have a good time their solely title, and the following 44 years have introduced a lot of dangerous reminiscences: Final season, the Wizards one way or the other blew a 35-point lead towards the L.A. Clippers. The worst half? I wasn’t stunned.
Current ache ought to really feel stronger than childhood pleasure, I’d assume—even for followers like me, whose assist was handed down geographically. However these deep, die-hard roots can affect our grownup conduct. “Early studying is extremely highly effective and exhausting to erase,” Chris Crandall, a psychology professor on the College of Kansas who has studied fan allegiance, instructed me. The staff’s success 50 years in the past could have boosted my childhood loyalty, Crandall defined, and their subsequent failures didn’t take away it. A brand new perspective (“Wow, these guys stink”) basically “lays over the previous one, however the previous one continues to be there,” Crandall mentioned. “And it’s very tough to eliminate it.”
I’m a minimum of sufficiently old to recollect the staff’s lone championship. The highest reminiscence for Wizards followers of their 30s might be John Wall’s dramatic game-winning three-pointer in Recreation 6 of the Jap Convention semifinals. The Wizards, after all, then misplaced Recreation 7. However one purpose followers stick round is the perverse pleasure they’ve of their fandom, Edward Hirt, a professor on the College of Indiana who has studied sports-fan psychology, instructed me. Rooting for the Lakers or the Dallas Cowboys is like sporting khakis: You hardly stand out in a crowd. Loving the Wizards provides me a defiant sense of individuality. “Do you need to be like everyone else, or do you need to be completely different?” Hirt mentioned. “The reply is neither. We need to be slightly little bit of each. We like feeling like we belong, however we don’t need to be seen as a clone of everyone else, both.”
Supporting a loser satisfies each of these wishes. I can commune with fellow followers at a sports activities bar or recreation, however after I stroll by way of an airport, even in D.C., I’m usually the one man sporting a Wizards cap. And actually, I like that. My Wiz fandom, Andrew Billings, a sports-media professor on the College of Alabama, instructed me, sends a message to the world: “How loyal am I? I root for the Washington Wizards.” (Which, let’s be actual, can be an awesome T-shirt). In a 2015 research of scholars from seven universities, soccer followers had been 55 p.c less likely to wear team apparel following a defeat in contrast with a win. However those that do are making an announcement: I’m not a fair-weather fan; I’m devoted and reliable.
These noble qualities clarify why followers of awful groups despise fair-weather followers, Hirt added. Bandwagon followers skip the struggling however embrace the glory. If the Wizards one way or the other reached the NBA Finals this yr, I’d be each thrilled and infuriated by the mobs of rapturous followers at downtown watch events. The place had been these bandwagon yahoos in 2001, when the staff completed 19–63?
However perhaps successful issues lower than we predict—even for die-hard followers who react to every loss with a primal scream. In a single 2019 study, followers of a school soccer staff felt a two-day rise in shallowness after a victory. However shallowness ranges didn’t drop considerably amongst dropping followers. One of many causes: Even when your staff loses, you may increase your shallowness just by commiserating with pals, Billings, a co-author, mentioned.
Sure, struggling sucks, however struggling collectively has some upsides. It may be a social glue that intensifies bonds with the staff and fellow followers. “Going by way of this hardship together with your sports activities staff makes you more likely to stay with them,” Omri Gillath, a psychology professor on the College of Kansas, instructed me. Followers don’t simply delight in mirrored glory, or BIRG, as psychologists name it; additionally they BIRF—delight in mirrored failure. “It’s about having a group of folks that perceive you and like the identical factor that you just do,” Gillath mentioned.
Final season, a good friend and I attended the Wizards’ house finale, they usually received shellacked by the equally awful Knicks. However my good friend and I loved laughs over pregame beers. We made sarcastic feedback because the Wiz turned a ten–0 lead right into a 22-point deficit. I purchased an end-of-the-season discounted T-shirt on the staff retailer. Listening to Knicks followers hoot about their victory was annoying, however we had enjoyable. And we bonded.
However rooting for a dropping staff could also be a dying phenomenon. Sports activities betting and streaming have made sports activities extra solitary and fewer tied to the place you reside—undercutting among the causes followers endure their god-awful groups. “Geographic loyalty is especially highly effective for older generations, partly as a result of they weren’t practically as cell with their jobs or their careers as youthful persons are,” Billings mentioned. “I stay in Alabama. If I needed to be a Golden State Warriors fan, I may entry all 82 of their regular-season video games in a means that was not attainable for older generations after they constructed their fandom.” Youthful followers can also be extra prone to comply with a single participant than a selected staff, Billings believes.
Let’s be clear: Profitable is means higher than dropping. A 2013 research discovered that on the Monday after NFL video games, followers of dropping groups had been extra prone to consume saturated fats and sugars in contrast with followers of successful groups. However I really imagine—and perhaps that is loser discuss—that my many years of Wizards fandom have made me a greater human. I’ve well-developed coping expertise. My pals and I are like Statler and Waldorf, the crusty hecklers on The Muppet Present: We handle head-smacking losses with well-timed quips. I don’t get too elated after a victory—though victories imply extra after they’re uncommon—or too down after a defeat. Hell, perhaps it’s even made me extra empathetic to folks’s challenges. In spite of everything, most of us in life can relate extra just like the continuously struggling Wizards than the trophy-hoisting Warriors.
Although I do know higher, I’m optimistic this season received’t be a #SoWizards yr. Perhaps the staff will jell. Perhaps the younger gamers will develop. Perhaps the veterans will keep wholesome. Or, you already know, perhaps not. A struggling sports activities franchise, I’ve determined, is like your fool brother or jackass uncle. Regardless of all their apparent flaws, you continue to love them. And so I’ll cherish disco-era Bullets reminiscences, have a good time the surprising victories, cling to silly hope, and brace myself for the worst. In the event that they miss the playoffs—once more—properly, there’s at all times subsequent yr.
