I now truly believe curses exist....
I have to say, I've always been skeptical of the whole concept of a curse with regards to sports. I always thought of it as superstitious nonesense.
The Curse of the Bambino the Red Sox have suffered under for almost a century I've always just attributed partly to bad karma and partly to self-fulfilling prophecy, but not a curse. Those just don't exist.
The fact the Chicago White Sox haven't won a World Series since the infamous Black Sox scandal I also dismissed in the same manner I did with the BoSox.
But tonight, I have just witnessed something that has truly changed my opinion of sports curses. Tonight, I witnessed the debacle (from the Dallas fan's point of view) that was the Lakers/Mavericks game.
You couldn't have asked for a better setup. The Lakers, the 3-time defending NBA champions, having struggled even since the return of the other half of their superstar duo in Shaq, host the Mavericks, at 17-1, the best team in the NBA to this point. Now the Lakers, despite struggling, are still an enormously talented team, and have won 23 straight games at home agains the Mavs. 23 STRAIGHT! But the Mavericks have been rolling, with their one loss this season coming against Indiana, the best team in the Easter Conference to this point, when they'd played another game the night before. They were gassed, Indiana was the better team, and the streak ended. But other than that, the Mavs have steamrolled through the 17 other contests they'd won, several against pretty good teams actually, including Detroit, New Jersey, Boston, and Portland.
And tonight, they walk into the Staples Center intent on sending a message. And for the first 3 quarters, they do, bitch-slapping the Lakers up and down the court, leading by 28 at half-time and 30 points overall. They had held the Lakers to 61 points through the end of the third quarter and they themselves had 88, they lead an insanely comftorable 27 points, and the game is, for all intents and purposes, over.
Then, IT happens, and henceforth, I shall refer to the event as IT because there is no other way to explain what happened after this.
The game suddenly becomes a Harlem Globetrotters game, with the Lakers playing the part of the Globetrotters, and the Mavs that of the stooge, destined to lose nomatter what they try.
The Lakers proceed to outscore the Mavericks 44-15, 21 of Kobe's 27 points comes in the fourth quarter. They Lakers shoot somewhere in the range of 90% field goal accuracy, they literally cannot miss. The Mavericks meanwhile, are somewhere in the 10-15% range, they literally can't make a shot if their lives depended on it.
Now, individually, in isolated situations, I can buy these things happening. I can swallow that the highest fucking scoring team in the league can't buy a point if a cheap hooker flaunted it in front of their eyes in a quarter. I can believe an uber-talented, yet-struggling championship team, can be beaten like a red-headed stepchild for 3/4 of a game, only to awaken like a sleeping giant in the last quarter of it. But for BOTH of these things to happen AT THE EXACT SAME TIME, IN THE EXACT SAME GAME, FOR A TEAM THAT'S BEATEN THE OTHER 23 STRAIGHT TIMES AT HOME, AND TO ONE THAT HAD LOST 23 STRAIGHT GAMES TO THAT FRANCHISE?!?
They have a word for this, ladies and gentelemen. And that word is "curse". The Mavericks have now lost 24 STRAIGHT GAMES IN LA, and in this latest one, they have blown the second-largest lead to start a 4th quarter in NBA history.
I'm saying this now, if the Lakers and Mavericks meet in the playoffs this postseason, I'm not going to watch the series unless the Mavericks have home court advantage. Seriously. Because if they don't, then it won't matter if they win all three of their home games because THEY WILL LOSE ALL FOUR GAMES IN LOS ANGELES! And if they do have home court advantage, and they lose a game at home, I'll stop watching too because THEY WILL LOSE ALL THREE GAMES IN LOS ANGELES! It is divine providence, so it has been written, so shall it be.
...OK, I thought that taking the time to write this out would make me feel better. Well, it hasn't. Shit, I think I'm gonna go CS and kill some virtual terrorists. Or go to bed and dream of a world where Harry Frazee never sold Babe Ruth to the Yankee's for a hundred G's, a world where Shoeless Joe Jackson is a proud member of the baseball Hall of Fame, and a world where the Mavericks had won at least one of the last 24 games in Los Angeles. A better place, to be sure...a place where IT never happened.
