Cleveland Should Have Lost

Cleveland should have lost.

LeBron and company were outplayed and outperformed and on the verge of elimination when lightning struck.

One boneheaded move by Draymond Green turned the entire series upside down and inside out.

And that is part of why I have a love/hate relationship with sports because sometimes your team finds a way to turn a sure thing into a loss.

Truth is I am not a fan of the Warriors or the Cavs so I wasn’t invested on behalf of either team, but as a fan of sports it was fun.

Anything Can Happen

Doesn’t matter whether it is football, basketball, baseball or hockey on any given night anything can happen.

Sure you have teams that are more dominant than others and sometimes there is an extended period of success or failure for franchises.

But the thing is you can’t always predict chemistry or use stats to figure out what will set a team on fire or destroy it.

If you are lucky sometimes you witness the magic and get a chance to feel like you are part of something special.

I like to use some of those moments to help my children understand why I don’t give up on things very easily.

They serve as good examples for why we should work hard and try to put ourselves in a position to succeed even when it doesn’t look like we have a shot.

I figure even if the chance of success is unlikely it doesn’t hurt to teach the kids to run hard for the whole race and not just part of it.

Had Lebron been an ordinary Cav he would have given up like most of them, but he didn’t.

He pushed and convinced them to fight and they won. Don’t expect them to repeat, but that was a big win so regardless of what happens…

I don’t think I am going to fly back to LA for Thanksgiving.

Chances are I’ll be there in December and I think I am going to save the cash for a different trip or opportunity.

Thanksgiving is nice, but we’ll all survive if I am not there.

I figure I’ll take advantage of the time to read some more and catch up on a few things.

Maybe I’ll start a new tradition of Thanksgiving sushi or pizza.

I still have time to change my mind but if I don’t I’ll tell the kids this is part of the commitment I made to run this race and run hard.

2016 has been such a mix of really good stuff alongside some pretty challenging and awful that I can’t stomach the idea of not going hard.

I am the anchor in this tug-of-rope battle and if I let go of the rope there is no one left to pick it up.

Very few would notice anyway and I am ok with that.

The good stuff didn’t happen because of gifts, it happened because of hard work.

It happened because even when things looked grim and winning seemed impossible we kept playing and lightning struck.

I don’t wear a sweater because other people are cold or stop working hard because others say it can’t work.

Good things happen because hard work led to opportunity.

Sometimes the tragedies and triumphs of sport provide great examples of why we should keep on going.