please don't worry lover; it's really bursting at the seams

I've rooted against the Lakers since I moved to LA. But this year I want them to go all the way.

Kobe Bryant's 33, an age where basketball players aren't hoping to get better, they're praying not to get worse. Every year is another quarter inch off the vertical, a few milliseconds off the first step.

The Lakers got swept in the second round last year. Then they traded away one of their best players to save money. Then their first-round draft pick got injured.

So how did Kobe spend the summer? Aside from getting a divorce. He went to Germany, and got not just one but two speculative knee surgeries. Trying to fight off time. Working as hard as he's ever worked, with virtually no hope of improvement.

There's nothing to suggest the Lakers are going to be any better this year than they were last year. Maybe this time a teammate will step up. Or the other guys will miss a bunch more three-point shots. Or maybe, just maybe, Kobe will jab step, and jab again, and jump higher than he's ever jumped before, and release, and the ball will do the rest.

Can you empathize with that hope? The guy's won five championships already. You could call his need to win another one pathetic, if you like calling other people's goals pathetic. Or stupid, considering the grind of an NBA season. But what it definitely is, is brave.

This is what games give us. Something to exert ourself toward. And a story. Characters with goals and obstacles and conflict and maybe resolution. A way to feel connected.

I was running along the beach yesterday, listening to Death Cab of all things, and I had this crazy sensation of being overcome by love. For Kobe alone in a gym practicing 20-footers, for a valley girl in front of her bathroom mirror putting on foundation, for Ben Gibbard singing whiny crap to a girl who will never love him. For all the people with a stupid dream who are doing their best to get there. You take that, and add friends who push and support each other, and that's what it's all about, love and life and the whole shebang.

This post started out as an essay about why sex is better than porn. And turned into my attempt at a canonical response to anyone I'm close to who thinks of "games" as a dirty word. It can be dirty. But we're all striving for something and we're all on the same team.