A picture is worth a thousand words.

 I promise this will be the last time I will post about the NBA finals and the Bucks victory (at least for a while), but this picture is so great.  If you know about the players, it tells a whole story (just like a tableau should do).

To your left is the great "point god", Chris Paul, who has been playing at an extraordinarily high level for a very long time.  He has never won a championship, but he did everything he could to win this year and promises to learn from the experience and come back even better next year (what a great philosophy -- one we can all benefit from hearing).  I hope he does.  (Even if you don't know basketball, you might recognize him from the State Farm insurance commericals.)  In the foreground is the amazing Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has been a star in the NBA for a number of years (I was going to say he was a rising star, but really for the last four years, he's been there -- winning MVP and Defensive Player of the Year and leading the Bucks to the playoffs).  Antetokounmpo has struggled from the free throw line and has a very long process to get ready to make a shot (which caused opposing fans to count while he is standing at the free throw line).  In the last game, he did really well but in other games he often missed.  (Someone who does play basketball should explain to me why they don't always make their free throws because there is no one interfering and it is the exact same thing each time, but I guess they're human and that's the answer.)

Anyway, this is such a great photo because it shows the veteran watching the young man and Paul is patient, but you can see he's thinking, "come ON" and Giannis is standing up tall and trying to look confident with millions of eyes bearing down on him and either hoping he is successful or praying that he is not.

I think what I have discovered in my obsessive watching of the NBA playoffs this year is something I've known before in watching sports (I have never been able to play any sport even acceptably, unfortunately for me) is how the athletes go out there and try their best and put it all on the line.  They can't do it half-heartedly, because everyone else is trying SO HARD.  They let us know that they want desperately to win and to contribute and help the team and when they can't, they feel terrible and that's all on display.  And when they can, it is glorious -- a dream -- the best moment of their lives.  We can all learn from them -- do our best, always try to learn, don't worry about the people who say you can't or you're not good enough -- they're not trying and you are and that makes your experience bigger and more rich than theirs.