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If you test a man, boil him down until nothing is left except the thing that makes him take one more step when all others around him have fallen, then you are left with the reason why grown men love sport.

Absent war, sport is the single greatest instrument for revealing character in a man. Politics, love, intellectual pursuit…. All pale in comparison to sport for revealing the fabric of our will when condensed under pressure and layed bare before frothing masses. Some are granite while others crumble to nothingness and trickle away like the ball squirting behind a fragile and broken Bill Buckner.

In one instance the entire measure of a man's life becomes due. Like soldiers on a battlefield, it's not until the ultimate questions are asked do you know whether or not you have what it takes to go over that wall. All the training, all the preparation, all the hard work mean nothing when the final bill comes due and you are lacking.

In sport, as fans, we watch and wait. Sifting through countless hours of ho-hum viewing. Watching and waiting to see if one of those rare moments present themselves where one man will be asked the questions and we hold our breath collectively and await the answers. No movie, no play, no other form of entertainment can compare to those intoxicating moments.

Rarer still are those players that are born for such moments. Pete Rose, hatless, rounding third and heading for home under a full head of steam. Mohammed Ali pacing the canvas like a caged lion staring through an invincible George Foreman on a steamy night in Africa. Joe Montana with a minute and thirty-nine seconds left on the clock in the Super Bowl.

Patrick Patterson is such a player. Inside Patterson's cast iron heart winning and losing are not statistics, they are life and death. Patterson, as in all truly great athletes, takes defeat personally. Long after all hope of winning has vanished the great ones play on because the very thought of losing is hateful and an affront. Men like Patterson play because they must play. In some ancient primordial swamp when men clawed for their existence against great beasts of prey, Patrick Patterson still roams.

Loincloth, club, or basketball, he would still be the same man. Patterson is the perfect sum of a million years of evolution. A modern savage at war upon the sterile battlefield we call an arena.

Thousands of years ago we roared in approval as the strongest and most gifted among us went forward to slay great beasts in the night. Centuries later we still feel that connection. That admiration.

So the next time you stand at a game in a big moment, maybe it's okay to go ahead and let out your best roar. Scream savagely and perhaps you too can feel that ancient connection to why grown men love sport. We were born to.