cia Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This week in the NBA, November 18, 2023
If you went to bed last night thinking that it’s a shame that the 76ers Kelly Oubre Jr. was injured in a hit-and-run accident on Saturday while walking alone in Philly, you may have been confused this morning to see much of X (formerly Twitter) losing its collective mind and suggesting the Oubre Jr....
Ron Washington’s hiring is a bizarre move for the Los Angeles Angels
The hiring of Ron Washington is the type of short-term thinking that has come to define the Los Angeles Angels since Arte Moreno officially bought the franchise during the spring of 2003. Those Anaheim Angels were the defending champions. Washington is taking over a club with a hellish trajectory. T...
The Mac Jones slander started early this season
Now that it’s apparent Mac Jones isn’t the guy in New England, the only thing that’s left to do is wait for the inevitable hit pieces. A tradition in Boston along the lines of belting out Dropkick Murphys in between fits of vomiting, an exit skewering for Bean Town’s disgraced professional athletes ...
Dear NCAA: Let James Madison play in a bowl game
It costs nothing to be kind. The NCAA is cruel for free....
Draymond Green is straight out of the WWE — and the NBA is better for it
There is a reason that professional wrestling has remained popular for decades even though the action is scripted. The business understands that in order to sell a story there has to be a hero and a heel. Cheering is fun, but jeering is cathartic. In team sports, the heel is automatically included l...
Shohei Ohtani's most likely landing spot is the NL West
We’ve come to the end of our tour of the islands of every MLB team’s offseason outlook. We wrap up in the NL West, still the favorite landing place for Shohei Ohtani, as two of the rivals here are going to duke it out to bring him either slightly up the coast or six hours up it. One more time…...
Draymond Green wins another personal battle — at Golden State's expense
Tuesday night’s Warriors-Timberwolves rematch was advertised as an In-season Tournament group play match. Instead, a Draymond Green slobberknocker broke out. Early in the first quarter, Klay Thompson and Jaden McDaniels got into a tussle, Rudy Gobert did what happens in 1,000 routine NBA fights, by ...
Is a Netflix docuseries enough to make you care about the NBA In-Season tournament?
Word on the street is that the NBA and Netflix could be partnering up on the new In-Season tournament. Maybe Netflix can get fans to care about this seemingly pointless tournament nobody asked for. It sounds like all the risk would be on Netflix while the NBA sits back and soaks up all the publicity...
Oh, great, now Zion Williamson wants to take basketball seriously
While it’s great that Zion Williamson is finally ready to shed his life as an influencer for a career in professional basketball, no one wants to hear the frustrations of a player who hasn’t played in a single consequential NBA game. The New Orleans Pelicans’ forward doesn’t sound happy with his rol...
James Harden is the NBA’s worst clutch superstar
There are volumes that could be written about what’s wrong with the Los Angeles Clippers superteam. After all the ruckus James Harden started this summer, if you thought he’d arrive in tip-top shape, ready to make one last push at a title with the Clippers, then you’re as gullible as every other tea...
Wake me up when the NBA adds a Champions League or an FA cup
The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you’re less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It’s really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious...
Emphasis on 82-game schedule won’t solve NBA’s biggest problem
In case the NBA has not made itself clear over the last few months, the league office is fed up with load management. There are 82 games on the schedule, and players are expected to play in every single game unless they are actually injured. The NBA is going so far now as to claim it has data that t...
The NBA is right about load management for the wrong reasons
OK, it’s time for Devil’s Advocate corner: The NBA’s stance on load management is a good thing, but not for the dumbass reasons Joe Dumars presented Wednesday. If you missed it, the executive vice president of basketball operations said there’s no proof that load management prevents injuries. Maybe,...
Brian Snitker was asleep at the wheel again
The symmetry is almost startling. It was three days short of being the exact date, one year later. Brian Snitker didn’t have an itchy enough trigger finger, or just fell asleep, and the Phillies teed off on a starter that shouldn’t have been on the mound. Which pivoted the division series to a 2-1 P...
In a move that shocks no one, Kansas barely gets a slap on the wrist from the NCAA
Did anyone expect a different result? ...
Luka Dončić let the NBA down this week
The first-ever international exhibition on Sept. 8, 1978, is immortalized for the defending NBA champion Washington Bullets’ loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv by the score of 97-98. Since 2000, when the EuroLeague was founded, NBA teams are 75-17 against Europe’s top teams in exhibitions. Or 17-75 if you wan...
Michigan TV network fires sports director for Mel Tucker ‘analysis’ that read more like PR work
Last Thursday, sports reporter Audrey Dahlgren had a very bad day, by journalistic standards. After attorneys for Mel Tucker, the recently fired head football coach at Michigan State, released 98 pages worth of text messages sent by Brenda Tracy — an anti-rape advocate who filed a Title IX complaint...
Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama are finishing what Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic started
If there’s anything the most recent NBA champions taught us, it’s that the center can still be the focal point of an offense. Sixty-six-million years ago, Michael Jordan’s arrival was a terraforming meteor that ended the age of the pivots and began the reign of guards. Prior to His Airness, NBA cham...
The Michael Oher situation illustrates how white people ignore other white people’s racism
The most frustrating thing about racism isn’t that it still exists, it’s that so many white people refuse to undeniably admit when it happens. Because if your first instinct was to think that Michael Oher was lying or making something out of nothing, you’re the reason why racism is still thriving....
Anthony Davis says he wants to play all 82 games this season — how long until he sits?
Los Angeles Lakers big man Anthony Davis is ready to rock and wants all the smoke with the defending NBA Champion, Denver Nuggets, and their MVP Nikola Jokić. Davis also claims to have a goal of playing 82 games this season. Neither of those things are likely to end well for the eight-time All-Star....