kylenw Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Yes, Flying Parents To The Final Four Is Paying Players
Back in January, less than a week before the college football championship game, the NCAA announced that parents of players who made this year's College Football Playoff or Final Four were eligible to receive $3,000 in travel expenses. Now, a number of ADs are pushing to make the program permanent. ...

Robert Kraft Takes Stand In Aaron Hernandez Trial, Explains His "Work"
An under-the-weather Bob Kraft was called as a witness in the Aaron Hernandez murder trial this morning, and he had some trouble explaining to the prosecutor exactly what it is he does for the Patriots. ...

The Knicks' "Plan" Still Sounds Dumb As All Hell
And now the Knicks season is about butts. ...

Young Sabonis Is Fine And All, But Let's Watch Old Sabonis Highlights Instead
Domantas Sabonis had a pretty good first half against Duke, but I still can't see the Sabonis name without spending 20 minutes poring over YouTube videos of Sabonis Prime throwing no-look passes and dunking on David Robinson. Look at that bullshit he pulls at 1:30—that's the hi-res version of the Ya...

Aw Hell, Kevin Durant Is Done For The Season
The Thunder announced today that Kevin Durant’s foot fracture has shown signs of “regression” and that he’ll have season-ending surgery next week to help the healing process. This sucks. ...

NFLPA Re-Elects DeMaurice Smith As Executive Director, For Some Reason
The NFL Players Association re-elected incumbent Executive Director DeMaurice Smith early Monday morning. This year's election had swollen to nine candidates, many of whom were ridiculous and under-qualified, but there had been a growing sense that the players were increasingly unhappy with Smith an...

The NFLPA's Election For A New Leader Is A Ridiculous Clown Show
This Sunday, the National Football League Players Association will hold an election for Executive Director, a position held by DeMaurice Smith since being unanimously elected by active player reps in 2009. Including Smith, there are nine candidates for the position, which is about eight more than us...

Kyrie Irving Unleashes All Hell In The Perfect Meaningless Game
San Antonio isn't usually a place for mid-March NBA thrills. Oh, the latter-day Spurs remain perfectly capable of playing the sort of gyroscoping, pinball-passing game pretty enough to goose Red Auerbach's carcass from 6 to 12, but it's very a long season and a very old team and while you can usuall...

The Lions Got Haloti Ngata, But Is that Enough?
Ndamukong Suh is leaving town, but the role of "bigass defensive tackle" is apparently plugged right up. The Lions have traded fourth- and fifth-round picks (with a seventh-rounder coming back to Detroit, according to Albert Breer) to the Ravens for defensive lineman Haloti Ngata, who's been holding...

What's Going On With This Tie, Patrick?
Patrick Willis officially announced his retirement today at a press conference, where he wept openly and cited scripture. Journalists gave him a standing ovation, which was weird. And for reasons that escape us, he also wore his tie as pictured above. ...

The Regular Person's Guide To The Apple Watch
There's some Steve Jobs understudy shit going on today, as you've probably seen. Our friends at Gizmodo have a very full and technical explanation of what happened today. But if you don't really care about tech specs and just want to know if this stuff is good or bullshit, we've got something for yo...

Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, Take A Look At This Goddamned 7-Foot Chinese Boxer
This is probably nothing. Probably, this is an oddity that will resolve itself well outside the view of the general boxing public. But just in case it isn't, this here is Taishan Dong, a 26-year-old, 7-foot, 280-pound former kickboxer out of China, and he moved to 3-0 this weekend. ...

"Sports Analytics" Is Bullshit Now
The 9th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference takes place this weekend, and you've likely noticed all the coinciding and ongoing coverage of the analytical side of sports. Some of these stories are illuminating explanations of what's going on at the vanguard of sports analysis; others bitch, ...

Photoshop Data: That Goddamn Dress Is Actually Blue And Brown
Since the collected staff of Deadspin is just about ready to split into teams and murder each other over the color of a dress in a photo from Twitter, let's crack open Photoshop and see what it has to say about this stupid dress. ...

Chart Of James Harden's Defense Looks Just As Bad As You'd Expect
This year's Sloan papers are making their way around this week, and like last year Kirk Goldsberry has a preview of the Harvard entrant on Grantland. This year's is about observing and measuring defense using the NBA's player-movement-tracking system, SportVU. ...

What The Hell Just Happened? 2015 NBA Trade Deadline Roundup
That was a hell of a trade deadline. Talented young players changing teams, high-value draft picks changing hands, contending teams adding pieces, decent teams squadding up and trying to start something—today hit every note you're looking for in a trade deadline dogpile, and had the courtesy of doin...

Are "Maximalist" Running Shoes The Next Big Con? No One Knows!
Today, The New York Times has a piece out on the maximalist running shoe, a trend now old enough to warrant an article written with characteristically Times-ian remove from rigorous examination of its subject. The thing about these shoes, though, is that even if the Times had wanted to conduct a mor...

Tiger, What The Fuck, Man?
Holy shit! This is Tiger Woods's third shot on the par-4 tenth (his first of the day) at the Farmers Insurance Open. Jesus Christ, he just bangs this thing like a railroad spike, less like a chip shot than Miguel Cabrera rocking a line drive up the third base line, or any Dwight Howard hook shot eve...

Stop Trying To Convince Yourselves Seattle's Pass Call Wasn't Stupid
On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks made a grievously bad playcall, and Malcolm Butler won the Super Bowl for the Patriots, and millions of football-watching Americans reeled in reflexive disbelief at the sheer boneheadedness on display....