heat Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
It’s not supposed to be that easy, Connor
The NHL playoffs like to revel in its celebration of depth and the unsung. Everyone gets a shift, so everyone had better do a job or more, and the puck can bounce onto anyone’s stick or off anyone’s ass to change a game, a series, a whole spring. It is not always a stage for the leading men to provi...
The Gang Enters The Soccer Tournament
This is a fever dream for soccer, or a fever nightmare depending on what team you root for. The Soccer Tournament, or TST for short, was announced this week as a 32-team showcase taking place in early June in North Carolina. Based on The Basketball Tournament, it’s a winner-take-all, 7-on-7, $1 mill...
Jimmy Butler went nuclear and evaporated Milwaukee's title aspirations
Monday night’s pandemonium was indicative of the Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler era. Grinding and persevering have defined the Heat for the last four seasons. When the odds are against him, Jimmy Buckets rises to the top of the food chain, but Game 4 was the capstone in his postseason cap. In the pantheo...
Josh Hart is the playmaker the Knicks needed
Jalen Brunson is the straw that stirs the drink for the New York Knicks. My mea culpa on his free agency will come at a later date. All of that being said, the Knicks were in the Play-in Tournament and their record was a mere three games over .500 on Feb. 10. On that date they lost to the Philadelph...
Kevin Love’s surprise cameo starring beside Jimmy Buckets helps Miami squash Milwaukee
If you’re a casual NBA fan, you may have forgotten about Kevin Love, as it feels like he hasn’t played much since things fell apart in Cleveland after LeBron James bolted for Los Angeles following the 2018 postseason. Love stepped up, making a surprise appearance in the Miami Heat’s game one victory...
Mark Cuban is not who we thought he was going to be
This past week has been the dried-out cherry on top of an expired whipped cream sundae of a 2022-23 season for the Dallas Mavericks. They entered it one game out of the play-in tournament a shade under two months after trading for Kyrie Irving. It would be easy to blame him for Mavericks’ fall, but ...
The new-look Los Angeles Lakers are peaking at just the right time
What appeared to be a lost Los Angeles Lakers season six weeks ago has sprouted wings in the final home stretch before the postseason. After missing countless weeks mending injuries in 2023, Anthony Davis and LeBron James returned to a lineup terraformed on the go....
Miami Heat to honor Dade County O.G. Udonis Haslem with an entire seating section
Udonis Haslem will go down as one of the most beloved players in Miami Heat history. He may be second to only Dwayne Wade, and that’s saying something considering some of the stars who’ve played for the franchise. While the Heat haven’t exactly made Haslem’s swan song season one to remember, the org...
Jimmy Butler blasted this horrible band in the locker room to punish his Heat teammates
I get it. I totally get why Jimmy Butler reportedly gets under the skin of his teammates. He had a point when he was with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Those young players needed to have enough energy to not get mauled by him at practice. But what happened recently is worthy of the NBA bringing the am...
Fred VanVleet’s expletive-laden remarks cost him $30,000 and put him in a special group
Fred VanVleet is now immortal. Hitting nearly every 3-pointer you attempt for two playoff rounds and winning a championship is great. However, only Toronto Raptors’ fans and non-causal NBA watchers remember that. The narrative in the 2019 NBA Finals was Kevin Durant’s injury and Kawhi Leonard playin...
The 2023 basketball HOF finalists have a legacy worthy of the honor
The list of finalists for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is a snapshot of an era. Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade headline the class, having met twice in the NBA Finals, splitting the titles between them. Gregg Popovich, Tony Parker, and Becky Hammon are forever San Antonio Spurs. And t...
’90s rules, agency wars, and other ideas for an NBA midseason tournament
I know I’m not the only one rolling my eyes at the NBA trying to come up with a midseason tournament format worthy of getting players to compete at the highest level. This is going to be like summer camp for teams once they’re eliminated, and if I was in the league, I’d think about throwing a contes...
Here are our NHL midseason awards
Handing out awards in the middle of the season is always a little silly, because just about anyone can spasm 40 games of brilliance. But hey, we’re here to be silly! So it feels like a great time to go over the first half of the NHL season and see who is the leader in the clubhouse for the baubles h...
Naming Pat McAfee Sports Media Person of the Year is an indictment of us all
This is not (totally) a hit piece on Pat McAfee. It’s more about how we should categorize what McAfee does, because The Athletic — you know that sports site owned by The New York Times — named him its Sports Media Person of the Year, and that implies that he’s a journalist....
Which NBA title contender will Jae Crowder join?
Championship NBA teams have always revolved around star players, but the glue guys/role players make it possible for franchises to become title contenders. There are stars all over the Association, but only those with the best supporting casts can make deep runs into the postseason year after year. ...
Culture isn’t going to fix the Miami Heat’s offense
When trying to illustrate how much a team is struggling, one of sportswriters’ favorite go-to’s is, “If the season ended today…” As in, “If the season ended today, the Miami Heat would need to win two play-in games only to face the team that beat them in 2022 in the first round.”...
Hell no, keep Carlos Beltran out of Cooperstown
The 2023 MLB Hall of Fame ballots were sent out yesterday....