After the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center on Saturday night, a mob of Florida State basketball players giddily tossed one another t-shirts and hats. Together, they’d just defeated Boston College to claim the school’s first-ever Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season basketball title, so a little bit of celebrating was in order.

The melee was quickly halted, however, as the public address announcer called everyone’s attention to the spotlighted end of the arena. There, high in the building’s rafters, a banner unfurled, revealing the words, “2020 ACC Champions.” The arena went wild at the sight.

Imagine being in a crowd at a professional hockey game drinking a soft drink, sharing a sandwich with your wife when your cell phone goes off. It is a working opportunity to live your dream. Minutes later, you are in bowels of the arena, strapping on pads and skates and headed onto the ice.

Within an hour, you’d become the stuff of legends. An NHL team would have a t-shirt on sale in their team store with your name and number on it. Your cell phone would burn up with media requests. Airline tickets would be ordered so you could be celebrated with a standing ovation as Ayres was last night.

The past 48 hours have brought a lot of Patrick Mahomes news. As the second-year quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs delivered that city’s first Super Bowl victory in 50 years a thrilling 31-20 win over the San Francisco 49ers, he’s been on quite a roll.

• Named MVP of the Super Bowl, which meant delivering the now iconic, “I’m going to Disney World” line.
• Actually going to Disney World and taking a young Chiefs fan with him as part of Make-A-Wish.
• Bringing the Lombardi trophy back to the people of Kansas City in a parade scheduled for today.
• Making a former high school classmate look like Nostradamus.

That’s a lot of dreams coming true over a couple of days in the life of a 24-year-old.

One of the greatest athletes I know will spend tomorrow night doing something extraordinary: at 8:00 PM Eastern, aerialist Nik Wallenda will step out onto a 1,800-foot high wire strung across the active Masaya volcano in Nicaragua. Every step (or misstep) of the journey will be captured by ABC and broadcast live to the planet. It’s just the latest of Wallenda’s death-defying walks above the world.

If you follow college basketball, you know the near-mythical rivalry that is Duke-North Carolina. Over the last 100 games between these two teams coming into their matchup over the weekend, each school had won 50 and they scored the exact same number of points. Those freaky statistics make clear this isn’t a gimme type of series—each team brings its best whenever the game is played.

That being said, I wasn’t expecting much from this game: it’s been a brutal season in Chapel Hill, with the Tar Heels sitting at 10-12 overall and 3-8 in the ACC at tipoff. Duke, on the other hand, came in ranked seventh in the nation and hadn’t been out of the top 10 all season. A blowout seemed to be in order.

I was getting ready to go to Tampa yesterday when my phone started buzzing. I ignored it for a while in order to get my shirts packed the way I like them, but the thing just kept buzzing. And buzzing. And buzzing.

Finally, I picked it up. Several different people had texted, all saying similar things.

Kobe.

Did you hear?

Oh my God. Kobe.