girinathan Page 31 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Sixers Choose Not To Pick Up Last Year Of Jahlil Okafor's Contract
The Sixers have chosen not to pick up the $6.3 million option for the last year of Jahlil Okafor’s rookie contract. Drafted third overall in 2015, Okafor was an interesting offensive prospect but an immediate defensive liability, and often seemed sad and adrift on a Sixers roster clogged with young ...

Who Calls Dirk Nowitzki "Tall Baller From The G"?
Basketball Reference is an invaluable resource, and millions of people are surely grateful that it exists. There is one minor feature on the site that might make you question the whole enterprise, and that’s the field for nicknames:...

Carmelo Anthony Explains Why He Screams While Rebounding
Arriving on a new team must be tricky; you’ve got to get acclimated to new surroundings and personalities. Happily it took Carmelo Anthony roughly zero regular season games to get comfortable screaming, “Get the fuck out of here!” at his teammates while gathering rebounds....

Jack Sock Goes Between The Legs Yet Again
Would you believe it? Rushing the net in a tense moment during a first-set tiebreak against David Goffin today, Jack Sock went between the legs—with great results....

Look At God
It’s a testament to Roger Federer’s season that he’s been on the TV so many Friday afternoons, and that so few of the matches have been remotely competitive. Fed just finished up a tense one right now against Adrian Mannarino at Basel, and he had a sloppy few games—lots of shanked balls hurtling in...

Tennis Player Chastised By Umpire After He Won Point Without Even Trying
Down 5-1 in the last set to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and returning serve, hope was more or less lost for Damir Dzumhur in today’s second-round Vienna Open match. He could be forgiven for letting his effort lapse, especially after he’d limped around for much of the second set, and even more so after he’d t...

Martina Hingis Retires For The Third And Presumably Last Time
Martina Hingis announced her retirement today, after 23 years of professional tennis that began, ridiculously, with her winning major titles and hitting world No. 1 by age 16. She was the sort of prodigy wholly absent from the modern game, obsolete due to the increased physical demands of the sport....

I Hope Dennis Smith Jr. Keeps Trying Big Dunks And Ruins Someone's Life
Dennis Smith Jr. is just 6-foot-2, but the audacious kind of 6-foot-2, the kind that wants to put the ball directly into the hoop no matter what bodies stand between him and it. There’s not a whole lot else going on in this Mavs roster, so it’s exhilarating when the rookie launches himself off the f...

Praise Shapo
With today’s first-round victory at Basel, Canadian wonderteen Denis Shapovalov has officially qualified for Milan, the new, strangely formatted “Next Gen” tournament intended to gin up interest in the rising cohort of men’s tennis stars. Only the top seven players 21 and under get to qualify, plus ...

Markelle Fultz Says Be More Like An Egg
Struggling (and visibly injured) Sixers rookie Markelle Fultz is in what one might call “hot water.” Through three losses and 59 minutes of run, the first overall pick has shot 34 percent from the field, bricked half his free throws with toddler form, taken just six shots from beyond nine feet, and...

Nick Kyrgios, Shut Down For The Season, Fields Questions From The Peanut Gallery
Nick Kyrgios chose to shut down his season Thursday, citing a desire to recover fully from the hip injury he suffered during a nasty slip on the grass in July. Here’s the full explanation he offered after an uneven season in which he made two finals but failed to pass the second round of any major:...

At Least There's Kristaps
The Thunder look like they’ll be fun, and good. The Knicks are of course neither, but in last night’s 105-84 loss they were bad on a level that still managed to surprise. If you are a team with a hopeless season ahead of you but a small gaggle of bright young players, you might just invest in their ...

The Spurs Will Be Fine
Kawhi Leonard missed the opener with a leg injury. Tony Parker is still recovering from a left quadriceps tendon surgery and is slated to return in November. Now, this may shock you, but it turns out that the loss of individual cogs may not hamper the Spurs too much as a whole, in part because they ...

Report: Bobby Portis Suspended Eight Games For Breaking Nikola Mirotic's Face
Nikola Mirotic was hospitalized yesterday with a fractured jaw and a concussion after a confrontation with Bulls teammate Bobby Portis. Today the Bulls announced that Portis would be suspended for eight games....

Do Not Under Any Circumstances Bring The Following Objects To An NBA Game
It’s opening night of the NBA season! It’s time to enjoy basketball, the best sport. But if you’re planning on attending an NBA game and getting up close and personal with your favorite players, you should know what objects not to bring to the arena....

Can The Knicks Defense Be Historically Bad?
A few weeks ago, while catching up on some Big Apple sports news, I came upon this incredible sentence:...

The TV Is Stuck On The Federer-Nadal Show And The Remote Has Disappeared Into The Sofa
Apologies if you expected the channel to change after the two greatest split the year’s four majors evenly between themselves. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s enduring dominance, and the inconsistency of their most dangerous threats, have frozen everything in place. The hypothetical Next Generation...

Isaiah Thomas Has Had It Rough
The new Lee Jenkins jam does what it usually does—suffuse its subject with a big old cloud of pathos—and his current subject, Isaiah Thomas, couldn’t be more deserving of the treatment. Thomas landed in Boston after languishing under-appreciated in Sacramento and Phoenix, made All-NBA teams, led the...

Two Belligerent Tennis Men Struck With Heavy Fines
It’s no secret that tennis is populated by tempestuous dingbats, and today two such guys were struck with big fines for bad behavior....

Hail Shapo
Eighteen-year-old Denis Shapovalov cracked the top 50 this week, becoming the youngest player to do so since an 18-year-old Rafael Nadal in 2004. Congrats to Shapo....