Basketball has often been compared to jazz. It is free flowing, in constant motion with different components working together, weaving amongst each other to create a rapturous driving force that moves and elates those involved and those in witness. As scary as many can find it, the state of transition is truly beautiful. It is the cause of all things good. Basketball is a game of constant transition, the word is ingrained in the culture. No other sport requires an athlete to look inside oneself like basketball does, sure there are higher physical risks in other sports but basketball is constant transition. It allows you to get out of it as much as you put into it, the movement of the self for the self. At it's best basketball requires you to share and work together, utilizing your strengths and weaknesses and those of your teammates. You can play with friends or strangers and pick up new understandings of people along the way, the game does not discriminate. You can play alone, which is something no other game offers quite like basketball. One on one sometimes feels like the purest form of the game, but when done right basketball is sharing and moving as part of something bigger. We could learn a lot from this game. It is pure and it is something to truly stand in awe of.
Basketball has been a source of many joys and many sorrows for myself and millions of others. I grew up in San Antonio, home to one professional sports team the Spurs, and as anyone who watched last years finals can understand that was hard to take. I've been a Spurs fan as long as my memory serves me and that was my favorite squad we've ever had. I witnessed the franchise's first championship in 1999 and while that was great and I'll never love a team like that the 2013 finals team was the top of the mountain for me. They were everything I love about basketball epitomized in a team playing against the NBA's favorite villains, as a sports fan there is no higher pinnacle of a narrative that you can hope for.
I remember game seven, I know that it came down to the last minute or forty seconds, but game six was the one. Those games left me wondering if I'd ever watch sports again, what could I hope for out of it after that, the ultimate good had been vanquished, I'd never wanted something I was not actively involved in so bad. Not just for my friends and I, not just for the Spurs, not just San Antonio, not just for the NBA, but for basketball. I had myself convinced that successive Heat championships would cause an eventual power grab among the leagues elite performers, convincing themselves they needed to join with other stars in order to remain competitive, relegating the competition to a few teams while the rest were left to waiver in some purgatory of basketball mediocrity.
While that may still happen, I've realized that doesn't matter. I voraciously consumed basketball over the last four months, hoping if I read enough offseason new. saw enough pro-am games and played enough pick up that I could reduce the space in my mind where game six lived to almost nothing. But you can't do that. The harder you work to forget something the more power you give it, the mind can be such a cruelly beautiful thing sometimes. Game six will always be there, whether I choose to remember some of the specifics or not, the tape will always be up around the court, Ray Allen will always hit that shot and the outcome will always be the same.
But there is hope. We've made it to the next season, a chance to create new memories, enjoy new moments and suffer new loses. In basketball, just as in life, we move on. Live another day. Because just as in basketball life will hand you many joys and sorrows, only the gravity of those things is higher stakes. Sports are that thing which allows us to suffer through our most heart breaking tragedies and champion through the most beautiful victories but at the end of the day know that it is a game allowing us a world in which wins and losses are nothing more. It is a haven and to quote the great one, "basketball has been my refuge". Because ultimately no loss will ever come close to burying a friend and no victory can touch what it means to truly love another person. Enjoy it for what it is and know that it's not going anywhere.
I like this.
ReplyDelete