ja Page 166 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Marcus Smart is the player Draymond Green used to be
The Draymond Green brand is still strong enough that LeBron James openly fantasizes about playing with him and his podcast is a hot topic even while the Warriors fall into a 2-1 hole against the Boston Celtics. Green, now 32, still benefits the Golden State Warriors in many ways. He sets bone-crushi...

Was MJF really talking about Adam Cole?
We’re now deep into the second week of “MJF: Hamlet or Veruca Salt?” Maxwell Jaxwell didn’t appear on Dynamite this week, wasn’t mentioned, and there were stories that Turner execs wanted any mention of him scrubbed from AEW production. He isn’t even on the opening video package at the moment....

Roving pack of feral dogs ate all of the Suns’ homework
Having a season end the way it did for the Suns — finishing with the best record in the NBA and failing to make it out of the second round — will leave any organization aimlessly ambling around the neighborhood asking their dog where it all went wrong. The latest bit of Sean Maguire-ian “It’s not yo...

EA Sports had better not push these kids away from Madden
The Madden franchise in recent years has shown the necessity of true competition for capitalism to function properly. Madden hasn’t competed with another NFL video game franchise since NFL 2K5. Some people have fond memories of that game, though personally I believe that’s the wannabe hipster crowd ...

Long Live the LIV?
The LIV Invitational Golf Series has been a drag on a PGA Tour that was already flailing to find its next superstar. LIV, which is funded by blood money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has sparked a mini-exodus of several PGA stars. By offering boatloads of cash for appearance fees, LIV ha...

Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?
Rudy Gobert is this offseason’s CJ McCollum in that every GM is going to call about the star player and get counteroffered with the secondary player. Yes, we know you called about Donovan, but for the low price of a couple draft picks and a salary dump, you can have Rudy at $38 million to $46 millio...

LeBron James wants to play with Steph Curry
This year’s NBA postseason has been pretty good, minus all the injuries, even with the absence of LeBron James. While the era of James playing into June every year is over, that doesn’t mean we won’t hear from the King during the playoffs and especially once the NBA Finals roll around. And one thing...

The Tampa Bay Lightning have channeled Admiral Ackbar to get back into the series
Perhaps the biggest sign that a team has entered its own class in the NHL is that it can play any way it has to, or wants to, to win. Whatever you ask of them, they have an answer. Some pretenders like the Hurricanes, once you take away their preferred style — in the case of the Canes it’s dump it i...

Jack Del Rio paints Capitol insurrection as 'dustup' in moronic commentary
Federal investigations into the Washington Commanders’ ownership, revelations of sexual misconduct, and a too-little-too-late name change just didn’t do it for them, I guess. Really, are they under some sort of curse that forces them to humiliate themselves until they, like, carry Zero up the mounta...

The Trail Blazers' offseason is a high-wire balancing act
This is the most important summer of Damian Lillard’s reign in Portland. For the past decade, the Portland Trail Blazers have been the Warriors’ little brother. Think Seth Curry and Steph Curry, but in franchise terms....


Jackie Robinson: His Life and Career in Pictures
When Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he not only integrated Major League Baseball. He was signaling to the nation—on one of its biggest stages—that Black Americans would no longer accept second-class status. ...

6 Decades Before Jackie Robinson, This Man Broke Baseball's Color Barrier
Sixty-three years before Jackie Robinson became the first African American in the modern era to play in a Major League Baseball game, Moses Fleetwood Walker debuted in the league on May 1, 1884 with the Toledo Blue Stockings in a 5-1 loss against the Louisville Eclipse. Walker, a 26-year-old African...

4 Black Baseball Players Who Followed Jackie Robinson's Lead in 1947
Jackie Robinson wasn’t the only Black baseball player to suit up in the big leagues in 1947. After he broke the color line and became the first Black baseball player to play in the American major leagues during the 20th century, four other players of color soon followed in his footsteps....

The odd construction around Shohei Ohtani certainly didn’t help Joe Maddon
With every passing year, the pressure on the Angels ratchets up just a little more as Mike Trout ages. It’s now common thought that the Angels have basically wasted the career of perhaps the best player of all time, and there’s a breaking point somewhere in the future but getting bigger on the horiz...

Richard Jefferson’s rant on shortening the season is off-base
Professional sports is not the easiest way to earn a living. That was part of what Richard Jefferson was trying to get at during his viral rant after Adam Silver dained to consider the idea of shortening the NBA season. Jefferson was drafted in 2001 and to his credit, the first 10 seasons of his 17 ...

In this edition of ‘Should That Be a Statue?'
Imagine if your lowest moment was so abysmal that people would want to build a statue to it? No, I’m not talking about the Southern part of the United States, I’m referring to Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final that earned him a red card before France fell to I...

Silent No Longer: The Outspoken Jackie Robinson
The eyes of Abraham Lincoln gazed down from a portrait on the paneled walls inside the executive offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club as Branch Rickey fire-hosed a torrent of racial slurs at Jackie Robinson. The president and general manager of the Dodgers had little doubt that the young ba...

9 Black Athletes Who Integrated Professional Sports
After Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ending a six-decade ban on Black players in Major League Baseball, opportunities slowly began to expand for athletes of color. Robinson’s historic achievement—a formative moment of the postwar civil rights moveme...

It looks like the NFL is getting a new owner — Rob Walton, another white guy
When Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them,” she was foreshadowing the actions of the NFL. ...