“If you don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning is not very exciting.” - Dick Vermeil

There have been times during sporting events, usually during commercial breaks, time outs, at halftime, when I, having ceased my profanity laced tirade against whichever player, official or coach had earned the brunt of my vitriol that day, there have been times when I ask why I’ve once again allowed myself to become so emotionally invested in an arbitrary children’s game played by grown men making millions of dollars whom I’ve never met. “Why do you put yourself through this?”

Typically, the answer inside my throbbing head is some combination of, “Because you’re an idiot,” and, “Because it’s fun,” both of which are half truths. Vermeil’s nothing-ventured-nothing-gained philosophy probably carries some weight. The more likely answer is that I have no idea. Maybe it’s my father’s fault, or some subconscious need to identify with a group. In any case, it’s a sickness…a gloriously painful sickness. But every once in a while…

“See I’ve been to hell and back so many times
I must admit you kinda bore me” - Ray LaMontagne

This season the Dallas Mavericks, my NBA team by birth, whose history of abject failure and heartbreak had threatened to drive me from sports fandom all together, they sucked me back in one more time. This season, a band of washed-up has-beens and never-could’s tugged at my sports soul just once more to say “Give us another shot.” And I listened. I listened, and I believed because, like most of the players on this squad, I’d been punched in the gut by the basketball gods so often, I figured “What’s the worst they can do to me now?”

More importantly, though, I listened because this was one of those rare occasions where basketball, where a team and a game transcended it’s own contained universe and signified something grander about the world and about me.

“Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.” - John Wooden

The greatest basketball coach who ever lived, John Wooden, regularly spouted truisms about how the game should be played and the translation of those truisms to one’s own life. Hard work. Fairness. Honesty. Character. These are the cornerstones of Coach Wooden’s philosophy on basketball and on living, and they are gospel to those who have followed and read about his career.

Now, I’m not so naive as to think that each and every player on the Dallas Maverick’s 2010-2011 roster perfectly embodies the qualities espoused by Coach Wooden. Jason Terry’s bravado and Deshawn Stevenson’s t-shirt would certainly have been frowned upon by the Wizard of Westwood. The principal players, however: Dirk, Kidd, Tyson and Carlisle are, whether they realize it or not, disciples of John Wooden. The humility and work ethic exhibited by those individuals is the type that only comes from repeatedly falling down, learning and getting up again.

Am I artificially aggrandizing basketball? Maybe. It’s still a silly game, after all, but to me it represents more than that. If you’ll permit my existentialism, these players, coaches and the play of the team as a whole represented to me something larger about our existence and the human condition. They reminded me once again why I care about sports at all. Because it proves that in the long run hard work pays off, that humility is a desirable virtue and that redemption is possible.

“What’s past is prologue.” - William Shakespeare

And so it was that I found myself once again in front of a TV on Sunday night, screaming at the top of my lungs while the Mavericks faced their toughest challenge to date: The Miami Heat, who, rightfully or not, have come to represent all that is wrong with the NBA. They are, as the story goes, pompous, selfish and worst of all, they took a “shortcut” by allegedly colluding to assemble the most talented basketball team to ever take an NBA floor.

In contrast to Dirk, their appointed leader, LeBron James, is a self-entitled, deluded child with more unrealized potential than any player in basketball today. This is a cardinal sin in the bible of Wooden.

They are also the source of the greatest failure in Dallas Mavericks history, a moment that crushed me. But tonight that 2006 Finals loss, the 1st round loss in 2007, and every painful memory of being a fan of this cursed franchise are only perfect moments of failure in a story that’s led up to this night. To this exorcism. To this crowning achievement and testament to goodness.

And we win. And somewhere Coach Wooden is smiling.

“You spend your whole sports-conscious life loving a team; pouring your heart and soul, time and money into them, and every once in a while, if you’re lucky, on a night like last night and in a season like this, they love you back.” -Me