All the Human Heart Wants is Its Chance
Some thoughts on the New York Knicks and the meaning of sports
For the past week, as the Knicks were closing in on their title, I’ve been working on an academic article exploring the historical relationship between the rise of modern psychology, the “muscular Christianity” movement, and modern sports.
Hang with me here, I promise not to get technical. I just provide that background to explain why I’ve been reading William James.
James is one of the most important intellectuals in American history, a Harvard professor from 1873 to 1907 who shaped the fields of philosophy, religion, and psychology. While he was not a Christian, his writings about religious experience and character formation influenced Christians of all kinds, including segments of the evangelical movement. I have mixed feelings about James and the cultural implications of his ideas—as well as the way they fit (and do not fit) within a Christian understanding of the world. But I admire the breadth and depth of his thought.
One throughline for James is his resistance to determinism. He did not like it when it showed up in Christian doctrine. And he did not like it when it showed up in science, in the growing popularity of biological determinism, the theory that human beings are basically machines.
James insisted instead on the idea of chance and the possibility that we could exercise free will—not that we could do anything and everything, but that we could at least choose between options available to us. The human mind, he said, needed to know that spontaneity was possible, that it had a vote, that “it is in the game, and not a mere looker on.”
“All that the human heart wants,” he insisted, “is its chance.”
I was thinking about James as I watched the NBA Finals. Because for me, what makes this Knicks title special—and what makes sports special—is the way that it puts the potential of the human will on display.
You’re not supposed to win a game when you’re down 29 in the second half. You’re not supposed to win a championship when your best player is barely six feet tall, or when you’re the three seed in the East, or when you’re down 2-1 to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. You’re definitely not supposed to win when you’re the New York Knicks and you carry the weight of a fanbase that has 50 years of disappointment.
But the beauty and magic of sports is that it invites us to believe that we have a chance, that the outcome is not predetermined. That in any given game, any given series, any given season, the human beings who compete might rise to the occasion, they might accomplish what previously seemed impossible (or at least highly unlikely).
Whether in William James’s day, when modern sports were emerging as a powerful social force, or in an age like ours, where we are taught to see the world in a coldly analytical way, this belief in chance and surprise and possibility matters. It is not the “chance” that sports gambling companies promote, the invitation to play a fool’s game in which the house ultimately always wins. Instead, it is the chance that is tied to human action, to the exertion of the human will.
And, crucially, it is also tied to the expression of human community. Because another thing that makes sports special is the way that teams embody and represent the hopes and aspirations of a community, the way that they become part of the cultural narratives that we tell about what it means to belong to a particular place.
True, only the players and coaches are exercising their will in a way that determines the outcome; and yet, it also requires an act of the will for us as fans to decide that we will invest ourselves in the collective experience of sports. In that act, we enter into a shared community where we become part of a greater whole and where we open ourselves to the possibility of the drama and experience of sports.
The scenes of joy that poured out from Knicks fans after the championship were a testament to these possibilities. As the New York Times understood, it was like a religious experience.
Look, I’m a historian. I know that sports have never been “pure,” that they have always included both the best and worst of our impulses, that money has always been a part of the game. Just as joy flooded the streets of New York City on Saturday night, so did a few scenes of destruction, showing that fans can choose to channel the power of sports in harmful directions.
Even so, sports teams, from William James’s day to our own, have provided social and civic goods that remind us, in a unique and powerful way, of what it means to be human and what it means to belong to something bigger than ourselves.
It’s a strange feeling being a sports fan these days because it feels like the people in charge are doing everything they can to undermine the things that have made sports special. Rather than steward the imperfect but beautiful gift of sports, they seem more interested in exploiting its unique status as a quasi-civic institution, wringing every possible dollar until sports becomes wholly and entirely transactional, from top to bottom.
Fifty years from now, will a championship matter to a community like this one does for New York? Will the next generation of sports fans, raised and encouraged by our leaders to think of sports primarily as an opportunity to gamble, still believe that there is a deeper purpose behind the games we watch and play? Will people care about sports in the same way?
I honestly don’t know.
But in this moment at least, with this Knicks title, we get to witness and affirm the beautiful possibilities of sports.
It’s a feeling those of us who believe in the social value of sports will need to remember in the years ahead, because it won’t be easy. The forces and the incentive structures arrayed against us might feel overwhelming. The outcome might seem predetermined. What can we possibly do when many of the executives and decision-makers across the industry seem to be actively undermining any long-term vision of sports as a source of the common good?
We don’t have much, but we have the ability to choose what we will celebrate, what we will give our attention to, what we will remember.
We don’t have much, but we have a chance.
Really appreciate your thinking and articulation of this - shows so much why sport tugs at our human hearts like little else!