This has been a rather brutal week for many outstanding human beings in the world of sports and entertainment. Last Saturday Derrick Rose, arguably the most humble NBA superstar, tore his knee in the first game of the playoffs. On Wednesday, Gigi Buffon made a terrible mistake that may cost Juventus the scudetto. The following day Mariano Rivera, a legendary pitcher for the New York Yankees tore his knee warming up in the outfield. I realize most reading this article could care less about baseball, but I can assure you Rivera is not only one of the greatest clutch performers in sports history he is also very well known for his charity work in his home country of Panama. This was probably going to be his final season, so to see him end such an amazing career this way is heart breaking (he has however vowed to attempt a comeback). On Friday I also found out that Adam Yauch, better known as MCA, from the Beastie Boys had passed away. He contributed to making rap a mainstream genre in the world of music (the Beastie Boys album “Paul’s Boutique” was ranked #156 in Rolling Stones ranking of best albums of all time for any genre) but also was involved with numerous charitable causes, especially to assist Tibet. Here is a very well written obituary on Adam:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/05/adam-yauch

Despite all this terrible news, the week can still end on a very high note should Juve finally clinch its first scudetto since the Calciopoli scandal. Juventus is coming off a deflating home draw versus Lecce, but still controls its own destiny since it has a one point lead over Milan with two games to go. The Beastie Boys first major hit (and many believed at the time it would be their only one) was called “Fight for your Right to Party” and the title perfectly sums up what Conte’s boys need to do to get over last Wednesday’s game and clinch the scudetto:

Conte has done an outstanding job this season, but his biggest challenge comes today since he needs to rally his players after the crushing last game. Milan has not been the same this season since the Muntari phantom goal (and it certainly does not help their cause that they have not stopped complaining about it for last 2 months), so Juve must react in a much better way. Other than the first game versus Napoli, when the team was down 2 goals at halftime, Conte and his players have not really faced much adversity so it will be interesting to see how they react when they play Cagliari later this afternoon.

The other key match of the game is Inter-Milan. It is rather ironic that Inter could be the decider of this year’s scudetto since the two teams fighting for it are its two biggest rivals. There is certainly a lot of bad blood between Inter and Juve, but seeing Milan win the scudetto would be even more devastating to Moratti and Inter nation. A goal by Amauri put Juve on top of the standings earlier in the season, so it would be completely fitting for Inter to hand the scudetto to Juve. With so many bad things happening to good people this week, it is time for the Karma Police to intervene and let Juve fans have a sweet moment of celebration after 6 brutal years.

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