Just a Friendly Game of Basketball | WILDCARD SESSION

My man got out from three strikes
In the skull but the knife he was carrying was dull
Instead of innings, we have endings
What a fine way to win things
And hot-dog vendors have fun
Sellin you the cat rat and dog on a bun
And when you ask what is all of this called?
It's just a friendly game of baseball.^*

- Large Professor from "Just a Friendly Game of Baseball" (1991, Main Source)

Life is f**kin' hard. Life is even f**kin' harder when you're behind and trying to catch up.

As the Celtics' magnificent comeback Game 5 win over Orlando after being behind by 14 with 8:30 left in the fourth quarter attests, sometimes we're successful in trying to make up for lost time, lost chances or just plain bad luck.

As the Rockets' getting blasted out of the Staples Center by 40 at the hands of the Lakers attests, sometimes we just can't catch up. We may have dug ourselves into too deep in a hole, we may have made half-assed concessions a little too late or the force of the darkness may be just a little too great. We become sucked in by the quicksand of life, getting caught up deeper and deeper into s**t the more we try to wriggle free.

I've always been skeptical of the argument that basketball is just a game. It's a game, but it's not just a part of life, but a metaphor for it as well.


AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Take, for example, Stephon Marbury's one-game (so far) redemption in Game 5. Starbury, after sitting like crap in New York for most of the season and playing like it for the most part after arriving in Boston, he displayed the talent that earned him his moniker, singlehandedly keeping the Celts in the game with a dozen points in a 5 1/2 minute span in the fourth.

Just like Marbury did for at least one game, we can get redemption, transcient or long-lasting, in life. If we can't at a particular moment - well, life goes on.

Even in the worst case scenario does life go on. The Rockets, after a fast start, came out playing such bad basketball that a 14-point deficit was the closest they could get to after falling behind by 19 in the second quarter. After that, the effects from Lakers' size, Kobe Bryant and Houston's own mistakes just snowballed and the Rockets never recovered.

Basically what happened was the freezing over of hell, but still, life goes on. There's a Game 6 to be played - in Houston, no less - and just like life, there are people who respond differently to adversity. We'll see how the Rockets come out.


Basically, whether it's merely testing your mettle - or you're really born and bred into a f**ed up situation, life is a journey, not a destination. We can choose to take each moment in nirvana or despair, or take each moment in stride, feeling intensity of the highs and lows like a vaccine : omnipresent, but never breaking out.

But no matter how you decide to interpret life, it's not my place to judge your modus operandi. All I want to say is that life goes on - just like a friendly game of basketball.

* Props to The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive for the lyrical transcript.