ass Page 97 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Boston can sure take a punch
We’d seen this script before. Fans with any kind of decent memory recognized it. In the NBA Finals, as Golden State locked in and took a double-digit knockout lead. Turn off your TVs, the game is over. Or as the late-great Chick Hearn would say “The game’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the...

Tracy McGrady’s new league highlights a style of hoops NBA players took mainstream in the 90s
Although basketball is a team sport, there are multiple one-on-one matchups within a game. Michael Jordan is credited with ushering in the isolation style of hoops into the NBA during the 1980s and ’90s....

2022 NBA Finals: How the teams stack up and storylines to watch
The NBA Finals are finally upon us, and it’s one of the better matchups anyone could’ve hoped for. There is plenty of star power, and each game should be tightly contested as both teams are known for their stifling defense. The league should be thoroughly pleased with the series we’re set to embark ...

Which NBA players saw their stock fall during these playoffs
A player’s worth is most accurately weighed in the playoffs. Just refer to last season’s Julius Randle debacle. Randle averaged 24 ppg, 10 rpg, and 6 apg on scorching shooting splits of 46%/41%/81%. Every metric but his FG% was a career-best. Then came the playoffs. In that first-round series vs. th...

Emotional Ukraine team one win away from 2022 World Cup
For the first time since Russia’s senseless invasion, the Ukraine men’s national soccer team took the field....

Cut the semantics crap, Kevin, you know what Draymond meant about Steph Curry, and he’s right
As much as I’m looking forward to seeing the Golden State Warriors back in the NBA Finals, what I’m not looking forward to is paying them many compliments. They’re extremely fun to watch, no less fun than the League Pass alert days of 2013 and 2014. However, Charles Barkley is correct when he says t...

Gregg Popovich’s coaching tree is monopolizing the NBA Finals
Gregg Popovich is the winningest head coach in NBA history with 1,344 victories. Along with having the most wins for any coach in league history, we’re beginning to see another part of Popovich’s legacy take shape. The four head coaches involved in the last two NBA Finals have a tie to coach Pop, ha...

Landon Donovan: Fall World Cup could hurt USMNT
Part of the charm of every FIFA World Cup is how it takes up a large chunk of summer. It either coincides with the tail end of the NBA and NHL playoffs, or misses it all together and only has to share sports airwaves with baseball’s slow ass. And it’s much more palatable to sit through a pair of 45-...

Half of the coaches in the NBA are Black — The NFL doesn’t have an excuse anymore
With less than 100 days before the 2022 season kicks off and a week after the NFL hosted a “diversity summit” for Black coaches, the NBA has shown us just how useless those summits are when you operate a league where the best person is hired for the job....

We got a fun Game 7, and here are the players who made their mark the past two weeks
The playoffs just haven’t felt the same since that thrilling Game 6 between the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors. Blowouts, unfortunately, littered the conference finals, especially in the east. The Dallas Mavericks only got thoroughly walloped in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, ...

Congrats Boston, but you have no shot against the Warriors
The Boston Celtics have torn through the playoffs, eliminating each team that’s ousted them in the last three postseasons. After a seven-game slugfest with the Miami Heat, the C’s are in Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2010, led by Jayson Tatum, who is making a strong case for ent...

The story of the man who conned his way into a massive soccer contract
Fraud runs deep in the veins of professional Bulgarian soccer club, CSKA (Central Sports Club of the Army) Sofia. In 2009, former club president Alexander Tomov and former chief executive Alexander Garibov, were arrested and charged with embezzlement and document fraud. The pair had allegedly been m...

Get ready for hot pickleball action!
It’s not often that we get the chance to live through the invention and ascension of a sport into popular culture. American football dates back to the Civil War era. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. FIFA was founded in 1904. But thanks to a man named Joel Pritchard trying to entertain his...

Jimmy Butler’s superstar card got declined when Miami needed it most
Earlier this month, FS1’s Nick Wright debuted a bit called the Superstar Club. I don’t usually endorse debate show takes, but this was a solid metaphor. Jimmy Butler was depicted standing in line, waiting for entry. In this year’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, he nearly cemen...

Reformatting the NBA Playoffs could solve the league’s injury issue
The NBA Playoffs are gradually winding down, and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag where quality is concerned. Despite the rating increase early in the postseason, some of these games have been hard to watch. Injuries to stars and the lack of downtime between games have some thinking it m...

Landry Shamet hath brought a plague upon every house he’s entered
Athletes and fans are a very superstitious lot, and if rituals and patterns are to be taken seriously, Suns’ guard Landry Shamet should be forced to play for lottery teams for the rest of his career. If your team is contending for a championship, needs a piece in the offseason, and picks up or trade...

Real Madrid shouldn’t have even been there
We’ll likely never see a UEFA Champions League run like the one Real Madrid just completed. If only quality of play decided Los Blancos’ quarterfinal and semifinal two legged-ties, as well as Saturday’s one-game final against Liverpool, they would’ve lost each one. Real Madrid trailed late in each s...

Upcoming sale of the Trail Blazers could partially atone for team not hiring Becky Hammon
If the recent sale of Chelsea FC taught us anything, it’s that sports franchises are as valuable as ever. The English Premier League club sold for $5 billion, and there was no shortage of suitors. That should make Portland Trail Blazers’ fans sleep better in the coming months as a sale of the team i...

Colin Kaepernick may return to the NFL while America asks itself what is it that the police do, exactly
Every revolution begins with a single act of defiance - Mahatma Gandhi...