Jon and I became good friends last year, although I’ve known him since high school. I hate to fill the stereotype that LA people only hang out with each other–but somehow it just works out that way.  He is twenty two and I am twenty, and when we were in highschool I thought he was cool because he had a popup restaurant. During this time, him and a few other seniors from his high school were trying to be chefs.  Jon spent the summer interning at Noma, and the rest of his squad were written about in LA magazine and LA weekly.

But, as happens with much art, Jon and the rest of his friends become disenchanted with cooking–it proved to be too much hard work and too little payoff. So, here we are, meeting again in New York, and hitting it off as great friends.  Jon is boyish but he’s also a gossip queen. He’s not super social, but he knows the tea about everyone. Who’s dating who, who broke up with who, what so-and-so really thinks about so-and-so, etc. Jon and I had fun making fun of the flamboyant Angelenos we mutually knew.

Jon and I hit it off so hard, that when April came around this time last year, and every student in NYC was scrambling to find roommates, we thought we could be a good match.   Good friends, but not too good.  Mutual friends, but not too many.  Similar in age, but he was graduating that coming spring–wouldn’t be staying too long.  We had intersecting lives, but presumably not enough to lose my mind.  I was excited. Jon was a good chef, maybe he would cook us dinner I thought.  Presumable too.  The apartment we found we could both afford, and our parents were eager to help us apply. Jon had a TV in storage, something he was graciously willing to put in our living room.  “My friend has an old apple TV box he’d be willing to give us if you’re down,” I said. He gave me a reassuring look: “No no,” he said. “It’s fine. I’m gonna get a PS4 which will be smarter in the end–you don’t have to split it with me because I’ll want it after. The PS4 can download the internet, and all the apps like netflix, HBO, and Hulu alike.  “It’ll be great.”

It’ll be great.

Cut to now.

It’s been roughly 224 days.  Little did we both know, that Jon would soon become fully addicted to not one, but two video games.  Something that wasn’t even in our periphery back then. Something that he didn’t even obtain back then.  The games are called Overwatch and Fortnite.  4 of his best friends from LA, Alex, Charlie, Oliver, and Jack join him on their respective earpieces to chat and communicate about the game, however those aren’t the only folks he’s talking too.  He’s often yelling to strangers, instructing them to protect him assist him, or “GET THE BASTIAN” (whatever that means).

This development has spoiled many things for me overtime.  It’s spoiled my daily moods, when almost each and every time I walk into the building, I hear explosions, yelling, and laughing from down the hall as I get out of the elevator.  It’s spoiled the living room, as its never unoccupied, never not swamped with used napkins, crumbs near the screen as he sits right next to it, shoes, socks, wads of electrical cords that litter the floor.  

It’s also ruined our relationship to a certain extent, and these words are not easy to type.  We don’t talk in the apartment much anymore. I don’t spend time anywhere but my room. For me, its spoiled parts of his personality, which I know are still there.  He doesn’t leave, ever, which translates to lazy.  Though, this wasn’t who he was before, because we used to go on day trips together: to the museum, to a brooklyn park, even to upstate New York or somewhere in Jersey to see the leaves turn colors. He’s no longer interested in past passions, the ones I “thought he was cool for” which I say in the beginning of the story.  I.e. He hates cooking, he thinks it’s lame.

Jon’s also relatively uninterested in the real world. He doesn’t listen to me when I talk, understandably, as he has 5 voices squabbling at once in his ears, and a colorful, strobing screen in front of his eyes.  He doesn’t let real-life invitations pass up his game time, either. There have been moments that a friend and I have come home from a movie in order to meet him at the apartment, to which we’ve sat patiently waiting for him to finish.  When he doesn’t, he’ll swiftly turn to us and say “looks like its not ending anytime soon,” to which we will head right back out the door, and head elsewhere, just to be away from the game.

Jon has told me that the game often reflects his mood on any given day.  If he loses the game, he is not happy for the remainder of the day. If he wins, he is in great spirits.

