ap Page 1179 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The top 5 underachieving teams in MLB, so far
It’s about the quarter mark of the MLB season, with most teams surpassing 40 games played. There’s still a looooooong way to go this season and the trade deadline is still two months away so a lot can change, but now seems like an apt time to compare teams’ records to their preseason expectations....

Athletes-turned-servicemen and women are not unique to America
While Memorial Day may be a uniquely American holiday, its sentiments — honoring those who have given their lives for their country in the line of duty — are global. America is no longer at war, having pulled out of Afghanistan, and if there was any positive to take away from that conflict that rage...

What are the unwritten rules for slapping another man over a fantasy football feud?
Athletes: they’re just like us! They play fantasy football, they get pissed over fantasy football, they physically assault each other over fantasy football — you know, just guys being dudes!...

Yankees and Rays educate Twitter followers on gun violence
As we sit in states of grief, hopelessness, and disbelief after yet another preventable massacre of children in Uvalde, Texas, the New York Yankees shocked the nation by forgoing their usual Twitter programming during their game against the Tampa Bay Rays last night....

Not to worry Luka, it happens to the best of them
Sure he had to hear his eulogy while he was still living after Andrew Wiggins read him his last rites in Game 3, but Luka Dončić has nothing to be ashamed of. The Dallas Mavericks star led the NBA postseason in scoring, but his singular output was futile against a Golden State Warriors team that pla...

Dan Snyder’s Commanders are a failed state
The Washington Commanders are a crumbling empire. The once thriving franchise has been reduced to something worse than a laughingstock over the last two decades. The Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants are a joke. Dan Snyder’s dysfunctional Washington Commanders are a waking nig...

A 75-year streak is in danger of being broken tonight
2021 saw the end of one of the most famous Finals streaks of all-time. Thirty-seven consecutive NBA Finals between 1984 and 2020 saw at least one teammate of Shaquille O’Neal’s on one of the competing rosters. No one on last year’s Suns or Bucks rosters had ever played with O’Neal during his career....

Get rid of position quotas from All-NBA teams already
If there was ever a reason to finally do away with the positional rankings for All-NBA teams, it’s Joel Embiid’s flagrant omission from First-Team All-NBA honors. The powers that be thought it appropriate to put the direct runner-up to MVP on the Second Team to adhere to a positional preference more...

NBA expansion talk heating up
While the NBA’s Conference finals are making surface-level headlines, tectonic plates are shifting underneath the NBA’s crust. On Tuesday, the NBA’s scuttlebutt radar detected signals that could alter the composition of the league. If a report from Portland 750 AM host and Oregonian sports columnist...

Whatever sport the Heat and Celtics are playing, it’s trash
A lot of sports fandom and analysis is about feel vs. facts, which can go pretty haywire at times. It definitely “feels” like these NBA playoffs have been uniquely blowout-heavy, but it kind of turns out they haven’t been. There just hasn’t been any game-turning shots in the last minute or buzzer-be...

Not giving Kyrie Irving an extension makes all the sense in the world, except the Nets have little choice
Logically, it makes zero sense to give Kyrie Irving a long-term contract....

At least Herschel Walker doesn’t offer thoughts and prayers — because he’s incapable of coherent thought
Well, if what you wanted from lawmakers in response to a senseless and sickening mass murder was a string of literal nonsense words, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that former Georgia running back Herschel Walker won his state’s Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat yesterday and then responded...

We have parity in the NBA playoffs, and be honest, it’s making you miss the 2017 Warriors
For those who were sick of the Golden State Warriors and LeBron James winning all the time, you finally have what you wanted in the NBA: parity. Going into the playoffs there were at least six teams who had a legitimate shot at winning the championship. But one question: has it been fun?...

The Flames cost us a truly transcendent moment
The going story out there has been that the NBA Playoffs have been kinda trash. It’s easy to see why people think that, because there’s been a ton of blowouts, and neither of the conference finals has produced a close game in eight tries. What we want out of the playoffs are moments and performances...

Is the NHL’s Presidents’ Trophy curse real?
The Florida Panthers breezed through the first round of the playoffs and then got bounced from the second round so fast we barely had time for the annual discourse about the Presidents’ Trophy and whether it’s a curse for a team’s Stanley Cup hopes....

The Grizzlies and Heat reacted completely differently to plays where their stars were seemingly injured
Acting like you’ve been there before might be cliché in the world of sports, but it really is the only way to operate for some franchises. For other organizations, it’s a few words some lame old guy threw together ages ago....

The Dallas Mavericks turned into pumpkins
When I wrote the Dallas Mavericks were a mess earlier this season, it was right after they traded one terrible contract in Kristaps Porziņģis for two terrible contracts in Spencer Dwindiddle and Davis Bertans. My argument was not that the Mavs had made the wrong move in ditching the Latvian bum. Nor...

Baseball doesn’t want Tim Anderson around
“You know… I don’t know, to be honest.”...

Kylian Mbappé is PSG’s only hope
Let’s be fair, it isn’t much of a sacrifice or even a hard choice to make more money than a lot of countries’ GDP and live in Paris. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and something 95 percent of the world would opt for (with the other five percent either already living there, making millions somewhere bette...

True Basketball Crime: Andrew Wiggins delivered the coup de grace to Luka and the Mavericks’ season
Entering this series, Luka Dončić’s heft, weight and skill were expected to overwhelm Andrew Wiggins. Instead, Wiggins’ capstone moment in his jewel of a playoff series came during Golden State’s 109-100 victory at the expense of the 23-year-old Dončić....