Nothing is Lost - Part 1

This is a 3 part post that I originally posted on Dallasbasketball.com.  The first was created the day before game 5.  The second the day before game 6, and the third came the day after the Spurs ended the Mavs' season.

Part 1

Undying hope in the face of constant disappointment, such is the story of a Mavs fan. 

We sit on the eve of what could be the end of another Mavs season closing in an all too accustomed manner of frustration, much as all but one other team’s fans will endure.   Nothing is over, but like a man pressing into the last sheets he’ll ever rest upon, this is a time of forced intro-and-retrospection, a time to not shun the fading embers of hope, but to embrace them.

Fielding what is undeniably one of their best roster’s in their tortured history of what is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades, a history where close does not matter, the Mavs seemed primed for a playoff run and were paraded as a realistic threat to the “mighty” Lakers.  Our hope was fed, dark corners of our fandom once again found the light, and optimism was passed off as an acceptable perspective.

Now, as the lights flicker and hemorrhage and threaten to blink into the darkness of another season bound to the past, drowned in the pool of failure, that hope has been strangled, beaten, and shat upon…..but has yet to stop breathing.   Doubt and pessimism have siphoned the blood from it, but at this very moment, they’ve yet to quiet it’s faint pulse, to devour every last drop.

Doctor’s have read the statistics in the veins of the past, and given the Mavs a 4% chance of survival.  Still, they’ve failed to pronounce us, the fans, and our hope, as deceased. 

The night has fallen, and the sun been chained, but still that pulse paces on through the dark, at least for this one last night.  Where the shores and depths of tomorrow’s end lead cannot be promised with complete certainty, and in that moment of doubt breathes one last opportunity to grasp fate by the throat and embrace its undefined destination for this journey, and for the Mavs to impose their will with a ferocity that has remained hidden in the receding hopes of their fans.

Nothing is over, as long as that pulse of life pushes on, tomorrow could grant its greatest gift, another tomorrow.

Tomorrow, if this season finds its end, we’ll mourn its loss and begin the process of moving on…..of moving on with more tools for improvement than possessed in any of the recent summers, but until that moment when the heart stops and the veins go dry, nothing is over. 

Hope, no matter how faint, is not dead.  Nothing is over.

Go Mavs.