ja Page 50 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The LA Chargers are finally interesting
Los Angeles’ most faceless and fanless team has landed a superstar. The NFL is a failsafe league. All of its television rights are national — as well as massive — and the roster construction is limited by a hard salary cap. The Los Angeles Chargers may not be hurting financially, but they are a thir...

On Sports Illustrated, the LA Times, and why sports writing matters
These are dark days for journalism, once considered the “Fourth Estate” of American democracy, so named because of journalism’s role in advocating for citizens, framing political and social issues, and holding the government to account on behalf of its people. These days, it seems there are two kind...

Joe Mauer, Todd Helton and the 1-team baseball Hall of Famers by franchise
The 2024 Hall of Fame inductions added two names to a very exclusive list. With Joe Mauer and Todd Helton’s nomination to Cooperstown, the two join 53 other players as the only in MLB history to make the Hall of Fame after spending their entire careers on one team. Listed by team, here are the reale...

Milwaukee Bucks hire retread Doc Rivers as new head coach
The Milwaukee Bucks filled their head coach vacancy with one of the NBA’s most familiar faces. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Doc Rivers will replace Adrian Griffin. The move was first announced by CNN Sports Tuesday night, leading to mass confusion around the Internet. ...

Doc Rivers is the habit the NBA can’t quit
Adrian Griffin was set up to fail from the start. The moment he was appointed head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, this felt like the making of a tempestuous union. Watching Griffin ink a deal to assume one of the most pressure-filled, win-now jobs in the NBA, then hire former Bucks coach Terry Stotts...

If Karl-Anthony Towns drops 62 in a forest on the same night Embiid delivers 70, does it make a sound?
That sound you heard last night was Karl-Anthony Towns reminding us that he’ll always be in the shadows of his peers. On Monday night in Philadelphia, Joel Embiid painted his magnum opus en route to a 70-point, 18-rebound exhibition of scoring prowess. Embiid’s 70 also came on the 18th anniversary o...

Ranking the final 4 teams in NFL playoffs
The stage is set. Four teams remain. Aside from some gut-wrenching, soul-crushing losses by the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys, these are pretty much the teams we expected to make it this far. ...

The Los Angeles Dodgers busy offseason gets busier
The Los Angeles Dodgers have dominated the MLB’s offseason, loading up on talent and spending over $1 billion in free agency. They’ve made the biggest splash signings both domestically and internationally, and locked in one of the biggest trades to boot. They’re not done, either. The Dodgers just ag...

This about sums up the Penguins season
Hockey can be infuriating. In no other sport can you do mostly everything right, but a little chinks in the armor can have an outsized effect if they’re spaced out correctly. Go 0-fer on the power play, or don’t get a save at the right time, or give up the wrong odd-man rush in the gimmick of overti...

Luka Doncic and each NBA team's leading single-game scorer
Update: Luka Doncic is the latest NBA star to drop 70+ points this season. It topped his Dallas Mavericks single-game record of 60, set in 2022. ...

Liverpool finally find a win in third gear
The Premier League finished up their split round, in what constitutes their winter break. So let’s run through every game that went down Saturday and Sunday, which doesn’t even allow us to get to our usual five bullet points! It’s our break, too, we guess. And sorry to any Brighton or Wolves support...

The AFC Championship Game is going to be extra 'quarterbacky'
When you’re truly remorseful, your apology tends to be louder than your initial disrespect. It’s why Lamar Jackson’s and Patrick Mahomes’ haters have been so silent lately....

The NBA 'superstar' landscape has shifted
There is no greater conduit for NBA hyperbole than the conversation around “superstars.” To have a rational, substantive debate, there must first be basic groundwork for what constitutes superstar status. First, the bad news: former Finals MVPs Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, LeBron James and Kawhi Leona...

C.J. Stroud and every rookie QB to win an NFL playoff game
C.J. Stroud became the latest rookie QB to win a playoff game for his team. The Houston Texans shellacked the Cleveland Browns, 45-14, and the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft looked terrific....

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown need a two-man game
The best duo in the NBA put on a show against the best team in the East on Friday night. Denver’s 102-100 win over Boston snapped the Celtics’ perfect mark at TD Garden this season, and 27-game home-winning streak overall. Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray combined for 69 points, 20 rebounds and 14 assi...

In the headlines: History for Michigan sports; Jim Dolan sex assault case; Insanity at Australian Open
Sports are about numbers, and that isn’t just because scores are kept. A player’s height and weight matter, they’re ages, too. But the best moments are when things occur that haven’t happened in a long time, as sports are also a marker of time. We just witnessed the best seven days that a place with...

Blue Jays need some reality; Gooden, Strawberry numbers retired; Wainwright switches careers
In a lot of ways, feverishly watching the flight route of a plane that wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be is a pretty nice metaphor for the Toronto Blue Jays’ offseason and outlook. The Jays knew Shohei Ohtani wasn’t on that flight, but their fans certainly didn’t. That doesn’t mean that the ...

Blame Michael Jordan for Krause widow disgrace; Rudy Gobert trade finally paying off; Lakers need Zach LaVine
Michael Jordan won a widow getting booed. My colleague Stephen Knox covered this yesterday, the booing of Jerry Krause’s widow Thelma during the Chicago Bulls’ Ring of Honor ceremony on Friday, and he isn’t wrong. It’s another “feather” in the “cap” of Jerry Reinsdorf, though he wouldn’t have been i...

Kelce retires; Pete Carroll isn't having it; Dan Quinn gets dunked; Jerry Jones keeps on Jerry Jonesing
When it was announced last week that the Seattle Seahawks were moving in a different direction at head coach, the news caught many by surprise. It was framed as though Pete Carroll and the organization had mutually agreed that Carroll would step out of the way and into an advisor’s role. But now wit...

How suspected or confirmed PED users have fared in Baseball Hall of Fame voting
Is Gary Sheffield more Hall of Fame worthy than Alex Rodriguez, despite the fact that both are inextricably linked to performing enhancing drugs?...