While growing up rooting for the Showtime Lakers I was an admittedly spoiled — and somewhat delusional — basketball fan.
Don’t get me wrong, watching the team win and, well, lose as much as they did (remember, those teams went 5-4 in the NBA Finals) left me with a healthy appreciation for how hard it was to be the last team standing, and all that went into a title-winning season. But rooting for that team also exposed me to an alternate reality not available to most fans; to an environment in which so many of the players were, to put it simply, overqualified for the roles they were playing on those teams.