We all have personal highlight reels.

Moments from our lives that we replay over and over in our minds because they still manage to deliver joy, embarrassment, sadness, shame, or some unholy cocktail of all four. Some of those moments we keep locked in the private vault, where they belong. Others we trot out at dinner parties because apparently human beings need witnesses for everything, including our own nostalgia.

If you are a sports fan, as I am, the reel you are most likely to share is made up of those moments when dopamine surges, endorphins flood your brain, serotonin spikes, and your mind permanently archives the whole thing in whatever dusty storage room passes for your personal palace of memory.

What makes those moments even better is that sports fandom is social currency. It is not a solitary experience. You can share that moment with someone else and, almost instantly, they will counter with their own version of the same memory, because sports fans are incapable of simply saying, ‘Yes, that was amazing,’ and leaving it there.

Those are the moments that connect us, binding us together in a way that transcends whatever divides us, uniting us in a shared experience. Or at least giving us a brief timeout from shouting at each other like children who cannot share a toy.

Since you didn’t ask, let me share a couple of those experiences from my own life.

• The Jets win Super Bowl III: If you were a kid in 1968 living in the New York metro area, there was no cooler human being on the face of the planet than Joe Namath. He was iconoclastic, larger than life, and behaved more like a rock star than a professional athlete. When he guaranteed that the upstart Jets from the upstart AFL would defeat the old-school Colts — and then actually did it — come on now. Unfortunately, it also sealed my fate as a Jets fan for life, which is less a fandom than a court sentence with merch.
• The Miracle Mets win the 1969 World Series: I was walking from my junior high school to my synagogue for instruction from our rabbi in preparation for my bar mitzvah and listening to the game on a small solid-state Sony AM radio. The Mets were my team, and up until that season they had been more of a civic punchline than a real franchise. But I loved them. They were a gift from my grandfather, who had adopted them after his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers deserted him for Los Angeles. When Davey Johnson hit the fly ball to Cleon Jones to seal the victory, I leapt with joy, even though I was alone on the street. And when I finally reached the rabbi’s study and told him what had happened, my very serious rabbi and I danced together with joy.
• Syracuse Wins the 2003 NCAA Basketball Championship: By the time the 2003 NCAA basketball championship rolled around, I had been a Syracuse fan for almost three decades — three decades of the Orange falling just short of the promised land. (Fuck you, Keith Smart. You are not forgiven.) So when Hakim Warrick blocked Michael Lee’s shot with almost no time left to seal the victory, it was a surreal moment of disbelief and joy. The only thing that would have made it sweeter would have been sharing it with my Syracuse classmates, who had suffered — not so silently — alongside me for years.
• 2004 “Idiot” Red Sox Win the World Series: By this time in my life, I had lived or worked in Boston for years and had become a die-hard Red Sox fan. I hadn’t given up on my Mets, but Fenway Park and Red Sox fans’ absolute hatred of the Yankees had lured me in, because nothing builds community like a shared enemy with pinstripes. And while I hadn’t suffered for 86 years like so many of them, I was at the game where Aaron Boone became Aaron Fucking Boone. The night they won the Series against the Cardinals, I happened to be in Boston on business and had planted myself at the bar at the Sheraton. I was surrounded by Red Sox fans, all of us sharing the same collective thought: somehow, someway, the Sox were going to figure out a way to screw the pooch. So when Edgar Renteria hit a soft grounder back to Keith Foulke, we were all convinced something terrible was about to happen. When it didn’t — when Foulke flipped it over and Doug Mientkiewicz squeezed the final out — there were a few seconds of stunned silence before the bar erupted in absolute pandemonium.

This week I added a new reel to my archive: the Knicks’ impossible comeback from a 29-point deficit, culminating in OG Anunoby tipping in Jalen Brunson’s rim-bouncing three-point shot to win the game with 1.2 seconds to go. OMFG. I must have watched that play and the bedlam that followed dozens of times since then, because apparently my brain has decided that repetition is now a cardio program.

It made me feel good in a way I hadn’t since January 20, 2025. It also defined the current version of the Knicks, whether they win the title or not, as one of the great teams in NBA history.

And when I paused long enough to think about it, which is always dangerous and rarely billable, I realized that one of the fundamental tasks of the President is to unite the country as a team. Which led me to wonder what the Octagon Don has done to bring us together as a team, other than give millions of Americans a shared reason to grind their molars into dust.

One of the things all great teams have is clarity of purpose. They know what their goals are and can articulate their mission in a sentence. You might think Make America Great Again fits that definition, but it doesn’t, because the Dozer-in-Chief keeps changing the definition to fit his personal needs, not those of the country. A slogan is not a strategy. And best it is trucker cap warning sane people to stay away.

A great team isn’t simply the most stacked roster. It is one where skills fit together and gaps get covered. Each person knows their lane and trusts others to handle theirs. Great teams have complementary roles, not redundant ones. Our Karen-in-Chief does not believe in complementary roles. Only his role. Everyone else is either an extra, a prop, or a person who failed to clap quickly enough.

For a team to work effectively, people need psychological safety. Google’s well-known Project Aristotle study found this was the single biggest predictor of team effectiveness. People have to feel safe admitting mistakes, asking questions, and disagreeing without fear of being punished or embarrassed. Clearly not a memo Don the Dis read. Or if he did, he had it shredded, subpoenaed, and blamed on a staffer named Chad.

For a team to work effectively, there also has to be trust and accountability. For the buck-stops-elsewhere President, there is no accountability. He never makes a mistake. Never admits an error. Never owns a consequence unless it comes with a licensing deal. Which is one of the reasons the boo birds sang so loudly when he showed up at MSG and nearly 80% of those polled don’t trust him.

Adaptability matters too. Conditions change — markets, opponents, priorities. Strong teams adjust. That word does not exist in his playbook. The man hasn’t had a new idea since the Reagan administration, and he’s not about to start now. Change implies the old version needed fixing, and the old version is perfect, just ask him. He’ll be happy to tell you. At length. In all caps. At 4AM. In a Tweet.

Teams that win have a leader who serves the team, not the ego. Our supreme egoist serves one master: himself. If he doesn’t see the benefit for him personally, any idea is a nonstarter. Public service, in his hands, becomes private catering with flags.

In other words, with the Diapered Don leading us, our team does not have a chance of winning. And if international sentiment is a guide, we will be cellar dwellers before too long, waving a foam finger from the basement while Fox News tells u the standings are fake news.

Considering all that, no wonder I have felt so adrift since January 20, 2025.

Which isn’t to say, I don’t want to add to my highlight reel this year. In chronological order, I would love to add these:  

• Knicks winning the NBA championship.
• Brazil winning their sixth star and the World Cup.
• A Blue Tsunami on November 3.

The first two are desired. The third is mandatory for all our wellbeing.