champ Page 16 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Sandro Tonali’s transfer from AC Milan to Newcastle demonstrates the heartlessness of it all
The real goals of “sportswashing” may not be things that apply to the plebes like you and me. If Middle Eastern regimes wish to burnish their image simply by buying European soccer clubs (and maybe soon American sports clubs, too) and turning them into world powers, it seemingly has only heightened ...

Now I can die peacefully as I’ve seen a Kenny Omega masterpiece live
Every sports fan has a checklist of things they have to see in person. These days it probably involves Shohei Ohtani. Maybe Connor McDavid turning some poor schmuck on a third pairing into unrecognizable goo (I saw him do it to Duncan Keith). LeBron in person maybe. The timeless ones are seeing a ga...

Wimbledon brings Venus back showing the Williams sisters still own tennis
Athletic greatness is proven by performance. Athletic immorality is defined by how debilitated your sport becomes when you aren’t around. Tennis doesn’t know what to do without the Williams sisters and it’s why Wimbledon keeps bringing them back. ...

Mike Dunleavy Jr.'s job is to keep aging Golden State Warriors at a championship level
Monday was the introductory press conference for Mike Dunleavy Jr., the new general manager of the Golden State Warriors. Three days later he gets the privilege of hitting the ground running with the Warriors holding the 19th overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft....

Mike McCarthy is exactly who we’ve always known he was
When it comes to athletic competition, we all love a good ranking. It doesn’t matter what it is, whom we’re comparing, or what’s at stake. It always catches our attention whenever a list is released, ranking players, or teams 1 through whatever. You can triple the attention any ranking list will rec...

Will a Championship trip to Vegas convince Nikola Jokić the NBA lifestyle is actually pretty cool?
I never mind professional athletes who don’t get wrapped up in the celebrity lifestyle. It isn’t for everybody, and it’s also a second job. Nikola Jokić wanting to hightail it back to Serbia after winning an NBA Championship is perfectly reasonable, but I do think he enjoyed Las Vegas....

Deion Sanders has lofty football goals — and a potential foot amputation on the horizon
Despite the limited amount of time it’s been since Deion Sanders became a college football head coach, it feels a lot longer — and weeks like this last one are why. “Coach Prime” has been in the news not once, but twice. The former is trivial, the latter is not....

The SEC nailed its 8-game schedule for 2024
One of the biggest offseason topics in college football was how the Southeastern Conference would handle the maiden voyage for Oklahoma and Texas into America’s premier league. Wednesday night’s announcement that everyone in the SEC would play either the Sooners or Longhorns once, alongside the cont...

Jonathan Kuminga has fallen completely out of favor with Golden State
It is remarkable how quickly circumstances can change in sports. The NBA is no exception; we see it frequently across the league. The Golden State Warriors are a team who’ve witnessed how quickly things can go sour within a franchise. Upon being eliminated by the Los Angeles Lakers in the second rou...

2023 All-Postseason Team, a FANtastic performance by these 5 players
America, glad to see the NBA playoffs were able to hold your attention again. With an average of 5.47 million viewers per game, the 2023 postseason was the most watched in five years. And more importantly, per Darren Rovell, since April of the 20 most watched programs by Americans under 50, the NBA ...

A’ja Wilson claims the Las Vegas Aces didn’t get a White House invite
Picking and choosing which championship teams are worthy of being invited to the White House was one of the many reasons why so many people didn’t like the last guy who worked in the Oval Office. And according to A’ja Wilson, Joe Biden isn’t doing a good job either....

Deadspin's 2023 All-NBA Finals Team
The 2023 NBA Finals was not a sexy matchup on paper. A team from the mountain time zone with a mountain in the middle of lane, against a team from South Florida with no flash. These were the two teams that kept America from the NBA’s most classic championship matchup, Los Angeles Lakers vs. Boston C...

US Open pits the face of the PGA against one of LIV's top blood money takers
The merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf Tour doesn’t have to wait long to see some corporate synergy, as one of the PGA’s four major tournaments, the US Open, tees off this week in California. Possibly the biggest cash cow on each side of the debate won’t have to wait long to get reacquainted w...

Here we go with this Kylian Mbappe nonsense again
Some transfer/trade/free agency stories go on for years, which is what it appears Kylian Mbappe is intent on creating. We all knew about LeBron James’s first free agency three years beforehand as ESPN turned it into its own Odyssey. And his second one a couple years before. Kevin Durant’s next desti...

The Miami Heat ran out of gas, just like they did in 2014, 2020 NBA Finals
When we were all stuck in the house in the middle of the pandemic, basketball was the first sport available to watch on TV. The Bubble proved that sports could go on despite COVID-19. And while the 2020 NBA Finals were forgettable to some, it gave us one of the best memorable memes of all time — exh...

Amanda Nunes, one of the greatest to ever punch a human being in the face for money
Legends come in all shapes and sizes and if people are too closed-minded to accept that fact, then they can miss truly special talent. Dana White’s closed-mindedness almost caused sports fans to miss out on one of the greatest fighters of her generation — Amanda Nunes....

Manchester City are so good they can survive a Pep Guardiola brain freeze
The joke had become the only hold for any non-Manchester City fan out there. The joke was that Pep Guardiola would always out-Pep himself in the Champions League, and find a new, and creative way to blow it for a team that probably should have won the trophy a while ago. The joke was certainly based...

Texas Rangers don’t need Jacob deGrom to be one of MLB's best teams
The weirdest part of the news of Jacob deGrom’s impending season-ending Tommy John surgery, which in all likelihood could keep him out of the Texas Rangers’ rotation until the beginning of the 2025 season, is that the first-place team in the American League West doesn’t need him. Is deGrom a massive...

Is Nikola Jokic the NBA's best European player ever?
Nikola Jokić is on a mission. Of course, he’s on a mission to win an NBA title, but he’s also out to prove the doubters wrong. The Denver Nuggets are two games away from their first NBA championship after taking Game 3 on the road in Miami, 109-94. Jokić posted another 30-point, 20-rebound triple-do...