Captain Kirk

Chicago went absolutely insane over their hometown Bulls last Wednesday, with a fervor that typically follows a championship game. And it wasn’t even the playoffs. All they did was add another W in the regular season’s column, but the loss that it meant for their opponents that night meant a heck of a lot more.

Last week the Bulls put an end to the Miami Heat’s 27 game win streak— they hadn’t lost a game since February 1^st. And even if you don’t know basketball, that’s an incredible streak to maintain. For a third of an NBA season, they were flawless— making it the second longest winning streak in the history of the league. The first belonging to the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers, but in a league with a substantially smaller number of teams, and where teams didn’t play games nearly as close to one another. Which all make the Heat’s run significantly more impressive.

            So here’s the conundrum— that game didn’t technically mean that much to Chicago, so why did they celebrate like it did? And the answer is because the Heat are a better team and everybody knows it. Miami knows it, ESPN knows it, even Chicago knows it. There’s a level of understood inequality between the two teams, which makes the win by the underdog novel and exciting. And the phenomenon isn’t isolated to the world of sports. People love when the unexpected occurs— when an underdog pulls off an upset, when a David beats a Goliath, when inequality doesn’t win.

            Yes, inequality tips the scale in competition, but when the odds are upset we go ballistic. And it hits the core of the human experience— it’s a story about defiance and hope. We cling onto stories that show us that anything is possible, and that’s why, in some sense, we need inequality. To tell us that we can’t, so we can.

            For the bulls they won with scrappiness and heart, although talented they were clearly inferior on paper, and when Kirk Hinrich wrapped up Lebron James and took him down a drive, it epitomized what it means to defy inequality. You’re going to have to put in 110% and play your heart out if you’re going to pull it off.