lds Page 58 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Thanks for allowing us to exhale, Jake
Jake Arrieta announced his retirement yesterday, though the league had basically announced it for him about two years ago. Still, I’ll never forget his run that really started in 2014 and carried through the 2016 World Series....
Anthony Edwards has arrived as the man in Minnesota
Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards made a lasting impression Saturday in his playoff debut against Memphis. Edwards kicked down the door and dominated the Grizzlies, setting a new Twolves record in scoring for a player in his first playoff game. ...
Ranking the NBA’s first round matchups by how likely we are to see an upset
The NBA’s playoffs are easily the most predictable of the major American sports leagues. Without the variability of baseball or the single playoff game format like football, it’s pretty rare that there are any true upsets in the first round of the NBA playoffs. In most years you look at the bracket ...
Can we please get an LS-U <em>30 for 30</em> already?
It’s hard to quantify what makes a thing charismatic. I recently went to New Orleans for the first time, and before I arrived, I was a little skeptical because often when people can’t shut up about how great something is, the expectation is set so high that anything but perfection is going to be a l...
Unlikely heroes lead way to start NBA playoffs
The stars were out for the first day of the NBA playoffs, with Donovan Mitchelll scoring 32 points to lead the Jazz to a 99-93 win in Dallas, Karl-Anthony Towns putting up 29 points and 13 boards to lead the Timberwolves to a Game 1 upset in Memphis, 130-117, and then Tyrese Maxey scored 38 points f...
The Los Angeles Clippers are the red circle of death of the NBA
Man, Steve Ballmer had to be feeling really good when he first got Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. I mean like “Steve Ballmer hyping up a pep rally” good or “Christmas morning presents as a child” good. He felt “Just bought a brand new XBox and am barely able to drive home below the speed limit” good...
Joe Maddon out-galaxy brains himself, manages to win anyway
There are a couple of key questions in baseball over the past several years that regularly intersect: “Why can’t the Angels win anything when they have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two unique talents among the greatest the game has ever seen?” and “How did Joe Maddon ever win a World Series with th...
Civil servant Kyrie Irving probably shouldn’t Google ‘Nets owner-China ties’
Two of the people not quoted in ESPN’s nearly flawless piece about Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai’s problematic ties to China — including a business under the umbrella of his company developing facial recognition software that may or may not have been equipped with an “Uyghur alarm” to alert police of...
No one asked for a Joe Paterno retrospective on his ‘legacy’
“We have never covered up things around here. We just didn’t have problems.”...
Jackie Robinson died unhappy with baseball
There was no Jackie Robinson Day in 1972. On the 25th anniversary of him breaking the MLB color barrier on April 15, 1947 the league hadn’t retired his number. In fact until June 1972, the Dodgers had never retired a number. They would do so for him, Sandy Koufax, and Roy Campanella. The league didn...
Sports is about magical moments and Dave Roberts robbed us of one
Dave Roberts must have had a ski mask on yesterday in Minneapolis....
Oklahoma softball would like, nay, DEMANDS everyone’s attention right now
Thirty-six wins, zero losses. That’s what the Oklahoma softball team’s record is right now, breaking the all-time Division I record previously set in 1999 by UCLA at 35-0. Now, with a streak this absurd, this dominant, you’d think there have been hiccups. Perhaps there were a few games where Oklahom...
The Timberwolves’ ‘trial and error’ era meets its polar opposite in Memphis
The Minnesota Timberwolves have been getting bodied all over the internet for their excessive celebration after surviving and advancing past the Kawhi-less Clippers team in their play-in game. And rightfully so, because the Timberwolves haven’t done anything yet. Their reward will be a battle agains...
A WNBA draft unlike any other
The first HBCU player selected in two decades, first round picks from Northwestern and Florida Gulf Coast, UConn and South Carolina waiting until the second round to hear names from their rosters called — yesterday’s WNBA draft showed us just how shaken up the college basketball world has become. ...
NBA play-in tournament day 2: Wednesday’s games highlight some of the league’s burgeoning young stars
Day two of the play-in tournament features the 9 and 10 seeds from each conference. These games haven’t been talked about as much as the day one games, but could be even more exciting. One of them will be a showdown between two of the hottest young guards in the league, and the other features a play...
Steven Kwan is kicking off his career hotter than anyone ever
First things first, I just want to say that I know he’s only played four career games, but that doesn’t take away from how insane Cleveland’s 24-year-old rookie, Steven Kwan, has been during this stretch. In 19 plate appearances, Kwan has recorded nine hits (three extra-base hits) and six walks for ...
When Jackie opened the door, these men walked through
It took 2,559 days after Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Major League Baseball to have its 42nd Black player appear in a game. Those seven years and two days saw 11 of the league’s 16 franchises integrate. The Boston Red Sox were the last to do so with Pumpsie Green in July 1959...
NBA play-in tournament: Tuesday’s matchup preview
It’s play-in tournament time, and now that we know all the participants, let’s look at Day One, which will be the seven vs. eight seed in each conference. We have intriguing matchups here and two teams that weren’t expected to be dealing with the play-in when the season started back in October....
The Rockets didn’t win much, but they were a blast to watch towards the end of the season
Once the NCAA Basketball Tournaments come around, the rest of the NBA season can feel like a slog. If you were already upset about players missing games, the volume gets ratcheted up on that, and at that point it’s fairly clear which teams are the best in the league. It’s also hard to muster excitem...
And the award for Most Unreliable Player of the Year goes to…
The NBA season has finally ended, and now it’s time to hand out some hardware. But this isn’t your usual NBA award. We’re handing out the MUP for the Most Unreliable Player of the Year. The criteria’s open to anything from being unavailable due to frequent injury, dealing with bouts of narcissism, t...