My father and two brothers are dedicated Chicago Bears fans; the cacophony of halftime analysis, both professional and amateur, soundtracked most of my Sundays until I left for college. Football isn't their only sport of choice though it's arguably the one I understand the most, having spent my adolescent years in the suburbs of Dallas-Fort Worth, where high school football is famously a way of life more than anything else. So while I do not consider myself deeply knowledgeable about professional sports, some crucial information has managed to lodge its way into my brain over the years spent idly on the couch or the bleachers while sports happened in the background.
Offensive and defensive lines, interceptions and sacks: These are all terms that, for me, possess a paradoxically equal amount of familiarity and mystery. Instead, the parts of the game that tended to pique my interest happen off the field in the swirling rumors and gossip that my brothers and father pored over during commercial breaks. Rumors of trades were the most frequent topic of conversation, or at least the ones I cared about the most. Of all the regularly inconvenient features of professional sports—injuries, drafts, post-game interviews—the concept of being traded away at a moment's notice was the one that struck me as the most casually devastating.
Until recently, I largely kept these feelings to myself, convinced I had missed out on something intrinsic that made these trades more bearable for fans and players alike, the same something intrinsic that propels my little brother to spend hours divining meaning from statistics that make my vision blur. But then I was introduced to the Villanova boys. Early this summer, one of my best friends and, until recently, the main source of my adult osmotic sports knowledge, texted me a link to a tweet from someone named Josh Hart. It was a screenshot of a FaceTime call between four grinning men: Hart, Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, and Donte DiVincenzo. "The Knicks just signed a 4th player from Villanova so basically a professional basketball player was reunited with his friends," she wrote. "This is what one of them posted when the trade was announced."
My heart swelled. I immediately replied "oh my god, they look so happy 🥹🥹" followed by "they should focus on reuniting friends when they're trading and drafting." The daughter of a former Georgia Tech head coach, my friend assured me she'd let her father know about my revolutionary new strategy. Unfortunately recent news leads me to believe that my advice hasn't been taken, at least not by the Knicks, who this week traded DiVincenzo and his teammate Julius Randle to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Karl-Anthony Towns. These names mean nothing to me. I didn't register the gravity of this news until my friend texted me Friday night: "I have devastating news. One of the Villanova friends is probably getting traded."
I wasn't the only person heartbroken by this news. Across social media, fans eulogized the end of the all-too-brief Nova Knicks, and I was reminded of the casual caprice that's part and parcel of professional sports. I imagined waking up one day to an email from Tom Ley informing me that I've been kicked out of Defector Slack and have to move to Minnesota. It's true that when the Nova Knicks miss their friends, they can cry into their millions at night, an option not yet available to me. Still, I can't help but get a bit sad when I reflect on how short lived the the joy captured in that FaceTime screenshot was.
I thought this was the sentimentality of the amateur, but then I ran this idea by my Defector colleagues and was immediately inundated with years and years of heartbreaking trades, each tear spilled on camera filling me with grief, then vindication. David Roth offered up a (later canceled) trade that apparently changed the history of baseball: Wilmer Flores finding out he was traded during a game, and getting emotional on the field. Chris Thompson sent this video, an interview of Joey Loperfido after being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays; I watched it with tissue at hand.
But the two that really got me were interviews with the Washington Commanders' Zach Ertz and former New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, sent by Barry Petchesky and Lauren Theisen, respectively.
By the end of the conversation, I was reminded of another of my long-held but seldom-spoken beliefs—that being a sports fan requires a bit of emotional masochism. I'm sure, at times, it pays off. The joy I felt at the Nova Knicks was real, after all. What I'm less sure of is if I'll sign up for that kind of heartbreak again.
