A Stoic’s Guide to Rooting for the Knicks (and other terrible teams)

Tired of living in misery because for favorite sports team stinks? Try adopting some of the core principles of Stoicism

Here is a hot take for you guys — the New York Knicks stink. I know, bring out the fire extinguishers on that one. There hasn’t been too much for Knicks fans to root for during this 2016–17 season. It’s essentially been Kristaps Porzingis’ hot start of the season where he was averaging 21.8 points and 7.3 rebounds on a 59.6 true shooting percentage in November, Guillermo Hernangomez leading all rookies in field goal percentage and rebounds per 48 minutes, and all the great Ron Baker quotes like, “But now when they see my Hyundai Sonata roll in, they know who it is and that business is coming.” The championship Knicks fans will be celebrating is Kristaps Porzingis winning the NBA Skills Competition.

Yeah, it’s been that kind of year.

From James Dolan accusing Charles Oakley of being an alcoholic to the team only being 1.5 games out of having the fifth-best odds in the NBA lottery, per Tankathon, it has been a wild roller coaster ride of on the court and off the court issues for the New York Knicks. And sadly, the dramas of this season can join the long laundry list of issues this organization has faced since James Dolan took over ownership of the team. Mention the names of James Dolan, Isiah Thomas, Jerome James, Eddy Curry, and Andrea Bargnani to Knicks fans and watch them become triggered with a mix of rage and despair. Hell, you can even trigger older Knicks fans by saying “2–18” or “Patrick Ewing’s layup,” and that happened during one of the Knicks’ “golden eras” during the late 80s-early 90s. Quite frankly, it is tough being a Knicks fans.

Unlike during the 2000s, the Knicks are in a much better position moving forward. The team finally has all of their future 1st round picks, cap flexibility despite Noah’s contract (Knicks are currently set to have $24.7 million in max cap space, per Spotrac), and two promising players in Porzingis and Hernangomez. Things aren’t all doom and gloom for the ole Knickerbockers, but fans still have suffered quite a lot since the turn of the century. Hell, it’s still unknown if the Knicks are going to commit to a rebuild around Porzingis or making a playoff push. The trade deadline is this Thursday at 3pm and choosing a direction moving forward is critical for the organization (things may have changed by the time this article has published).

With all of this chaos surrounding the team, Knicks fans have experienced some significant disappointed. This pent-up frustration over a period of time spanning almost two decades has manifested itself into a large group of fans actively rooting against this team in order for them to improve their draft lottery odds and take the long, difficult route of team rebuilding; this notion goes against the core principles of fandom, yet does so with good intentions.

The concept of fandom itself is rather irrational due to it nature; fandom is a one sided relationship where you, and only you, set forth on a journey of emotions and the other party does not necessarily care about your emotional well being. It’s not like Carmelo Anthony or Joakim Noah come by your apartment to apologize for their poor performance on any given night. Jeff Hornacek isn’t texting you the next day to see how you’re feeling after he didn’t manage his timeouts well. Sure, the team addresses the game afterwards in the post-game press conferences, but they are just telling you what you want to hear. It’s like when you tell your partner you’re sorry for not putting away the laundry for the umpteenth time and won’t do it again when you damn well know you’re not actually sorry and you’re going to forget to put away the laundry again next week. All you are doing is trying to avoid a full-blown argument.

But what if I told you that there was a way to root for the Knicks, or any other consistently shitty sports franchise that consistently brings you sorrow night in and night out? What if there is a philosophy that allow you to root for your team without irrational emotions interfering with your judgment and enjoyment of sports entertainment? I know, “irrational emotions” is essentially an oxymoron, but that’s not necessarily the case if you’re a Stoic.

Yes, my friends, you can free yourself from the emotional burdens of fandom by adhering to some key concepts of Stoicism. Now, the philosophy itself is a lot more encompassing than what I am going to discuss. Being a Stoic is a bit more complex than its Urban Dictionary definition (even though it is somewhat accurate):

Someone who does not give a shit about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter. They are the most real people alive.

If you want to learn more about the philosophy, check out the University of Tennessee at Martin’s peer reviewed section on Stoicism on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP).

What I’m going to discuss is the more broad concepts of apatheia (freedom from passion) and eudaimonia (the flourishing life), while relating them to rooting for the New York Knicks or (insert team). The IEP explains that apatheia is “best construed as equanimity [mental calmness] in the face of what the world throws at us: if we apply reason to our experience, we will not be concerned with the things that do not matter, and we will correspondingly rejoice in the things that do matter.”

