Fantasy Friends

The guys of my generation are hooked on fantasy sports. When it comes to maintaining meaningful relationships into adulthood, that might not be a bad thing.

- By Zak Cheney-Rice

LAST SUMMER, I reached a grudging conclusion about myself: I’d been playing fantasy sports for too long. It had been 12 years since I’d married my love of NBA basketball to a fixation on stats and petty feuds with my friends, which seemed charmingly zany at age 22 but was getting to be exhausting by 34. My enthusiasm had started to wane a few Octobers earlier, between catching my orcish reflection after staying up until 2 a.m. to draft and collapsing into bed to wait for my toddler’s screams to wake me up. The high jinks depicted in The League, FX’s sitcom about fantasy football, used to spark amused recognition. Now they were a warning that my pastime was becoming neurotic.

Somewhere in the course of this realization, I met Martin. He was a drummer from the Bay Area who’d relocated to Los Angeles, my hometown, and had been invited to join my fantasy basketball league by our mutual friend, Jonathan. Jonathan is the league’s commissioner—alternately a benevolent steward who settles disputes and builds consensus around new rules and a menace to my inbox who triumphantly signs emails with “2016 League Champion.” It was a special occasion: the league’s draft, in which we choose players for the upcoming season. The pomp that goes into this yearly event is embarrassing to admit. I remember trying to imagine how it must have looked to Martin, the only first-timer, and couldn’t avoid the takeaway that we were all unhinged, including him for sticking around.