Sun’s up!

At 5:30 a.m. I climbed into bed with Junior, who'd been shaken up by some bump in the night. We snoozed together and after a time he opened his eyes and said, "Wanna play!"

And what were YOUR first words this morning?

"Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence," wrote essayist Stephen Dunn. "In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery."

A two-year-old is incapabile of forcing it. Junior's words were immediately followed by his falling backwards out of bed and then popping up to exclaim, "Time to make coffee!" Now that's flow.

Are you prepared for what comes next today? If so, that's too bad. Too bad you know what's coming next, that is. Here's hoping we're all thrown wildly, happily off course by something utterly unexpected, like a Dan Haase behind-the-back-over-your-head-are-those-your-shorts-on-the-floor spin move.

The one certainty this day holds is hoops at St. John's tonight. We tip off at 6:30 -- or whenever -- as usual. Please let me know if you will or will not be playing tonight.