Tag Archives: basketball

It’s Only Basketball

My first memory of playing sports is a third-grade basketball game where I blocked a classmate from behind. He was taking every shot. I didn’t know the rules—I just knew he was supposed to pass the ball to our team. And I was on that team. Later, my father talked about liking two college teams because of how their coaches coached the right way. I never got behind the more local IU but rooted for Duke because of that for a long time. It wasn’t long after that conversation that my father passed away. I found myself in a new city and new school with no idea of how to talk with guys my age.

Sports was the language that helped a young and hurting boy make connections. Exuberance, pain, unity, anger; I could express all of these things while competing in sports. I also could feel those things while watching along with professional athletes while living vicariously through their accomplishments. Seasons felt like stories, complete with heroes, heartbreak, and high stakes. It wasn’t therapy—but it was the closest thing I had.

My relationship with sports is different now. I don’t need them the same way. I basically only watch disc golf and basketball. I watched the Bucs win the Superbowl. I didn’t cheer because it felt like being a bandwagon fan for my own team. The Braves and Avalanche both won titles around the same time but I wasn’t invested anymore.

The Pacers still hold a special place in my heart. I am not as invested with the wins and loses as I used to be. But I think I’ve been through too many heartbreaks and near misses to ever let them go. The 2024-25 team carried a lot of promise after pushing the champion Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. It took them a while to get going after lingering injuries slowed them but in January they hit their stride. The postseason felt like magic. Haliburton had the offense humming, the defense was physical, and the team was full of guys that never quit. They had improbable comebacks in every round of the playoffs while defeated teams they were considered underdogs against.

Even in the first game of the Finals, the magic continued, with Haliburton hitting yet another game winning shot. This Pacers team felt like they were destined to bring the trophy to Indiana. Fans reflected on past losses to the Bulls, Knicks, and Lakers . And injuries to star players to stop the team from reaching its potential. The awful malice in the palace in Detroit that depleted a team with the best record in the league.

It felt like it was our time. I heard the Morpheus line in my head from the Matrix, “He’s beginning to believe.” Narratives fall in line as teams fail or succeed spectacularly. It felt like this story was the one of the underdog losing for far too long before finally reaching the goal.

By the time Indy pushed the series to game 7, even with an injured star player, I was fully in. Indy looked good to start the game. It didn’t take long for that all to change. Hali’s injury in that first quarter shut down the chance of the storybook postseason having the storybook ending. I couldn’t and still can’t get over how unfair that felt. To try so hard and get so far and in the end?

This one hurt. It wasn’t just the loss of a title so close at hand. It was all the years of heartbreak, the missed opportunities, the bounces that went the other way. It was watching a young man who devoted his efforts into a game that he loves only to have his body let him down in front of millions. It was watching the game that I love, the one I lost due to my knee failing me years before. It was seeing a team that had multiple victories in this run that defied stats and probabilities.

Sometimes sports can be the Cinderella story that defies the odds or of a player finally reaching the mountaintop. But often the real story is messy and beautiful and painful just like real life. Not all losses are as devastating or all wins as euphoric so that they overshadow everything else. This Pacers team ha great accomplishments with memorable moments that will be forever true even if this still hurts. I don’t need sports to fit it and express things any longer. I can just say that this loss hurts. But I’ll be okay. It is only basketball.

Basketball In Heaven

I sure hope there’s basketball in heaven. I hope I’m running fives with all the savvy of an old man and the youthful athleticism of a young buck. Honestly, I hope I have more hops in the afterlife than I ever did hooping it up here on Earth. I really hope I get the chance to express my joy on the court if I am lucky enough to find myself in life after death.

Have you ever, as a full-grown bill-paying adult, thought about what you’d hope to find? Not that regular business about how well the streets are taken care of and which dead loved ones you’d hope to find. Important details but not the point of the exercise. How would you want to be able to spend your time if you had more than all the time in the world?

Man, I’d like to be running the break, pushing the ball up and surveying the defense. I’d love to be making cuts, reversing the ball, making smart passes. Some of those passes would be throwing lobs to Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Some of them would be a little more special, finding my buddy Dave on the move with a pocket pass, letting out a yell as he finishes through contact. I’d also be making chest passes to my dad, who would be firing off jumpers from the elbow. Go ahead and try to wipe the smile off of my face after that kind of assist. Man, I’d be making spin moves on every play. I wouldn’t be spending every day thinking that my joints stop me from not only being physically but emotionally the same person. I wouldn’t be held back by thinking about whether or not I had the juice to move in the way I want to move. I would melt into the joy and poetry found in the beautiful freedom of movement that mesmerized me about the game in the first place. I would find joy in the expression of joy itself. Man, I sure hope there’s basketball in heaven.