I have been v sick

And am just now coming out of it.

Mavs beat the hated Heat 4 games to two.

This post may be terrible, a little loopy, disjointed, etc, ... but after what happened last night I have to get something down.

It is amazing the runs my teams have made over the last dozen or so years.  Sooners football has a National title, four trips to the title game, numerous Big 12 Titles, Sooners basketball made it to the Final Four once and almost made it another time.  The Stars have a Stanley Cup and two trips to the Stanley Cup Finals.  The frickin' Rangers after years of lameness last year won their first ever pennant, losing in the World Serious to the Giants, as I am sure all of you know.

Then last night.

Before Renee & I started dating in 2002, my teams had given me two titles in the last few years, the Sooners in 2000-1, and the Stars in 1998-99.

Then the years of frustration started rolling, to wit:

Sooners make it to Final Four, lose to eventual Champion Carmelo's Syracuse.
USMNT defeats Mexico 2-0 in World Cup, makes it to QFinals in World Cup, loses to Germany 1-0 after outplaying them the entire game.
Sooners make it National Title game, a game they probably did not deserve to play in after getting rocked in the Big 12 Title Game by Kansas St, they lose to LSU.  (Tigers get the Trophy but AP declares USC Champions anyway.)
Sooners make it to National Title Game, we do not have cable at the time and we watch game at local sports bar with Meghan.  We slink out at halftime, Sooners down 35-7.  Final 55-19.  (NCAA vacates USC's Title for numerous violations but once again the AP does not give a shit, USC are still champs.)
Mavericks are up two games to love in NBA Finals but get robbed and let the the refs get in their heads and lose four straight games to the Miami Heat.
Sooners lose to the Longhorns but still get Big 12 Title and lose to Jebus freak, Tim Tebow, in the National Title Game.
USMNT wins Group, loses in first round to Ghana in OT.  (World Cup 2010.)
Texas frickin Rangers beat damn Yankees in ALCS, win their first pennant and are crushed, 4 games to 1 by the SF Giants in the World Serious. 


So many times.  So close, yet so far away.  Renee has been with me for all those heartbreakers.  She is not really big in to sports but carries a really great attitude, having to live with a sports freak like me.  Who knows what she thought about my teams and how their failures to get over the hump reflected on me, personally? Or, if she thought that, at all.  


And then there is my personal relationship with the NBA to consider.  I know, I know.  So many hardcore sports fanatics feel cheated by the the League Commissioners and refs.  (Just talk to any Raiders fan.) And that a lot of that is garbage.  But the NBA had a big scandal.  They punished the one "bad apple", eleven months in jail, and pretty much brushed it under the rug.  But I truly believed the Mavs were robbed in 2006.  David Stern hates Mark Cuban.  (You will notice that David Stern handed the Trophy to the Mavericks' original owner, Donald Carter, and not Cuban last night, presumably at Cuban's request.)  And then after the Warriors humiliation of the Mavs in 2007 (the "bad apple" ref'd one of the games in that series, a Mav road game that they were favored to win) I swore off the NBA for good.  


I had not seen a single NBA game from start to finish until I watched the Mavs against the Heat.  I did not follow the Mavs, at all.  I would check out Blake Griffin, former Sooner, occasionally, all the awesome dunks, and I would sometimes check the sports section to see how the OKC Thunder were doing.  


But my Ranger chat buddies at Baseball Time in Arlington dragged me back in.  I knew how dangerous that could be; how my hopes could be dashed by a v good Heat team (the Heat and Wade again?) or I might be cursing David Stern again.  

Dirk is from Wurzburg.  I've been there, was probably there when he still lived there, 1994.

But we did it.  Moreover, we were the David in this fable.  The Dallas fucking Mavericks had practically the whole country behind them due to King James monumental display of "The Decision" hubris.  The words being used to describe the Mavs Title are:  Heart, Toughness, and Team.  


Dirk gets a Title.  Jet does not have to take the tattoo off.  (There is some lame hubris, too.)  Jason Kidd gets a Title at thirty-eight.  


Of course, everyone is saying the Heat choked.  Of course, everyone is saying LeBron choked, that the Heat lost the Title more than the Mavs won it.  The Mavs and their fans do not care.  Talk talk talk all you want pundits.  The Mavericks are World Champions and finally, one of my teams got over the hump when everything mattered.  


We are the Champs.

(Now, let's go Rangers and keep this great run for Dallas going.)