What is ‘What happened to the Game I Love?’ Its origin, explained

We can all get a little bit dramatic at work from time to time. Luckily for most of us, we don’t spend the majority of our time staring down the barrel of meme culture, waiting for it to pull the trigger.

The same can’t be said of former NBA point guard and freshly former ESPN commentator Mark Jackson, who has made a career out of saying stuff in public. Like almost everyone in that general line of work, Jackson woke up one day to discover that he’d accidentally birthed a punchline, and that it was wider reaching than he probably would have preferred. Where once he had game – presumably game that he felt pretty strongly about – now he had none. It’s enough to make you wonder: What happened to the game he loved?

What is ‘What happened to the game I love?’

The meme: “What happened to the game I love?” The origins: Pretty straightforward. 

Mark Jackson was commentating on game two of the Western Conference Finals between the L.A. Lakers and the Denver Nuggets, one of the last professional organizations in the United States to proudly incorporate the word “nugget” in its name. A blown call by a referee handed the Nuggets a free foul shot in the fourth quarter. 

Jackson was irate. Jackson was furious. Jackson was, to hear him tell it, heartbroken. Presumably, he thought back on happier days, remembering simpler times when the Nuggets weren’t handed a free foul shot in the fourth quarter. Girding his emotions, he shook his head – if not literally, then figuratively – and asked, perhaps hypothetically, “What happened to the game I love?”

Its melodrama on point, its earnestness difficult to take seriously, the quote became an instant classic. Fake quote cards hit social media almost immediately. Reappropriations arrived at the speed of sound. The gaming community, bunch of little stinkers that they were, started using the quote to express disappointment in any ill-received announcement or troubling development in games like Call of Duty, Smash Bros., and Animal Rescue Simulator 2. Soon, it was being used to describe unhappiness with anything, game or not: Dialogue in cartoon shows. Less than delicious hoagies. Your least favorite son. 

Today, we live in a postmodern ”What happened to the game I love?” world. The meme, once beautiful and pure, can be used to describe anything, less than a year after its internet debut. It’s enough to make you ask yourself, “what happened to the lightly-bullying meme making fun of a retired Gen X athlete who got carried away one time? Specifically, the one I loved?”