bu Page 187 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Maybe it’s about Connor Hellebuyck, not Connor McDavid
The reflex is to point and laugh at the Edmonton Oilers once again. It’s combined with frustration that the game’s best player is leashed to such a clown car of an organization, one of the most brilliant individual seasons going completely to waste. And if you’re a long-term hockey writer or analyst...

Basketball returns home
Even as just a casual basketball fan, I have not missed out on the schadenfreude of the New York Knicks the past decade. It’s always affirming when a place that considers itself essential to a sport, perhaps to the world through that sport, is rendered irrelevant. Watching the Knicks’ sense of self ...

The Panthers got a finish lesson
It sounds stupid to almost everyone who loosely followed the Panthers-Lightning Game 4 yesterday, considering that the Cats gave up six goals and lost by four. But for most of the game, especially in the first period, Florida kicked the absolute shit out of the Lightning. They relentlessly attacked ...

Scott Kazmir returns for first start in five years
After José Godoy became the 20,000th player in major league history on Friday, Rays’ shortstop Taylor Walls debuted on Sunday, becoming No. 20,001....

Blazers-Nuggets briefly bumped to ESPN2, still a far cry from tape-delayed 1981 Finals
The start of Trail Blazers-Nuggets was bumped to ESPN2 as Jose Ramírez and Josh Taylor fought for the undisputed junior welterweight title on ESPN, which is barely fathomable in 2021. Taylor won by unanimous decision, and ESPN switched over to the action in Denver with 6:40 left in the first quarter...

God bless the Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat, Jimmy Butler and playoff basketball
Let’s all process this together, because that shit was a lot....

Five pitchers whose Cy Young-caliber seasons are going unnoticed
Baseball has gone through an entire “repressed Catholic kid going into their freshman year of college”-type transformation over the past several years. With baseball moving ever closer to a “three true outcomes” game, several pitchers have revitalized their careers and several more have just started...

Gimme an X! MLB’s 20,000th player reminds us what baseball desperately needs
In 1975, Bob Watson scored Major League Baseball’s one millionth run, an achievement which earned him one million Tootsie Rolls and one million pennies from the candy company, all of which Watson donated to charity....

La Russa is still managing like it’s 1989
The Yankees and White Sox combined for 26 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. In 2012, that’s not so surprising. What is a bit of a stunner is that Aroldis Chapman didn’t get any of those K’s. Carlos Rodón fanned 13, Jordan Montgomery punched out 11, and Michael Kopech added two whiffs out of the Chic...

The biggest “snubs” from the NBA Awards finalists
Y’all are already mad over ‘Player X’ not appearing on at least one of these ballots, so we’re gathered here today to commemorate those unable to join their peers as NBA Award Finalists. ...

Baseball America’s Top 50 names in college baseball is missing some Sharts and a Hug
Baseball America has ranked this year’s top 50 names in college baseball, and it’s a good list....

Hockey is the dumbest sport
It’s funny (but not), and fitting, that in a week where we’ve spent a great deal of time talking about baseball’s old, drunk, incontinent demons still plaguing the youthful and logical, hockey strolls into the saloon, hitches up its belt, and says, “Oh, you think you’re stupid? I’ll show you stupid....

I feel nothing when I watch Major League Baseball
Well, it’s Groundhog Day… again. Yesterday I penned an article (which, by the way, is an incredibly outdated expression) highlighting the increasing number of no-hitters thrown in MLB, and how we are growing desensitized to them. Two nights ago, it was Spencer Turnbull no-hitting the Seattle Mariner...

Leave Kwame Brown alone
When you poke the bear, you best be ready for the consequences. And Kwame Brown is a 6-foot-11, 290-pound bear that was in hibernation until his rest was disturbed by two of his former teammates....

When I'd rather watch 'Schitt's Creek' than ANOTHER no-hitter, you know baseball has a problem
Last night, I was scrolling Twitter as the dulcet tones of Schitt’s Creek provided a backdrop to my evening. In short, I was doing nothing. As the late night baseball game out west between the Seattle Mariners and and the Detroit Tigers wore on, I started seeing familiar tweets in my timeline — we w...

Pitchers are even less afraid these days
We didn’t need Spencer Turnbull’s no-hitter last night to know that pitchers have smothered baseball these days (and that the Mariners have had all their bats replaced with Play-Doh). It’s the fifth no-hitter of the year, and we’re barely a quarter through the season....

France gets even scarier with return of Karim Benzema, also more blackmail-y
With club seasons stumbling to their final weekend, and the normal curtain-closer Champions League Final now less than two weeks away, attention and anticipation starts to turn to the postponed European Championships, which are still called “Euro 2020” even though it’s 2021. And also seems to be los...

Cam Heyward thinks 2021 first-round pick Najee Harris has legs of steel
When a team drafts a running back in the first round of the NFL Draft, everyone expects him to carry a heavy workload for his new team (especially when his legs look like tree trunks), but Pittsburgh’s Cam Heyward might be expecting a little bit too much out of his new teammate, Najee Harris. ...

Joe West’s 'record' is a testament to inertia
I wasn’t aware that the Major League Baseball Umpires’ union had a Twitter feed. I mean, why wouldn’t they? You also might, for a very brief moment, ask if it’s an outlet where the union might help explain some controversial calls or the like. But then you’ll quickly remind yourself that this these ...

Ryan Lochte is on a redemption tour no one asked for, and Bob Baffert will assuredly be next
Just two months before the Tokyo Games are scheduled to begin, the White Privilege Olympics have already started, as the baton that Tim Tebow was carrying has now been passed to his caucasian brothers “in the struggle.”...