Hmm. A week or so ago, when talking about basketball with a friend of mine, I was asked, “Which team do you root for, Joel?”

“The Lakers”, I replied, which resulted in my friend giving me a weird, judging look. Involuntarily, I somehow felt the need to justify my support of the Lakers, and I told my friend that I had supported them since the mid 90s when they were a selfish, underperforming team full of promise. I somehow felt better after saying that, as if I had justified my support for the Lakers. But even as I said all that, I knew it was a lie.

Because deep down inside, I really don’t like this current Laker squad. The truth is, I have been a die-hard Laker fan for more than a decade of my 23-year old life. But I somehow can’t say with a straight face that I support this current Laker team. I just can’t. And I’ll tell you why.

Sixteen years ago, I first got to know about these “Lakers” when my Dad bought me the old 1991 Bulls Versus Lakers Sega Genesis game, one of the precursors to today’s NBA Live series. Who was that 6′9 Johnson guy with the strange no-look layup special move from the top of the key that was unstoppable? I didn’t know who they were then, but I sure liked using that team.

In the mid-late 90s, I watched every Laker game I could. That era’s Laker teams were really stacked, with a very strong supporting cast of Elden Campbell, Eddie Jones, Van Exel, Fox, Horry and the like in great shape to contend with Shaq as the centerpiece, and Kobe as the intriguing young star. They were really flashy, full of drama and inevitably underperformed year after year, but I rooted for them just because I hoped that they would somehow get their sh*t together and become a cohesive, great team.

Back then, I played center/power forward for my Raffles Institution Gryphons team since I was big for a 14-year old, and I often tried to emulate a bunch of Shaq’s moves. The night before one Under-14 basketball match, I watched Shaq get pummeled and shoved to the floor on a shot attempt… but as he was on the way down, his body nearly horizontal, he flipped the ball up in a hopeful hook shot that miraculously went in. The next day, I subconsciously did the exact same thing during a basketball match and got the and-one, and I remember my teammates (who had all stayed up late to watch the NBA game themselves) cheering me and heckling me at the same time for my Shaq impersonation. That was one of the best feelings in the world. I was Shaq.

My years of rooting for a flashy, exciting Laker team which really didn’t have a realistic hope of winning it all ended when MJ retired (again), and Phil Jackson brought his brilliance to the Lakers bench. Within months, the selfish and melodramatic Lakers were turned into a cohesive force under his tutelage. I must have watched the 2000 NBA Finals several dozen times to study Reggie Miller’s running-off-screens game (which by then I found myself having to model my own game after, since I had stopped growing and was now a shooting small forward), but I really was rooting for the Lakers throughout. I was so happy when they won it in 2000, having witnessed Kobe’s ascension to the game’s true elite in that Game 4 win after Shaq fouled out, having spent half a decade rooting for a bad team and finally feeling it all pay off.

The Dynasty years were a wonderful time for me. Whatever their off-court antics and Hollywood hijinks, the Dynasty-Era Laker teams were a cruelly efficient and disciplined on-court machine. They were the best; they knew it in their hearts and they worked their butts off to remain that way. Even when the Lakers’ overconfidence got the best of them in the 2001 NBA finals, after being unbeaten in the West and falling to AI’s bloodthirsty Game 1 barrage… they recovered quickly and subsequently put the Sixers away in a brutally clinical fashion. I didn’t care much at all for the glamour and Hollywood-ness of the Lakers; 12 time zones across the globe and below the equator where I was, I was too removed from them to take notice. I just really enjoyed the truly dominant basketball they played at both ends of the floor, which beyond being merely entertaining, was fundamentally sound, great team basketball.

The arrival of GP and the Mailman to the Lakers seemed like a great idea to me. My old teammates still call me “Malone” because I was also a huge Karl Malone fan and was emotionally crushed when they fell twice to the Bulls, doubly so because MJ’s famous “last shot” came as the result of a Malone turnover. My basketball idol on my favourite team? Literally a dream come true for me. Alas, we all know how that Laker team, which fielded 4 Hall-of-Famers – the best PG of the 90s, the best power forward of all time (Duncan doesn’t count; he’s a pivot whatever anyone says), the most dominant center in the league and the Air Apparent – fell to DEEEE-TROIIIT BASKETBALL.

Nonetheless, I still rooted for the Lakers after that star-studded version of the team unravelled. I really enjoyed the Caron Butler years, kept cheering Kobe on through the first few frustrated Shaq-less seasons. Those Laker teams had absolutely no shot of contending for a title, but my years of rooting them on made me feel hopeful that they’d someday get back in it.

