6 Page 43 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Which NBA title contender will Jae Crowder join?
Championship NBA teams have always revolved around star players, but the glue guys/role players make it possible for franchises to become title contenders. There are stars all over the Association, but only those with the best supporting casts can make deep runs into the postseason year after year. ...

What’s next for the USMNT?
You know it’s over when your star midfielder is showing up courtside at Miami Heat games. Or the rumors of contract talks with the manager are heating up, while he tries to gain leverage by whispering about European club jobs. Time to call for the Lyft officially....

A decade-plus of Eastern Conference mediocrity can’t be easily forgotten
It’s weird how much energy goes into debating which conference is the NBA’s best. It makes sense in college football because schools can’t play all 100-plus teams each year, and strength of schedule determines playoff spots. But in basketball, with all 30 organizations facing each other at least twi...

The NBA’s newest award is a better fit for MLB teams
It’s bad enough that there have been 16 NBA playoff spots since 1984. At that time there were only 23 teams in the league. It’s 2022, and still more than half of the league gets into the playoffs, and that’s not even counting the highly entertaining Play-in Tournament. Sure the New Orleans Pelicans ...

Gregg Berhalter deserves a lot of credit… and the exit door
At the top, we should refresh the list of things Gregg Berhalter can’t help. Everyone knows this list by now, but it deserves reinforcing. He can’t help that the US doesn’t have a genuine striker. He’s hardly the only international manager affected by such a thing. They’re just not that common. Spai...

Did Qatar even want the World Cup?
The small Middle Eastern country — known for its poor human rights record — is the World Cup host, but did Qatar actually WANT it to begin with? Whichever government officials were responsible for bringing the world’s biggest sporting event to their country must’ve wanted it enough to take the initi...

Is there closure for Ben Simmons in Philly?
Maybe one day Philadelphia sports fans will forgive Ben Simmons for not taking the court at all for the 76ers last season, not shooting in four consecutive fourth quarters, and the play in which he passed the ball to the only Sixer who was arguably a worse shooter than him instead of dunking on Trae...

World sporting events are becoming a different kind of guilty pleasure
While this World Cup is unlike any other due to the start time and Middle East location, there is a recent world competition that comes to mind. Think about it. Climate unfit to host the event, haphazard accommodations, stories of government overreach, and sportswashing. That sounds like the Beijing...

Who had TCU as the first Texas program to (possibly) make the College Football Playoff?
I hate to give Texas credit for anything because the state already takes credit for everything. However, of all the supposed football-obsessed hubs, the Lone Star State tops them all. Mostly because of how unhealthy the population’s dedication to the sport is — I’m sure there are Texans who got wher...

Why the 76ers’ Joel Embiid scored 101 points in 24 hours
In professional sports, team executives and coaches can over-complicate a situation by attempting to outthink the room. This frequently happens in the NBA when general managers are building teams. Or they just become so blinded by certain players that they fail to see their inadequacies clearly....

Dejounte Murray has been better than advertised to start the season
Following last season’s disappointing journey and final destination, the Atlanta Hawks are off to a blazing start to this season. They are 7-3 and not only look like the clear best team in the Southeast division, but also like one of the better squads in the Eastern Conference....

Could this Philly prop bet be the worst bad beat of the century?
Last night, the Philadelphia Phillies dropped Game 5 of the Fall Classic, falling behind 3-2 in the series. It was a better showing than their efforts the game before which saw Rob Thomson’s crew get no-hit, just the second time in World Series history any participant has been held hitless. However...

Can you Phil the love tonight?
Love is certainly not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Philadelphia — despite it being called the City of Brotherly Love or having a statue of the word. I don’t care how high of a note Musiq Soulchild hit in his 2000 Billboard Top 100 single....

The NBA decided to pick the 76ers this time when selectively enforcing tampering penalties
While the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles continue along championship tracks in their respective seasons, the 76ers, on the other hand, seem destined to waste another precious year of Joel Embiid’s prime. After a slow start to this NBA season, the Sixers have finally crawled back to .500. Now the l...

Will have some more of this, thank you
Tuesday night was Klay Thompson’s 651st regular-season game as a Golden State Warrior. When you add the 145 playoff games, Thompson’s been a part of 796 games in his career, and he’d never been ejected from one — until Tuesday night in Phoenix. ...

It’s impossible to be completely miserable (or happy) during the sports equinox
There are 17 gazillion things happening in sports right now, and as much as I’d like to update you on all the happenings of the opening weeks of the NBA and NHL, the World Series-deciding MLB rounds, College Football Playoff-ramification slates, and every NFL, EPL, MMA, boxing match, game, contest, ...

Hey James Harden, you've got airmail
James Harden’s most iconic sequences are so identical they blur together. Jab step, dribble, dribble again, dribble behind the back, dribble between the legs, dribble one more time… I check my phone… he stutter-steps — oh wait — one more dribble, crossover dribble, crossover dribble, step-back. The ...

For NBA MVP, the value bet is Zion, but who will actually win is obvious
It’s easily forgotten that NBA is actually an acronym that stands for National Basketball Association. For a casual observer that follows the league’s personalities and news breakers on social media, the league can be viewed as a multiplatform action/drama that sparks the audience’s adrenaline with ...

And the nominees for this NBA season’s only-great-in-video-games teams are …
There’s a rage-inducing aspect of NBA 2K every year that makes me feel like I need to take those seminars to avoid turning into my dad. A few crazy-talented teams become fan favorites and get overused to the point of exhaustion due to sheer star power despite being middling to garbage in real life. ...
