Pour one out for Ben and Andrew
I gave up on basketball. I was done.
When I moved from California to Indiana, I stopped following the sport. See, I was a real fan back in Sacramento because I had a team to root for. There were heroes: Bibby, Chris, and Vlade, and there were villains: Shaq and Kobe. It was a game I barely understood, but I knew that our guys had a fighting chance and could take down the unstoppable duo that were the despicable Lakers.
Evening after evening, especially in 2002 and 2003, my brother and I gathered around the living room in front of the massive cathode-ray television and tried to figure out this sport and follow along with our Kings.
We never made it to a game, we were dirt poor, and we never bought any swag. But we were fans, in the truest sense of the word. We tried to mimic Bibby on the court ourselves. As two skinny white teens hovering just over six feet tall, we had a hero we could aspire to.
And for us, that was enough.
Years later, we followed the Mavericks’ attempted ascension with Dirk, but moving away from California tore away my anchor for a team to follow.
Then the Kings made the playoffs in 2023. My brother and I had moved across the country and back multiple times and had both landed in the Inland Northwest. For me, that’s North Idaho, and for him, that’s Eastern Washington. The Kings were back, and we had to track it. We had to follow the Beam Team and see if they had a chance.
It was all new players, of course. We had to relearn the game, understand the divisions, and figure out who mattered. The odds were completely against the Kings, but we didn’t care. They had a chance in our hearts.
Around that time, I started listening to the GOAT podcast as part of the Stratechery bundle. I didn’t know a thing about where the game stood, and over the course of that year, I started to figure it out again, thanks to Andrew and Ben.
I started to learn the players, what had happened in the ensuing decades, and was able to absorb it through the lens of two superfans who knew the game and could describe it for me.
Now, with Ben Goliver leaving the podcast and moving on to ESPN (I’m happy for him, really!), I’m feeling a bit of sadness. For the last three years, I’ve listened to them every week, heard their silly jokes and fruit rankings, and even had the privilege of taking Ben on my favorite hike up here in Idaho.
The podcast may continue, but it won’t be the same without Ben, and I just wanted to write this to thank him and share my appreciation for these two nerds getting me back in the game.
Now, of course, I’m rooting for anybody but OKC to win this season (as I did last season; I subsequently hoped for every team they went up against to take them down). And with Fox on the Spurs, and Wemby as this alien from space, I have a team to root for — at least until the Kings someday reach relevance again.