Brookhaven Courier

Issue date: 4/2/07 Section: Sports

I remember feeling frustration, sadness and anger in late June of 2006. I'm an avid ESPN viewer, and couldn't even bring myself to turn on the station. I honestly felt like crying.

The cause of my sadness was my Dallas Mavericks had lost four consecutive games to the Miami Heat to lose the NBA Finals (I say my because that's how I look at my favorite sports teams).

Dallas won the first two games of a seven-game series, but completely shut down after.

They were leading the third game by 13 points in the fourth quarter when they decided to take a mental and physical break. After all that time I invested in watching those boys, I felt cheated.

Now, I love basketball and sports for that matter, so the time wasn't actually wasted. It just hurt when the team I've watched my whole life finally got a chance to win a championship and blew it.

I know it sounds silly, but I was in a complete state of shock. It was like my fat cat Darwin just died.

Dallas currently has the best record in the league and the team looks like the lead contender for the title.

They have had three winning streaks of more than 10 games, and have looked unstoppable at times.

As a fan I'm excited about the way the team's playing, but as a realistic basketball fan I can't help but feel a little worried.

The NBA playoffs are a long and arduous string of seven-game series. They start in late April and don't end until late June.

Dallas will have to go through the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs just to get the chance to return to the finals.

All three teams are in the Western Conference, and hold the three best records in the entire league. If Dallas ends up beating these two and making it to the title series, I just hope they have enough left to win.

Now I want to be optimistic. I want to look at the glass as half full, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Anything can happen in sports, and in the case of the Mavericks something always does.

For some reason, for the entire span of the team's existence, something always kicks us in the butt.

We get an important player hurt at an inopportune time, we fall asleep after winning two games or we just never have a chance to win.

We finally have an elite player in Dirk Nowitzki, a great supporting cast with players like Josh Howard, Jason Terry and last year's coach of the year Avery Johnson.

Things look promising for Dallas; I just hope and wish and pray (OK maybe not pray) that if we have the chance to finish off a team in the finals, we just do it.

Let's be like Nike.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools