Stories, not sadness

This is a ballad for all the teams that lose in the month of March on that last-second buzzer beater that is extolled so often in happier word and song. This is a pat on the disconsolate back. This is a kind word.

You did good, boys. Or girls. You came so very close. There is a certain amount of fate involved in everything we do and basketball is no different. I know your coach always has said that "You make your own luck," but that isn't always the case. Sometimes there is just plain luck. Bad luck at that.

I know you're going to rip yourselves apart. Two points or one point... that is not very much in a game where points are scored with just about every inhale and exhale. You can look back and see places where you could have scored two more, easily, and where you could have stopped your man from scoring two. You can see, even if no one mentions the fact, that you were responsible for losing the game. This is nonsense.

Tell me: if you had won, if that final shot hadn't dropped for the other guys, would you be thinking of any of the things you are thinking now? Not at all. Never. You played your best, did your best. Watch the other people do their happy dance and then go back to the locker room and take a good shower and have a good cry and go home and turn on the radio.

Tomorrow will come and you'll have a good story to tell. That's what playing these games is all about in the end, the stories to tell.

Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated.

 

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