Crazy days in L.A.

What a crazy couple of days it has been for the sports community in Los Angeles.

We witnessed probably the most physical playoff game so far in this NBA postseason on Wednesday and then we awoke Thursday to news that Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games for violating the MLB's drug policy.

We'll start with the Lakers/Rockets Game 2. The Lakers needed the win badly since they had already lost home court advantage with the loss in Game 1.

This game turned ugly in the end of the third quarter and when all was said and done, there were five technical fouls, one flagrant foul and two ejections.

The first ejection was Derek Fisher, who intentionally nailed Houston's Luis Scola by hitting him with a shoulder to the chest while Scola was setting up a screen for teammate Kyle Lowry.

Fisher said after the game that he was just trying to get through the screen. First of all, Lowry would have to be moving around the screen for that excuse to be valid, but he wasn't. Fisher saw Scola coming and intentionally backed away from Lowry in order to send a message. He deserves to be suspended for Game 3.

Ron Artest and Kobe Bryant also got into it in the fourth quarter when Artest claimed he was elbowed in the throat while the two were battling for a rebound. When the refs wouldn't give Artest the call he wanted, he then got in Kobe's face about it and promptly got ejected.

Somehow, Artest was charged with the foul in the exchange, but he didn't deserve to be ejected. It's not hard to see why he was though, with all that happened to end the third quarter.

Despite all the madness, the Lakers went on to win 111-98 and even up the series at a game apiece.

Then on Thursday, we found out that Manny Ramirez tested positive for a banned substance, hCG, which is used to promote fertility in women, but also used to regain natural strength after a steroid cycle.

As comical as this situation is for anyone who is not a Manny fan, this brings up a serious discussion: did Manny use steroids?

It's a fair question to ask with the knowledge of what hCG is used for, but the fact also stands that until now, he had never failed a drug test.

Unfortunately for Manny, that is the question that will probably be asked about him for the rest of his career, especially with the downfall of A-Rod and so many others to come.

It's just sad to think that Ramirez is being paid so handsomely here and the fans wanted him back so much and now he's gone for 50 games or almost one-third of the season.

Luckily for the Dodgers, they play in a pretty weak division and they'll probably hang on to their NL West lead, but it's going to be closer now than it would have been.

The worst part is that we, again, will be asking ourselves who's next?...because now we can't help but think that someone else will get caught.