via FreeDarko

The amazing thing about sports is that despite, or even perhaps in spite of what happens on the court or what appears in the box score is that people tend to construct a narrative and mythology around various teams in players. Any USC fan knows this all too well. Look at the preseason hype machine of over four years ago that made Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart into demi gods and then the same system that created a seemingly immortal legacy left by Vince Young's sensational man-against-the-world performance in that now legendary Rose Bowl game. But this isn't about football,but instead about another So Cal and Texas showdown.Tthis is about a modern sports myth in the making, the final game of the Lakers v. Rockets playoff series.

Yes, even before the playoffs had been started it already had been declared an inevitibility that a Lakers/Cavs Bryant/James armageddon matchup would be the one to decide the champions, and even with the larger than life (literally) Yao Ming, the Rockets weren't really given a chance at the series. Yet we have the birth of a hero in the diminuitive Aaron Brooks leading the supposedly less talented Rockets to a nearly dominant game 1 victory, and when the series turned back to Houston anything seemed possible even though the Lakers had just shown that they could be the Lakers everyone thought they were.

But Houston lost the next game, and lost Ming to an unfortunate (but not unlikely) foot injury and the feisty Rockets were given no hope. Then the Rockets won! Then they lost! By 40 points, and once again the decree from the pundits on high was that Houston had no chance and that now the door had definitively shut. But as we have seen now the door was not really shut at all, and that perhaps there was no door in the first place.

So here it is. Kobe Bryant. Ron Artest. Pau Gasol. Shane Battier. If you watch ESPN or ABC you already know that the Rockets once agins have no chance and that LA is basically the consensus pick. And who knows, this series may not even be remembered even two months from now. However, at this moment it has taken on a near Biblical David and Goliath vibe and seems to have the seeds of greatness sewn (sown?) into its very fabric. So I'll just leave you with some smirking words from Aaron Brooks when asked by a reporter if his team had a chance after the end of game 6, "Oh, I don't think we have any chance of winning. But I think we'll come out to play anyways."