br Page 379 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Russell Westbrook Is Struggling
The sixth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder were such a popular pick to upset the third-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs that it’s hardly fair to even call them the underdogs. Only one of ESPN’s panel of 20 analysts picked the Blazers to take the series, and the thinki...

The Damian Lillard Experience Is The Sweetest Show In Basketball
Tell yourself you love basketball as a beautiful game, to watch the ball ping around the court as a team’s collective hive-mind hunts the best available shot. Then watch the last week of the NBA playoffs and see if you can stick to that conviction. Between Lou Williams’s rash of perverse leaners on ...

Breanna Stewart Likely Out For Season After Tearing Her Achilles With Russian Team
Well, this sucks. Seattle Storm forward and reigning WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart is probably going to miss the entirety of the upcoming season, because she tore her Achilles while playing for Russian team Dynamo Kursk in the EuroLeague title game on Sunday....

Someone Has To Clean Up After Broadway's Creative Destruction
If you are familiar with the still boyishly handsome but extremely serious actor Ethan Hawke, you know that when stage directions state that a character he’s portraying onstage wields a golf club and then is “seen smashing typewriter methodically,” Hawke will absolutely be smashing the shit out of a...

Christian Yelich Has Been A Human Fireball Against The Cardinals
When Christian Yelich homered in the first four games of the season, all of which were against the St. Louis Cardinals, it was a fun curio—a hot streak carried over from the Brewers right fielder’s MVP season last year and a great player being great in an unusual way. Gabe Fernandez even wrote about...

Joel Embiid Couldn't Keep A Straight Face While Apologizing For His Elbow On Jarrett Allen
Joel Embiid got hit with a flagrant foul late in the first half of his Sixers’ eventual series-tying 145-123 win over the Nets on Monday night when he unleashed the full force of his elbow into Jarrett Allen’s neck while trying to beat him in the paint. Allen got up right away, but my goodness, that...

Mitch Marner Is Everything For The Leafs
Probably the biggest story out of Monday night’s 3-2 Leafs win over the Bruins is the resurrection of Auston Matthews, who in the second period scored his first goal in the month of April to put Toronto in the lead for good. But if there’s an enduring image of this game for Leafs’ fans—particularly ...

Nazem Kadri Is Done For The Rest Of The First Round
As expected, the NHL hit Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri with a multi-game suspension on Monday evening for his high crosscheck on Boston Bruin Jake DeBrusk from Game 2 of their first-round series on Saturday:...

There's A Lot Going On In This Jason Vargas Interview
Everyone’s eyes will naturally be drawn to the colonial-seeming fellow sliding into the background of Saturday’s postgame scrum for Mets pitcher Jason Vargas. Fine, that’s understandable. This blog will get to him shortly, but there are other things to appreciate here, too....

Brand Digs Up Jackie Robinson's Corpse To Sell Beer
If people would stop accepting ads like this as being anything beyond an ad, there’s a chance they might stop being made that way. In the meantime, a brand used Jackie Robinson, who didn’t drink alcohol, according to his wife Rachel, and a two-toned baseball (yecccch) as a prompt to sell beer. They ...

The Refs Lost Control As The Bruins And Maple Leafs Tried To Kill Each Other
The Bruins took Game 2 against the Maple Leafs on Saturday with a 4-1 win in Boston. Though they won with a large margin of victory on the scoreboard, the game was much closer in terms of physicality. ...

Kenny Atkinson's Trust In Caris LeVert Paid Off
When Caris LeVert went down with his gruesome-looking foot injury in November, the initial assumption was that his season was over. It made sense at the time. When you combine his history of foot injuries, and the fact that he had to be taken off in a stretcher, the projections tend to be pessimisti...

Ex-NFL Players Now Have To Jump Through Even More Hoops To Collect Concussion Settlement Money
A new set of physicians’ rules has been approved for the NFL concussion settlement, and while those rules do not explicitly alter the criteria for a qualifying diagnosis, they do include a number of wholesale changes that could make it more difficult for ex-players to obtain settlement payments, jus...

Uh-Oh, Joel Embiid's Knee Might Keep Him Out Of Game 1
A visibly frustrated Joel Embiid said he “has no idea” if he’ll play tomorrow in Game 1 of the Sixers’ first-round series versus the Nets, due to pain in his left knee. Seems bad:...

Bryson DeChambeau Foiled By Dumbass Stupid Flagstick And Dumbass Stupid Hole
Bryson DeChambeau leads the field after shooting six under par in the opening round of The Masters. Despite this, he has as much reason as anybody to feel bitter about how the course treated him on Thursday....

Leafs' Nazem Kadri Sets Up Beautiful Breakaway For William Nylander With Pinpoint Feed
After going down against the Boston Bruins early, the Toronto Maple Leafs spent a majority of Game 1 (so far) effectively defending seemingly every scoring opportunity their opponents got. The Leafs have now gotten to the point where they’ve been able to turn that strong defense into some magical of...

The Braves Just Got Nine Years Of Ozzie Albies At An Insultingly Low Price
After signing Ronald Acuña to a team-friendly deal worth at most $12.4 million annually over the next decade, the Atlanta Braves have locked up another one of their young players with a dirt-cheap extension that’ll last beyond arbitration and through his entire 20s. Second baseman Ozzie Albies, curr...

Dirk Nowitzki's Championship Stands Alone
Dirk Nowitzki is finally retiring after two decades with the Dallas Mavericks, and is secure in his legacy as the greatest-ever player from outside the United States thanks to 31,540 points scored, the iconic fadeaway jumper, his 14 all-star teams, and the 2007 MVP award. His once-reviled, or at lea...

Report: Guns, $20,000 In Cash Stolen From Braves Outfielder Nick Markakis's Home
A suspected burglar stole five guns, including an AR-15 rifle, and $20,000 in cash from the Atlanta home of Braves right fielder Nick Markakis, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ...

Paul George Ended A Crazy Game On A Crazy Bucket
The final minutes of Rockets-Thunder on Tuesday night were a dense flurry of batshit. They featured Russell Westbrook swooshing a runner from 27 feet, Paul George earnestly looking to scrap with P.J. Tucker, and James Harden conducting the Rockets’ woozy show as usual. All of that is weird, but some...