The Ankle Game and the Mystery of Sports

I witnessed a miracle last night

Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals is forever anointed as the Flu Game. Legendary guard Michael Jordan contracted the flu between the fourth and fifth games. Some later conspiracy theories suggest a local pizza joint poisoned Jordan in Utah. Regardless of how MJ got sick, nothing was going to stop the legend from playing. 

 Jordan comes to Game 5 and is sick and dehydrated and looked dazed most of the game. The cameras showed Jordan during timeouts hunched over, towel draped on his bald head looking like death. MJ’s face said, “when can I go back to bed?” 

Michael scores four points in the first quarter and is a zombie. The second quarter, he finds some energy and drops seventeen. The flu appears to be winning in the third and Jordan later said he almost passed out from dehydration. He only scores two points.

And then it happened...

These are the moments of the mysterious nature of why we sit glued to the television, or today, on phones, tablets, and computers, to watch athletes do the unthinkable. You don’t know when, or how, or why these things happen. The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

But if you follow sports long enough, and you’re lucky enough, you might witness a miracle:

• The Catch- Joe Montana to Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone to win the 1981 NFC Championship. 

• The Immaculate Reception- Franco Harris picks up a deflected pass with seconds remaining in the 1972 AFC divisional playoff game leading to a last minute win, and later a Super Bowl victory. 

• The Steal- Larry Bird steals the inbound pass in 1987 to beat the Detroit Pistons in the NBA conference finals. Later Boston would lose to rival Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals. 

• The Miracle on Ice- 1980 USA hockey team beating Russia in the Olympics. 

I was lucky enough to bear witness to the Jordan Flu Game. MJ held together with Gatorade and duct tape and sheer will and grit finds something within to will his team to victory. The Chicago Bulls go on a 10-0 run late in the game with Jordan scoring seven of those points, including a three-point shot to ice the game. Jordan finishes the fourth quarter with fifteen and thirty-eight points, five assists, seven rebounds, and three steals for the game. Mike wins his sixth and final NBA Championship with the Bulls. 

Do you believe in miracles? 

These moments keep us coming back to this thing called sports. A little window into what humans can accomplish and achieve when no one gives them a chance. We’ll have to put aside the dark side of sports when players become arrogant. Don’t forget the absurd wealth most professional players accumulate while teachers and other service-oriented jobs make beans. And, let’s be honest, the amount of emotional energy we give to grown humans playing with a ball can get out of balance.

And yet, if you are lucky enough, and the stars align, you might witness a miracle. Like the one many of us witnessed last night. 

Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs literally limped into the AFC Championship game against their new rival, the Cincinnati Bengals. A team they hadn’t beat in the last three meetings. One of those games being last years AFC Championship game when Mahomes mysteriously disappeared in the second half and the Burrow-Bengals went to the Super Bowl. 

Not last night. Do we call it the Ankle Game? 

The game goes back and forth all four quarters. And then it happened… Mahomes late in the fourth with the game on the line runs for a first down. He not only gets the first down, but gets pushed late out of bounds and they add a personal foul penalty moving the Chiefs in field goal range to win the game. 

All game Mahomes was in obvious pain and hobbled by the high ankle sprain. But in a moment of sheer will and guts and grit, Mahomes sprints to the sideline outrunning a linebacker to will the Chiefs to a win. Much like Jordan in the Flu Game. 

Sports can bring out the worst in people. Families and neighbors become enemies. Owners and players forget the joy of the game and become greedy. Players and coaches are silenced or fired for speaking out on justice issues. 

But if we try to separate all the underbelly stuff of sports, we might find a purity of why we watch. The storylines of underdogs and gimpy ankles become these little slivers of miracles and magic. You don’t have to like sports, football, the Chiefs, or Patrick Mahomes. But for whatever reason, even the most indifferent fan finds themselves drawn to the mystery. We often wonder if there is more going on here. How can a silly game unite a city and a father and son over something on the surface appearing so childish? Did you witness what happened when Damar Hamlin almost died?

When we are witnesses to the miracles and magic, we often contemplate what’s going on inside a person like a Mahomes or Jordan that finds a deep reservoir of will and guts and grit when games are on the line? When bodies are falling apart. How do these elite athletes bring themselves into a state of Zen, calm, and peace to focus on the task despite the circumstances being less than ideal? Broken ankles, dehydration, and flu doesn’t matter to these guys. They block out all the pain, everything that happened earlier in the game, and what matters is this moment, right now. 

And don’t say well they are professional athletes and get paid to do this. I’ve watched sports long enough, and observed humans in a variety of disciplines, to know not everyone has this. On paper Jordan shouldn’t have willed the Bulls to victory. The Utah Jazz were a better team. It didn’t matter for those forty-eight minutes. 

Mahomes and the Chiefs came in as the underdogs, and shouldn’t have won the game. It didn’t matter for those sixty minutes. The Chiefs lost two of their starting defensive players, and by the time Mahomes gets to the fourth quarter, he is down four starting receivers. He’s now depending on rookie players, a scrub who they poached off the Practice Squad the day before, and some dude from Row 7 ( I made that part up).

But it didn’t matter. You go with what you have. No excuses when the game is on the line.

I don’t want to be Sports Cliche Guy. But sports is a microcosm of life. I played sports and so do my kids. I still find joy in pick-up games at the Y or playing with my kids at the park hoop. We are under no illusions of our kids playing beyond high school. They might, if they keep working at it. We don’t force them to play, and see it as a good in their lives. Sports teach us about life. 

It teaches us life can be full of great highs and joys. Things sometimes just work. And life can also be full of suffering and sorrow, and nothing goes right. Welcome to life under the sun. How many times have my wife and I had opportunities to talk about life lessons and faith after a terrible loss, or a great win? 

Team sports can be a brilliant teacher reminding us it’s never about one person but a collective unit learning to trust and work together for a common goal. Most of our work lives and family units are learning how to walk out this principle. It takes much work, training, and prayer to become a team.

Mahomes made magic on Sunday night and my family and I cheered, yelled, high fives, and I might have gotten teary eyed. 

These mysterious and miraculous moments are why we come back for more. Why we root for our teams despite getting our hearts broken often.

Last night I witnessed what some might call the Ankle Game. You call it what you will. 

All I know is, there certainly is more going on here. And if we're lucky, we sometimes get to witness a miracle.  

-RJP