Lakers Win = Fans Riot. Why?

Can somebody explain this to me? Because a team wearing one color uniform scores more points and wins four games in a seven game series against a team wearing a different color uniform people living in the city whose name appears on the winning team's jersey have reason to go on a rampage of wanton destruction.

Why?

Why does Shaquille O'Neal averaging 38 points a game in the finals inspire someone to smash a TV news van or police car to bits?

Why?

Why does Kobe Bryant's steady play despite an unsteady ankle make someone want to burn a car?

Why?

I've never understood this. It's not limited to Los Angeles. The Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" teams were nothing compared to the bad boys who roamed the streets when the Pistons won their consecutive titles.

It's not limited to pro sports. Places like Lexington, Kentucky and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, fairly mellow places for the most part, become havens for drunken rudeness on the occasions that their teams take home NCAA titles.

It's enough for civilized communities to wish their teams would make it almost all the way but lose at the end just to spare themselves, their homes and their businesses the risk of being senselessly destroyed by senseless morons who get too drunk and too stupid.

Don't get me wrong, I like to celebrate. When my favorite teams win I jump up and down, hoot and holler, and generally carry on with mindless abandon. But it never occurs to me to go out and vandalize something or set something on fire.

Why? Is it something I'm doing wrong? If I found myself in a big enough crowd of people and thought nobody would know, would I want to destroy something just because I could get away with it?

I think not. But I also think that I could live happily if no team in my hometown ever won a major championship. I'd much rather fathom the agony of defeat than endure the agony of victory that might ensue.

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