Before I knew it, Phil Jackson was back in town. The Lakers, despite having a team full of scrubs, were somehow a low seed in the playoffs again. Twice they met the high-octane Phoenix Suns in the first round, and twice they gave their far-superior opponents a heck of a fight. 81 happened. I cheered and cried for these Lakers, because of their spirit and courage, and because they embodied that never-say-die warrior spirit that the best of people show, as Atticus Finch says, “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

And then the Gasol trade happened, and the Lakers started to win and win again…

Which brings us to today. What’s not to like about this Laker team? They’ve got Kobe, they’ve got the perfect offensive sidekick in Gasol. Lamar. Bynum. Walton and Vujacic and Farmar and everyone else on that very good bench. Sun Yue! On paper, this is the best team in the West – nay, in the League.

I should be full of hope. This is a squad that stormed through the best teams in the West and got to the NBA Finals – without their starting center, and having to play the likes of Vladimir Radmanovic for extended periods. With Bynum back, the Lakers are set to rule the West! They’ll beat the Celtics for sure in 2009!

I should be feeling the same feelings I did in 1999-2000 when Phil first came. After years of playoff futility, the team I’ve supported through thick and thin over the past four or so Shaq-less years finally has a shot at another ring. I should be stupidly optimistic; giddy with excitement.

But I’m not, and I don’t. I can’t root for them anymore. I just can’t. Not because they got humiliated in the Finals and I’m “hopping off the bandwagon”; far from that, because right now, objectively speaking, is a great time to hop onto the Laker bandwagon for you younger / casual fans out there.

No, I can’t root for the Lakers right now because I don’t like their attitude. And it started with the Gasol trade. When the trade happened, I was filled with hope. Before he even played his first game, you just knew that Pau Gasol was the absolute perfect fit for the Lakers. Legit 7-foot low post presence, extremely skilled hands, great mid-range jumper, brilliant basketball IQ… Gasol was the perfect guy to bring the Lakers back into championship contention. I jumped for joy at this miracle, snickered at the Grizzlies’ utter stupidity, and reveled in the early success that the Lakers had with Gasol, who fit in seamlessly as if he’d played in the triangle offense for a decade.

But then something changed. As the wins started to pile up for the Kobe/Gasol-led Lakers last season, I started to feel something different about this team; something that I personally found tremendously off-putting. I couldn’t understand what I felt at the time; I didn’t give it much thought back then, and have thought about it on and off over the summer, and finally today realized what that feeling was. And I know now why I can’t support them.

Ever since they started winning with Gasol, these Lakers have been bleeding a sickening sense of entitlement. They started to act as if they were supposed to win, as if the heavens had aligned themselves as a special favour to them just so that a Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals would happen. As if the League and its fans across the world owed them a trip to the Finals, owed them an NBA championship.

All in all, in the success that followed the Gasol trade, the Lakers started to act as if they had won the chip already. As if the playoffs were over before they actually began; as if steamrolling through everyone that came in their way and then winning the title easily was a foregone conclusion.

(On a side note, this is the same sense of entitlement that threw voters off Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the same smug sense of entitlement that John Mccain now exudes that is making even life-long Republicans turn away from him with distaste.)

The truth is, the NBA and its fans owe these Lakers nothing. They haven’t won a championship yet, so why did they get so cocky, so soon? They entered the Finals as favourites to win – I thought they would – and their overconfidence was their downfall.

So even when the Lakers dramatically snatched back those games on their home court, those critical must-win survival games, causing Laker fanatics the world over to celebrate and pump their fists in the air and go “we can turn this around!”, I really didn’t feel any of that.

Instead, I found myself rooting for the trio of understated and under-appreciated veterans who had collectively toiled for more than 30 years between them with little fanfare and even less success, found myself jumping out of my seat at every valiant Powe hustle play, found myself glued to the screen watching Rondo play his heart out every single second he was on the court.

I found myself hoping that my long-beloved Lakers would lose. And it hurt. Yet I couldn’t help but weep with Kevin Garnett as he broke down in pure joy in front of the world, couldn’t stop smiling at Paul Pierce in his moment of absolute triumph.

So, going into the 2009-2010 NBA season, I find myself unable to root for these Los Angeles Lakers. The team I’ve cheered on for half my life, whose games I have often thrown down all my homework, deadlines or midterms be damned, to catch on TV. The team I’ve loyally defended in a hundred sports arguments, both online and in person. The team whose year-by-year roster since the mid 90’s I can probably recite by heart like a silly Japanese kid knows his Pokemon species.

I’m sorry, Kobe. I’ll always be your guy. But deep down inside, I can’t root for this Laker team. And I can’t claim that I do anymore, not with a clear conscience.

So I won’t.

(Wow. Writing this really, really felt like a writing break-up letter; maybe because it is one, in a sense. I feel like I’ve come clean with my emotions regarding the Lakers – emotions I’d kept under wraps for about six months now – and that I’ve gotten a huge load off my chest. When people ask me which NBA team I’m rooting for, I know what I’m going to say now – and I know I won’t have to awkwardly justify what I said.)