It's strange-basketball-player-story-Friday!

On Horseback with Nash:

On horseback a young Dirk Nowitzki races teammate Steve Nash down a thin strip of floury sand along the lapping shallows of some sub-tropical sea, the duo’s long hair flapping like matched manes in the wind.

Dirk is clumsy on horseback, Nash skillful. Waiting at the finish line, Nash joshes his friend:

“Howdy,” he says, doffing an invisible Stetson as Dirk’s steed lumbers over the snapped tape.

Dirk chuckles, executes an ungainly dismount. A breeze flutters their similar white riding shirts.

“Steve,” Dirk says later, the two of them sipping electric-blue drinks through complexly-looped pink straws, their horses happily gamboling a little ways down the beach. “What could be better than this, Steve? We’ve got the whole world, don’t we?”

Nash stares out at the giant red sun, dipping into the Pacific.

“Steve?”