This story of disillusionment tends to read fairly pitiful.  But it is also lacks my failures. It’s missing my responsibility in the matter. My thoughts-but-never-attempts at trying to change this. When I lay awake at 3 AM to the sound of “Good one Reinhart, you beat the enemy!”  I am haunted with my absence of confrontation. My lack of simple statements like, “the video games have bothered me,” or problem-solving questions like “Can we put this in your room? Can we make a schedule where you play when I’m out?”  Instead, I have merely grown to be passive, quiet. I’m the one who lets it burn, though I still call this a story of disillusionment onto me.

THOUGH. For the amount of flack Jon gets, whether its my passive aggression, or any one of our shared friends’ overt pestering and bullying on the matter, things like “your such a nerd,” or “get off there! It’s a nice day dude” won’t cut it.  Won’t stir change. He plays the game because he wants to. It’s his tv. It’s his PS4. This is a story about disillusionment, because I grew to love a friend, and he grew to love his game.  Now we grow apart, and that’s sad but I’m actually ok.

As a fan you’re conned into thinking that there’s loyalty in sports.  In basketball, when a player is drafted by a team, the team and the fans of that team stakes ownership over that player.  They become a permanent member of the franchise, an irreplaceable element of the “family,” so much so that they themselves, the team, and fans across the board become emotionally attached to that player.  

If you think classically about basketball history, the greatest examples stay faithful to the franchise they were originally drafted into. Maybe I’m biased because I grew up watching the greatest player of all time, Kobe Bryant, stay strong for my hometown team the Los Angeles Lakers.  Through the hardships of 2007, during his tumultuous relationship with his co-leader Shaquille O’Neal, even through rumors he wanted a trade to the Chicago Bulls–Kobe didn’t go. He saw the headlines that called him the “legendary sidekick” that helped Shaq win our rings. He brushed them off. He knew that his skill was unparalleled to what anyone had ever seen before, and that the team couldn’t do what it did without him.  He stayed faithful to his organization because they stayed faithful to him and his abilities. He was three championship rings in, and there was still two to go. Loyalty was his destiny.

This rings true for other basketball legends that Kobe was even going up against during the finals. Tim Duncan for the Spurs, Dirk Nowitzki for the Mavs never left. This kind of allegiance to one’s own team set the standard for me and other basketball fans across the nation, thinking that the best, purest player, had one goal in mind: to be the hero of their city.

So when other players who I grew up watching, who are thought to be so essential to their team leave…all hell breaks loose! Kevin Durant, my beloved OKC Thunder small forward goes to the Golden State Warriors–makes a decision to get the easy championship with a team who is just a game away from being back-to-back champions, a team who is clearly the most dominant in the league, what am I as a fan, left to think? That loyalty is dead? That players don’t care about their roots anymore? Is basketball coming to a point where its no longer about facing losses and working hard to get to that sweet win?  When I hear about KD’s move, or rumors that LeBron is leaving his hometown Cleveland to “head west,” I am suddenly overwhelmed with a disappointment that players just want to combine powers and make a quick win.

But maybe this dualistic way of thinking isn’t good for me as a fan.  Its hard to swallow the fact that players leave, knowing that the best players in my eyes stayed in their lane.  But I can’t shame others for taking charge of their own destiny.  You think about players nowadays like Demarcus Cousins, who was drafted in Sacramento to play Center for the Kings, and who fell in love with the place. So much so, that he said his jersey will hang in the rafters after he “retires in Sacramento.” But the guy was traded after they told him they would keep him.  Same happened to Jimmy Butler on the Chicago Bulls.

The League, in actuality, is a dirty place. It’s one that despite it’s advertisement, puts business before family.  As soon as its bad business to keep a player, they’ll trade him without even saying a proper goodbye.  This leaves fans blaming the player for not being a Kobe, a Duncan, a Nowitzki.  If I’m going to continue to be a basketball fan, I’m going to have to learn that there really is no loyalty.  I can’t hold up these standards, because it limits my ability to appreciate what these players are fighting to do, in any city they can get.