gi Page 193 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

There's no party in Conference USA as three teams leave
I know, I know — college football is far from our collective minds at the moment, what with Super Bowl Sunday this past week and March Madness fast approaching. But the best kind of drama is CFB drama, and the best kind of CFB drama is Group of 5 drama....

Please, please, please let us see Giannis vs. Embiid in the playoffs
Giannis Antetokounmpo has been playing at an MVP level for so long the media stopped giving him the award. It’s a level that very few players have reached. Depending on their side of the argument, people lament that Michael Jordan and/or LeBron James should have considerably more MVP trophies becaus...

Richard Sherman isn’t ready to enshrine Matthew Stafford in the Hall of Fame
The second the Rams’ Super Bowl win over the Bengals was final on Sunday, the narrative about Matthew Stafford’s Hall of Fame candidacy took off and hasn’t slowed down since....

Goran Dragić could fall right into the laps of a contender following his buyout from San Antonio
Every year in the NBA, there’s at least one highly sought-after role player traded away at the deadline that has no intention of suiting up for their new team. And many times, that feeling is mutual. This year that guy is Goran Dragić. He was traded from the Toronto Raptors to the San Antonio Spurs,...

The path to an NBA championship is increasingly volatile
Neil Young gets credit for the line, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” but Kurt Cobain made it infamous. That dichotomy stuck with me, and it’s impossible not to see it in sports....

Funny how the little white girl who skates got treated differently than the fast Black girl who sprints
Unsurprisingly, Emmanuel Acho doesn’t have anything to say. ...

The Phoenix Suns are going bankrupt in the attention economy
Chis Paul is the NBA’s Copernicus. He needs to be the offensive axis, and his arrival placed the Suns near the center of the NBA galaxy. The Western Conference’s heliocentric age began, and we didn’t even know it because everyone has been so eager to babble about the Lakers, Nets, Sixers, and Warrio...

Kamila Valieva’s saga sets a dangerous precedent for skaters
It wouldn’t be a proper Winter Olympics without a figure skating melodrama. It’s earned a reputation as the Olympics’ closest equivalent to soap opera. In 2002, a judge cheating scandal led to a reform of the entire scoring system. Tonya Harding’s sabotage of Nancy Kerrigan before the ‘92 Olympics a...

Aaron Donald’s reign of terror places him in pantheon of generational defensive players
Offensive highlights litter every catalog of the greatest plays in Super Bowl history, and even fewer of those great plays involve lumbering defensive linemen. A two-yard loss isn’t as exciting as a 25-yard scoring throw or a running back trampling an entire defense. But when the story of Super Bowl...

I’ve had it with your narratives
I used to be fine with Cris Collinsworth. I didn’t think he was God’s gift to analysis or anything. But he showed just enough passion to be lively without being cloying. He didn’t really sound like he was trying to do a Madden impression. And he showed just enough under the surface to be interesting...

The Dre and Snoop halftime show was yet another example of universal appeal coming in a not-so-universal package
LOS ANGELES — I’m normally against concerts in arenas. This dates back to when I saw old Kanye at the United Center during the Glow in the Dark Tour in 2008. A concert is supposed to be an obnoxiously loud party where people drink, smoke, meditate, or whatever to become fully enveloped by the atmosp...

Super Bowl LVI NFL Betting Primer: Best over/under, spread, teaser and prop bets
There’s nothing quite like Super Bowl Sunday, but sadly, the drama and theatrics that come with it also bring about the realization that we’ll be making our final football wagers until early September (or August for those who very daringly elect to bet on preseason action)....

The Mavericks are a mess
The Mavericks’ Kristaps Porziņģis acquisition and subsequent trade has been one of the most embarrassing and impactful mistakes of modern NBA history. Especially when it comes to surrounding their young superstar, Luka Dončić, with a contending roster....

Meet Kenny Washington, the man who broke the NFL's color barrier
LOS ANGELES — There is a lot going on in the NFL shop at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There’s a section for Los Angeles Rams gear, Cincinnati Bengals gear, a place to customize your own gear, places for memorabilia such as autographed helmets and portraits, and a DJ. At the entrance of that NF...

When a Super Bowl is in town, the unhoused are unwelcome
LOS ANGELES — If you saw Eugene at a Chevron station or a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles, at first glance you might not notice anything out of the ordinary. He is a Black man with a dark complexion clear enough in the early evening light that some might ask for his skincare routine. He’s under 6 feet tall,...

Lia Thomas wins right to compete at NCAA Championships
Since University of Pennsylvania senior Lia Thomas crushed her competition at the Zippy Invitational with the nation’s fastest times in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle, she became a cause célèbre in the crosshairs of the NCAA’s latest transgender athletes brouhaha....

Enough of the Super Teams, it’s all Killer Bs
NFL America should root for the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday....

Kristaps Porziņģis, in search of a version of himself that doesn’t exist, traded to Wizards
This post could take longer than it has to because Kristaps Porziņģis once averaged 22 points for the Knicks. It won’t, though, because that player is no more. What’s left is a shell of a unicorn in search of a situation that will allow him to at least chuck as much as his former self....

In the other big NBA trade, four-team deadline deal could put Milwaukee over the top again
Many of you probably missed the four-team trade involving seven players and draft picks with all the commotion and reaction over the James Harden-Ben Simmons blockbuster. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Kings, Bucks, Clippers, and Pistons have agreed to the following trade: ...

James Wiseman deserves to be more than Kevon Looney with an upside
There’s still time for James Wiseman to turn into the player the Warriors thought he would be. This is his second season, he’s only 20 years old, and a meniscus tear isn’t microfracture surgery. He participated in contact drills Tuesday for the first time since the tear last season, according to ESP...