My Arbitrary Rules For Rooting Against A Team:

1. Each year, you may select one Team To Root Against (TTRA)
2. You can only root against one professional sports team per calendar year.
3. Once you publicly declare your TTRA, you must continue to root against that team for the remainder of that season.
4. You are allowed to pick one player on your TTRA that is not considered blameworthy.

In addition, you are allowed to pick one individual player to actively root against. You can change this player as frequently as you wish, but you can’t actively root against more than one player at any given moment….unless you are rooting against your TTRA, in which case you are allowed to root against every player on that team, excepting of course if have allocated one of the members of your TTRA to not be considered blameworthy.

I hereby declare my 2006 TTRA to be the New York Knicks; as such, I will actively root against the New York Knicks for the remainder of the NBA season.

However, please note that I exempt one Knick player, a certain David Lee, from my active dislike of the Knicks. David Lee is not to be considered blameworthy of any actual or perceived Knick failure in the 2006-2007 season.

I am not yet ready to declare which individual player I will actively root against.

As of today, I will also replace my former favorite NBA team, the New York Knicks, with the "upstart" Charlotte Bobcats (The quotes are not intended to show that I am actually quoting anyone, but rather an indication that I am "self-aware" of the fact that the use of the word "upstart" is cliched. In addition, the quotes around the word "self-aware" are intended to indicate that I know that people who think that they are self-aware usually confuse self-awareness with self-absorption. Still, even knowing the pitfalls of the word "self-aware," I used it anyway, which really goes to show how crazy and unpredicable I can be at times, which I argue makes me possibly more annoying in person but probably more likeable in general).

I also publicly predict that the Bobcats will end the 2006-2007 season with a better record than the Knicks.

I haven't yet related why I'm making this switch. And I'm not going to...yet. Mostly because I don't know why. I don't know who to trust anymore. For example: In this yahoo article, the author states that one former teammate compared Marbury to a “a walking rain cloud.” Hearing this made me wish I had a trusted source inside every team, and that before deciding to root for (or against) a given team I could first discuss my decision with my trusted source and see if I agreed with what he had to say about their team dynamic. Is Marbury a walking rain cloud? Who knows? I don’t trust this yahoo source. Or any sports-related op-ed-type source.

I think this is why I like anything written by Malcolm Gladwell or Michael Lewis: I trust them as sources. They've somehow managed to circumnavigate my Rules About Sports-writing Skepticism (Rule #1: always be skeptical). When Lewis declares Joe Morgan to be a bonehead, for example, I believe him.

So until Gladwell or Lewis write something about the Charlotte Bobcats, I’ll be blindly rooting for Morrison and Co.