Do You Believe in Miracles?

In the interest of counteracting an overwhelming desire to sulk, here are a couple of great amateur basketball moments.

Once upon a time, Debbie and a dear family friend, Trinh, played for the Florence Nightingale Middle School Nighthawks. Our family went to a Saturday tournament to give them moral support, but we expected to be home early. King Middle School, the tournament favorite, had a roster filled with taller and quicker players; some even honed their ball-handling skills in the Saturday Japanese-American League. What Nightingale lacked in height, they didn’t make up with experience. Some of the Nighthawks even played in tennis shoes. Needless to say, they weren’t supposed to succeed.

If memory serves, Nightingale overachieved and reached the championship game. They were outmatched in terms of skill and physical size, but the other team went cold went cold in the finals, missing lay-ups and getting frustrated. The score was incredibly low, in the teens, I think. In the second half, the game was close and the Nighthawks trailed by a point in the waning seconds. The crowd assumed it was over, but they got the ball back and someone put up a wild shot. Trinh jumped up, avoided the trees, and came down with a rebound in the paint. As she went up for a shot, she was fouled, and the ref blew his whistle. With three seconds on the clock, Trinh was going to the free throw line with a chance to win.

The opposing coach, with predictable gamesmanship, called timeout to ice her. There’s no way a junior high schooler can overcome the pressure, I thought. Maybe, just maybe, she could send the game to overtime. Trinh returned to the line after the timeout and calmly hit the first free throw to tie the game. Impossible! She got the ball back from the ref, bounced it, and sank the second free throw for the lead. We jumped up and down and rushed the court when time expired. Trinh, thanks for the memories. (Note: I spoke with Debbie today and she couldn't remember beating King.  Maybe it was a consolation game. By the way: I'd still trust Trinh to sink free throws in crunch time.)

Finally, this video from two years ago made me choke up. A friend from high school sent it to me the other day. It's a great story about an autistic boy who played an amazing game for his high school team.

Sometimes You Lose

Last night was one of the most painful nights in Laker history, no doubt about it. It was so awful to watch the end of the game that Lucy curled up in my arms. Daniel left the room and tried to watch the Cartoon Network. Caroline said, “Now I remember why I don’t like basketball.” I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night and wondered if it had all been a bad dream. Unfortunately, the Lakers allowed the Celtics to come back from an unprecedented deficit in the NBA Finals. Wow, that smarts. I almost feel like Debbie after Miami lost to Penn State in the national championship game. (She went to her room and slammed the door after Vinny Testaverde threw an interception at the goal line to end a brilliant last minute drive.)

The loss brought back a bunch of bad memories. Maybe I need to forgive Larry Bird for waving the towel and McHale for grabbing Kurt Rambis by the neck and slamming him to the floor. I don’t remember if I cried when the Dodgers lost to Reggie Jackson and the Yankees in 1977, but I cringed when Daniel checked out a book on Mr. October a few months ago. My blood pressure rises when I see Bevo, Vince Young, or burnt orange. (No offense to any UT friends out there...) And I still can’t believe that USC lost to Stanford last year. I know that you win a few, but sometimes it’s true what Maime Trotter says to Galadriel Hopkins near the end of The Great Gilly Hopkins: “All that stuff about happy endings is lies.”