Tonight the Suns beat the Mavericks in double overtime. These are the two best team in the NBA, and this game proved to be the most exciting game of the year. What made the victory so sweet is that we were outscored in the 3rd quarter 38-16, which helped put us in a 15 point hole in the 4th quarter.

At this point in the game I knew my perfect day had gone horribly wrong. I showed up at Zipps promptly at 5:00 PM for the game, only to see an empty sports bar. All six waitresses told me in unison that the game was at 7:00 PM. I came back home and did some more work. Two hours later I stepped into a Zipps again, except this time it was a packed house staring up the final minutes of the first half were ticking down. I was so angry that I became sick and almost threw up at half time.

(It hard to write about a day that involved a sports game because I feel like I have to be a sports writer. I don’t have the patience to write like that and people don’t have the patience to read about it. So I’ll just stick to my experience of the game, not the game itself.)

This game was super exciting because it was a battle of the  top two MVP candidates: Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitski. Steve Nash scored 10 points in the last 55 seconds of the game. Let me say that again: Steve Nash scored 10 points in less than 1 minutes. Steve made every play his team needed to come out with a victory. He stole the ball, forced turnovers, drew charges, found the open man. Shoot, he even made the defensive rebound that allowed the final second tick off the clock for the victory. He was awesome. Unstoppable.

I was at Zipps with 100s of other fans and I celebrated like a madman. I have no desire to be cool about winning. I yell and pound my chest. I give strangers high fives and hugs. Why? Because I love the Suns. And when and where can a grown up have such raw and real emotion? Zipps was boiling with the joy of victory at the end of the 2nd overtime. It was party!

The Bizarre After Party

Candyce is out in California for the rest of the week, so I had to celebrate on my own. That was until my house filled up with friends who wanted to watch the newest episode of Lost. That party was interrupted by a stocky Indian who knocked on my door and told me he was out of gas. (This is a very Lost-like thing to happen.) His behavior was odd, so I kept two friends close by as I walked out of the garage to his car. At this point he was peeing in my yard. I thumped the can of gas on my shoulder and scolded him, “You can pee on a man’s yard and expect him to give you free gas!” He apologized and began walking away from my palm tree before he had finished his business. It wasn’t pretty.

He drove a beat-up Bronco, a gray version of what OJ got in trouble in. I opened up his gas cap and turned up the can and let it chug. Ten seconds later, and he had his shirt off and started flexing for Nick. Apparently he wanted to have a flex-off with my stocky roommate, but Nick wasn’t up for it. It was bizarre seeing this chubby Indian man flexing his flab in front of my house by the light of my garage. I nodded my head to show how impressed I was.

This little big man proved to be not so bright. I pulled my car around to give him a jump. As his Bronco charged, he explained that he has trouble with his battery because his massive sound system kills his alternator. Thirty seconds later he hopped behind his wheel, fired up his car, and then turned up his Bob Marley loud enough to shake the neighbor’s windows. This, of course, killed his car. The street went dark and silent. The three of us stood their in disbelief by how stupid this guy was.

We had to start all over again. Ten minutes later he was rolling and chugging out of the neighborhood. No woman no cry…