Responding To Defeat

I sat down to watch my homestate team on Saturday night, the Portland Trailblazers, with confident hope that it would be a good use of my time. I had worked hard that day to make sure everything on my ‘honey-do’ list was completed so that I could relax and watch sports. I was in triple-sport bliss, because not only were the Blazers playing, but the Seattle Mariners were on FSN and I was watching an afl2 game online. Surely, this was heaven.

But what unfolded before my eyes on Saturday night was catastrophic. I saw a young team, that had been successful down the stretch and on a roll, be thoroughly stomped and schooled by thirty in the opening game of the NBA playoffs. It was as if the crowd corporately and simultaneously had the wind knocked out of them and they stood in a collective silence of shock and horror. The team they saw in front of them was not the same team that had revitalized the Portland sports community. Instead, they looked young, timid and experienced.

Its three days later and the Trailblazers have had a chance to soak in their first game failure. A loss like that eats away at your stomach and causes your heart to ache. But what happens after the empty stomach and broken heart is something interesting and remarkable…a hunger grows. A hunger grows to prove to the world that you deserve to be in the playoffs, in the game, in the arena, and though the defeat stings, there is renewed hope of once again rising to the pinnacle and experiencing the exhilaration of victory. It is what has driven men and women across the centuries, what inspires us to continue on and drives us to achieve more. It is the passion to succeed.

I am confident that the Portland Trailblazers will respond tonight against the Houston Rockets. We will see the team that got them there, and we will watch the way in which they respond to defeat, a true measure of a champion.