I shot Wade 72 times

Dwyane Wade has 72 bullet holes in his face. That is exactly the number of times I shot him. No shots were fired at the body from afar. All were from point-blank range, right between the eyes, each time the tv guys flashed a closeup of his poker face.

I do not hate Wade. And I am not a Mavericks fan. I just rooted for Dallas because I felt it was the underdog. I like to pick up lost causes, even in my sports. Feeling that, man-for-man, Miami was awash with veterans and superstars, I went for Dallas.

Actually, I like the Pistons, a liking that goes back to the original bad boys, back when players still wore " pakigol " shorts. I liked them because while they were an NBA champion team, their bad boy image made sure their shot at popularity won't fly. It nailed them to the doorstep.

It was like hitting two birds with one stone. I had my underdogs and I had my champions. It was really an easy choice. What wishful thinking it would be on the part of anyone to imagine Dennis Rodman being preferred over Magic Johnson. So everyone rooted for the Lakers but I.

I dropped the Pistons when the bad boys retired and altar boys came in. I went for the Knicks. I went back to Detroit only when a new set of bad boys came in the 2000s. I love bad boys for their tendency to become underdogs and for their ability to spoil the fun for the favorites.

I do not like favorites, especially the way Filipinos like them. Try looking around during the regular season and you will notice only very few people are actually following the NBA games. And of those few people watching, virtually nobody has a chosen team.

But wait until you get to the playoffs, then to the finals, when a clearer picture begins to emerge. This year, all of a sudden everybody was a self-proclaimed Miami fan. Jesus, where did these guys come from. Everybody is a segurista. Nobody heard of the term through thick and thin.

In all of the time that the NBA caught my fancy, I was all by my lonesome, ante-dating the heckling of Mark Cuban by nearly two decades, back to when there was no home cable tv. The games then can be seen live only at beer joints that had satellite discs.

There is a premium in going for the underdog. Defeat sort of comes as a matter of course. You do not lose sleep over it. But if you win, your in-your-face glee is a priceless entitlement. If banks were to accept bragging rights, I would be a rich man.

So why did I shoot Wade 72 times in the face? Just because, that's why. How did you expect me to react to somebody who never misses? Even when he did miss, why, he made up for it so fast it was as if he never missed at all. That fall-down-get-up thingy? It's incontrovertible.

Another thing I have noticed about Filipino NBA fans is that they are fond of providing anybody who cares to listen, or those who have no choice, as in this case, their unsolicited postmortem analysis as to how this team won or why that team lost.

My own postmortem analysis? Miami won because of Wade. And Dallas lost because of Wade. Oh yes, there are so many unscrutables that could have pitched the game any which way. But why go through all the trouble of conjecture when you have one unassailable fact in Wade?

Next year I will probably be shooting Wade again. Whichever underdog I will be rooting for next time, I have a feeling it will cross paths again with the young man in the Miami Heat No. 3 jersey.

Of course I would love my whipping boys to be the Pistons again. But with Wade ascending in the House of Heat, there will probably be several other teams begging for my affection. And that is why I love this game.