Like absolutely every last person on earth, I hate sweeping generalizations about people.

That’s a joke.

I am going to generalize about people and say few of them would defend fair-weather fans or pretty much fair-weather anything. Even fewer would admit to being a fair-weather fan, but I am going to do just that. In this context, I do not mean “fair weather” in the meteorological sense of “After fair weather the last couple of weeks, fire/black-lung season is right around the corner,” but rather in the sense Merriam-Webster defines as “Loyal only during a time of success.”

Speaking of which, in April, I started paying attention to the Miami Heat again after music writer Ben Salmon, who knows my fair-weather status well, alerted me they’d just eked out a playoff spot. His timing was impeccable. The underdog Heat had just begun a compelling playoff run starting with this season’s No. 1 seed, the Milwaukee Bucks. The Heat were the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, and after beating the Bucks, dispatched the Knicks and Celtics en route to a respectable-enough defeat at the daunting hands of the Denver Nuggets in the finals.

During game five, it became clear the underdog Heat were not coming back in the series. I took deep breaths, kept some perspective, threw nothing. A day or two later, I went back to not thinking about basketball, which is the right of fair-weather fans.

Years ago, I would have shouted, sworn and stalked out of rooms like, frankly, a moron when the Heat lost such a big game. The Heat making a great playoff run that no one saw coming, only to be thwarted by a lumbering center and his excellent teammates? Back when I was an all-weather fan, I would have at least thrown the remote across the couch. Sure, it would land unharmed on a fluffy pillow, but my wife has standards that do not include dimwitted males behaving badly toward inanimate objects.

As someone who would like to be better than my past self — for my health, wife and sanity — being a fair-weather fan is my best shot at it. Besides, resisting the urge to throw the remote is a good habit to get into. Our eventual robot overlords are not going to take kindly to how we treat their brethren if we throw remote controls every time there’s a botched call.

So to my fellow fair-weather fans, I say ignore any critics of your fair-weather behavior just like you ignore that team in the down times: blissfully, unapologetically, with nary a thought.

Being a fair-weather person has other applications. I’m also a fair-weather bike commuter. Should I be ashamed? I’m sure someone thinks so. That still won’t make me want to pony up for a hilly 3-mile bike ride in bike lanes with a wintry mix of snow, ice, gravel that behaves like marbles under my tires, or when it’ll be in the 90s during my ride home.

Do I want to go for a pleasant bike ride when the temperatures are somewhere between 45 and 78? You bet I do. Lately, that’s been twice a week or so. That’s fine by me, but then I’ve accepted that I’m a fair-weather bike commuter.

And when I do ride a bike, am I insufferably smug about getting exercise and reducing vehicular traffic while personally saving the environment?

Of course I am! That’s the unspoken benefit. Even fair-weather riders get to feel superior once in a while.

By all means, be loyal. Be ardent. Be attentive. But when the situation warrants?

Whether it’s a basketball team that has your heart on a yo-yo string, a bike commute in poor conditions or a columnist whose topic isn’t doing it for you, feel free to be a fair-weather whatever.