Fan Etiquette: How Did the Burning Desire to Win Become the Desire to Burn?

Forword by Steve Kerr Five-time NBA Champion

In 1997, I was fortunate enough to live out every basketball player’s dream. With five seconds left in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, I took a pass from Michael Jordan and knocked down a wide-open jump shot to beat the Utah Jazz and win the championship. I can remember everything about the moment: Phil Jackson drawing up the play in the timeout; Michael Jordan telling me he was going to pass the ball to me; watching the ball in midair after I released it, everything seemingly frozen in time. But what I remember most vividly, and what will stay in my mind forever, is the roar of the crowd as the ball swished through the hoop. 20,000 fans at the United Center created a din that night that still gives me goose bumps just thinking about the moment.

But what if the fans hadn’t been there? What if nobody cared about basketball and no one bothered to watch it on TV or attend the games in person? My ‘moment’ wouldn’t have been such a big deal. I would have made the shot, high-fived my teammates and gone home. No glory, no fame, not much excitement. Just the same feeling your average pickup basketball player feels making a shot down at the YMCA on a Sunday afternoon.

Fans are the lifeblood of college and professional sports. Without the fans, there would be no games. It’s the intensity of the fans—the passions and the fire—that makes sports so entertaining and so fun. Some of my best memories as a sports fan are watching two teams in which I had no interest battling for a game in a sold out, frenzied arena. I cared about the outcome only because of the amazing atmosphere that the fans had created.

Unfortunately, it’s also that passion and intensity that can create some horrible moments for fans and athletes alike. In 1988 when I was a senior at the University of Arizona, I was verbally assaulted before a game by fans in the Arizona State University student sections who stood and mocked me about the death of my father, who had been killed in a terrorist attack in Beirut four years before.

I was so shocked and sickened that I sat through the rest of the warm-up session, crying on the bench as my teammates consoled me. The story became public, and a week or so later I received an unsigned letter from one of the students who had been mocking me. The writer of the letter apologized, but tried to justify his actions saying, "Do you know how painful it’s been to see Arizona athletes being so cocky after beating us over the years?"

I know as a fan how painful it can be when your team loses.

I remember crying when my beloved Dodgers lost the World

Series two years in a row to Reggie Jackson’s Yankees in the late ’70s. My son Nick is the biggest Cubs fan on earth (boy is he in for some pain), and I watch him cry when they lose a big game. I feel for him, but I’m also reminded of how awesome sports are. The passion they elicit among fans is incredible, and that passion provides for so much entertainment. It makes for civic pride, the camaraderie amongst friends, for pride in one’s alma mater. It makes for inspiration, determination and effort. How many kids out there are inspired to do great things after watching a frenzied crowd cheer on an athlete, or a team?

But I don’t care how painful a win or a loss can be. It’s still just that—a game that is either won or lost. And it’s important for every fan to remember to keep that perspective. Yes, we love sports and we want our teams to win, but not at the expense of our care for each other as human beings. I believe that the vast majority of sports fans do understand that perspective. My hope is that those who don’t will eventually get it. Cheer hard, with passion, and hope your team wins. But if they lose, always remember that it’s just a game.