Magic in Garbage Time

Got home from the gym today, and flipped on the TV while I was changing my clothes...and what should I see on ESPN Classic but a replay of the 1992 NBA All-Star Game. This is perhaps my most favorite basketball game of all time, simply because it featured a ton (maybe more) of Dream Teamers, and was played just a few months after Magic Johnson was forced to retire from the Lakers because of his HIV infection. But he still led the West to a 40 point blowout, earned MVP honors, and...and this is the part that always makes my heart pump...sucessfully defended one-on-one against first Isiah Thomas and then Michael Jordon in the last two minutes of garbage time, while knocking down three straight treys himself at the other end. And I can still remember how I felt at the time, all the emotion of that moment at the end of the game -- a game that meant nothing and yet meant everything, a game that was already both won and lost, Magic's last game in the NBA against these guys he'd played against so often...it just meant so much, it brough tears to my eyes. And now, fifteen years later, I watch this same game with all the nostalgia of an old man remembering his own misspent youth, and...well, I feel grateful. And greatly filled with both a joy and a sadness I can hardly describe....