cup Page 28 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Can’t deny Steph any longer
Steph Curry collected the Finals MVP last night that, the award that for some reason, some people think was required to validate him. As repeated ad nauseam by me and others, there are few players who changed the game completely, and Curry is one of them. Even when he was off, as he was in Game 5, h...

Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...

What, if anything, do we take from the USMNT draw with El Salvador?
Let’s start by not overreacting to a 1-1 draw against El Salvador. It was the same result that kicked off the United States’ Octagonal round of World Cup qualifying. That matchup from last September mattered way more to the US. And the Yanks didn’t score in that game....

The NHL finally gets its era-shifting Final with Lightning vs. Avs
Hockey being what it is, mostly weird and random, rarely throws up the two best teams in the NHL’s showpiece, the Stanley Cup Final. Sometimes we get close, and most seasons it’s actually hard to decipher who are clearly the best teams. With shootouts and overtime goofiness affecting the standings, ...

It’s easy to like these Warriors again
There was just something about Kevin Durant on the Golden State Warriors that almost ruined basketball. It wasn’t ever about the burner accounts and snowflake sensitivity. The lack of competitive advantage made the NBA challenging to enjoy while Durant was in the Bay Area from 2016 to 2019. Now that...

MLS becomes the first to go full streaming
Well, someone was going to do it. ...

How can anyone root against Steph Curry? I’ll tell you how
I tend to cringe when NBA pundits incredulously ask, “How could anyone root against Steph Curry?!” I’m not a LeBron true believer, here to disparage the greatest shooter in the history of the game. He’s incredible. The hand-eye coordination is something out of Star Wars. When little Anakin Skywalker...

The Celtics are so weird
I suppose, when it’s all over, if the Warriors close this out, this Finals will be billed as an example of just how much experience in the championship round matters. It’s the easy-to-reach conclusion as the Celtics sure look like the better team most of the time. And yet they find themselves down 3...

Kyrie Irving is way better at basketball than at Twitter
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were supposed to be a generational duo on the hardwood. Three years later, Durant has been about what we expected, but Irving hasn’t held up his end of the bargain. Even on social media, Durant is running circles around Kyrie. Durant and Kyrie have waaaay too much free ...

Steph Curry and Steven Stamkos are having an Old Guy Summer
Well, spring. But whatever....

The Rangers will almost certainly learn all the wrong lessons
To figure out where the New York Rangers are going after being dumped out on their ass by the Tampa Bay Lightning, it’s important to retrace how, and especially why, they got here....

It’s OK, Matt Swarmer, Chicagoans were too drunk or distracted to remember that
The Chicago Cubs matter insomuch as they give the fine people of the Windy City an excuse to day drink and eat hot dogs. Outside of that one year, this season isn’t that much different from most others. They’re 23-35, 10 games back of the division leading St. Louis Cardinals, and nine games out of t...

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 ...

Draymond Green’s postgame podcast ignores the elephant in the room
As more avenues open to give broadcast coverage to the NBA, more veteran players try their hands at the art of speaking constructively about basketball, as opposed to playing it and spewing whatever they want in postgame interviews. J.J. Redick is a budding star in the industry, and CJ McCollum look...

Steph Curry really wants that Finals MVP trophy
Game 4 of the Finals felt a lot like Game 1 with the road team quieting a hyped home crowd via a fourth quarter run that flipped the game and sent stunned fans for the exit before the final buzzer. Steph Curry needed to be brilliant and he was, hitting the biggest shot of a series that has seen few ...

Whatchagonna do NHL?
The NHL Department of Player Safety needs to get to the bottom of this quickly. The video evidence against Lightning captain Steven Stamkos allegedly spitting on Alexis Lafrenière appears damning, yet not conclusive. Why else would he cock his head back and lunge forward with his lips puckered at th...

The third period has become to the Rangers what the third quarter is to the Celtics
The New York Rangers lost their first game at Madison Square Garden during these Eastern Conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-1 last night. They’ve scored one goal in the last seven-and-half periods, and they haven’t really deserved much more than that....

Even if Steph Curry doesn’t miss time with a bum foot, the Warriors need help
The Golden State Warriors find themselves in a familiar position in these NBA Finals. They now face a 2-1 deficit following Wednesday night’s Game 3 116-100 loss. The scariest part of the game for Warriors fans happened in the fourth quarter when Curry suffered an injured foot diving for a loose bal...

The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...