champ Page 36 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Whether he admits it or not, this is a different Andrew Wiggins in the NBA Finals
Stephen Curry was mesmerizing on Friday night. If the Golden State Warriors do go on to win their fourth NBA Championship in eight seasons, it will be one of the most memorable championship performances in league history. Curry, a generational talent and one of the NBA’s most popular players, respon...

The arms race between Manchester City and Liverpool has gone nuclear
The narrative between Liverpool and Manchester City has always been something like the A’s and Yankees from the early 2000s. The two powers of a league operating on completely different planes and through wildly different methods. The Big Bad with all the money that can buy their way out of anything...

Tony La Russa got the Matt Nagy treatment on Saturday, but at least he’ll only hear it at his home ballpark
Fortunately, for Tony La Russa, the chants for his firing won’t follow him everywhere around Chicago. Even if the Chicago Bulls were playing in the NBA Finals right now, there likely wouldn’t be enough White Sox fans at the game for the chant to ring out enough for a viral moment. Also, La Russa’s k...

Will LIV golfers be allowed at Augusta?
The LIV tour is live. The lines have been drawn and the hammers thrown down, and Charl Schwartzel has taken home the first ever LIV win in London, and yet with each declaration from a defecting golfer or a pissed-off PGA exec, more and more questions arise. The biggest one on everyone’s minds right ...

Pro Football Focus is just doing this to make people lose it
Let me give a disclaimer, so this doesn’t come off as a complete trashing of the analytics community. Yes, advanced stats and analytics have a place in the game of football and sports in general. But they are not…I repeat, NOT the end all be all....

So this passes as content in the MMA world?
Considering your subject is always good advice for a journalist. If the person was recently on a noteworthy podcast spouting off gross conspiracy theories, maybe steer the conversation away from subjects like, I don’t know, the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers ...

Long Live the LIV?
The LIV Invitational Golf Series has been a drag on a PGA Tour that was already flailing to find its next superstar. LIV, which is funded by blood money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has sparked a mini-exodus of several PGA stars. By offering boatloads of cash for appearance fees, LIV ha...

The national anthem played on a saw? Now I’ve seen everything
Playing or singing the national anthem at a professional sporting event is an honor to several musicians. Not only is it an opportunity to showcase their tremendous talent, but it also provides validation to the artist, telling them, “Yes, your music is good. Would you do us the honor of starting ou...

The price was right: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and other pros sell out to Saudi-backed LIV Golf
Just about everyone has a price tag. LIV Golf is trying to figure out what that price tag looks like for the biggest names in their sport. Greg Norman, the CEO of the new government-funded Saudi tour, claimed that LIV offered Tiger Woods a number in the “high nine figures” to come play for them, des...

It was good business for the Warriors to build a new arena in San Francisco, but they need to remember the passion for the team comes from the whole Bay Area
Obviously the new Chase Center is not going to be as loud as the roar in Oracle Arena the last time the Golden State Warriors were in the NBA Finals. Now that all of NBA media has noticed that fact after two games there, let’s try to move off of that point. The old arena is always louder, more fun, ...

LeBron James said he was going to be a billionaire and, well, damn, he pulled it off
“In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I’ll be the richest man in the world,” LeBron James said to Tim Withers of the Associated Press in 2005. “That’s one of my goals. I want to be a billionaire. I want to get to a position where generation on generation don’t have to worry about nothing. I don’t want...

Rafael Nadal winning the French Open is still the most inevitable outcome in sports
Rafael Nadal’s dominance on clay courts is to be expected. When he enters Roland Garros, his path to the title is Jordanesque, Gretzky-like, Ruthian, or whichever GOAT athletes of the last century come to mind....

The best sports scenes from <i>The Wire</i>
On yesterday’s date in 2002, the Michael Jordan of television series made its debut on premium cable. It didn’t have near the hype of Bobby Knight calling it the best basketball player of all time. In fact most people didn’t even watch it until years after the final episode aired. But The Wire would...

Say it ain’t so, D.J.
Dustin Johnson has defected. Only a few months after his statement of allegiance to the PGA Tour among all that Phil Mickelson-LIV Golf drama, the promise of what is rumored to be in the $100 million-plus range proved too tempting to turn down, moral compass be damned....

The last chapter of the greatest rivalry?
It’s a testament to their greatness that whenever Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic line up in a major, where everyone projects they might meet, everyone starts girding up for it. Be it the quarters, semis, or final, everyone knows to block out half a day and gather the supplies necessary. Because whi...

Icarus can kiss my ass
Perhaps there’s no bigger showcase of Lucy yanking the football away than Liverpool chasing The Quadruple. Because as it got closer, it only became harder and only felt further away. Which sounds stupid, because no team has gotten closer. But fatigue was clear for the last few weeks, and the more ma...

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...

American Athletes who gave their lives in service
It may be rare these days, but there was a time when some of the best athletes in America went off to fight in wars. Some did so willingly, others were drafted....

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...

Real Madrid have more than just black magic against Liverpool
While four years is a long time in soccer, and teams can greatly transform a couple times in that timespan, Real Madrid and Liverpool look a lot like they did four years ago. Liverpool are still anchored by Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Andrew Robertson in defense and Sadio Mane and M...