Ope Pardon, No. 14: Expectations

I had a dream on Friday night that the Warriors got swept by the Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals, which was, not technically speaking, even possible given they had already won one game.

What happened was that I had decided that I would wake up for the 3 a.m. Game 4 tip-off and it didn't happen. I woke up when my alarm went off and thought, "not happening, I'll just watch the second half," and then the next time I woke up it was already the fourth quarter and when I checked the score, the Warriors were up, or maybe they weren't, but in either case I thought, "oh well, what will be will be" and I think I woke up once more, had one more alarm set, and I did see that the Warriors won before going back to sleep for real. Yet something in my brain rewired a bit when I went back to sleep and in my dream the Warriors had lost Game 4 and also retroactively Game 2 and had been swept so I woke up believing the Finals were over the Warriors had lost.

This gentle rewriting of reality in my sleep in and of itself is not notable. My brain does this super chill thing, especially fun when I have too much to drink and my grasp on the previous night's events is already tenuous, where it decides a cool dream scenario would be to run back the exact night I just experienced but change some things. Usually, there is a profound tell —a friend who lives in a different country and belongs to an entirely different friend group is at the party, or a celebrity — but I nonetheless have woken up many times momentarily unsure/mortified/confused before realizing what I am remembering only happened in the dream remake of the night. Anyways, what was notable to me about believing, in that half-awake zone, that the Warriors had been swept, was how at peace I was about the whole thing.

From about 2016 to 2019, every Warriors playoff performance was weighted with nothing short of championship expectations. (To be fair, that will happen when you add Kevin Durant to a 73-win team. It wasn't not warranted!) Maybe it's because I am physically and temporally further removed from the U.S. sports news cycle and I still haven't quite figured out how to consistently follow the NBA here (it's one of the last 2-3 puzzle pieces I have to fit together with this whole living in France thing) but it was my impression that entering and even toward the end of this season, the national expectations for the Warriors were pretty low. Certainly by comparison.

I don't really believe fans who say they're just happy to be there when faced with the possibility of their team getting knocked out of the playoffs (unless they are Knicks fans). When given the choice between winning and losing, we'd all obviously rather our team keep winning. Sure, you can be happy they made it however far, but you'd obviously be happier if they won, and why limit the happiness you ask for from the world?

That said, there is something quite refreshing in the "happy to be here" mentality, at least when it comes with being close enough to the last championship to not feel desperation for the validation of a title but far enough to have lost the super team identity that frames any loss as a catastrophic failure. While, also, of course, still being good enough to make it to the NBA Finals.

(The "close enough to the last championship" here is key because I enter most Michigan basketball seasons with low expectations and, the years they unexpectedly make a March run before being slain by a random white bench-warmer raining 3s, the crush of defeat feels so much worse because I wasn't expecting it but then I let myself believe. Hope! It's a bitch.)

I, of course, want the Warriors to win, but I don't hate the Celtics with the fervor I reserve for the Rockets or Clippers. If the Warriors lose, I will be disappointed, but I don't anticipate the demonstrably dour effect on my mood that past losses have induced.

‎I don't really want to make this about more than a basketball series, but I have been thinking a lot about the power of expectations lately. Having expectations invariably invites the risk that they won't be met. It is, A Thing, apparently, that when people who dream of moving to Paris actually move to Paris, they have a hard time because Paris is, in many ways, a trash city. (Principally in a literal way: There is trash everywhere.) So Parisians like to ask you if the city aligns with your expectations and I never know what to say because the truth is I didn't have any preconceived ideas of what life would be like here on account of thinking through this decision not at all. (I didn't even watch Emily in Paris before I moved!) I genuinely believe this is a reason I have acclimated so easily.

Yet, of course, the challenge (of life, I guess) is to manage your expectations while also maintaining something resembling standards. The cliche of having no (or low) expectations so people (or sports teams) can't let you down is an effective means of avoiding disappointment but at the same time, having expectations is not only a demonstration of self-respect for what you deserve but also a show of faith, trust and investment from you as well.

Recently, my therapist asked me to make a list of what my career, relationships, etc. would look like if I had "the highest expectations" for my life. I responded by taking issue with the phrasing/premise of the question because I have found that the more I adjust my expectations to reality, i.e., lower them, the happier I have been. This isn't to say I don't have standards, just that I don't think it's healthy for me to go into every NBA season expecting a ring, as it were.

As a compulsive planner, it's been hard, but I am trying to be better about letting things develop without expectations, more open-minded about the variety of types of relationships and jobs and trips and experiences you can find. Of letting the season play out while still acknowledging there is a line you can cross at which you become mathematically disqualified from the playoffs (literally and metaphorically).

If the Warriors 2021-22 season is any indication, this is a flawless mentality. The way I feel about these Finals is kind of my goals-level feeling of expectations. I have certain standards for the Warriors — to make the playoffs, for Curry to shoot well, for Draymond to be a net-positive for the team, for Kerr to get over himself and run pick-and-rolls when it counts. I will admit, once it became clear this team was Good, I even expected them to make the Finals. But listen: You don’t live through 2016 and a 50,000 hours of 3-1 jokes without adjusting your expectations, the distillation of which is that this is all just sports and the expectations you have for a sports teams should (theoretically) always have a hard ceiling at "entertainment." The Warriors have entertained me this season (and playoffs) and I'm not overthinking it more than that.

Now if only I could adopt such an enlightened approach to the rest of my life.