The day reads 2nd September 2020. OKC Thunder. Houston Rockets. Game 7. The ball is inbounded and finds the hands of Lu Dort. The 3 is up…and blocked by Harden as time expires. A fourth straight 1st round exit, yet as OKC trudged off the NBA Bubble stage, that familiar feeling of resignation and dormancy were replaced by optimism and a sense of boundless possibility, inspired by the culmination of a fresh core of young talent that were due their time in the spotlight sooner rather than later.

Fast forward five years and you’re now presented with the burgeoning dynasty that is the OKC Thunder. A modern powerhouse built on the backbone of adversity, grit and the onerous nature of our results-oriented NBA, which has contributed to the downfall of unfulfilled hypotheses and dreams. The Thunder in their prosperity, however, have now become a franchise that suffers from their success, constructed in arduous honesty, honour and humility but cut down by the spite of the neutral, subverting the authenticity of their players and attributing those traits to arrogance and cockiness.

The opposition to the Thunder that materialised from their ethos don’t exist as an isolated occurrence in tales of success in sports. The Golden State Warriors from 2015-2019. Tom Brady’s Patriots. Pep Guardiola’s Man City. In all these cases of sustained success, there comes a discernible point where common feelings of affection converge into a semantic symphony of distasteful narratives and remarks, despite the nature of that success being sustained by the same ideology that existed before it was tangible.

It can be easy to ascribe this phenomenon as something as simple as “envy”, and while that does play a role in reactions to successful teams, it struggles to explain why neutral observers get tired with the presence of sustained excellence.

The sentiment towards the similarly attainable success of peers suffers from the condensed, simplistic explanations of psychologically impacted phenomena. Essentially, “envy” and “jealousy” are far too concise terms for emotions that focus more on social comparison and hedonic adaptation and while some choose to assert the aforementioned terms, I choose to believe that the discomfort the neutral fan experiences with the existence of persistent success illuminates our socially othered urges of hedonism and indulgence.

I found this to be best complimented by Berlyne’s ‘Optimal Arousal Theory’, which describes how people can find excitement and adrenaline in the presence of controlled chaos. Overwhelming ease and security bring boredom. Unabashed volatility brings fear and discomfort, yet situations irrespective of paradigmatic shifts bring the sweet spot of uncertainty.

The OKC Thunder in their underdog period epitomised this idea. Their hard-nosed style of play balanced elegantly with the smooth suaveness of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s handle and in their non-threat status, both were praised. They were good enough to be appreciated but not good enough for those attributes to be stigmatised and while this was fine for a 44-win team on the rise in 2021, that sympathy would soon disappear with their ascendance up the Western Conference from 2024 onwards.

The same team. The same players. The same coaching staff but a completely different attitude. This is the boredom that Berlyne’s theory exacerbates, where the fear of our escape starts to possess the same monotonous patterns that our regular lives do, and in the uncertainty of stability turned threat, our brain finds the oppositional attractive force that stimulates the uncertainty we crave.

This is the crux of the hate. It’s a bottomless, directionless distaste born from the embers of ennui and in that disinterest is where Berlyne’s theory finds its effervescence. That boredom goes on to breed excitement. The desensitisation brought by ease goes on to inspire vigour, and in the cyclical pattern of dopamine cravings and emptiness will come another team, rebuilt organically with a refreshing style of play that will suffer the wrath of viewer fatigue and apathy.

In my research I came across a question that Aristotle was posed with which ended up forming the crux of this article, “Do we prize life for pleasure or pleasure for life?” where Eudoxus claims that pleasure makes life good while Speusippus argues that pleasure is valuable because it’s a part of a “good” life. Aristotle retorts, “Pleasure completes the activity”. It’s not the core or the reason as to why we should do things but instead is a self-beneficiary for the good things we do. So, when we enter that region of boredom, instead of allowing hastiness and the pursuit of pleasure blind us from brilliance, find the solace to indulge in it, be comfortable and learn from it.