All it took was a lanky European and three little gunners.
Countless times I’ve tried to get my dad into basketball, and countless times I’ve failed. There isn’t enough defence. I don’t understand the game well enough. I just can’t watch a full game. Hockey’s so much better. We are Canadian after all, and for a Habs fan growing up in the late sixties and seventies, it was always hockey or nothing for my dad. He did have a a little Montreal Expos break coming every summer until the NHL season came back, but that was pretty much it. Basketball didn’t even measure a blip on his sports radar screen.
But then, this year, it finally happened. My dad started to enjoy basketball, and enjoy watching it with me. All it took was a little outside shooting and a little Lebron James beat down.
If you know me or have been reading this blog, you know I’m not exactly the biggest Lebron fan in the world. Clearly, it’s genetic. My dad hates him just as much as I do, and whenever I would try to talk to him about basketball (it was so nice that he pretended to care), he would follow up with his trademark “Are the Heat losing at least?”
Even with all this hate though, I still couldn’t really get my dad to enjoy watching basketball. That is, until this year’s finals.
I knew the transformation was complete when I received a text from him that read: GO DALLAS. Not only was he watching the game, but more importantly, he was watching the game without me. He was watching it on his own time, and not just because I happened to be using the big TV and nothing else was on.
I figured the Lebron loathing aspect factored into this a little bit, but I was nonetheless pleased. It wasn’t the only thing.
My dad fell in love with the Mavs shooting.
Time and time again, he would watch in awe as Jason Terry, or Jason Kidd, or J.J Barea (attack of the J’s!) would calmly step up and nail a three ball with the shot clock winding down. My dad’s always been impressed by the outside shooting of NBA players, but this wasn’t just appreciation anymore; it was excitement.
In reality, I should’ve seen it all along. If there’s one thing my dad loves in sports, it’s the underdog. He loves seeing the little guys take down the big, cocky favourites, and that’s exactly what this series was. For a guy like my dad (or myself for that matter), what could be better than watching 5’9 J.J Barea knock one down in Dwayne Wade’s face, or Jason Kidd hitting a wide open, crowd energy sucking, dagger three pointer on the road.
Moments like these are the reasons that I love basketball, and I probably should have realized that they are probably the same moments that would make my own father love basketball as well.
The day after the famous GO DALLAS text message, we spoke about the previous night’s game. He told me about how incredible those “three little guys” shot the ball, and how amazing Dirk (I guess after enough times of me talking about him, he remembered his name) was.
He talked about how Dallas seemed to have the two best players out there, “Dirk and the little black guy” (that would be Jason Terry). He talked about how Lebron didn’t impress him all that much, and how the Mavericks just looked like the better team.
While watching game six together, my dad said one other thing caught my attention. In the midst of the Mavs fourth quarter barrage, he turned to me and said: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this kind of how the Europeans beat the Dream Team that one time”.
I thought about it for a second and realized that yeah, it kind of was. The Heat were getting beaten the same way the Americans were beaten, and it took a non basketball fan to make me realize it.
Dallas played team oriented ball and shot extremely well, while the Heat’s stars couldn’t find a way to solve the Dallas D. It was 2006 all over again, but this time most of America was cheering for the big, blond European.
My dad was a member of this Dallas cheering section, and a proud member at that. It doesn’t really matter that it might have started as a simple case of Lebron hatred, because it evolved into so much more. It evolved into an admiration and an appreciation of team basketball and shooting that left my dad and I with moments that we will never forget.
So thank you Dirk, Jason (x2) and J.J, and thank you, Lebron, D. Wade and Chris Bosh. You guys gave me the one sports story that not even my hockey loving, basketball indifferent dad could ignore.
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