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When reporters asked Detroit Pistons coach Larry Brown about the difficulty of closing out the Los Angeles Lakers before Game 5 of the 2004 NBA Finals, the Jewish boy from Brooklyn turned to the Haggadah.

"Well," Brown replied, "on Passover we always ask: 'Why is this night different from all other nights?'"

The episode is one of many parallels Rabbi Mitchell Smith, Ph.D. draws between sports and Judaism in his book, "Baseballs, Basketballs and Matzah Balls: What Sports Can Teach Us About the Jewish Holidays... And Vice Versa," published by AuthorHouse in April.

Smith runs a private sports psychology practice and is director of Sports Psychology Services at Florida Atlantic University, as well as a Reconstructionist rabbi who held pulpits in Florida and Israel. He took rabbinical school classes with Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, and writes how Kaplan's belief that "all Jewish teachings and the Jewish spirit could be brought to bear in all aspects of life" served as inspiration for the book.

As Smith helped athletes and coaches examine topics like focus and self-confidence, he started using sports as material for rabbinical sermons, many of which found their way into the book. Smith included a glossary of the book's Jewish terms so the work could appeal to Jews and non-Jews alike, he said in a telephone interview with The Jewish State.

Using material from past sermons became a dilemma in a chapter titled "When the Game Becomes Sacred," where Smith describes Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998 through the lens of three principles in the High Holy Days prayer of U'Netaneh Tokef: teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (charity).

Teshuvah requires hours of self-examination rather than instant change, Smith writes, similar to how McGwire and Sosa put in countless hours of practice during their careers and showed through the home run chase that, "In a time when we are too often seduced by thoughts of instant success and immediate rewards, the athletes who have paid their dues for their triumphs are role models for us all."

Regarding the importance of serious prayer, Smith calls the focus of McGwire at the plate a "pre-performance moment" that led to his success. Smith also describes McGwire's gifts to abused children in St. Louis and Sosa's donation of computers to schools in the Dominican Republic as forms of tzedakah by which the stars "elevated the game they play to a higher level, not merely by what they have done, but by the grace and menschlichkeit (basic humanity and decency) by which they have done it."

But in light of McGwire and Sosa's refusal to come clean about their alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs, can they be considered "role models"? Was McGwire's most significant "pre-performance moment" steroid use, rather than his focus? And can Jews still learn from the menschlichkeit of these sluggers despite some of their other actions that suggest exactly the opposite? In a note before the chapter, Smith acknowledges these dilemmas but writes of Sosa and McGwire that, "If the messenger has disappointed, hopefully the message still stands."

Smith told The Jewish State that Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and several sportscasters read the chapter beforehand, and everyone concluded that it would be a shame to throw out a chapter that taught valuable Jewish lessons.

"In the end you have to whittle out the enduring points from the issues; every reader will take from it what they want," Smith said. "I felt that the experiences and episodes that I brought to bear really fleshed out the points of [U'Netaneh Tokef]."

Smith's first chapter, "Gold Medal Lessons for Life," reviews how Olympic athletes can be role models in the same way that Jewish leaders have done so, citing Theodore Herzl's, "If you will it, it is no mere fable" in comparing the creation of a Jewish state to underdogs winning medals.

The "To Play or Not To Play" section delves into the dilemmas of Jewish baseball players like Hank Greenberg who were forced to decide whether or not to suit up on Yom Kippur. While several players Smith quotes express that playing on Yom Kippur is a personal choice, Melanie Greenberg, Hank's granddaughter, disagreed by saying that, "Heavy though the burden may be, I believe that Jewish ballplayers share the same obligation as my grandfather -- to serve as representatives for their people." Hank Greenberg sat out on Yom Kippur during the 1934 pennant race.

Smith revisits the issue of athletes playing on sacred days when writing about Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron, citing columnists who were either abhorred by the idea of Israeli athletes participating in international competition when the deceased were being commemorated, or inspired by how Israelis excelled in soccer to show the world how the Jewish people have survived and endured.

A chapter on Sukkot compares the "simple life" of Jews in the wilderness of the Sinai Desert to the desires of coaches to have their players "get back to basics" by focusing on fundamentals to yield the best results. In "It's (Not) Greek to Me," Smith explores the irony of how the Maccabees shunned the Greek emphasis on sports during the time of Hanukkah but became the namesake for Israel's Olympics, the Maccabiah Games, because of the national pride associated with their military victory.

Tu B'Shevat stresses the importance of planting for the future just like coaches mold the habits of athletes in the young stages of their careers, Smith writes, while Purim teaches us how to properly channel competitive anger on the field, unlike the way Haman misplaced his anger against the Jews by plotting to wipe them off the map.

Smith analyzes how Passover represents a coming of age for the Jewish people, similar to the maturation of athletes when they develop team-oriented mentalities.

The anxiety of farmers before the Shavuot harvest, Smith writes, resembles how athletes use specific pre-game rituals to influence their game-time performance.

Other chapters deal with lessons Smith applied to both Jewish life and sports psychology, including the power of determination, the importance of confidence-based performance over performance-based confidence, rebounding from adversity, and staying motivated even after achieving success.

Smith said his goal was "to excite people about Jewish practice through the vehicle of sports," but said that the lessons in the book are also meant to motivate Jews to action beyond simply feeling excited about tradition. Many of the lessons allow Jews to find comfort in tough times and see more of what their religion has to offer, he said.

"As a rabbi, we want people to be actively engaged in Jewish living," Smith said. "The ethnic ties alone have that sort of sentimental value for us, but that in and of itself is not sufficient or worthy of maintaining Jewish life."