What Do Rafael Nadal and Yao Ming Have In Common?

When someone is great, there's nothing that can stop their light from shining through the cracks of whatever it is that they excel at. Combine that with intensity, heart, and work ethic, they are virtually unstoppable.

Every so often, incredible physical specimens enter into sports that they are not conventionally built for, but use those same advantages to become forces of nature.

For every bit of energy, there is a point in which it stops. No measure of energy ever continued through time. No matter how fast you're going, how strong the swing, or how powerful the momentum, at some point it meets an end.

When Yao Ming entered the NBA six years ago, he was an amazing physical specimen at 7'6", and could do things that guys who were seven feet tall couldn't even do.

Yao was a great jump shooter, and could take big defenders out 18 feet from the basket and connect. He could play by shooting fade-away shots with his back to the basket.

Yao could also do conventional things big men do, such as block shots and rebound. He was extremely talented and was nothing like the NBA had ever seen before.

As a culture, we were ready for Yao and he was ready for us. Nothing against our heralded big men like Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Patrick Ewing, but this guy was different.

Yao may not of had the strength of those guys, but his size, skill, and competitiveness was more than enough to compete on a nightly basis. When we really got a load of Yao, nobody believed that he would be anything short of amazing.

What we didn't realize was that the rigors of today's NBA would prove too much for his long, slender frame.

For quite some time, big men have had problems with injury, but not to Yao's extent. His feet were seemingly made of cardboard and not bone.

After playing in 242 of 244 games in his first three seasons, Yao missed 84 of his next 244 games, playing in fewer than 60 games for three seasons in a row. His feet were falling apart on him, and as fans, we hated to see it.

Whenever potentially great athletes fall to injury, it saddens us as fans to see the player will never have the chance to reach their ceiling.

The same thing happened to Penny Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn. Many athletes have felt the burn of serious injury early on, and their careers were destroyed as a result.

We all hoped entering this past season that Yao and his feet would hold up, and he could continue his ascending career. Stunningly, Yao played in 77 games and only missed five of them.

His Houston Rockets team earned a playoff berth without star guard Tracy McGrady, another oft-injured player, and had a chance to move out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time in the millennium.

Houston defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, and was confident heading into the second round against the Los Angeles Lakers.

It was then that Yao injured his foot again, shelving him for the rest of the playoffs. His Rockets team played spirited basketball without him, but it wasn't enough as the eventual champion Lakers eliminated them 4-3.

Monday, June 29, the Rockets' world was crushed into tiny pieces among hearing news that they've feared for years.

Yao Ming's foot is not healing, and he may miss the entire 2009-10 season. Silence could be observed across the state of Texas, and earthquake-like seismic waves ripped through the front office of the Rockets.

With their biggest fears shadowing the arena, the Rockets stand in the unenviable position of possibly losing their outstanding, extremely gifted star.

Meanwhile, Wimbledon plays out at the All England Club in London, and an awkward silence could still be heard throughout Centre Court.

Roger Federer continues to reign supreme following his French Open defeat of Robin Soderling to win the title and give him the Grand Slam cycle.

Although he's no longer ranked No. 1 in the world, Federer's fellow competitor and rival Rafael Nadal can do nothing to stop the potential release of his stranglehold of late on men's tennis.

Like Yao, Nadal is an imposing package of power and not the conventional men's tennis player. Nadal is extremely fit, but weighs in at almost 200 pounds while standing at 6'1".

It's not just his weight, but his frame that makes him different than other men's tennis players. His strength rips shots along the line with great spin that makes it hard to compete with Nadal.

Rafa hit the tennis world swiftly, building a clay-court game that could be matched by no one. Future Hall-of-Famer and potentially the best of all time Federer had to take a back seat to Nadal.

Grass was widely considered Federer's surface, but as Nadal overtook him for the No. 1 world ranking, he beat Federer on his own surface.

Someone had taken down the big-bad wolf of tennis, and his name was Rafael Nadal.

As the tennis world embraced this new amazing talent, his knees weren't embracing the physical beating they were receiving each tournament he entered.

At the age of 23, Nadal is in the prime of his career, but is missing tournaments that are hurting his growth and reign over tennis.

Determined, Federer is building himself back up in the absence of Nadal. The new sheriff in town has been forced to leave his post, putting a deafening halt to his choke-hold on the game.

After losing the French Open, his clay court event, Nadal didn't want to make excuses but knew that he wasn't 100 percent, and his knees were crying tears of pain to him.

Not wanting to miss Wimbledon, Nadal played some warm-up matches to test his knee. He lost to Stanislas Wawrinka and Lleyton Hewitt, two players he's expected to defeat.

After those defeats, Nadal chose sadly to forgo Wimbledon to rest the Tendinitis in his knees. Meanwhile, players such as Hewitt, Federer, Andy Murray, and Andy Roddick have life as the game's most dominant figure of late and are quietly absent.

Nadal and Yao are undoubtedly two of sports most imposing, extremely talented figures and represent a new wave of athlete that combine physical gifts with work ethic and talent.

Unfortunately, their size and styles of play put their bodies under significant stress and cause injuries to be deterrents to what otherwise can be historically successful careers.

The plight of the modern athlete is staying strong enough physically and mentally to compete with the world's best.

For Nadal and Yao, the physical gifts were natural. Unfortunately for them, their body's responses to them haven't been.