“We Won!” Man Exclaims About Group Of People Who Have Never Met Him

By Meg Reid

CLEVELAND—Throwing his hands in the air while jumping up off his couch, longtime Cleveland Cavaliers fan Gary McKay exclaimed, “We won! We pulled it out!” at the conclusion of Sunday’s Cavaliers’ NBA playoff game against the Miami Heat, referring to the victorious basketball team, of which McKay is not a member.

The Cavaliers, comprised of players who have never met McKay, won a decisive victory against the Heat Sunday, with the final score 121 - 100. The game is the first in a Round 1 best-of-seven tournament, with the winner and the fans who overly identify with the winning team moving on to face the victor of the Indiana Pacers matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks.

“Sammy Buckets put up some numbers for us tonight!” McKay continued, calling Cavaliers guard Sam Merrill by a familiar nickname, despite having never even seen Merrill in person, except maybe once in a Taco Bell drive-through, but he wasn’t sure.

Sports linguist Dr. Lara Norton told End of the Bench that it is common for sports enthusiasts to use first-person plural pronouns to refer to themselves and the team of which they are a fan, even though many have never been so much as in the same city as the actual members of the team.

However, this inclusive language is rarely extended in the other direction. 

“Usually when athletes say ‘we’ or ‘us’ in postgame press conferences they are referring to themselves and their fellow teammates, the people who won the game by actually playing it,” Dr. Norton explained, “not people like McKay, who drank five beers from a reclining position while watching the game on television.”

McKay, still visibly excited about the team’s victory, commented knowingly that “Kanyan must be so proud, especially now that they have another little one at home,” referring to Merrill’s wife Kanyan Ward, who also has no idea who McKay is, much less how many children he has or when they were born.

Despite the apparent disconnect between his language and reality, McKay’s friends and family appeared to genuinely congratulate him on the win. “Hey man, good game, you guys deserved it,” Alex Connell, who has been rooting for the Heat, said to McKay after the game.

At press, McKay’s wife Sarah could be heard telling guests she's “happy for him when his team wins” without noting that McKay is in no way a member of the Cavaliers, nor have any of the actual team members ever acknowledged her husband’s existence.

End of the Bench will have more on this story after we tell everyone that we won.

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