NONE IS SO BLIND AS HE WHO WILL NOT SEE

Heavy felt young again. Years of unrequited love for the Sonics had left him bitter & old beyond his years. But now new hope sprung eternal, & it was all because of Ginny. She had helped him to understand the Madman previously known as Wally. Understanding was half way to trusting; & trusting was half way to believing. Heavy was almost to the point where he believed these Sonics could actually do some serious damage in the playoffs. Nate & Wally had the team believing in themselves, & as Heavy well knew, when you believe in yourself, anything can happen. This newfound optimism felt like a long lost friend. Heavy had been a cynic for so long, he had forgotten the meaning of 'hope springs eternal'. But now that was all changing. And it was all because of Ginny. It was she who had convinced him that everything would work out for the best. And it was she who had helped him to understand the magic of Wally.

Born into abject poverty, the adopted son of migrant farm workers in Appalachia, he had become the first in his family to attend college. After graduating from the University of Virginia thanks to a basketball scholarship, he went on to an illustrious career with these same Sonics. After a little-known injury shortened what would no doubt have been a hall of fame career, his business acumen allowed him to move into management. Marrying into money at that point gave him the financial wherewithal & the impetus to surmount all obstacles & scale the heights to ownership. It was a dream come true for a poor farm boy from West Virginia.

(Editor's note: Actually, Wally was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, attended one of the most prestigious schools in the south, & had a rather uneventful professional basketball career. Always an astute investor having been raised with money & possessing minimal athletic ability (for an NBA player), it was a natural for Wally to ascend to management & eventually ownership. From whence Heavy gets the foregoing & what follows is testimony to the fact that love is indeed blind. Perhaps he got confused with Jason Williams,& a few neurons became crossed.)

The players, many of them tough inner-city kids, identified immediately with the way Wally had pulled himself up by the boot straps. He was respected & admired -- if not revered -- as one of their own; a fellow career soldier who had achieved success by virtue of hard work, perseverance, & God-given talent. He had them believing in themselves as they headed into the playoffs. As a kindred soul who had achieved success despite all obstacles, they felt that if Wally could do it, so could they.

Heavy knew that something about the whole story didn't ring true, but love is blind. He dismissed the idea that Ginny had encouraged him to believe they thought about everything in the same way, while all the while setting him up for the big fall. Had he known that she was really a cocktail waitress who had dropped out of SPU & that everything she knew about Wally & the Sonics came directly from him, it probably would have changed little. Heavy totally denied any possibility that she was a plant from the very beginning sent to, "take Heavy down for the good of the team." For one who had known misguided love many times before, surely this was the real thing, Heavy thought.

The only question now was in which order the Sonics would demolish their playoff opponents. It was looking more & more like Dallas would be their first round playoff opponent, but it really mattered little, Heavy had come to believe. Dallas, San Antonio, the Lakers, or the Kings -- who cares? They were all trembling in fear of what a healthy Sonic team would do to them. With Watson back & Lewis & Radman soon to follow; with Baker improving every day & guaranteed to provide that necessary low post presence when things slowed down in the playoffs as they always did -- it was a LOCK! A high flying Mason SLAM DUNK! The only fodder figure Heavy was concerned with was who would be the first victim.

"Heavy, Heavy, Heavy, can't you see? Sometimes your words just stigmatize me!" It was Ginny, & Heavy awakened instantly form his reverie as if from a trance, only to fall victim to another of an entirely different sort.

"Whatcha thinking about, Heavy?"

"Oh, I was just thinking about the Sonics, & why it took me so long to figure out the obvious. This team is peaking at just the right time. Hell we could even win it all! I bet those other teams are just quaking in their boots."

Ginny wasn't sure she liked the power she held over Heavy. True she was used to holding sway over men's opinions, but she liked it better when Heavy was off on some cockamamie tangent. Like the other night when he had been pontificating, "Desperation's just a better word for nothing left to lose. What does FREEDOM have to do with it?"

Or when the conversation shifted to politics, & he had intoned, "Fighting for peace is like f--king for chastity." Where did he get this crap from? When she saw how easily she had implanted ideas into his head so contrary to what she knew he had previously believed, she found it difficult not to lose all respect for him. She also wondered who before her had been responsible for what Heavy had thought then. In the end, she pitied him more than anything. And yet she felt strangely guilty at the same time. It was really little more than amusing being able to manipulate someone so easily. But in spite of herself, she found herself strangely attracted to this weird idealist for reasons she couldn't explain. He aroused maternal instincts in her. It was very obvious that SOMEONE needed to take care of him.

Tune in next week for the continuing adventures of Heavy & Ginny as the Sonics prepare for their first trip to the playoffs in many moons.

Editor's Note: The preceding is fiction. Any resemblance to real people, events, or locations is purely coincidence.

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