layoffs Page 54 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Blues Honor Rent-A-Car Company With Color Guard Flag, Then Quietly Dishonor It
You might think sports are about sports. No. They’re about the troops. And America. And sometimes Canada too, but rarely in the NHL playoffs. But how can you prove, if you’re a team in, say, the Stanley Cup Final, that you really care about America and its uniformed services? (If you go one day with...

The Weirder The Finals Get, The Better
The news from the NBA Finals is all good, kids, and it is this: Nobody has any narratives left to invent. The events of Games 1 and 2 have savaged all the preconceptions, conceptions, and the way it’s looking, the post-conceptions of this series. Nobody has any idea what’s coming next, and nobody wi...

The Warriors Should Have Been Fucked
There’s no such thing as an NBA Finals loss that doesn’t sting, but some of them hurt more than others. The J.R. Smith Disaster was so demoralizing that you knew, even though it happened in Game 1, that the Cavs would never recover. Last night’s Game 2, which the Raptors lost 109-104, was not nearly...

Craig Berube Works The Refs, Because Not Much Else Is Working For The Blues
Jordan Binnington will be back in net and the Blues believe his newfound porosity was a fluke, and Oskar Sundqvist will return after serving his one-game suspension, so not only are they ready to move past their Game 3 shitkicking, but they’re out of excuses for it. Mostly. Down 2-1 in the Stanley C...

Marc Gasol Can Run With The Warriors, And Get Buckets Too
Marc Gasol has been a prime component of the Raptors’ asphyxiating defense—one of the most switchable, responsive, obnoxiously needling teams in recent memory. His post D has been stout enough to knock Joel Embiid a notch down from series-defining to merely good. By Giannis Antetokounmpo’s own admi...

Fred VanVleet Can Do No Wrong
How big a lead does a team have to have on the Warriors before its fans can feel comfortable? Twenty points with two minutes left? Fifteen points with 30 seconds to go? To me, it didn’t feel like the Raptors had Game 1 locked up until they were actually dribbling out the final ticks, up nine with th...

What Happened To All The Interesting Refs?
One of the nerdier things a basketball fan can do at 9 a.m. Eastern Weirdo Time is to go to the NBA website and glom onto the identities of the officials who will work whatever game interests you True, NBA ref nerddom is an exceedingly small subset of Nerdvania, but let a thousand sets of hipster gl...

A Thorough And Informative 2019 NBA Finals Preview For Basketball Idiots
Hello, casual basketball viewer! At long last, the NBA Finals are here, and you know what that means: It’s time once again for you to crib a pitiful smattering of hoops knowledge from this extremely half-assed blog and carry it forth to the sports bar like the torch that lights your path....

Let's Talk Ourselves Into This NBA Finals Matchup
The NBA Finals would seem great to someone who only recently decided to care about NBA basketball. You’ve got your dynastic bulletproof Golden State Warriors, currently minus injured cornball virtuoso Kevin Durant but otherwise as monstrously dominant as ever. You’ve also got the Toronto Raptors, a ...

Drake And The Raptors Both Got A Talking-To From The NBA
The Toronto Raptors will host Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, and there’s no doubt Drake will be sitting on the sideline. He’s behaved like an unruly dingus courtside in Toronto, blurring the lines between participant and bystander in ways that would make Spike Lee blush. Bucks coach Mike Budenhol...

Oskar Sundqvist Will Face Hearing For Hit That Hospitalized Matt Grzelcyk
Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk was taken to the hospital after being boarded by Oskar Sundqvist in the first period of Wednesday’s 3-2 Blues overtime win. Sundqvist got just two minutes, but a bunch more might be coming: Sundqvist has a hearing with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety. ...

Vladimir Tarasenko Nearly Ripped Himself In Half Scoring This Goal
Carl Gunnarsson’s rocket of a winner for St. Louis in Game 2 last night understandably gets all the love and applause this morning —it gave the Blues their first-ever Stanley Cup Final win and sent them back home with hope instead of despair. But back in the first period, long before Gunnarsson’s go...

Carl Gunnarsson's Pissing Prediction Led To A Boston Pee Party
“Tonight it was hard, so I’m happy about that,” Oskar Sundqvist said, and he was talking about a shot, thank goodness. Specifically, teammate Carl Gunnarsson’s OT goal to give the Blues a 3-2 win and knot up the Stanley Cup Final at a game apiece....

Carl Gunnarsson's Blue-Line Blast Gives The Blues Their First-Ever Stanley Cup Final Win
Folks, we got a series! After getting absolutely trounced in the final 39 minutes of Game 1, the St. Louis Blues showed that this Stanley Cup Final would not be a repeat of 1970. Rather than allow themselves to get steamrolled by the Bruins in Game 2, the Blues held their ground and beat Boston in o...

The Bruins Don't Want To Talk About Getting Into Bed With Barstool Sports
The Boston Bruins were happy to plug their Barstool Sports towels this morning ahead of tonight’s Game 2, but for some reason they now don’t want to talk about the partnership....

Even If The Warriors Win, Oakland Loses
This is the real NBA Finals, the one that transcends Larry O’Brien, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Doris Burke, Woj, Adam Silver, dynasties, the next Why-The-Lakers-Are-On-Fire tell-all, the works. This is Oakland’s last stand with the team it raised from a pup, its last healthy bite of an apple that ...

This Kawhi Leonard Ball Fake Is Hypnotic
Kawhi Leonard has been doing a lot that’s reminiscent of Michael Jordan. The raw scoring—Leonard is up to 31.4 points per game this postseason—the shimmying midrange work, the perimeter defense. Add a new entry to the list: ball fakes only possible with enormous mitts. Check out this possession in G...

Aaron Rodgers Loses Chugging Contest Among Milwaukee-Area Sportsmen
Since the Toronto Raptors have Drake cheering them on, the Milwaukee Bucks need their own celebrity row. Green Bay lineman David Bakhtiari has filled a spot more than once, and he’s excelled at acting as a Rally Packer for the crowd. All he has to do is chug beers, and the crowd gets fired up....

Drake Cuts Sweaty Promo About How Raptors Fans Are Really Good At Following The Rules
The Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night, and Drake, the Raptors’ rowdy uncle/human mascot, was not in the building. He was back home in Toronto, watching the game with thousands of Raptors fans in an outdoor square. He was so excited after the win t...

Raptors Defense Pushes Bucks To The Toilet's Edge In Game 5 Upset
The Milwaukee Bucks, the best team of the 2018–19 regular season and by far the best team through the first two rounds of the playoffs, find themselves in the deepest of caca following a 105–99 loss to the Toronto Raptors in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Bucks will have to stave off e...