eric Page 217 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Portland Trail Blazers are hotter than a seatbelt buckle in August
The Portland Trail Blazers are coming into the NBA playoffs on fire, in NBA Jam terms....

Can talent trump experience? We’re about to find out
After being sidelined for more than a month, James Harden returned to the Nets lineup on Wednesday night as he came off the bench to score 18 points, dish out 11 assists, and grab 7 rebounds in a 128-116 victory over the Spurs. ...

NFL schedule offers weird and wonderful highlights (and, oddly, a lot of Saints in primetime)
Football people are weird people, because we get giddy over something as simple as a schedule release. That giddy feeling happened last night, as the NFL (and it’s teams’ social media departments) released their full 18-week slate for the upcoming season, which will be the first in which every team ...

A long-awaited Matt Harvey return means a reminder of all the ‘what-ifs’
You were constantly reminded of what was, and led to pointlessly ponder what could’ve been. ...

Gobble it up! Here’s the NFL’s Week 1 and Thanksgiving schedules
We’re months away from NFL kickoff and you probably have some questions heading into the 2021 season. Some have easy answers like, will fans be allowed? Or, can I actually club in the new Raiders stadium? Yes and Yes! Unh-sss-uhn-sss-uhn-sss…...

Rob Manfred isn’t even trying to hide his sniveling evil anymore
I guess it’s something of progress that the news of the Oakland A’s doing the ol’ “starting to look around” thing to get their partner to pay more attention to them was met with a basic shrug by most everyone. Because it’s so familiar, so predictable, all part of the cycle. Whenever a team is lookin...

Man City are the standard, and indeed, built for ‘this’
When it comes to Manchester City, they’ll never be free of the debate or criticism that their success is bought through Saudi oil money. And their counter that they have the best manager in the world in Pep Guardiola will never be enough to convince anyone who focuses on the first point. The truth i...

Three yards and a cloud of dust won’t cut it in AFC North anymore, and draft proves it
When I think of the AFC North, I think of smashmouth football. I think of Jerome Bettis vs. Ray Lewis. I think of physical, hard-hitting games, ending in scores like 13-9. I think of heavy-set run formations, with three yards and a cloud of dust, accompanied by some of the best defensive players acr...

If the Jacksonville Jaguars aren’t on Hard Knocks, HBO should just cancel the series
In 2019, the NFL and Home Box Office – I bet the kids had no idea that’s what HBO stands for – fumbled on the 1-yard line as the ball rolled out the back of the end zone....

Highly-replaceable NBA player on mediocre team starts beef with NBA All-Star
Kent Bazemore needs to bow down on this one....

Tonight, we find out if the Miami Heat are back for real
Other than allowing a 40-point fourth quarter, the Miami Heat displayed one of their most dominant end-to-end performances of the season on Mother’s Day. Tonight, in the second leg of their “Baseball Series” with the Boston Celtics, the Heat face the Boston-based club again at TD Garden, which will ...

Don’t expect the upcoming Lakers docuseries to be the next <em>Last Dance</em>
2022 will be the “Year of the Lakers.” Not on the court, necessarily, but definitely on our television screens....

WNBA has an opportunity to take its league to the next level
The 2021 season will be pivotal for the WNBA....

If Luka Dončić were Black, he’d be labeled a troublemaker with all his technical fouls
This isn’t a column about Luka Dončić. But it is about how Luka Dončić is covered....

Bob Baffert cries wolf again
You have to ask if there’s anything left of horse racing to kill. Perhaps it’s entrenched so deeply into irrelevance, outside of four or five days a year, that just about nothing can make it worse. This is an industry basically surviving on the courtesy of state governments, really....

Behold, a fun few moments of instant replay in baseball
Sometimes, instant replay is a real drag. It takes forever to review some minor call that doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway, the flow of the game is broken, and you wonder if we’d be better off without it, even if sometimes bad calls do get corrected, because even though they do, a lot o...

Why did ‘completely healthy’ Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah’s past heart issue cause him to plummet in NFL draft?
When Day 1 of the 2021 NFL Draft concluded, several first-round talents had yet to be taken. Many viewers were shocked to see names like Asante Samuel Jr., Teven Jenkins, Trevon Moehrig, Jevon Holland, Christian Barmore, and Levi Onwuzurike still available after 32 picks. However, the most notable e...

NBA will respond to Zion injury in way NHL has yet to learn
David Griffin can expect to find himself writing a check to the NBA after the Pelicans executive blasted the league over the lack of calls for Zion Williamson in the paint, now that the star big man will be out indefinitely with a broken finger....

Celtics and Heat are stepping into a trap
When you’re the Miami Heat or Boston Celtics, every game is a trap game for the rest of the season....

Blazers welcome back fans just in time to stick it to L.A.
I don’t think anyone will argue that the NBA playoff intensity was alive and well in the bubble last year. There were fantastic games that came down to clutch moments, and there were underdog teams like Miami making a run all the way to the Finals. It was everything on the court you could hope for. ...