john Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Maple Leafs have their problems, but paying their good players isn’t one of them
The free-agent apocalypse that was going to arrive in Toronto next summer has apparently disappeared. Before last summer, Auston Matthews and William Nylander were a season away from unrestricted free agency, and John Tavares and Mitch Marner were two years away. The latter two are still in that spo...
Despite a 13-win campaign, it’s still hard to trust the Ravens
After dominating Jacksonville, San Francisco, and Miami in consecutive weeks, the Baltimore Ravens looked like the dominant force everyone had been waiting for all season. Forget about the hiccup Saturday night against Pittsburgh (minus Lamar Jackson), Baltimore is viewed by many as the favorite to ...
School fires girls basketball coach, dismisses player after antisemitic incident: report
Updated Jan. 9: Yonkers Public Schools have fired a high school girls basketball coach and dismissed a player from the team as a result of an antisemitic incident Thursday night, the New York Post reported. ...
Every NFL team's retired jersey numbers
One of the biggest honors in all of sports is to have your number retired by your respective franchise. No one else will be able to wear it after you, cementing your legacy in the rafters or in a ring of honor/team hall of fame. Here are all of the officially retired numbers by the NFL (minus the Ba...
John Fisher's move of A's may have a snag; Jim Harbaugh avoids a choke job; the strange case of Luke Littler
There’s generally little hope for fans when it’s already been announced that their team will move to another city. That hope evaporates more when a league approves it, as MLB has done with the A’s move to Vegas. And yet, there’s always a sliver of light that can’t be extinguished when an owner is so...
In honor of the Magic retiring Shaq's number, here is every NBA team's retired jersey numbers
With the announcement that the Orlando Magic will retire Shaquille O’Neal’s jersey, the NBA has finally done it! All 30 teams have officially retired a jersey number for a specific player (Yes, before Shaq, the Magic’s only jersey retired was No. 6 for “The Sixth Man,” a.k.a the fans)....
The NBA's participation policy wasn't meant for guys like Dorian Finney-Smith
The NBA likely implemented its player participation policy — read: anti-load management protocol — so that fans wouldn’t attend games only to see LeBron James and Anthony Davis, or Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, in street clothes. ...
NHL contenders have something of a goalie crisis
The NHL is almost certainly delighted that it’s seen an uptick in scoring the past three seasons (though down a skosh this season from last). It probably should pull a muscle patting itself on the back for the crackdown on goalie equipment leading to lower average save percentages across the Origina...
What’s going on at Harvard with Claudine Gay is similar to how the NFL, sports, and America operate
Claudine Gay is the new Nikole Hannah-Jones in the same way that Eric Bieniemy is the latest version of Sherman Lewis. And while there’s a big difference between being a leader at an institution of higher learning and coaching football, the common denominator remains the same — excluding Black peopl...
John Fisher might not have the money to move the A’s to Vegas
There’s generally little hope for fans when it’s already been announced that their team will move to another city. That hope evaporates more when a league approves it, as MLB has done with the A’s move to Vegas. And yet, there’s always a sliver of light that can’t be extinguished when an owner is so...
Sports has an owner problem
There’s an owner problem across all professional sports. If you think the behavior of Carolina Panthers’ owner David Tepper was abhorrent, and it was, and needs to be eradicated from the game, and it should, wait 15 minutes until the next entitled billionaire gets fussy. ...
The Texas Longhorns’ season-long bank heist fell short at the vault
The horseshoe that’s been up the Texas Longhorns’ ass finally fell out Monday night. Hours after its claim at legitimacy flamed out, with Alabama squandering a seven-point fourth-quarter lead to a semi-lethargic Michigan team, UT repeatedly looked like frauds. ...
Here are the New Year's resolutions I'd like to see for the NBA
The NBA has never been more fun. Three-point bombing, higher-than-ever talent, a global player pool and the best product in professional sports. But it’s far from perfect. We’ve pinpointed five resolutions we want to see in 2024 that can improve the game on and off the court. ...
Bowl shenanigans are at full-throat
The great thing about bowl season is it lets fans check in on programs they may not have watched much during the regular season. With 86 teams participating across 43 exhibitions, and little else to do but veg out on football, this seems like a good time for a little peer review. On Thursday, Miami ...
This week in the NFL: Travis Kelce is not pleased; Russell Wilson done in Denver?; Antonio Pierce disrespected in Vegas
Travic Kelce let it all out on an episode of his “New Heights” podcast with brother and Philadelphia Eagles center Jason. After the Chiefs lost three of their last four games, Travis called it “a frustrating f**king experience” and said that everyone – including himself – is contributing to the offe...
Jalen Hurts’ fugazi QB record is evidence that sometimes numbers do lie
The NFL’s Big Data complex, including Next Gen Stats and Pro Football Focus, would have you believe that numbers don’t lie, but the truth is that numbers can be untrustworthy little digits. They don’t explicitly generate faux stats, but accurate statistics can be framed deceptively. For instance, on...
IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2023: The complete rankings
Welcome to the grand finale of Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR festivities. Here’s hoping 2024 will be better. It probably won’t....
Old beef still sells. Just ask the Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson
As long as the nostalgia of 1990s beef still sells, I’ll never feel old. I was but a child then. A child who looked at box scores in the Chicago Sun-Times and followed the daily drama of the 1997 Chicago Bulls contract negotiations. Even as a youngster, I recognized that Jimmy Johnson and the Dallas...
Lamar Jackson is inching closer to joining Patrick Mahomes as the only Black QBs with multiple MVPs
Since 2023 has been filled with highs for Black quarterbacks, 2024 might as well keep the party going. And if things hold steady, Patrick Mahomes won’t be the only one anymore....
IDIOT OF THE YEAR: It's the final countdown (Nos. 10-1)
Here they are: The biggest dummies of 2023. Most of them are starting to take up permanent residence here. ...