We Lose
Within a week, the Bay Area lost two championships it could have won.
Why does it seem like the Warriors loss hurts more than the Sharks?
By the reasoning we keep getting hammered into us by the long-suffering Cleveland’s, Sharks fans should be hungrier. They’d never been to a Stanley Cup Final, much less won one. The Warriors had won one just last year.
Was it because of the special 73-win season? Was it because we expected the Warriors to win all season, whereas the Sharks were a surprise? Was it because hockey isn’t really one of our big sport leagues like we sometimes say it is?
No, it’s because there is no logic to the psychology of losing. It sucks, no matter what, and every loss is different.
The truth is that this loss shouldn’t hurt as much. This loss should teach the Warriors, rather than destroy them. The Warriors will still grow. This isn’t the 49ers, whose internal collapse was like a bizarro mirror of the Oakland Raiders in 2002, a Super Bowl loss falling to the bottom of the league. How the Sharks will do is a bigger question, with aging stars Marleau and Thornton, and an uncertain core.
But it hurts. I’m pretty much going to stay away from non-baseball sports stuff for the rest of this week.
No one anywhere else in the country is going to cry tears for the Bay Area and its sports teams. The 49ers have had one of the the great NFL dynasties, in its past. The Warriors were all the NBA would talk about until five days ago. The Giants are still in the midst of the even year magic/bull. Other cities have been miserable for a long time, and no one likes a winner when they aren’t the winner.
But Bay Area fans know what it’s like to have lost. We’ve had plenty of practice. Even in the middle of our region’s golden age of sports, the losing hurts.
But we’ll get better. We still have the Giants, after all.
