A Tough Day

Yesterday was a fairly sad day for my sports teams. Derek Fisher of the Lakers got a 1 game suspension for his aggressive action against the Rockets in game two of their playoff series.

A short way away in Chavez Ravine, home of the LA Dodgers, Manny Ramirez was found to have taken an illegal substance and will be vacationing for the next 50 games. For the Dodgers this is a tragic loss.

Much has been made of each of these two suspensions in the media. Manny Ramirez got the lion share of attention with good reason. He is a big name in LA and in baseball. But the bigger story for me is how each team will respond to these losses.

The Lakers so far have been a little shaky against the Rockets. The Rockets have played them tough and look to improve on this with the next couple of games in Houston. Will someone step up and take up the slack for Fisher? Will the Lakers as a team step up and play to their potential? Or will they allow the Rockets to dictate the terms of play.

The Dodgers have a similar situation only multiplied by 50. After all, Manny revived the team late last year to lead them to the conference title and a first round win over the Cubs. Can they continue to push runs across at the same rate they have been? Can they maintain or improve on the lead they have in the Western Conference or will they drop down to the level of the rest of the West?

It times that this that smell like opportunity to real competitors. They know that when someone goes down, everyone needs to fill the vacuum left behind. They know that the loss will signal to the competition that they are on the ropes ripe for the knockout. They know that by not going down and punching back will not only surprise the opposition, it could very well scare the hell out of them. Like Rocky not going down for Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

You know, seems to me we could all do with more of this attitude in our everyday life. Are things going poorly with your marriage? Step up and make it better. Is work getting you down? Ok, make things better there yourself. The economy is sucky? Figure out how to succeed in spite of it.

The tough will get going and they will succeed. And if all of us do the same, then we all win. That is human nature. To survive. To make it. To continue.

Diskeeper continues to work even when you don't. It's tough on fragmentation.
Read about InvisiTasking here: http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag/InvisiTasking.aspx