The Overtone: Can Boris Diaw’s Coffee Cure Heartaches too?

Coffee, apparently, can do many a thing. It can keep you awake at night, sure (whether you want to or not), and it can also help enhance your physical performance (no wonder Diaw can keep it going for another night, all right!).

It may also protect you from Alzheimer, according to several studies, though there are probably few people who are drinking it with that in mind (and a lot more to, you know, just get started in the morning).

These days, it also seems like “the thing to do”. Grab a coffee. It perhaps has replaced lunch as what you plan with friends (because, cheaper, and you’re not bound to an entire course of food if it turns out the whole thing is boring your brains out).

Espresso, Ristretto, Americano, Slow burned please, thank you, Soya milk if possible for the Flat White, merci, cheers!

That social side of coffee might be a good thing, with former San Antonio Spur Boris Diaw having started an actual coffee club for the Jazz players (admission free of charge, caffeinated beverage obligated). Though I wouldn’t want to force anyone to having to spend time with their colleagues outside of actual working hours (what have your most excruciating “team-building” activities been?), I do think it’s a good sign.

For me, it is a sign of togetherness, and, from my experience as a teacher, activities that are non-mandatory, have a social element with people who actually want to be there, and that are fun; these work really well.

So coffee can enhance your physical performance, and it has a social team-building element that might give the Jazz an advantage, but the question is, can it cure that achy-breaky-heart?

Because, inevitably (and I don’t want to go all fatalistic on all y’all here), that seems to be the thing that happens when the Jazz play the Spurs.

A Spurs team without Tim Duncan, a Spurs team with its main cogs getting increasingly older, and a Spurs team that isn’t coming off a Finals appearance last year.

A Spurs team without some of those who’ve burned the Jazz in the past. Without Matt Bonner, for instance. And, without Boris Diaw, who will play for the forces of sainthood this year.

Nevertheless, I, for one, wouldn’t want to put all my worldly possessions and material things on the Jazz when they play San Antonio. And I know, I know, we’re not living in a material world, and Jazz wins may come and they may go, but still, I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.

According to a Harvard study, women who drank more than 4 cups of coffee were 20% less likely to become depressed.

Coffee and cigarettes is the breakfast of champions anyway, so I’ve heard.