ja Page 296 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Jared Dudley Versus Ben Simmons Should Turn Into Some Prime NBA Playoff Beef
In Game 1 against the Sixers, fleshy Nets vet Jared Dudley shone. He finished with two points, but made several nice reads after lumbering into traffic, snagged a steal which led to a charming slow-break before Mike Scott broke it up on aesthetic principle, and, most importantly, played some stout d...

The Pacers Kept Handing Bojan Bogdanovic The Ball Until It Killed Them
It looked like the Pacers got some much-needed redemption on Wednesday. After putting up a measly eight points in the third quarter against the Celtics in Game 1—Indiana would go on to lose 84-74—the Pacers had a strong third quarter of their own in Game 2, outscoring Boston 29-16. But that momentum...

Vlad Jr. Hit A Ball Out Of A Minor League Ballpark, Almost As If He Is Too Good To Be Playing In Them
While hitting for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons on Wednesday night, Vlad Guerrero Jr. crushed a poor baseball all the way out of a minor league ballpark in Pawtucket. And if the Toronto Blue Jays have any sense, Guerrero himself will also be exiting minor league parks very soon....

Nothing Could Have Shaken Mike Malone's Faith In Jamal Murray
It’s hard to overstate just how bad Jamal Murray was through the first three quarters of Game 2 against the Spurs. The numbers are as plain and grim as numbers get: 0-of-8 from the field, two assists, and a plus-minus of -18 in 24 minutes. But even those numbers don’t quite capture the depths to whi...

What The Hell Happened To The Lightning?
Six days in April can change a lot....

Jamal Murray Washed Away The Sins Of His Horrendous Start With A Near-Perfect Fourth Quarter
Late in the third quarter, the Nuggets were close to overcoming the 19-point deficit the Spurs had put them in just a few minutes earlier. Thanks to the efforts of Malik Beasley, Denver had whittled the lead down to six with about 1:30 remaining in the quarter, and San Antonio was forced to call tim...

The Lightning Should Spend The Entire Summer With Paper Bags On Their Heads
Never has an NHL team had more reason to be embarrassed. First period of Game 1 aside, the Tampa Bay Lightning who won 62 games in the regular season failed to show up in their first-round series against the tremendously underestimated Columbus Blue Jackets, and they paid the price. As the Lightning...

Ajax Have Slain Cristiano Ronaldo, Giant Of The Champions League
For only the second time in six seasons, Cristiano Ronaldo will not win the Champions League. For the first time in a decade, and only the second time in 13 years, he won’t even appear in one of the four semi-finals. Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who has loomed over the continent’s premier tournament l...

Jacob Wohl And Jack Burkman Wasted My Time, But On The Bright Side, They Wasted Theirs Too
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl have put their heads together and made an ass of themselves yet again. The Goofus and Goofus of right-wing outrage added to their overstuffed portfolio of unnecessary and unwanted press conferences with a soft-hitting expose on corruption in the college recruiting realm....

Joel Embiid Couldn't Keep A Straight Face While Apologizing For His Elbow On Jarrett Allen
Joel Embiid got hit with a flagrant foul late in the first half of his Sixers’ eventual series-tying 145-123 win over the Nets on Monday night when he unleashed the full force of his elbow into Jarrett Allen’s neck while trying to beat him in the paint. Allen got up right away, but my goodness, that...

Nazem Kadri Is Done For The Rest Of The First Round
As expected, the NHL hit Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri with a multi-game suspension on Monday evening for his high crosscheck on Boston Bruin Jake DeBrusk from Game 2 of their first-round series on Saturday:...

There's A Lot Going On In This Jason Vargas Interview
Everyone’s eyes will naturally be drawn to the colonial-seeming fellow sliding into the background of Saturday’s postgame scrum for Mets pitcher Jason Vargas. Fine, that’s understandable. This blog will get to him shortly, but there are other things to appreciate here, too....

Brand Digs Up Jackie Robinson's Corpse To Sell Beer
If people would stop accepting ads like this as being anything beyond an ad, there’s a chance they might stop being made that way. In the meantime, a brand used Jackie Robinson, who didn’t drink alcohol, according to his wife Rachel, and a two-toned baseball (yecccch) as a prompt to sell beer. They ...

After Jackie Robinson Bent Baseball's Color Barrier, Two Journeymen Broke It For Good
Today, Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the day that Robinson crossed baseball’s color line. Robinson is as revered an athlete as you will find in any sport and has become a symbol for how a single person can change a powerful institution for the better. While Robi...

The Lightning Look Like Toast
“We’re still playing Tuesday. We’re still alive.” That’s Lightning head coach Jon Cooper giving an exhaustive list of everything positive about this opening-round series for Tampa, which could indeed end on Tuesday, just not in a way he or anyone else could have ever predicted....

The Refs Lost Control As The Bruins And Maple Leafs Tried To Kill Each Other
The Bruins took Game 2 against the Maple Leafs on Saturday with a 4-1 win in Boston. Though they won with a large margin of victory on the scoreboard, the game was much closer in terms of physicality. ...

The Raptors Were Never Going To Be Able To Stop D.J. Augustin From Becoming A Postseason Hero
The Orlando Magic are an enigma. The designation has nothing to do with a complex scheme that coach Steve Clifford has put together, or an analytics heavy-approach to selecting undervalued free agents that other teams would ignore. No, the Magic are an enigma simply because it makes no sense how thi...
![The Lightning Dug Themselves Into A 2-0 Hole, Then Nikita Kucherov Made Things Worse [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ealuylr8ju7f7dxze85z.jpg)
The Lightning Dug Themselves Into A 2-0 Hole, Then Nikita Kucherov Made Things Worse [Update]
Now that the Columbus Blue Jackets and Tampa Bay Lightning have played two playoff games against each other, let’s check in on the team that Vegas all but guaranteed would have a spot in the Stanley Cup final:...

Cristiano Ronaldo Is Like Clockwork
Cross the ball, head the ball, score a goal. It is the simplest tactic in soccer. It is what practically all teams resort to when the need for a goal is at its most dire. It is a strategy without frills or subtlety. When it works, it is nearly unstoppable. However, it very rarely works—rarely in a s...

A Lively Discussion About Futuristic Bathroom Technology
It is a sad fact of life: there are just more questions in the Funbag than there is time to answer them in the average Deadcast. All your horrible thoughts, your deeply considered curiosities about peeing and pooping, and NFL football, and peeing and pooping vis-a-vis Donald Trump—lost, like tears i...