One more

I played golf for four years in high school.  I had never played golf until my freshman year.  I got better each year.  I didn't play to be competitive, I played because I loved golf and I got out of school once a week in the spring time to golf all day.  Why wouldn't someone play?  By my senior year, I was pretty good and played on the varsity team.

The top ten (I think ten) in the district tournament qualified for the state tournament.  I don't know if I even comprehended that we were playing to qualify for state.

I had a decent round, nothing great, but not bad.  I don't remember what my final score was, but I remember what my golf coach told me after we had finished up.

He talked to me about my round and if there was anything that I could have done better.  There were a couple of bad slices and close putts that I should have made, but that was typical.  The reason he had asked was because I had missed going to state by one stroke.  I immediately thought of a bunch of swings/putts that could have taken just one stroke off of my score. 

For a long time I wondered what would have been different had I been able to go to state.  It wouldn't have been Mr. Destiny-like, but maybe I would have honed my game a bit more and golfed in college.  Okay, maybe not, but a small ripple like that could have had other effects.

Why am I making you relive my not-so-glory years of high school golf?  The Jazz were exactly one game from possibly altering their destiny in this year's playoffs.

Two nights ago the Dallas Mavericks knocked off the Spurs and sent them packing from the first round for the first time in forever.

The Mavericks will now face the Nuggets in the second round after Denver pounded the Hornets once again.

First of all, that big win over NOLA a few weeks back hasn't looked as impressive since the Hornets have probably sucked worse than the Jazz in the final weeks.  But it was a win on the road for the Jazz, so maybe it was big.

Regardless, one more win, just one more, from the Jazz would have given us the 7th seed and facing the Nuggets.  Denver has been playing some of the best basketball in the league right now and our fate could have been the same as New Orleans'.

But we split the season series with them and they're a much better matchup for us than the Lakers.

Had we been able to pull off that series (a lot better chance there than against LA), we had the perfect gift!  Dallas took out our nemesis in San Antonio.  No matter how poorly SA played, they're our kryptonite and I would much rather play Dallas than them.

It was the perfect storm for the Jazz and they wouldn't have met up with the Lakers until the WCF.  We could have hoped for the Rockets to upset LA and it would have been perfect.

We'll never know.

See, this is what happens when you watch LOST too much.  You start thinking about how if I could just go back in time and change one little thing, how would the future have been different?

I for one would have gone back to October 2008 and flown to Chicago to give Derrick Rose the Tonya Harding treatment.