Sportfiction Interview Series: Who Watches the Eastern Conference Playoffs?
Posted on May 21, 2007
Note: This is the first in a continuing series of interviews we’ve conducted with unique sports fans around the world. The series will continue approximately whenever we feel like continuing it. This interview was conducted last night, in a grungy sports bar in Northeast Philly, with Mario Cortes, the only man in the country who will admit to having watched every game in the NBA’s Eastern Conference playoffs.
Cortes was already at the bar when we called to meet with him. Although it was only 11 AM, he wanted to be able to catch “Cold Pizza,” or whatever it’s called now, to hear Skip Bayless’ take on LeBron James. We skipped that and showed up later—we stopped listening to him when he said Ichiro was a better athlete than Lance Armstrong.
Anyway, we arrived around noon, and Cortes was already on his 5th Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t seem to do anything but watch basketball, purchase multi-colored headbands, and wear said headbands to games for his multiple Rec league basketball teams, for which he plays small forward. Cortes is fairly fit—maybe 10 pounds overweight, which is pretty good for a 45 year old man. He has a nicely maintained goatee, and, by most accounts, appears to be a perfectly well-adjusted, sane person who made a fortune when he sued a carpet company at age 38 in response to what he believed were excessive static shocks that caused him undue pain and suffering, not to mention mental anguish.
He welcomed us politely and told us to sit next to him at the bar. We sat, and the interview began.
Sport is Stranger Than Fiction: So, um, what the hell dude?
Mario Cortes: Whaddya mean?
SISTF: Well, have you really watched every game? Even the Magic-Pistons series?
MC: What’s not to love about Grant Hill?
SISTF: He seems like a nice guy, but we heard his own family didn’t even watch games three and four.
MC: All the more reason to watch, right? If his own family doesn’t support him, someone’s gotta do it. I like that guy, ya know? Plus, he was going back to Auburn Hills to play his old team, and you had Darko there…
SISTF: You watched the games for Darko too?
MC: No one ever talks about him, but he’s playing okay now. Sure, he’s no star, but he’s okay. And Carlos Arroyo has some nice games. The US slept on Arroyo and he made them pay.
SISTF: So, is this some kind of national pride scouting thing, taking one for the team, doing your patriotic duty to watch games no one else watches?
MC: Well, kinda, I guess. I mean, the US is cool. I want them to win and all, but it ain’t really about that. It’s more like—here’s me, and there’s a TV, and the games on, so why not see how Carlos Arroyo’s playing? Read more
