Everyone knows the timeless dilemma of which came first, the chicken or the egg. The sporting equivalent is to have fun and win. What causes what?

That’s the question of the day: Do athletes and coaches have fun because they win the game, or do they win because they have fun?

What comes first? Fun leads to winning. Or winning is fun. Obviously it’s more fun to win, that’s for sure. But when players and coaches have fun, reduce stress and take a more relaxed approach, does that lead to more success?

In any case, first-year Arkansas coach John Calipari’s comments during Tuesday night’s postgame press conference were interesting. “We’re going to have fun,” he said.

He didn’t say it the way someone who knows he has no chance of winning would. Oh damn, we’re terrible, let’s just have fun. No, he was determined to win, so it seemed like a way to stay relaxed and transmit that mood to the players.

Hey, it worked as the Razorbacks erased an eight-point deficit with 8:10 to play and won their first road game at Bud Walton Arena in three tries. They made all the right plays in the final five minutes, finishing with a 10-2 run to erase Miami’s five-point lead.

Arkansas 76, Miami 73 was an incredibly entertaining result for the Hogs and coaching staff and certainly made for an enjoyable flight home to XNA. It’s a long flight whether you win or lose, but when you win it seems shorter.

The Hogs trailed by eight at halftime, but Calipari said, “Could have been down by 20 points. If we hadn’t come back and pushed it a little bit and played the way we needed to play to win – because I told them we were going to win this game.

“I told them at halftime, I told them at every timeout, ‘If you’re not here to win the game, sit on the bench.’ This means you won’t go crazy. This is the only way we can win.

“Everything I told myself during the game, even at 8, 10, whatever we were down – sometimes I didn’t even look at the clock – ‘We’re going to have fun.’ It’s my first year trying to build a new team, I’m going to have fun the whole game. If we lost, we won, we go home, we’re a little happier.

Maybe he said all this because he had a chance to see some former players before the Miami game. He also visited with one or two assistant coaches from the mid-1990s when he turned the UMass program into the No. 1 team in the country.

Maybe he said all this because deep down he believes – knows in his heart – that his players perform better when he’s having fun. That doesn’t mean he trains less intensely; The guy is always competitive and demands that his players keep up with fire and excellence.

But it was an old home night, a time for fun. Seeing people he cared about seemed to relax the Hall of Fame coach, maybe even put things in perspective, especially when he feels some pressure to deliver big things for the Razorback in this first season fans. It certainly weighed on him a little that he had lost both games against the only good opponents before Miami.

So it was satisfying to spend a little time with Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo and former NBA star John Wall, both first-round picks from his time at Kentucky. Additionally, Adebayo’s mother came to the game to see coach Cal.

“I saw Bam at the (morning) shootaround. I saw John Wall after the game,” Calipari said. “Miss Marilyn, Bam’s mother and Kevin. I saw all these people.”

“Billy (Bayno) came to town, part of my team when I was at UMass. Now all the UMass players have been texting us. I mean, it was a good day with all that stuff and I had fun.”

I leave everyone – especially youth coaches – alone with this absolute truth. There are times when coaches and players have to be absolutely serious, whether it’s in Little League or March Madness.

But the more fun you have before and during the game, the more you win. Then when you win, you have even more fun. And in case you’re still wondering, it’s chicken before egg.

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