takemeoutcoach

[takemeoutcoach]

Even though the Kansas Jayhawks began the season slogging through a five game losing streak, and still have a -.500 record in the Big 12, their last three games have morphed this season into something they might actually remember with pride. It’s not just that they derailed BYU’s undefeated streak last week—it’s how they did it, in a way that felt absurd, unhinged, and entirely emblematic of a team determined to prove that chaos can be a strategy.

They also took down the Deion Sanders-led Colorado Buffaloes, a team buoyed by a media frenzy and the almost mythic talents of Travis Hunter, a two-way phenom, and Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s quarterback son whose precision and poise have made them both strong contenders for both the Heisman and the No. 1 draft pick. It wasn’t just a win; it was the kind of statement game that flipped the script on what anyone thought the Jayhawks were capable of this season.

The Jayhawks, once hyped as potential Big 12 contenders before the season began, have settled into their new identity as a spoiler team with almost defiant glee. Their wins against conference heavyweights have thrown the Big 12 standings into a chaotic four-way tie, leaving teams like BYU and Colorado scrambling to salvage their postseason dreams. Now, BYU and Colorado are stuck in the indignity of rooting for underdogs—Kansas State and Arizona Wildcats—to pull off upsets next week. If that doesn’t happen, Iowa State and Arizona State will be the ones securing their spots in the Big 12 title game, leaving BYU and Colorado to grapple with the sharp letdown of a season that, despite all its fireworks, would end on a distinctly bitter note.

[takemeoutcoach]

I got about halfway through the video, already annoyed by the clickbait title. The more I watched, the clearer it became that this wasn’t going to be a showcase of some genuinely chaotic, mind-blowing ending. Instead, it seemed destined to be just another rehash of the Mavericks imploding and the Nuggets methodically clawing back from a 24-point deficit. A disappointing narrative dressed up as something spectacular.

And then PJ Washington happened. Anyone who paid even passing attention to last year’s playoffs knows that Washington pulling through in clutch moments is practically routine at this point. This was the guy whose ice-cold free throws sent OKC packing, propelling his team to the Western Conference Finals against the Timberwolves. Watching him take over wasn’t surprising—but it was still electrifying. Washington wasn’t just showing up; he was reminding everyone why the Dallas kid is built for these moments.

What makes Washington’s late-game heroics even more thrilling is the way they seem to materialize just as everyone forgets he’s there. It’s hard to blame rival defenses for focusing on Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, and now Klay Thompson—players so transcendent they’re already etched into the game’s history books. But Washington, 26 and operating perpetually in the shadows of these giants, has mastered the art of stepping up when no one’s looking. He doesn’t need the spotlight to deliver; in fact, it feels like he thrives without it, seizing his moments with a kind of quiet inevitability that leaves you wondering why anyone ever doubted him in the first place.

As a Heat fan, rooting for the Mavericks feels as unnatural as wearing Celtics green—not just uncomfortable, but like a betrayal of identity. Yet last year, when Boston booted my team out of the playoffs in the first round, my allegiance morphed into something primal: I just needed someone, anyone, to stop their march.

By the time the finals arrived, I found myself backing a team that had tormented Miami plenty over the years. It was an uneasy alliance, forged less out of faith in Dallas than out of spite for Boston. And sure, some might dismiss that series as a “gentleman’s sweep”—the Celtics winning 4-1 with the kind of authority that makes the losing side look like a footnote. But watching the Mavericks claw through those games, often just a few shots away from flipping the narrative, felt like an exercise in hope deferred. The cards didn’t fall their way, but for a fleeting moment, they almost made you believe they might.

(deuce knew!)

[takemeoutcoach]

There’s this thing about sports, this undeniable allure that operates somewhere between an elemental truth and a complete con. Because sports aren’t actually about winning or losing, not really, and they’re certainly not about the narrative arcs we’re all so desperate to impose on them. No, sports are about patterns—the endlessly recurring, fractal-like repetition of themes that are somehow both entirely predictable and yet still capable of knocking the wind out of you, leaving you half-elated, half-enraged, wholly invested.

Take this week, for example. It's only Tuesday, and two undefeated streaks were both obliterated, both in ways that seemed to fold into themselves like some kind of meta-commentary on why we care so much in the first place.

First, the Kansas City Chiefs lose to the Buffalo Bills. The Bills are a franchise practically designed to be a symbol of futility, except not the dramatic, Shakespearean kind of futility, but the mundane, grinding kind—the kind that feels more like a low-grade fever than a tragic flaw. And yet, there they were, hosting the Kansas City Chiefs in Buffalo, facing Patrick Mahomes (who, let’s face it, has transcended quarterback status to become this kind of vaguely mythological figure) and the reigning-champion Chiefs, who hadn’t yet lost this season. And Josh Allen—this big, shambling paradox of a quarterback, capable of looking both transcendent and bizarrely amateurish within the same quarter—finally had his moment. He outplayed Mahomes. The Bills didn’t just win; they reasserted some long-forgotten sense of possibility. It was electric, sure, but also deeply fragile, because anyone who knows the Bills knows this can’t last. But for one week, they were kings.

And then there’s the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose streak ended not with triumph but with something that felt closer to a cosmic correction. The Boston Celtics—a team that has somehow managed to turn ruthless efficiency into an aesthetic—showed up in Cleveland and proceeded to dismantle the Cavs in a way that felt less like a game and more like a reminder of the universe’s natural order. Jayson Tatum, who plays basketball with a kind of brutal inevitability that makes you feel simultaneously awed and vaguely resentful, didn’t just beat the Cavs. He ended them. Cleveland’s star player Donovan Mitchell went down in the game’s final moments, a sequence that was less an accident than a narrative exclamation point. And just when it seemed like the Celtics might show some mercy, Horford iced the whole thing with a dunk so definitive it practically echoed.

The thing is, none of this is new. These patterns—the rise and fall, the triumphs and humiliations, the victories that feel like redemption but are really just setups for future heartbreak—are baked into the DNA of sports. What makes them maddening is also what makes them irresistible: the idea that they’re always just on the verge of resolving into something clear and meaningful, even though they never really do. Which, of course, is why we keep watching. Because in their messiness, their refusal to make sense, they feel more like life than life itself.