Locker Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
I’d rather get in a ring with Greg Hardy than play pickup with D.K. Metcalf
Albert Pujols and D.K. Metcalf aren’t in the same universe athletically at this point in their lives. Yet, they shared a basketball court Friday as part of the NBA Celebrity Game, and I gotta say, it is startling that one of the greatest baseball players of this century — coming off a 24-home run sw...
Maybe blowing it up is the right call
About six weeks ago, I came here to lament how whenever one thing went wrong for a team, in any sport these days, the immediate call from fans and media alike was to simply blow things up. We have become so attuned to teams either being contenders or driving themselves into the dirt to start over th...
You’ll be shocked to hear THE Ohio State University teaches THE wrong thing
A pretty disturbing case came to a close in Columbus, where two former OSU football players, Amir I. Riep and Jahsen L. Wint, were acquitted by a jury of the rape and kidnapping of a 19-year-old student. The case seemed to hinge on a video of the alleged victim giving consent after the fact, even th...
The White Sox want you to know they’re just dumb, not evil
One of MLB’s biggest problems, and it spreads to other leagues as well, is the amount of buck-passing that seems to take place when there’s a serious issue. Whenever there’s someone like Mike Clevinger being investigated for domestic abuse or something else awful, a team is waiting for the league to...
The NBA asked us to watch basketball that made load management a priority
At least the NBA, unlike some of its sporting league counterparts, keeps its CBA negotiations mostly under wraps. They’re going on right now, as both owners and players have the option of opting out of the current agreement by March 31, which would end the deal on June 30. One of the things to leak ...
MLB cares more about middle relievers — and money — than the fans
No one comes up with a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist quite like MLB. It’s their specialty....
Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving run two-man weave in first game as teammates
Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving made their on-court debut as a duo Saturday night in Sacramento. The two combined for 55 points on 22 of 41 from the field, and an overtime loss, 133-128. De’Aaron Fox entered the fourth quarter with 10 points and finished with 36, getting wherever he wanted on the court...
Remember LaMelo Ball?
Coming into the season you could see the Charlotte Hornets heading for a ravine. They lost their second-best player to off-the-court issues, and LaMelo Ball was literally limping into the year. Well, the family wagon smashed right off that cliff. ...
Put Devin Hester in the Hall of Fame, you cowards
Most every time, I don’t care about the Hall of Fame. Any of ‘em. The Baseball Hall of Fame is now just a platform for every voter and commentator to prove how important they think they are or what new metric they say proves all. Everyone gets into the Hockey Hall of Fame as long as they went out dr...
Of course the NHL makes teams wear St. Patrick’s Day jerseys
In the NHL’s current procession into the gutter, the New York Islanders were the latest to announce that they wouldn’t be using rainbow jerseys or stick tape for their Pride Night. While odious on the surface, digging a little deeper it gets…slightly less odious. The Islanders have never done so, th...
Kyrie Irving shouldn’t be an All-Star because he’s literally the worst
Kyrie Irving’s first media appearance since being traded to the Dallas Mavericks was just as delusional as you might imagine. The dribbling headache said he wanted out of Brooklyn because he wants to be in a place where he’s “celebrated and not just tolerated.” That led to a feeling of disrespect, a...
Probably not the study the NFL wanted coming out this week
As the proper bookend to yesterday’s TMA, B.U. released the results of its study of former NFL players’ brains, and it’s not a number that the NFL wants talked about on Super Bowl week. This is the time that the NFL wants to celebrate itself, what everyone loves about it, why it’s become a religion ...
Don’t worry, the Pro Bowl won’t be the future of football
The NFL ran its Pro Bowl weekend, sinking into the party theme that it’s always been for everyone in any sport really. It used to be that players didn’t mind the free trip to Hawaii, though when it got to be they could all easily afford a trip to Hawaii that sort of lost its charm. So the NFL made t...
Other leagues could learn something from the NHL’s All-Star Weekend
You know that feeling of hearing a new song that you like from an artist that you’re not sure that you like? The first run-through is filled with skepticism. As catchy as it is, you’re unwilling to admit that you enjoy it. Then you hear it again, and it’s like, well, shit, I guess even Post Malone c...
Tom Brady's not the only star who couldn't quit the spotlight
For the second straight Feb. 1, Tom Brady retired from the National Football League. His first retirement lasted all of 40 days, coming back to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers minutes after the NCAA Tournament field was chosen on Selection Sunday. He’s now retired “for good” and the entire sports world kno...
I would rather light my franchise on fire than validate Kyrie Irving
Eventually, some time way down the road, after amassing hundreds of millions of dollars, Kyrie Irving is going to get his. By that point though, it’ll be way too late in life to teach him that he’s ever done anything wrong. When the news broke that Irving demanded a trade from the Brooklyn Nets on F...
The NHL will always be a niche sport — and that’s fine
There is no fanbase that can whipsaw from beseeching the masses to watch their sport to getting pissed off at any mainstream coverage or attention quite like hockey fans. Any discussion of hockey’s ratings and popularity always includes a collection of the same reasons it’s not more popular, along w...