Our favorite teams bring people together, keep family members close, bond people from different generations. Some of the happiest moments of my life involve something that happened with one of my teams.

The NBA and NHL have different agendas: The NBA is much more protective of its players and its brand; the NHL has less to lose, and it's in their best interest to generate buzz any way they can.

I am old enough to remember every Red Sox season since 1975. Baseball is long. Baseball takes forever. It's day in, day out, for six solid months - seven if you're lucky. Winning is always fun.

You always hear that tragedies put sports in perspective, that they prove we shouldn't care this much about the successes and failures of a bunch of wealthy strangers. I'm going the other way - sometimes, sports put everything else in perspective.

I pride myself as being a very supportive parent. I go to my daughter's soccer games. I hit most of them. I try to go to all of them.

Don't worry about what other people are doing. Worry about what you're doing.

One of my favorite things about basketball is that you can't break it down into some sort of science that makes total sense.