By Lawrence D. Blum, M.D.

[Note to those who are not sports fans: The Philadelphia 76ers challenged the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers for the championship of the National Basketball Association in June, 2001]

Because of the Little Guy, that’s why! Charles Barkley was a magically irrepressible toddler in a grown-up body and Sixers’ uniform, but Allen Iverson, even more the tyke in perpetual motion, really is little. And of all the innumerable primal conflicts played out on the courts and fields of sport, none is more important than David versus Goliath, little versus big.

In a 1960’s comedy routine, Bill Cosby got a laugh by confessing the obvious, “I started out as a child.” Cosby was in agreement with Freud and psychoanalysis about the lasting importance of childhood experience. We all start out as little people, nourished by, but struggling against, the big people. On a deep level, this struggle never leaves us. We want the playful joys of being little, and we envy the privileges of the big. To all the mothers, fathers, older sibs, teachers, policemen, neighborhood bullies, and other authorities who would squash our fun, we say, Not this time, Buster!

Not only are the Sixers powered by the Little Guy, collectively they are the little guy, the underdog, outmanned, against the odds. Under-rated, hard-working, they are a perfect match for Philadelphia, a city that experiences itself as an overlooked, hard-working, underdog to neighboring New York and Washington. We can identify with them easily.

They are us. “We” are in the finals! But they are also our heroes, our champions, carrying the flag of rebellion and redemption for us oppressed little guys. And they are our children, growing and succeeding, beyond our dreams, making us proud. And giving us a poignant feeling of community, as the extended family has when one of its own first graduates college. We are proud, we are grateful.

There is nothing like a common opponent to promote a feeling of community. Our disputes with our brothers and sisters are swept aside in the joint effort against an oppressive authority, whether this is a parent, a government, the Evil Empire, or the steamrolling Los Angeles Lakers. We are inspired by the Sixers’ teamwork and devotion to each other, their playing with broken ankles and fingers, bruised shoulders, inflamed tailbones.

Of course they are not the first little band in Philadelphia to draw together to challenge a giant. We should remember that the 76ers are named in honor of the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies from the British crown, our greatest national story of rebellion against authority, of children uniting in action against an abusive and neglectful parent.

We revisit and re-work our primal emotional struggles all the time, in theatre, literature, and art, in politics and history, in science and sport (and of course in psychotherapy). We are emotionally moved by the stories, past and present, that embody these struggles. The signers of the Declaration, as they joined to oppose their Goliath, gave us a great, romantic statement of teamwork, placing their names under their final declaration that “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” To the Seventy-Sixers of every age!

June 11, 2001