Mavs-Warriors, 2007
http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2007/05/something-else-altogether.html
There's not much left of the old west anymore. Just a few crumbling buildings...
I don't feel well this morning. Not at all. And it is not easy for me to stand tall, not easy to stand at all, in fact, against the incoming tide of Free Darko.
But I will. I will stand and I will wade out into the waters, knowing that as surely as the tide washes in, it will recede.
The Mavericks were my team. They were from my home. You might say that I loved them. I will not bring up the despair of my youth, watching those Mavericks in the early part of the last decade, for that matters little now. This is about this team, this season, this series.
The Mavericks stood for excellence. Perhaps we are all flawed but exuberant, striving for the unlikely upset, dreaming of shedding our shackles and toppling our greatest foe, especially if that foe is ourselves. If that is true (and it is), then Golden State is our team. Moreover, their freedom and their instability screamed out to us of potential. Not just the potential of our own greatness, however momentary, but the potential that the old ways CAN be cast aside and trampled by a revolution. And that is what is heralded on Free Darko - signs of revolution.
And yet... the Mavericks strived, but strived for something different. I see myself in them. They strived for perfection, and in their failing showed how unattainable perfection is. Some might say their failed quest was Sisyphean. And no glory will be noted in their struggle, since the rock they once pushed never reached the summit and is now tumbling down the mountain, gathering speed.
After all, the rock the Mavericks strained against was no virgin boulder. It has been placed atop mountains before. It is said that, at times, Michael Jordan sustained perfection for periods longer than thought possible in this modern era, where the air in the lowlands has grown almost too thick for legends to survive. But I could not relate to Michael Jordan. I was young and his victory seemed assured. These Mavericks tried to scale the heights in the real world, absent of legend, with victory all too uncertain. They risked everything this season. They answered the cries of their critics and the aching of their hearts with a run at the hallowed 70, where only Airness had tread before.
And, as happens to mortals when they leave their realm, they fell. That they were felled by a team that some say signals revolution is not the only tale here.
For when I look in the mirror, I do not see Golden State. I am not a wild talent, capable of blinding flashes of brilliance. I cannot fly, and my bouts of madness deal more with quiet despair than with explosive flamboyance. I am a human, though. A man who does dream of perfection and, occasionally, believes it is attainable. And in leaning out and reaching for it with oustretched arms, risking my balance, risking everything, I realize that I could topple, fall flat, and that the world would point at my fallen figure... and then move on.
