My ups and downs with the Dallas Mavericks

I was asked to put some fingers to keyboards about my love for the Dallas Mavericks. Here are five days worth of thoughts.

4/20/11

Faith is belief in the unknown. Faith is trusting and putting hope into a possible outcome. And for the past few years, even the most loyal Dallas Mavericks fans have lost a little faith. For what seems like a hundred season,  we Mavs fans have been faced with watching our beloved basketball team falter at the first step. The team will shine in the pre-season, and a thought creeps into our head "maybe this is it." But we instantly squash it, because we know it's far too early. Then regular season games start to fly by and suddenly we are in the win column leaving other teams in the dust. Dirk is posting games with double digit points and rebounds, Jason Terry is sinking 3's, and our backbone, Kidd, is providing an ever present steadiness in the face of a long season. Fans catch themselves saying out loud, "We got this." And then it's play-offs. And we suck. And yes I say we. Because basketball is a community sport, when the Mavs lose, we fans lose to. But even still, after all of the years of shock and disbelief at our lack of playoff winning, I still wear my Mavericks jersey and will proudly walk into any sports bar saying ,"Go Mavs." It is this kind of faith that I believe will win the Dallas Mavericks an NBA championship. We have the talent, the spark, and the desire. Now we just have to finish.

It's round one of the play-offs this year, the Mavs are up 2-0 in a 7 game series. We basically annihilated our opponent last Saturday to try and prove to the world that we belong here. So I leave my fellow fans with this hint of advice. Do it for Dallas, do it for Dirk, do it for yourself. Even in the face of adversity, ya gotta have a little faith.