samfels27 Page 80 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Leicester found a new way to blow it, and their fans probably won’t care
The warping of European soccer and its priorities make judging Leicester City’s last week of the season decidedly foggy. Twenty years ago or so it would be easy. Win the FA Cup, finish fifth, that’s an unqualified success. But that’s not the world we live in anymore, and that’s what makes it so uncl...

Obligatory 'Is This It For The Capitals?' post
In a sport as random and silly, and at times downright stupid, as hockey, it’s oxymoronic to try and weave some overarching narrative from a playoff exit. Games and series are decided on a few bounces and deflections most of the time. Change any one variable, and you can get a completely different r...

Basketball returns home
Even as just a casual basketball fan, I have not missed out on the schadenfreude of the New York Knicks the past decade. It’s always affirming when a place that considers itself essential to a sport, perhaps to the world through that sport, is rendered irrelevant. Watching the Knicks’ sense of self ...

Luis Suárez gets his revenge
No one will ever feel bad for Luis Suárez. We’ve seen him try to eat several opponents (though it did lead to one of the best terrace songs of all-time, “He cheats! He dives! He likes his snacks alive!”) Even more seriously, he was suspended for racially abusing Patrice Evra, an event that, had it h...

The Panthers got a finish lesson
It sounds stupid to almost everyone who loosely followed the Panthers-Lightning Game 4 yesterday, considering that the Cats gave up six goals and lost by four. But for most of the game, especially in the first period, Florida kicked the absolute shit out of the Lightning. They relentlessly attacked ...

Hockey is the dumbest sport
It’s funny (but not), and fitting, that in a week where we’ve spent a great deal of time talking about baseball’s old, drunk, incontinent demons still plaguing the youthful and logical, hockey strolls into the saloon, hitches up its belt, and says, “Oh, you think you’re stupid? I’ll show you stupid....

Nathan MacKinnon is unplayable
Everyone knows that after his 105-point-in-a-56-game season that Connor McDavid is the best player in the world. But what my book presupposes is... maybe he isn’t? (an old joke, and I’ve come to have no use for Wes Anderson over the years and you likely have to, but it’s still a good one). ...

Here’s another violent hit the NHL will do little about
The NHL is going to have another black mark that it won’t do enough about after Nazem Kadri went... well, Nazem Kadri:...

LeBron cements the continued existence of a game he hates
Look, the Play-in Tournament is stupid. Everyone pretty much knows it. The players certainly hate it, and even the ones who get to participate in it probably don’t like it much more. It’s manufactured drama. We’ve had 72 games this year, and in normal times we’ll have 82, and if you’re not in playof...

Pitchers are even less afraid these days
We didn’t need Spencer Turnbull’s no-hitter last night to know that pitchers have smothered baseball these days (and that the Mariners have had all their bats replaced with Play-Doh). It’s the fifth no-hitter of the year, and we’re barely a quarter through the season....

Tony La Russa sold out his own player, and for what?
This Tony La Russa sociology experiment on the South Side of Chicago is going exactly as anyone familiar with the White Sox team and La Russa figured it would. And really, the only thing bailing La Russa out is that this roster was so turn-key when he took it over that even the injuries to Luis Robe...

France gets even scarier with return of Karim Benzema, also more blackmail-y
With club seasons stumbling to their final weekend, and the normal curtain-closer Champions League Final now less than two weeks away, attention and anticipation starts to turn to the postponed European Championships, which are still called “Euro 2020” even though it’s 2021. And also seems to be los...

Joe West’s 'record' is a testament to inertia
I wasn’t aware that the Major League Baseball Umpires’ union had a Twitter feed. I mean, why wouldn’t they? You also might, for a very brief moment, ask if it’s an outlet where the union might help explain some controversial calls or the like. But then you’ll quickly remind yourself that this these ...

Columbus Crew fans reject name change, and win
Perhaps it’s not on the level of preventing a team from moving away from your city, but fans of the Columbus Crew once again took on ownership of the club and once again came out on top. ...

Harry Kane wants out, and the summer striker showcase showdown is on
The rumors started a few weeks ago, but Tottenham’s firing of José Mourinho as manager seemingly has not been enough to keep their favorite son home. Harry Kane has reportedly told Tottenham he wants to move on this summer, to a club where he can win things instead of just waving at them as they go ...

Yes, WWE had zombies at Wrestlemania Backlash, and it’s probably fine
As a wrestling fan, it seems silly that there could be anything you could be told happened at a wrestling show where the reaction would be, “Oh that’s too stupid.” ...

The NHL Playoffs are back and it’s fans-tastic
Look, if there’s an opening to make a Cinderella reference, I’m gonna take it. Just deal with it, and let me have what little I can get. ...

Alisson goal saves Liverpool’s season - yes, he’s the goalkeeper
Whether barely scraping into a Champions League place while leaking buckets of oil after the heights of their last two seasons is really “saving” Liverpool’s season is an open question. And there’s a more than fair argument that after their owners were one of the main drivers of the diabolical, Mr. ...

Kris Bryant is Kris Bryant again, just in time to be shipped out
If you don’t live on the North Side of Chicago, or carry those emotions, then like most of the baseball world you’ve probably forgotten about Kris Bryant at some point in the last few years. Even a good portion of those who do pass through the Addison Red Line stop had written him off or made him so...

Udonis Haslem joins the greats
Udonis Haslem might have authored one of the best send-offs in team sports history last night....