Dallas Stars play-by-play Dave Strader (left) shares a laugh with broadcast partner Daryl "Razor" Reaugh before a game between the Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning at American Airlines Center in Dallas on Saturday, February 18, 2017. Strader has been battling bile duct cancer and this is his first game back since last season. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)

Watching the smile on Strader's face in the pregame shot, then simply listening to him call a hockey game as he has done for decades in Detroit, in Florida and for ESPN for years when it had the NHL contract before coming to Dallas just last season was uplifting.

But the Stars' finest moment of the season came about one minute after Jamie Benn deposited the puck in the Lightning net for the overtime win. That's when the Stars team skated over in the direction of the press box and raised their sticks in salute to Dave Strader, doing his first broadcast in 283 days as he fights a long, difficult battle with a rare form of bile duct cancer.

The Stars have endured a disappointing season that is almost certain to bring significant change to the organization. First in the West last year, they sit in 12th even after Saturday's 4-3 overtime win over the similarly hapless Tampa Bay Lightning.

It is not often that a regular-season NHL game, one waged in February between two teams far off the playoff pace, upstages the NBA All-Star Game. It happened this weekend.

Undoubtedly, it was even better for Strader than it was for Stars' fans. As he said in an interview with WFAA (Ch. 8) last week, "I'm not looking at this as the last time to broadcast, either. I'm looking at this as the next time to broadcast. Then we'll see when the next time will be."

Doctors have told him that returning to work and enjoying what he has done professionally for nearly 40 years is as effective as any chemotherapy they can provide. Strader will get to broadcast for a national audience Sunday when the Stars and Boston Bruins play on NBC.

When Strader speaks of "buying time," we recognize that it's something all of us do but most of us get to ignore until the consequences become dire. We talk about "enjoying every day as if it's our last," but how many of us stay focused in that direction for more than five minutes before burying ourselves once again in the mundane?

And that's what brings us to Sunday night.

I guess if you talk about and hear about Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant playing together long enough, you develop a marginal interest in seeing how it will play out. That's how it was for me, anyway, although I never understood the endless questions for West coach Steve Kerr on whether he would play the former Oklahoma City teammates together.

They're two of the five best basketball players on the planet. Their minutes were likely to overlap at some point. As it turned out, they were together only briefly, but they executed a give-and-go where Durant set up Westbrook for a dunk, and the reaction was as if a two-state solution had just been reached in Israel.

The reality is that while the Western bench exploded in celebration, Westbrook and Durant never exchanged high-fives and never really looked in either's direction, at least as long as the TNT cameras stayed on them in the celebratory moment.

Two basketball players, who were never particularly close even while leading Oklahoma City to playoff victories and one trip to the NBA finals, no longer care for each other now that Durant has found paradise in Golden State. We get it.

It's not so much the fake news of the NBA as the fake drama that boggles the mind. The league is populated with more athletes making in the range of $20 million a year that are miserable with their surroundings or teammates or coaches than any on the planet.

That's not to suggest the league doesn't produce great moments (just not in an unwatchable 192-182 All-Star Game that had play-by-play man Marv Albert scoffing at the end). The playoffs are around the corner, and despite the sense of a preordained Golden State-Cleveland finals, there will be plenty of riveting moments.

And, of course, similar to the very real drama that Strader's battle provides us, we watched TNT's Craig Sager very public bout with leukemia for two years. In fact, the tribute to Sager with 3-point artist Reggie Miller leading the way was the highlight of All-Star weekend.

It's just that the NBA used to provide a dunk contest on Saturdays and an All-Star Game on Sundays. Now it's simply a never-ending show where they miss most of the harder dunks on Saturday and atone with uncontested slams Sunday that allowed Anthony Davis to shatter Wilt Chamberlain's scoring record without really being guarded.

Davis got a record, an MVP trophy and a new teammate in DeMarcus Cousins after the game. I'll take Dave Strader getting to report to work and enjoy his job for another night over that any time.

Let's raise these sticks in salute to Dave.