Hanging In Mid-Air

(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/opinion/indiana-pacers-new-york-knicks-playoff.html

("Knicks vs. Hicks: Let Us Praise Old-Fashioned Contempt")

This is a romantic vision, an ode to a time that no longer exists. Beautifully written, a tribute to an America that is as distant as those glorious (inglorious) Reggie Miller-Spike Lee tete-a-tetes in the last millennium.

Sports, as much as it may seem to the contrary, is not reality. The Knicks and the Pacers are but entertainers. Our devotion to cause, deep as it is, is ephemeral. This year's pain will be almost forgotten by opening tip-off next season. Our differences and disagreements of the moment as fleeting as one series to the next.

While we would like to believe that Knicks vs Hicks could peacefully co-exist in the rest of our universe, we have learned the hard lessons to the contrary. We are all flying elbows and illegal picks now. Our pushing and shoving is fully intended to cause injury and suffering.

We find the goats and the G.O.A.T.s in those we watch. Calamity and greatness moving in tandem. Our hearts and souls invested in the ball hanging in mid-air. But though it serves as metaphor, it is but a dream. And when we awake, our divisions face us, uncompromised and undeniable. And whether the ball finds the bottom of the net or clanks off the rim, does not change us.

The hard truth. Life is not a game