ja Page 182 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Mavericks had better pack some vaseline and boots if Luka isn’t full strength for their first round series against the Jazz
Bless the Dallas Mavericks’ hearts, they went for it on Sunday. They were one game behind the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference standings. If the Warriors — sans Stephen Curry — had lost to the New Orleans Pelicans and the Mavericks defeated the San Antonio Spurs, the Mavs would have j...

When Jackie opened the door, these men walked through
It took 2,559 days after Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Major League Baseball to have its 42nd Black player appear in a game. Those seven years and two days saw 11 of the league’s 16 franchises integrate. The Boston Red Sox were the last to do so with Pumpsie Green in July 1959...

NBA play-in tournament: Tuesday’s matchup preview
It’s play-in tournament time, and now that we know all the participants, let’s look at Day One, which will be the seven vs. eight seed in each conference. We have intriguing matchups here and two teams that weren’t expected to be dealing with the play-in when the season started back in October....

NBA playoff matchups we’d love to see (and one we wouldn’t)
The 2022 NBA playoffs is an annual garden of forking paths. Teams don’t know who to expect awaiting them in the next round or when their season will end. One injury can swing momentum in the other direction. What we do know is that there are particular matchups that are more palatable than others. C...

And we all thought Barcelona was done big-game hunting
We didn’t really get as big of a window to laugh at Barcelona as we thought or hoped. Proving the life lesson that you need to celebrate anything worth celebrating at that time and that place or you’ll miss the opportunity. Barça is roaring in La Liga right now, all the way up to second after winnin...

The Rockets didn’t win much, but they were a blast to watch towards the end of the season
Once the NCAA Basketball Tournaments come around, the rest of the NBA season can feel like a slog. If you were already upset about players missing games, the volume gets ratcheted up on that, and at that point it’s fairly clear which teams are the best in the league. It’s also hard to muster excitem...

And the award for Most Unreliable Player of the Year goes to…
The NBA season has finally ended, and now it’s time to hand out some hardware. But this isn’t your usual NBA award. We’re handing out the MUP for the Most Unreliable Player of the Year. The criteria’s open to anything from being unavailable due to frequent injury, dealing with bouts of narcissism, t...

Tiger had the world on pins and needles for a shot that truthfully didn’t even matter
Tiger Woods, 18th hole, The Masters. It didn’t matter that he was 13-over par and his chances at winning had long expired. It didn’t matter that Tiger wasn’t expected to win. It was spectacular that just over one year after an automobile accident mangled his right leg, he was playing in The Masters,...

This NBA season was not fantastic
The NBA ended its worst season in recent memory on Sunday. Yes, it was really that bad....

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. made every baseball sorry it was ever born
We’re going to be hearing from Blue Jays fans all season, and it’ll be kicked into overdrive here in the next month after the Leafs barf all over themselves in the first round again. All of that energy will definitely be channeled into the Rogers Centre immediately. You won’t be able to duck it....

Why Embiid’s scoring title is a BIG deal
Joel Embiid capped off his chase for the scoring crown on Saturday night by summoning a brilliant 41-point, 20-rebound outing in the Philadelphia 76ers’ 133-120 win over the Indiana Pacers. A dazzling 40/20 game was the perfect way to secure the best individual accomplishment of his career....

The end of the NBA regular season is nigh
Because the NBA regular season doesn’t really matter — seriously, the barometer of advancing to the postseason this year was, “are you better than the clock-struck-midnight on Julius Randle version of the Knicks or the bunch of corpses that LeBron James couldn’t animate to 35 wins in Los Angeles?” —...

Overpaying Aaron Judge was a mistake the Yankees used to make without blinking
In the scene at the climax of Layer Cake, an English gangster flick Daniel Craig made two years before becoming James Bond, the antagonist goes on this tangent about taking shit, and how eventually, if you climb high enough, you forget what shit even looks like....

Brian Kelly can't stop trashing Notre Dame
Brian Kelly is on a mission to make himself Public Enemy Number One in South Bend, Indiana, for reasons unknown. His daughter will be graduating from Notre Dame next month, and at this point, if I were Kelly, I wouldn’t be too keen about showing my face on campus....

Did you notice these cool details from MLB Opening Day?
After an offseason filled with turmoil and uncertainty, Major League Baseball kicked off the 2022 season yesterday...with two postponements, one of them Red Sox at Yankees. Yeah, that wasn’t a great way to kick things off. Pushing back the start of your marquee series is never a good thing,especiall...

Gary Player wants you to know that Phil Mickelson is ‘being crucified’
I debated between a Lethal Weapon 2 “Diplomatic immunity” joke and a “Maybe we should stop bringing the kids around grandpa” barb to start this story about Gary Player wearing a Saudi Golf League logo during the ceremonial opening tee shots at the Masters and then his telling a reporter that Phil Mi...

Chasing the Bengals' path to glory
The avalanche started with the fifth pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Ja’Marr Chase from LSU, reuniting Chase with national-championship teammate and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow, Cincy’s selection with the No. 1 overall pick in 2020. Those were far from t...

We forgot about Trae
Led by Trae Young, the Atlanta Hawks began this season with more buzz than the city’s best lemon pepper wings. They were a quality young League Pass team who’d matured into an Eastern Conference heavyweight overnight. The 2021 postseason served as the setting for Young’s glow-up from empty calorie s...

Have to admit, the Play-in is adding a lot of intrigue
Everyone’s favorite time of the year is finally here. We’re just days away from the NBA’s Play-in Tournament as eight teams battle for the right to get their spines pulled from them in the first round. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the Play-in when it was first introduced. I thought it water...
