I was almost a Lakers fan.
It was 1987, the year before my dad had decided that I needed to be more well-rounded. The year before he bought me my first pack of baseball cards because he knew that statistics would foster my interest in the game. The year before his trick worked, and I gradually became interested in sports as a whole. The year after the Lakers, unbeknownst to me, had eliminated the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Semifinals.
After meandering into the room during one of the Lakers/Celtics games, I realized that I could comb my hair straight back into the style of the Lakers’ outspoken coach, Pat Riley. Not realizing what an insult this was to the Dallas basketball team (or that Dallas even had a basketball team), I rooted for the Lakers based solely on two things: my Pat Riley hair got a laugh, and the Lakers were winning.
The next year (the year of well-rounded and baseball cards and sports puberty) I watched my dad agonize as the Lakers beat a team in green jerseys, but not the same green jerseys as the year before. When I inquired, I was told that the team in green was the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas? Wait, like, Dallas… Texas? We have basketball in Texas?
That was it.
I was in.
I picked a bad time to become a Mavericks fan. They never made it back to the Western Conference Finals during my childhood. In fact, they only made the playoffs once more. But the Mavericks became something more to me than just a team to root for; they became common ground between my dad and I, even when there wasn’t much else.
1993 was the year when I decided to cease all rodeo activities. It was also the year Dad and I watched the Mavericks set the single-season record for consecutive losses (20) and the year after they finished 11-71. Those days, nobody in Reunion arena cared that my Dad bought us the cheapest seats and then walked us down to the front row for the second half. In retrospect, I think they were just happy that the TV broadcast would look less embarrassing.
I know the names (and have cheered for) Martin Müürsepp and Loren Meyer. (and for that matter, Fat Lever and Uwe Blab).
In 1998, my family was reeling from the loss of its youngest son. Dad stuck up for me in the face of a basketball coach who refused to play me. I had a poster in my bedroom that included Ed O’Bannon. Ed O’Bannon!
When the Mavericks resurgence began with the Mark Cuban purchase of the team, I was dropping out of college. By the time we realized that only half of the Wang ZhiZhi/Dirk Nowitzki tandem was going to work out, I was overseas, but I kept up.
I learned to hate the San Antonio Spurs.
in 2006, I didn’t get to see any of the games. I was busy fighting my own personal demons while the Mavericks were creating theirs, coughing up the 2-0 Finals lead to the Miami Heat. But I still checked the scores the next day online. I still called Dad. At the end of the Imogen Heap tour later that year, I celebrated the success by taking my dad to a game (against the Lakers).
While I moved back to Tennessee instead of Texas, got married, and discovered my own life as an adult, The playoff disasters of the late-aughts broke my heart every year. Golden State, New Orleans, Denver, San Antonio… Every year, they got my hopes up, and every year, they found a new way to break my heart. When the Trailblazers outscored us by 20 in that 4th quarter to tie the first round series at two, I admit: I declared myself no longer emotionally invested. I couldn’t handle another early exit.
But I still called Dad after the game 5 win. And after each subsequent win. I yelled at the screen when Bynum knocked Barea to the floor in Game 4 of the Semifinals, but beamed when the sweep was complete. (It had to be the Lakers.)
When Dad went to India for 10 days, I texted him updates at halftime and after every game of the Oklahoma City series. Once he got home, it was again phone calls after every win (and radio silence after every loss.)
And then there were the Finals.
And of course they were against the Miami Heat.
As far as storylines go, there couldn’t have been a more clear hero/villain scenario: Dirk, who had taken less money to stay with my team; Dirk, who said “my heart is here”; Dirk, who I felt a kindred spirit with because he took those playoff collapses harder than anyone; Dirk and his crew of aging veterans, none of whom had won a title with their various teams… against LeBron. Lebron, who left Cleveland. LeBron and Dwyane Wade, who had destroyed us in 2006. Wade, who said flat-out that Dirk’s lack of leadership was the problem that year. LeBron and Wade and Chris Bosh, who flirted with the idea of signing with his hometown Mavericks before deciding that Miami would be the easier path to a ring. LeBron, and Wade, and Bosh, and Erick Dampier, who had been a key part of those Maverick playoff collapses and now stood to get his ring on the backs of this supercollection of stars.
I was so tense that I couldn’t really talk to anyone during the games. I watched most of them with fellow Texan and musician Aaron Long. When Game Two looked out of hand with the 4th quarter ticking away, we were checking our phones, watching the opening acts. When the score got close, we darted backstage. When Dirk orchestrated the comeback, replete with torn tendons in his finger, we were screaming at a laptop streaming the game, ignoring the looks of other musicians in other bands with other histories.
We yelled at the TV for 6 games, but neither of us said much of substance. Our hopes had been picked up only to be gut-slammed too many times. Aaron threw up more than once. But here we were again last night in my living room; both of us standing for nearly the whole fourth quarter, fighting off memories of the ghosts of Avery Johnson and of Don Nelson. Of Josh Howard, Devean George, Devin Harris, Shawn Bradley, Popeye Jones, Chris Anstey, Jamal Mashburn, Jim Jackson, Doug Smith, Adrian Dantley, Roy Tarpley, Kiki Vandeweghe…
So when Dirk walked off the court and into the locker room as the final few seconds of the game ticked away, I got it. It wasn’t a classless move. It was just too much, he had to be alone for a minute. This wasn’t a preening, self-glorifying moment of celebration; this was how someone who grasped the weight of the moment dealt with it. Get alone for a second. Get yourself under composure.
I stepped into my bedroom.
“Heyyyyy congratulations!” my Dad answered…
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