Breaking Down the Most Important GIF in the History of Georgetown Basketball

Allow me to set the stage for you. 

It’s a brisk evening in Brooklyn in late November. November 20th, 2012, to be exact. In Brooklyn, the Barclays Center is hosting a marathon basketball game between a team that used to be really good and another team that used to be really good.

Georgetown lost to #1-ranked Indiana in overtime in the championship game of the 2012 Legends Classic, but the actual basketball isn’t what we’re here to discuss. 

We’ll be talking about this GIF.

If you’re a Georgetown fan, or hell, just a fan of college basketball in general, you’ve probably seen this. It’s iconic. If you wanna feel old, this year marks the 10 year anniversary of this GIF. 

All this time has passed, and yet there has been little analysis of such a seminal moment in the history of Georgetown fandom. That changes now.

_{(All names and descriptions are fictional. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.)}

Kelsey

“WHHOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Screaming feels good. We are witnessing someone scream out all of their stress. As Kelsey unleashes a piercing scream deep from inside, she unleashes her frustration with the lack of an internship offer, her worse-than-expected Ecology midterm grade, and whatever bullshit that’s happening with her course credits. Kelsey feels unburdened.

After she finished with her scream, Kelsey lets out a hearty laugh. “Why did I sweat the small stuff?” she wonders to herself. She takes a moment to ponder the fact that maybe those weird kids from her high school who thought they were werewolves and howled at the moon at night might’ve actually been onto something.

Daniel

Daniel is a preoccupied man. He joins in on the celebration, albeit ever so slightly delayed. He had thrown a pregame for the people on his freshman floor before they got on the buses to Brooklyn. Daniel managed to score some top-notch Mad Dog and blue-raspberry Svedka for the pregame, thanks to an upperclassman who had gone to his high school. However, the only person he really cared about coming to the pregame was the girl who lived a few doors down his New South hallway.

Daniel is the modern-day Jay Gatsby. His Daisy came to the pregame, but only for a few minutes, and it’s been bugging him all afternoon. Around him, the crowd roars: something big just happened. Daniel goes “Oh!” and takes a moment to gather his thoughts. He lets out a “let’s fucking go” and a fistpump. Just like that, he snaps out of it and he’s back to the game. What happened to get the crowd hyped? Daniel has no clue; just like he has no clue with how he’ll pry away his Daisy from her Nick Buchanan.

Cole

I love this guy. To us outsiders, he doesn’t seem entirely sure what he wants to do with his arm, but he goes for it anyway. He’s an Energizer Bunny.

Nothing fazes Cole. Once, he tried the ballsy move of getting into the Tombs with his fake, and when he got rejected, he laughed, dapped up the bouncer, and said “Well, it was worth a shot, right?” Cole’s arm motion is some amalgam of a fistpump and a lassoing motion, perfected over the course of countless hours at Johnny P’s. 

Cole is a fixture at Hoya Blue events: a true ride or die for Georgetown Athletics. In the stands at each game, he whips out this fist pump/lasso hybrid. Unbeknownst to his fellow Hoya Blue members, his ultimate goal at each game he goes to is to get the arm going fast enough, like a helicopter rotor, and if he can whip his arm around enough, he might just be able to take off and fly into the sky. Ten years later, Cole needs Tommy John surgery. When the doctor asked him about any stresses he might have put on his arm, Cole was at a loss for ideas.

Ashley

She’s a trend-setter. She’s the only person in the GIF wearing something that’s not a “We Are Georgetown” shirt or a basketball jersey, and she and her friend Samantha are the only ones who are celebrating by clapping. She’s a little pissed Samantha didn’t get the patriotic Georgetown shirt from the bookstore so they could do matching outfits to the game. But that’s not important. 

What was important was coming up with her Tombs Night playlist. She had all certified bangers on the playlist she had set up on her iPod Nano: “The Motto” by Drake, “Whistle” by Flo Rida, and of course, “Pound The Alarm” by Nicki Minaj. However, Ashley couldn’t help but feel the playlist was incomplete. There wasn’t anything yet that could be the ideal lead-off song to get things going. 

She turns her head to the side: an incredible beat has just come on. This is her white whale, what’s she’s been looking for this whole time: the perfect lead-off song for the playlist. She claps again.

Samantha

I give a lot of props to Samantha. She’s dealing with a man immediately in front of her doing God-knows-what with his arm, and she and her friend Ashley have incredible message discipline to both stay on board with the clapping.

Ashley had been hounding her in her GChat messages for the week leading up to the game to buy some special American shirt from the bookstore to go twinsies at the game, but that seemed like overkill. Besides, the bookstore is a rip off, and Samantha didn’t want to go back there after dropping $100 bucks on a used “Principles of Microeconomics” textbook the week before.

Jonathan

Flex on ‘em. Jonathan’s subtle flexing of the biceps is a different sight amongst the din of the crowd of Georgetown students, but the flex sends its own type of message. When people zig, he zags. He’s a cool cat in his own way, like Miles Davis. 

Kyle

Ah, youthful insouciance. He’s the obvious star of the GIF, and for good reason. His hat is turned backwards, and with the steady hands of an old gunslinger, he unleashes the double bird upon the Hoosiers on national television. Tom Crean and his toupee didn’t know what was coming. Kyle lets out not one, but two hearty “fuck you”s, holding the birds strong all the way. The look on his face is resolute, the fingers unwavering, and the “fuck you”s clear as day. The zeal with which he carries out this endeavor is an inspiration.

This is the face of a man who has been able to put aside all the worries of everyday life and just live in the moment, however fleeting it may be. In its own way, this is a moment of zen.  Many spend their lives looking for inner peace, and in this moment at least, this man has found it.

Some of the people in the GIF may be doctors or lawyers today. I’d imagine, despite the extensive education these hypothetical doctors and lawyers have received, they continue to watch Georgetown games whenever they can. It’s a sickness that sets in among many of us student season-ticket holders, and it never truly leaves us even after we graduate, despite our knowing better. And yet, we couldn’t be happier to watch. 

In many ways, this GIF is a marker of the beginning of the long fall from the zenith of Georgetown basketball’s last decade. 

After the overtime loss to #1 ranked Indiana in the title game of the Legends Classic, Georgetown was ranked in the AP poll the following week at #20, slowly rising over the course of the season to a peak of #5. The Hoyas finished the regular season ranked #8 and with a record of 25-6, enough to put them in the NCAA tournament as a two-seed. 

And disaster struck. 

Since “Dunk City,” it’s been a long, slow, and painful decline for Georgetown basketball. But these people in the GIF weren’t aware of the malaise that would set in upon their beloved team in the following decade. Blissfully unaware.

Each of them was living in the moment as Georgetown was playing #1 Indiana tight down the stretch in the second half, not a care in the world except for basketball. We can only surmise that many of them did not imagine that, at that time, they were living through what would be the peak of Georgetown basketball for the next decade. In that moment though, everything was all right.

Well now everything dies, baby that’s a fact

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back