Pippen Ain't Easy
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Chicago Bulls: The Difficulty of Watching Playoff Games After Their Exit

By Nick Jordan

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The past month of watching basketball has felt bizarre.

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It still was a normal routine to me, just one with an abnormal variation—like eating food left-handed or washing my hands with soap before water. The thought of a game at night still held a reservation in the preoccupation center of my mind during the day, but my motivations for such thought have been hindered.

I wasn’t enjoying basketball during the 2015 NBA Playoffs like I always have had. I didn’t believe it was because the Bulls were eliminated. The past few seasons I have loved watching basketball even without Chicago, nothing should have changed this year.

But it did. I stopped enjoying basketball after the Bulls were gone.

I know I should have been enthralled by the Finals. It featured an all-time entertaining team against the King of Compelling. The two teams played contrasting styles, along with a David versus Goliath narrative, and the urgency level of all involved parties was extraordinary. It shouldn’t take persuasion to get anyone, much less a sports journalist, to sit in front of the TV and watch that. Persuasion is what I forced upon myself to watch the games. My attempts failed.

You know the truth by the way it feels.

When in doubt about anything, I repeat that phrase, probably from an elementary school textbook, to myself. It sounds so trivial, but has literally guided a huge portion of my life. It’s not rational to live your life by a phrase, much less one that discourages logic, however, as it says, everything I do feels right.

If I had just followed logic, I would probably be in an office doing engineering work instead of watching basketball. Everyone has always told me how lucky I am to be able to go to college and choose any profession I want. They say I should choose a career that pays well and will be hiring in the future.

I never listen.

I always think if I chose what I love to do, I’ll will my way to a job. I do not want to spend one-fourth of my existence on earth not loving what I am doing. I’ll take the chance I can never find a job. I know that is a part of living. Gambling your life on what you love? I am convinced that is living. The only catch is I have to really love this, a notion that has come into question recently during these playoffs.

I decided, probably around the time Tom Thibodeau was hired, I was no longer going to enjoy a team more than a sport. The love of teams is what originally got me into sports, but at that point I figured I could no longer just be in sports. I had to figure out ways to make a living off of sports. I felt I needed to sacrifice biased fandom for objective reporting and commentary if I actually wanted people to listen to what I had to say. Every year since that declaration the Bulls would lose and I would stay strong in the support of the game. I thought I had accomplished my decision until this year. The elimination was overbearing. I wasn’t able to watch basketball without the Bulls.

I could not ignore the scars the Bulls left on me this season. The Cavaliers rolled through everyone in the East, including the Bulls, with ease. The Bulls team was healthy as a Bulls team coached under Thibodeau could get, and all the players were playing near their peaks. The rest of the East was poor and the Cavaliers had lost some of their stars. The window was aligned for Chicago to snatch a Finals appearance. The Bulls missed their chance.

It had been over a month since the Bulls were eliminated, yet I was still venting to myself about Chicago instead of enjoying other games. Words are a result of thoughts, and thoughts are a result of feelings. I never fight my feelings. I didn’t feel like basketball during these playoffs. Someone who wants to be a sports journalist—at least a good one—can’t just “not feel” like basketball. I was at a crisis.

I tried to ignore what my brain was telling me during these Finals. I told myself to carve out three hours at night to sit in front of the television and enjoy basketball, yet I couldn’t. (Too much Bulls bereavement.)

Constantly I was checking my phone, daydreaming, or tapping my fingers on my leg. It was if I was sitting through a class waiting for the bell to ring. I was doing this by my choosing, but fighting the urge to do so. The root of my problem became a conflict between following my phrase and following my career. I became extremely angry with myself: “You watched every regular season Bulls game this year and you can’t sit through a Finals game? A game that features the best player in the world against the most entertaining team of the past five seasons?”

Feb 21, 2015; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Bulls guard Jimmy Butler (21), center Joakim Noah (13), and guard Derrick Rose (1) during the second half against the Phoenix Suns at the United Center. The Bulls won 112-107. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

The self-criticism led to an ever-reoccurring rationalization of my situation: You’re 20 years old. You are going into your junior of college, which costs you’re parents tens of thousands of dollars every year. You are consciously choosing to spend that money to get a degree in an industry that some predict won’t exist in a decade.

In case you forget this fact, just wait for the next ten people you inform what you want to get a degree in, at least three of them will remind you. You spend much more time than you’re peers pursuing other degrees making a name for yourself, but, unlike them, are receiving no compensation for such. You made the decision to follow this career.

It was your choice to turn down more money in easier industries. This simple choice you made at 18 is going to profoundly affect the rest of your life. You especially want to send your future children to college, yet are consciously pursuing a career that dramatically reduces you’re opportunity to do so. You may need to stop making decisions based on feelings.

An incensing command, which has been uttered ubiquitously by teachers, relatives, and friends over the past over the past five years, plays over once again in my head: “Why are you doing journalism, Nick? You have always been a math guy. Engineering is like the fastest growing industry in America and journalism is virtually the opposite. If anyone can put two and two together it’s you.”

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    • It usually takes me a second to ponder a response, during which time my inquirer thinks he or she is actually going to cause me to switch my career path. But then I think back to all the crappy part-time jobs in my life and how miserable I have been during them. I think about how everyone I worked with looked to me as either miserable or faking happiness. I think about how, even when I got paid from these jobs and had more money than my friends, I was still unhappy knowing I had to go back to the same place to receive more money. I hate those places.

    I don’t understand how people can spend one-third of their existence hating what they do. I can’t be one of those people. I have to find what I love. I start to think about sports.

    The truth is the Bulls ruined the rest of the playoffs for me. Conflict of interest, I am attributing it to. The difference this year, I guess, is I really believed the Bulls should have made the Finals. In years past I enjoyed them, but didn’t realistically believe in them. I have to get to a point where even when I team I truly believe in gets bounced, I can still follow the sport objectively. I’m not there yet, but I’m working every single day to get to that point.

    I guess that is what the offseason is for.

    Next: Ranking the best Finals victories for the Bulls in franchise history

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