ass Page 33 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

If NBA teams can raise division-title banners, they should be able to raise a banner for the In-Season Cup
The inaugural In-Season Tournament is nearing its conclusion, which can only mean one thing: How can we find a new way to dump on it? Fortunately, a contrived controversy has been delivered on cue. The winner of this weekend’s In-Season Tournament will have to navigate the thorny situation over how ...

Why is no one screaming about the NBA’s MVP race yet?
There’s one unquestioned upside to the NBA’s In-Season Tournament. The endless promos and exhausting exposure to promote Adam Silver’s baby — and debate over if it’s working or if it matters — has overshadowed the usual topic de jour as we hit the quarter-season mark: The MVP race....

Paul Pogba's career could be done after 4-year doping ban
Juventus midfielder and French National team player Paul Pogba’s future career remains uncertain after Italy’s national anti-doping prosecutors requested a four-year ban from soccer after testing positive for testosterone in September. ...

America is better at shooting people than basketballs
The United States set a record over the weekend. There were two mass shootings on Sunday, one in Texas and another thousands of miles to the northwest in Washington. Those were the 37th and 38th mass killings of 2023 — a new record. With 24 days left in the year the 2022 record of 36 has been surpas...

Juan Soto is finally a New York Yankee. Took long enough
The New York Yankees have finally acquired outfielder Juan Soto from the San Diego Padres, according to New York Post columnist Joel Sherman, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan. ...

Anthony Edwards is salty about being called an All-Star
The next time you’re out and about and happen to run into Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards, don’t dare refer to him as an All-Star. Even though he is indeed a one-time All-Star “selection,” he won’t acknowledge this fact. He doesn’t count it since he wasn’t a first-choice selection to the...

Biden supports Indigenous Olympic lacrosse team
With lacrosse being added to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, it is only right that the group of people who invented the sport get an invite too. ...

LeBron James wants to win the NBA Cup because Michael Jordan didn't
The NBA Cup/In-Season Tournament finally concludes in Las Vegas this week. LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers outlasted the Phoenix Suns in a scrappy game Tuesday night to advance to the semifinals. James put on a show against Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, scoring 31 points, dishing 11 dimes, ...

The NBA’s top 3 rookies are tough to watch (for reasons outside of their control)
The 2023 NBA Draft was supposedly a three-team draft. The main prize was Victor Wembanyama, with Brandon Miller and Scoot Henderson in the trail positions. Regardless of which guard, wing, or big you got, each could be a franchise cornerstone. The caveat is what exactly would they be holding up? ...

The Winter Meetings don’t work that way, Shohei
If you exist on a plane outside the insular world of sports Twitter (sports X?), you might not be aware that the world currently hinges on MLB free agent Shohei Ohtani picking a new baseball team. Until said team is chosen, those of us left behind in the bubble can do nothing but hit “refresh” on th...

Selling the Mavs is a Faustian bargain for Mark Cuban
What do Donald Trump, casinos, the Holocaust, and the Dallas Mavericks have in common? The answer can be found in a comic book. In Art Spiegelman’s seminal tome on his family’s survival of the Holocaust, the graphic novel Maus, the underground comix writer analyzes the cyclical effect of trauma, not...

Tyrese Haliburton has the Pacers skipping the NBA waiting line
There are three tiers of NBA existence: Teams stuck in the mud, teams trying to fit through a championship window and future contenders waiting their turn. Prior to Tyrese Haliburton’s first full season as a Pacer, Indiana was rudderless and stuck on a road to nowhere. Aside from Haliburton, there w...

Refs defend controversial LeBron timeout call
Officials from last night’s Los Angeles Lakers-Phoenix Suns game have confirmed the controversial timeout call that helped punch L.A.’s ticket to the In-Season Tournament semifinal....

The NCAA's latest NIL 'solution' is nothing but a shell game
College sports’ has once again ripped off its student-athlete robe and revealed its naked capitalistic body. By leaving out Florida State because its starting quarterback suffered a season-ending injury in late November, the College Football Playoff Committee showed that its goal is to put the best ...

Oregon just got hit with a Title IX lawsuit and the allegations are rough
On Friday, 32 members of the University of Oregon’s women’s beach volleyball and rowing teams filed a class action lawsuit in federal court that accuses the University of depriving female athletes of “equal treatment and benefits, equal athletic aid, and equal opportunities to participate in varsity...

Could you imagine if Shohei Ohtani signed with the Blue Jays?
A new team has entered a bid in the Shohei Ohtani raffle — the Toronto Blue Jays. ...

NCAA wants to try something new with NIL
The NCAA has proposed a new rule to its NIL format that would allow for Division I schools to directly enter deals with its athletes. ...

The Baseball Writers Association of America’s anonymous ballot problem is hopefully ending soon
According to FanGraphs senior writer Jay Jaffe, the BBWAA has voted to make all Hall of Fame ballots an opt-out disclosure instead of an opt-in. The decision is still implemented to the Hall of Fame’s approval....

How to hate-watch the rest of the NBA's In-Season Tournament, Part 2
Human nature drives us to dump on new concepts and the IST has inspired a whole host of reasons for the NBA Cup to receive hate. There’s a lot not to like including the scoring differentials playing a role in who advances, sneakers sliding around on the NBA’s personalized ice rinks, the 30-team fiel...

How to hate-watch the rest of the NBA's In-Season Tournament, Part I
The NBA In-Season Tournament’s single elimination stage tips off this week. Human nature drives us to dump on new things and the IST has inspired a whole host of reasons to hate it. There’s a lot not to like. The scoring differentials playing a role in who advances, the personalized courts playing l...