Something crazy happened this weekend. I have been blessed in ways most of my college and high school friends have not. Sure I have an incredibly encouraging, respectful, loving & above all God-honoring wife. (Bonus: She is amazingly beautiful!) I have a great family with supportive and sacrificing parents, a great brother to physically and verbally spar with, and four grandparents that are still alive and have spent the majority of my life spoiling me rotten (as all grandparents should). I have a diminutive but extremely athletic dog that thinks he’s the most dominant animal on four legs. I have a 1993 Mazda 626 that just rolled 190,000 miles that I have been driving since I was sixteen blessing me for many years without car payments. I breezed through college in a mere five and a half years, received a degree in Architectural Engineering, and have been working at a great company with great co-workers for the past 4 years. I probably go to the best church in the entire country and get to hear the best communicator in the whole world preach amazing sermons about humility and boasting in nothing except Christ crucified.

But I’m not talking about any of those things. I’m talking about being blessed by living in Dallas, Texas. I’m talking about knowing the surpassing joy that the God of the universe has placed me in His country. Texas is an amazing place. And the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is currently about as close to being a Sporting Mecca as you can get. I know they haven’t done anything spectacular in the last few years, but the Dallas Cowboys are still America’s Team. The Texas Rangers just went to the World Series last year and then started this season nine and one. And then there are the Mavericks, my beloved Dallas Mavericks, having won 50 games or more for eleven consecutive seasons. If you aren’t into sports or specifically NBA basketball, you may not have heard, but this weekend they swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers out of the playoffs. (I think Dallas also has professional hockey and soccer teams, but that may just be a rumor.)

During this playoff series a local radio guy had been talking to L.A. Laker, Shannon Brown. Brown had mentioned several times how the Lakers were just beating themselves. Ben Rogers took the opportunity to ask if it was possible for a team to sweep themselves, and the following is priceless audio gold.

Shannon_Brown.mp3

Being the obvious Mavericks-homer that I am, I want to give the Mavs their due respect and say “kudos” on a job well done. Congratulations on a dominate display of basketball prowess. However, I must immediately return to that which has gotten us to where we are today, and once again don the metaphorical sackcloth of skepticism. So MFFL’s (Mavs Fans For Life) unite and join me in my vigilant and cautious pessimism. Because we can’t keep winning unless we believe we will lose.