God and Basketball

“Right hand of God. Right hand of God” Karl-Anthony Towns describing his Knicks teammate OG Anunoby’s game-winning tip into the basket to finalize a 29-point comeback and win for the Knicks in Game Four of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs

I’m more of a college basketball fan, specifically ACC basketball, and more specifically ACC basketball when all the teams were actually on the Atlantic Coast. But last night’s Game Four of the NBA Finals felt a little bit holy. (I’m so sorry Spurs fans but that game was a spiritual experience for so many people.)

I don’t believe that God cares who wins sporting events, but I do believe that the exhilarating feeling of an unexpected victory or the success of an underdog or the miracle of three point shots from the next county feels like a God Moment. I’ve experienced this personally – my favorite holy sports moment being this one. I was a senior in high school sitting with my brother several rows up under the home basket. To this day, when I watch replays of those last 17 seconds with 8 points down, my heart feels like it’s going to explode again. This is surely what it feels like to experience the Holy Spirit, albeit trivial by comparison.

This is the feeling I felt when I prayed in a courtroom for an innocent defendant who was found not guilty. This is the feeling that I felt when I witnessed immigrants graduating from a church-sponsored computer training program knowing that they’d found employment with dental benefits. This is the feeling I felt when I prayed for my children only to find – with time – that God provided something better than I had imagined for them.

Prayer is not magic. God’s hands are not on basketballs or golf clubs or tennis rackets (or steering wheels or gun triggers.) And yet God is with us through life’s everyday and extraordinary moments. God’s weeps when we weep and rejoices when we rejoice.

God was with every Spurs fan whose heart broke last night. And God was with everybody who – like me and HH – screamed with joyful disbelief with 1.2 seconds left on the clock. God is with us. That doesn’t mean that God finds us parking spaces or keeps us from making bad choices. But God is surely with us in the aftermath of whatever happens – whether we acknowledge it or not.

Go Knicks.