I haven’t had a stake in an NBA Conference Finals in 19 years.
Sure, I’ve rooted for and against a few teams over that time, but ultimately, the result didn’t matter. It was a battle between two teams I didn’t truly care about, a series I would dismiss as irrelevant within weeks. My rooting interests had long-since passed.
Sometimes the Blazers had been eliminated before the end of the season. Other times they reached the first round, and on rare occasions, a very short second round. Every year, I accepted that it was more about the journey than the actual result.