The how and why of sports fandom is consistently fascinating to me. Probably because, as a longtime (now former) Cleveland Browns fan who isn’t from Cleveland and hung with that team through some truly embarrassing years, I was constantly asked how and why I rooted for them. Since I had to tell the backstory of my allegiance so many times, I developed an interest in everyone else’s.

A few weeks ago, I took one of my sons to Lids. He’s 4 years old. The only “favorite team” he has right now is the Paw Patrol, so I wanted to see what he would do after I told him he could pick any hat out of a store with hundreds of choices. After sifting through a lot of teams with animal mascots, he landed on the Chicago Bears. Did I just witness the origin story of a kid finding his favorite NFL team? Or was it nothing more than a kid who loves animals finding an animal to put on his head? Now I have to monitor the situation — and be prepared to buy a pint-sized Caleb Williams jersey if need be.

If it was as easy as picking the hat with the coolest mascot, I wonder which teams would be my favorites. Instead, last year I did a whole deep dive into my fandom and went through a thoughtful process of choosing teams to root for. It was part of a midlife-crisis-adjacent sports reset. Some things didn’t change — the Seattle Storm, Seattle Kraken, Seattle Mariners, and Seattle U basketball teams kept their roster spots — but I did adopt the Las Vegas Raiders and UNLV basketball as new additions, plus I brought Notre Dame football back for a fan reunion.

When it came time to find a new NBA team, I noted that it would be more like a rental agreement than a permanent purchase. I was assuming that when (if?) the NBA finally grants Seattle an expansion team, I’ll reunite with the Supersonics that I grew up on before they left town in 2008. But I still wanted to have a rooting interest in the meantime, even if it was for only a couple of years. I eventually chose the Houston Rockets.

Well, as it goes with a rental, with the one-year mark approaching, you have to decide whether you’ll renew your lease or find something new.

I’m leaning toward something new.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the Rockets. In the first post-tank season of their post-James Harden rebuild, the 2023-24 Rockets were fun to watch, and surprisingly competitive. Fred VanVleet became my favorite player on the team, with his undrafted-underdog scrappiness and clutch shot-making. I liked Jalen Green’s explosiveness; Jabari Smith Jr.’s potential; Alperen Sengun’s offensive brilliance; Amen Thompson’s two-way playmaking; Dillon Brooks’ confrontational intensity. The Rockets played some great games and beat some good teams along the way, and they were on the brink of making it into the postseason play-in tournament before coming up short at the end.

But something was missing. I didn’t feel an authentic connection to the Rockets. It was forced. I thought it was enough that two of my favorite basketball players — including my all-time favorite player — used to be Rockets. Even as much as I loved that the Rockets were the first franchise that I’d seen host a Muslim Faith & Family Night, I didn’t feel like a real fan.

The team choices that did stick for me, I think, stuck because I had a real connection: the Mariners, Kraken, and Storm are my hometown teams. The Raiders represent the city where I’ve lived for three years now and built a home. Seattle U is my alma mater, while UNLV is my fiancée’s alma mater. With Notre Dame, there’s the nostalgic pull of the Irish being my favorite team when as a kid.

The Rockets don’t have anything like that for me. There’s no familial, regional, or otherwise obvious link. My favorite-player ties to Tracy McGrady and Harden aren’t as strong, given that T-Mac is retired, and it appears Harden will retire with his actual hometown L.A. Clippers rather than his adopted hometown Rockets. I can remember when the Rockets reached their peak as a franchise, winning back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995 — and I can remember that, as a kid, I was rooting for their opponents (the Knicks and Orlando) in both of those Finals series. You feel like an imposter saying a team is your favorite when you weren’t even happy for them at their highest height.

So I was thinking that maybe it was best to go back to what I’d been doing with the NBA for the last 15 years, sans Sonics; not have a favorite team and just root for my favorite individual players, wherever they bounce around the league: at the moment that would include Trae Young and the Hawks, LeBron James and the Lakers, Harden and the Clippers, Ben Simmons and the Nets (seriously, I love his game when his mind and body are functioning properly). I could just wait until the Sonics return to Seattle, or until Vegas gets an expansion team, and become a real fan then.

But another thing happened over the course of this past season that I didn’t expect — I found myself gravitating to a team with which I did have some kind of connection: the Charlotte Hornets.

Clearly, it’s not a bandwagon choice; the Hornets have been one of the worst teams in the league for much of the last decade. They’ve made a total of 10 playoff appearances in their history, making it out of the first round in just four of those trips. They’ve never been to the conference finals. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2016.

There are some former Hornets that I liked — Kemba Walker, Muggsy Bogues, Larry Johnson off the top — but that element wasn’t enough to keep me invested in the Rockets. And I’m not necessarily a big fan of anyone on Charlotte’s current roster: LaMelo Ball is nice, Brandon Miller is going to be really good, Nick Smith Jr. and Amari Bailey were high school phenoms that I followed before they were pros, and Cody Martin is a twin (as a #TwinDad, that matters); but for me there’s really not one appointment-viewing Hornet. (And yet one thing I’ve always said: It’s truly your team when you root for them no matter who’s on the roster.)

The pull that the Hornets have isn’t something I can force or control. Most likely it’s because I have close family in the Charlotte area (although they’re not really Hornets fans), I’ve actually spent time in Charlotte, and a few different times in recent years I came very close to moving to Charlotte before and even after settling in Vegas.

While the Rockets (41-41) were battling in the West for a playoff spot this past season, I was watching them on NBA League Pass just as much as I was watching the Hornets (21-61) plummet into the basement of the East. When the offseason began, I found myself paying more attention to Charlotte’s coaching search, their draft, and their free agency more than I paid attention to anything the Rockets were doing. (I’ve definitely studied more film on Tidjane Salaun than Reed Sheppard.)

The surface stuff is there, too. I like Charlotte’s uniforms, the gear, the mascot, the nickname. Some of their alternate unis and court designs are ugly, but that’s almost every NBA team these days. I like that Michael Jordan is still involved with the franchise. (MJ’s 23XI racing team is my favorite NASCAR outfit.) The Hornets were the last NBA team to have a Black majority owner (Jordan, from 2010 to 2023) and also the first team to have a Black majority owner (Robert L. Johnson, from 2002 to 2010, back when they were the Charlotte Bobcats). Earlier this year, the Hornets became the first team to have a Black head coach, general manager, assistant general manager, and president. That kind of representation matters.

But embracing a team has to go beyond the names on the roster, the faces in the front office, or the colors of the uniform. One thing I’ve learned during the past year is that you can’t manufacture the intangibles that are often the best things about being a sports fan. Sometimes it just has to feel right, even if there’s no good reason.