joe Page 50 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Florida teams thawing out in first round of the NHL Playoffs
The President’s Trophy winners are in trouble. The resilient regular season champion Florida Panthers have a tough task ahead of them to win their first playoff series in 26 years. They were overmatched Saturday afternoon by the Washington Capitals 6-1, giving the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions a 2-1 ov...

The Giants are suffering a power outage
Fresh off a franchise-best 107-win season, nobody expected the San Francisco Giants to repeat as NL West champs in 2022. The departures of key players such as Buster Posey, Kris Bryant, and Kevin Gausman were going to be difficult to overcome. The Giants managed to replace Gausman by acquiring Carlo...

Philly’s Joel Embiid, Dallas’ supporting cast help get their teams back into series
The last two NBA Finals losers, the Heat and Suns, are in very similar positions in the second round of the playoffs. Both took care of business at home, then went on the road Friday night and got smoked....

So the James Harden-Ben Simmons trade looks like a dud
Upon hearing the news of any trade, the first reaction is to think about which team won the trade initially. In the NBA court of public opinion, that distinction usually goes to the side that obtains the more prominent name or superstar player. With Ben Simmons (and others) being traded for James Ha...

Robo umps can’t get here soon enough as unhinged humans remind sports fans that baseball still has worst officials
The MLB’s umpires are really milking their last few minutes of relevance, and in the process aren’t doing themselves any favors in the argument against robot umpires taking their jobs. No, Triple A isn’t testing out a robo-ump at the moment, but maybe they should be because what happened to Madison ...

The Spurs in a different city, maybe even a different country? It's not a terrible idea
Does the Austin Spurs have a nice ring to it? How about the Monterrey Spurs, becoming the first team from a major American sports league to be located in Mexico?...

Are the Yankees frauds? Will the Angels come down to earth?
Saying “it’s only April” is out, because it’s been May for a few days now. We’re about 15 percent of the way through baseball’s regular season, give or take depending on how many games each team has played, and while that’s not a big sample size, the teams that are in first place now have those wins...

DeAndre Ayton continues to show Phoenix that he’s pretty damn good and deserves a max extension
In professional sports, we often hear players go public with the desire for a new contract instead of just allowing their performance on the court or field to speak for them. But that isn’t how Phoenix Suns center DeAndre Ayton is handling his contract situation with the Suns. All Ayton’s done over ...

Joel Embiid might be a world champion after all
Joel Embiid’s best chance of becoming a champion is unlikely to happen in 2022. A concussion and right orbital bone fracture have cast doubt on his availability for the Sixers’ semifinal series against the Miami Heat. If he’s unable to play, the Sixers are doomed and The Process-era Sixers will repe...

Sixers fans, gird your loins for Harden time
Before Sixers fans could even breathe a sigh of relief over the possibility of going to a Game 7 despite a 3-0 lead, they’re gasping for air upon hearing the news that Joel Embiid is out indefinitely with a right orbital fracture and a mild concussion. The injury, courtesy of an elbow from Pascal Si...

Trae Young can be a lot of things, but he can’t be the No. 1 scoring option on a title team
You can blame Trae Young for a lot of Atlanta’s first-round exit to Miami. He was 22-for-69 from the floor, shot 17 percent from 3, and had as many turnovers (31) as he did assists (31). He didn’t even listen in on the huddle before the last play of their season, so if you want to destroy him, feel ...

NFL Draft Day provides a welcome rebuke to the NBA’s player empowerment era
It’s a widely known fact that Kyrie Irving is delusional. He’s a man of the people while walking among them unvaccinated. He thinks the Earth is flat, and has the NBA figured out even though he’s essentially a losing player without LeBron James. However, when he said he was going to keep “managing” ...

The NFL Draft becomes must-bet TV
Will it be Travon Walker? Aidan Hutchinson? Kayvon Thibodeaux? Whoever your gut is telling you is probably a safe bet — well, safer than most bets, anyway....

Russia-U.S. prisoner exchange offers glimmer of hope for Brittney Griner
It appears Russia’s hardline obsession with punishing drug offenders has its limit after all. On Wednesday morning, Russia released a U.S. citizen and former marine, Trevor Reed, as part of prisoner exchange. In July 2020, Reed was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison following an altercation wi...

Jerry Jones dumps on son for yucks
I do appreciate that Jerry Jones will actually get in front of a microphone and talk to the people. It’s something that his brethren in NFL ownership refuse to do, and maybe if they did they would have the most valuable sports franchise in the entire world. Is Jones talking for the sake of transpare...

Ben Simmons is an NBA medical mystery
Mental health issues aren’t unheard of in the NBA. All-Stars like Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have openly discussed their battles in recent years. However, Ben Simmons’ inability to play through a mysterious mental block and his reticence to speak about it has turned him into an NBA medical mystery...

Philly fans are going to end the world if the 76ers blow a 3-0 lead
Since Joel Embiid hit that incredible dagger 3 to beat Toronto in Game 3 and give the 76ers a 3-0 advantage in the series, his team has dropped back-to-back games and held a lead for five minutes and 17 seconds out of a possible 96 minutes. Philadelphia has won exactly two of the past eight quarters...

How much thin air is in the 10-5 Rockies?
See? It’s an altitude joke! Because they play in Denver, see? Pretty genius, huh? I know, I’m great. Yes, it is a burden, but one I carry for you. Because you deserve it....

Joe Schoen is aiming to rid the Giants of any trace of Dave Gettleman
January 10, 2022 was a dreary day for Cowboys, Eagles, and Commanders fans across the world as the New York Giants announced general manager Dave Gettleman’s retirement. In his four years as GM, Gettleman made so many unthinkably bad moves that he became more valuable to the Cowboys than Dak Prescot...

2022 NFL Draft: Most Likely To...
We’re only one week away from the 2022 NFL Draft. Combine measurements have been made, interviews have been conducted, Pro Day workouts have been observed — all that’s left now is to see how the next generation of stars shakes out over the league on Draft Day....