What Rhymes With Seimone Augustus?

He says he's not the only one who works hard to preserve the family atmosphere at the games. There are tons of kids at tonight's game. Families with girls make up a huge portion of the Lynx fan base (and, yes, from what I see—or think I see—lesbians are pretty well represented, too). A dad behind us with three girls in tow explains that they come up from Bloomington to watch a handful of games every season. "I want them to see that you don't have to be a boy to play basketball," he says. "Which you might not realize from watching TV." Burt chats with the dad a bit, about girls, girls' sports, and just as much feminist theory as you might want to hear at a sporting event.

At the beginning of the final quarter, the Lynx are down by 12. Burt and I have wandered down to the cushy chairs right behind the announcer to say hello to two other diehard fans. Burt explains that this is probably it. The Lynx just aren't championship material this year and they probably won't dig themselves out of this loss. A couple of years ago, this might have bothered him more, he admits. "But now I've got a new baby [six-month-old Nathan] and I realize that it's okay to miss a game. I'm not actually on the team," he laughs.

Then the Lynx start chipping away at that lead. Shots that had rolled around the rim in the first three quarters start to sink. The Stars barely get a chance to shoot. The Lynx trim the lead to 4, then 2. With 1:40 to go, Svetlana Abrosimova makes a breakaway lay-up to tie the game. The whole crowd is on its feet now. Burt is shouting and clapping unstintingly. Little kids are jumping up and down in the aisles. The scene under both baskets is starting to look more like a rugby scrum. Nobody scores for another 30 seconds of play, until Seimone Augustus, last year's number-one draft pick and newly minted All-Star, sinks six free throws in a row. The Stars can't hold on to the ball. Final score: Lynx 85, Stars 80.

At game's end, Burt poses a question he really wishes I'd ask, and I have to admit it's never crossed my mind: "How is a WNBA player like a poet?"

It should probably be no surprise that he's got a long, thoughtful answer to his own question, and it comes out in one burst. The gist of it is this: "They're both people who devote a lot of time and energy to something that is really valued in college and then they graduate and go out into the real world, where a very small number of them are able to keep doing it. Then they become part of this subculture that promotes the kinds of values I believe in."

They are also, Burt continues, people whose lives are lived in extraordinary details: putting the ball in just the right place, where your average person couldn't sink it, and putting words in just the right place, where you never imagined they could go.