When winning becomes the work to do

On the nature of the NBA's dark horse contender.

The Rockets, Magic, Cavs and Knicks are, the Grizzlies are too. The Nuggets, Suns and Clippers present like they are through the numbers right now, but they aren’t. The Lakers are not, and haven’t been since the 80s, but claim the moniker every season with the idea that obscurity looks good on them, or is in any way convincing. I won’t get near the Sixers.

Less than a set of prevalent rules for who is one comes a pang in the gut, or a tinge in the air if you’re close enough, almost like an eclipse. A transitory state, not meant to last or be lived in. It’s rousing, can be catching, stirring up a strange tribalism. You know it when you see it — a dark horse.

Benjamin Disraeli, a former British Prime Minister, invented the term in one of his early novels. A story about the aristocracy, and one he’d go on to regret writing, Disraeli’s protagonist watches as “a dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.”

The two fields we know dark horses best in now, coincidentally I think despite Disraeli, are sports and politics. Both also share the lore and love of an underdog. A dark horse differs because the shot is less far-flung, there’s possibility and skill coursing through the candidate but they haven’t yet stepped into the full bore of their power. They still have their edge but they’ve learned control, not everything is a fight or flat out flight but — and this is crucial — they’re still bound to the spirit of the crowd.

We love the allure of a dark horse because with them comes the potential of knocking off the best.

The NBA is nothing if not cyclical and one thing we can’t bear is pretension to our champions. Today’s dark horse is tomorrow’s show pony and when that turn happens — season to season, sometimes within a season — we look for the next prospect.

It can be tough enough to keep up with when succession is linear, one team rising and blowing by the favourite. The current collision of league parity with whatever pileup is happening in the East, to a lesser degree the West, where any position past third in the standings is basically fourth, has made for a field of convincing runners.

What happens when they all pull into the stretch of this season in a wide, proud line? Do we have the heart to sustain them all?