How has sport changed my life, you may ask. I think it has made me a better person. It has taught me camaraderie, sportsmanship, fair play, it has given me an opportunity to meet friends, battle buddies, team-mates and 'fan-mates' without whom my life would probably be a whole lot sadder.

Yet to this day I bear a stigma so painful that I can truly say sport has broken my heart. T'was the June of 1994. I was still in high school and was over the moon because my beloved New York Knicks were in the NBA finals. Heck, the Knicks were looking like the team of destiny at the time, as they had to beat a young and resilient New Jersey Nets in the first round (nicknamed the 'tunnel series') and then they outlasted the excellent Chicago Bulls (sans Michael Jordan) and the tough-as-nails Indiana Pacers, both in seven gruelling games. What was left was a Houston Rockets team that wasn’t even considered to be the best of its own conference.

Everybody knew that the Rockets were a tough team, and with center Hakeem Olajuwon they had the perfect counter-punch for Knicks superstar center Patrick Ewing. Yet all of us Knicks fans thought that there was no way Kenny Smith, or Sam Cassell, or for that matter anyone on that Rockets roster could stop our sharpshooter John Starks (turned out we were almost completely right, too).

Anyway, to get back to my side of the story, my level of happiness was even greater considering that this was the first time that the games were broadcast live on a TV station that we could actually receive in Hungary. So every second night I was up until five or six in the morning catching each game of the final.

From June 8 to June 10 everything was hunky-dory (maybe except for the fact that this was still my last week of school, so it wasn’t easy catching the games and then going to school). Hopes were high - the Knicks won a game in Houston to tie it at 1-1 with the series shifting to New York for the next three.

Game Three, however, got our spirits quickly down as the Rockets found a way to grind out a win at our beloved Madison Square Garden. On June 15, we struck back big. Starks was getting on one of those streaks of his, he was making all shots, Ewing found a way to baffle Hakeem and the Knicks won the game 91-82.

From then on fate showed how ironic it can be. Most of us have heard of the major news event of January 17, 1994, yet only a few of us remember the date. It was Game Five of the NBA finals, the venue Madison Square Garden, New York. The result? The Knicks won, but I couldn’t see the game. Why? January 17 1994 was the date of OJ Simpson’s infamous slow-speed chase, and it was shown live even on the European networks, interrupting the game. I should have known back then that this was a bad sign.

Yet there I was on a June 19 that seemed like just another summer's day, except for the fact that my beloved Knicks could clinch the NBA finals. Alas, it turned into a forsaken day in the life of one article author. It was Game Six of the finals, the Knicks were destined to win it all, and I was about to watch all of this unfold live. How could anything go possibly wrong?

Throughout the game things were going well. Ewing kept the Knicks in the running early with the help of the most underrated point guard of his era, Derek Harper. Even the younger guys – Greg Anthony, Hubert Davis – got some meaningful minutes with acceptable performances. The stars were aligning for the perfect finish.

I can’t let this reminiscing go by without mentioning the efforts of Charles Oakley, the enforcer forward who simply demanded respect on the defensive end down low. So there we were, holding a Western Conference team to a low-scoring game once again, and I’m thinking: 'This is it, it’s time to print the championship banner.'

In the fourth quarter. Houston threw everything they had at the Knicks. Yet Starks just kept hitting shot after shot to keep the team within one bucket. He eventually got 16 points in that fourth quarter. Then the time arrived. Houston up 86-84 with only seconds left, the ball is played to an all-open Starks. There’s no one even remotely close to him. He rises for the shot, makes the motion (at this point I'm already envisioning the ticker-tape parade for the team on the streets of Manhattan), and then all of a sudden, from out of nowhere Olajuwon manages to get a hand on the ball and alter the shot.

At the instant, I jumped up from the couch and bumped my chest hard into the table in the room. Emotional pain mixed with physical pain magnified the hurt in me. I sat up straight, in total disbelief and watched the replays over and over and over. To this day I have a theory that had Starks passed once he got into the air to an all-open Ewing, the Knicks would have taken it into overtime, where a clearly-exhausted Rockets team would have lost – Game Seven was an afterthought.

Starks had completely lost confidence in his abilities because of the block and the Knicks looked like  has-beens as they surrendered easily (at least compared to the other games).

A sad story for a fan, for sure. But without the consequences I realised only some time later, this would not have become a life-affecting event (well, unless I was mentally unstable, or out of my mind completely). What I did not realise on the spot was that by bumping my chest into the sharp corner of the table I had induced a scar about an inch wide that is visible to this day.

For a long period, whenever I caught a glimpse of it, it just got me down. Yet today I have turned this negative memory around. I realised the reason we lost at that final moment was because we got too cocky, too self-assured (the players, the fans). We took that last shot for granted. The Knicks had played so many games to the wire, and they always seemed to come out on top. Over-confidence struck at the most important moment as I’m pretty sure Starks was convinced in his mind he was making that shot and he definitely 'knew' that no defender could get as much as the tip of their pinky on it.

Guess what? He knew wrong. Today when I see that scar, it reminds me not to take anything for granted, to be humble, and to have confidence in myself without overdoing it, especially when I feel like I’m in the driver’s seat. It's all a part of growing up when you truly understand, that you should learn from mistakes.