dl Page 31 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

What’s next for the USMNT?
You know it’s over when your star midfielder is showing up courtside at Miami Heat games. Or the rumors of contract talks with the manager are heating up, while he tries to gain leverage by whispering about European club jobs. Time to call for the Lyft officially....

A decade-plus of Eastern Conference mediocrity can’t be easily forgotten
It’s weird how much energy goes into debating which conference is the NBA’s best. It makes sense in college football because schools can’t play all 100-plus teams each year, and strength of schedule determines playoff spots. But in basketball, with all 30 organizations facing each other at least twi...

The Phillies don’t know when to settle
Dave Dombrowski and the Philadelphia Phillies apparently don’t understand the new atmosphere of baseball. The expanded playoffs mean, or were supposed to mean, that teams don’t have to go all out for 95-to-100 wins anymore. The Phightins are proof! 87 wins and a trip to the World Series!! You just h...

Herschel Walker is a threat to society — it’s time to get him out of the paint
Somewhere between the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 6, and the early hours of Wednesday, Dec. 7, we will know the results of another crucial election in Georgia that has national implications. But, more than that, we will know if the Republican Party was successful in electing a Senator strictly because ...

Bryan Reynolds requests a trade — what is he worth?
Remember a few years ago when a power-hitting shortstop was all the rage? They were a dime a dozen, and securing a shortstop that could be a serious threat in your lineup was an enormous deal. Nowadays, every team has one of those. The Boston Red Sox had two in Xander Bogaerts and Trevor Story last ...

Red, white, and the blues
How far do moral victories and actual losses go for the United States men’s national team? After failing to defeat The Netherlands at the World Cup, U.S. Soccer needs to take a hard look in the mirror....

Kanye West and Antonio Brown’s antics should be the end of Donda Sports
If you stand with clowns don’t get mad when you wind up in a circus....

The 5 best landing spots for Jacob deGrom
Oft-injured, but damn near unhittable when healthy, former New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom was bound to draw numerous suitors once free agency started, and while the rumors haven’t been circulating at quite the speed we expected, deGrom’s market has heated up recently, but the heat hasn’t come from t...

Tom Thibodeau, Tony Soprano, and the New York Knicks
Almost a year ago, I contemplated the soul of Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, searching for answers to his most pressing coaching quandaries. Humans are prone to making connections, comparing and contrasting, to make sense of the chaos around us. In the world of the NBA, Thibodeau shares much of th...

Hockey still needs to be shamed into doing the right thing
It would appear that hockey has at least slithered to the level that public attention can get it to do the right thing a couple of days late. It’s just above barely nothing, but moving from nothing to a couple of inches above barely nothing is the lowest form of progress. But progress. ...

Hey, Bill Belichick, we told you so
Remember when photos of a shredded Mac Jones circulated before the season? Patriots fans were so hyped by the Mac-churian Candidate’s transformation that they gave him a standing ovation the first time he ran out on the field in training camp. ...

This is what inexperience looks like
It’s taken some cognitive dissonance for USMNT fans leading up to this World Cup, to sort of ignore the fact that they were showing up with the most inexperienced squad possible. Only Deandre Yedlin has ever been on a World Cup squad before, and he’s hardly anywhere near the first 11. It also has a ...

Shaq Moore’s surprise World Cup inclusion gives USMNT comfort on backline
One of the true shockers of the United States men’s national team’s World Cup roster reveal was Shaq Moore making the cut. His inclusion, alongside striker Haji Wright, appeared to come the most out of left field for diehard fans of the Stars and Stripes. Moore has had recent call-ups, played in fou...

DeAndre Yedlin is USMNT’s only bridge to last World Cup appearance
Before we can truly look forward, we must go back in time, to a marvelous place where the United States men’s national team missing the World Cup was such an afterthought, it would be equal to falling into the abyss. Yeah, a few CONCACAF rivals like Panama and Costa Rica were rapidly improving and b...

The NBA's worst owners
When Robert Sarver announced he was selling the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team he had owned since 2006, after a lengthy investigation by the NBA for workplace malfeasance and offenses, I barely shrugged. How awful could it have been, I thought to myself. My concept of the workplace was poisoned by an ei...
![UVA cancels final home football game on day shooter is due in court [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/a63d571d9436f85e0c9e823ad06fabdb.jpg)
UVA cancels final home football game on day shooter is due in court [Updated]
Three days after an on-campus shooting took the lives of three Virginia football players, the university canceled the Cavaliers’ final home game of the season, which would’ve been Saturday against nationally-ranked Coastal Carolina. Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry, and Devin Chandler were the three ki...

The UVA shooting, and why sports can’t be America’s savior while also being a target
The University of Virginia’s athletic department shouldn’t be dominating headlines for something like this....

The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow — AL East
The GM Meetings are in the books, the Winter Meetings aren’t in the distant future, and the rumors are beginning to fly. You can be sure your favorite team is talking to agents for players! Does that mean anything? Nope, sure doesn’t! But you’ll take anything at this point, and they know that. So we...

Three University of Virginia football players shot and killed on campus
Three members of the University of Virginia football team were gunned down on the Charlottesville campus late Sunday night and two more were injured, according to police and university officials....

Tua Tagovailoa is the real deal
Prior to the season, the NFL world was conflicted on Miami Dolphins starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s viability as a franchise quarterback. Even after his six-touchdown performance in Week 2, the world was still divided. Maybe it was just a fluke game. Hell, even I pointed out that bad quarterba...