I think maybe "that was a absolutely horrible finish" got interpreted as saying that the win wasn't well earned. That's not how I saw it at all.
I'm not sure how "hope" plays into it but few of the sports I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championship. People are tired or playing injured, and it never occurred to me to believe that this made their performances less amazing.
Off the top of my head the recent Milwaukee Bucks championship was noted as happening in a context where their strongest competitor, the Brooklyn Nets, were catastrophically compromised by injuries. The Cleveland Cavaliers were almost laughably compromised by the loss of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love against the Golden State Warriors in 2015 due to injuries. And then in 2019 it was the Golden State Warriors turn to suffer terrible injuries as they lost in the finals to an improbable underdog in the Toronto Raptors, which spilled over into a lost season for Golden State the following year which created an opening for the Lakers to win it all in the covid shortened 2020 season.
Meanwhile in baseball injuries are so pervasive it's almost a question of which team doesn't suffer injuries.
So I think it's a broadly accurate characterization of sports fandom at least in North America, and it's bizarre to venture into a conversation like this to talk broadly about sports fandom excluding such major examples that speak to this point.
On the contrary, the NBA was one of the sports I had in mind when I made my comment. (frankly I'm not clear which part of that comment you found factually incorrect, such that you would write something like this)
> One of the major narratives of the most recent NBA postseason was how unfortunate it was that the Eastern Conference was so plagued with injuries that it limited the quality of competition, and it frequently has been a major narrative.
I am sure that is a thing a human, or sports journalist, might believe, so, point taken. One certainly could view the "quality of competition" as being "compromised" if the athletes and teams are not functioning tip-top at the end of the season. A person could enjoy watching the competition less as a result. I think my original comment makes it clear that I don't view things that way. I find the fact that someone else might view the matter differently as being... not especially noteworthy?
> Meanwhile in baseball injuries are so pervasive it's almost a question of which team doesn't suffer injuries.
What part of few of the sports I follow allow for contenders to be at the top of their game towards the end of the championship. People are tired or playing injured made you believe I needed to be reminded that people get injured playing baseball? Not upset, just baffled.
Complete strawman. You are one of very few people who think this match was "relatively boring."
>In reality, chess is a fighting contest between two flesh-and-blood humans
And they weren't suggesting that the match was boring so far as I can tell, but more generally, they were responding to your idea that high level play is intellectualized in a way that loses the human touch.
They were using that as an example to illustrate that this distinction, between intellectualized high level play on the one hand, in a human touch on the other, is not something that shows up in the context of the NBA. They were not suggesting this was a description of the chess match between Gukesh and Liren.
It was relatively boring on the level of the momentum shifting back and forth. That is, if you sampled the game every hour, you would find more excitement in the median on some other chess championships. That doesn't make it less impressive or the outcome less inspiring, or the story of the players. Momentum shifting a lot makes for an exciting championship. The 2018 championships between Carlsen & Caruana were much more exciting IMO, despite having a more predictable outcome also IMO.
Now, really none of these championships are boring, unless you start comparing them and introduce the term relatively boring. All the players are playing with spirit, or else they wouldn't be playing at this level. Any perceived methodicalness doesn't make some player too much like an AI.
Of course, not everyone is going to agree with me, and I accept that. I also think that it’s totally fine that Magnus Carlsen stopped participating, but another commenter thinks it’s a travesty. I agree to disagree.