Regarding eudaimonia, there are two schools of thought within Stoicism on the subject where the main objective in life is cultivating virtue versus seeking moderate pleasure while avoiding pain. A crucial component of eudaimonia was what one school called apatheia and the other called ataraxia. The two terms have similar meanings, but do have their subtle differences. The IEP article on Epictetus ‒ one of the most influential Stoics ‒ defines the two terms below:

apatheia: freedom from passion, a constituent of the eudaimôn life.

ataraxia: imperturbability, literally “without trouble,” sometimes translated as “tranquillity”; a state of mind that is a constituent of the eudaimôn life.

It should be noted that Stoics of the Hellenistic and Roman eras did have a different interpretation of the term “passion” than our contemporary definition, as it did not exactly overlap with the term “emotion.” To say that a Stoic aimed at a passionless life where he or she simply suppressed emotions is a misrepresentation. Rather, the Stoics divided the passions into unhealthy and healthy, with the unhealthy group consisting of pain, fear, craving, and pleasure, and the healthy group consisting of caution, wishing, and joy. Essentially, there are irrational passions with rational counterparts except for pain, which does not have a counterpart. Below is a diagram from the IEP detailing this concept:

A diagram of the Stoic passions via IEP

So, how does this related to the New York Knicks or any other dysfunctional sports franchise? The terms used to describe Knicks fans are primarily the unhealthy passions. Knicks fans feel pain because of years of incompetence from the management and the product they put on the court; fear that management is somehow going to screw up the few bright spots of the organization by not truly committing to a rebuild or even trading their 1st round picks for a player only to keep the team in NBA purgatory; and craving for this current franchise just to be as good as their past glory with Patrick Ewing as the centerpiece. Instead, be cautious of the front office, wish for the team to rebuild around Porzingis via the draft and smart free agent signings, and have joy for when manages to finally turns it around instead of reveling in the pleasure of it. I know this appears to be semantics and parsing of definitions, but these subtle differences allows you to not consistently get caught up in the irrational, unhealthy passions and emotions of fandom.

This leaves us with pain, and dealing with it is quite difficult when it comes to what the New York Knicks have put fans through. It has reached a point where even the very small things like Derrick Rose not passing enough because of his tunnel vision or Porzingis getting into foul trouble truly bother Knicks fans. These small issues just become microcosms of the larger concerns with the organization, whether just or unjust as it may be.

In his article “Indifference is Power,” Larry Wallace may provide a solution to this issue when discussing a “Stoic mind-hack” detailing in a William B. Irvine book titled, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy­ (2009). Wallace writes the following:

By keeping the very worst that can happen in our heads constantly, the Stoics tell us, we immunise ourselves from the dangers of too much so-called ‘positive thinking’, a product of the mind that believes a realistic accounting of the world can lead only to despair. Only by envisioning the bad can we truly appreciate the good; gratitude does not arrive when we take things for granted. It’s precisely this gratitude that leaves us content to cede control of what the world has already removed from our control anyway.

A good number of Knicks fans know the concept very well. Not only is expecting and preparing for the worst to actually occur a practical way to approach life (i.e. this is a principle I live by), this concept of expecting the bad to appreciate the good when it comes to fruition is an ideal way to approach your fandom for the Knicks, the Sacramento Kings (sorry about Boogie Kings fans), the New York Jets, or any terribly managed organization without a recent tradition of winning. The goal is to eventually become indifferent to the things the Knicks do that cause you pain, and according to Wallace, that is where the true power exists:

The truth is, indifference really is a power, selectively applied, and living in such a way is not only eminently possible, with a conscious adoption of certain attitudes, but facilitates a freer, more expansive, more adventurous mode of living. Joy and grief are still there, along with all the other emotions, but they are tempered — and, in their temperance, they are less tyrannical.

Expecting the worse, appreciating the good that occurs, and being indifferent to the so many of the issues the organization faces, whether it is at the micro level of a player’s poor performance in a loss or at the macro level of the team not committing to a direction (preferably a rebuild), is the path Knicks fans should take in order to free themselves of unnecessary pain.

Epictetus has a famous metaphor about a dog leashed to a cart that fits really well here. The cart begins to roll down a hill with the dogs attached to it. The dog can either fight the cart’s movement at every inch, hurting himself and ending up miserable in the process, or the dog can decide to gingerly go along with the cart or hop on it for the ride and enjoy the scenery. There is no use in Knicks fans trying to fight and complain about the incompetence of the organization ‒ it will only lead to pain and misery. It’s much better to hop on the cart that is the New York Knicks and roll down the hill that is each and every current NBA season. Fans should expect and prepare for the cart to eventually crash into a building; but on the off chance that the cart comes to a nice and easy stop right in front of a beautiful beach where you can just sit back and relax for the rest of your days, the chaotic ride will be completely worth it.