leo Page 31 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Fight fire with fire, burning with fear
You have to hand it to Avalanche coach Jared Bednar. He does have one of the best checking centers in the NHL at his disposal in Nazem Kadri. It would be easy, explicable, and defensible to just toss Kadri over the boards every time the Oilers put Connor McDavid out there, and be done with it. After...
Get ready for hot pickleball action!
It’s not often that we get the chance to live through the invention and ascension of a sport into popular culture. American football dates back to the Civil War era. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. FIFA was founded in 1904. But thanks to a man named Joel Pritchard trying to entertain his...
AEW always gets away with it
The days of AEW running out “perfect” pay-per-views, where everything hits and the length is manageable, are probably over. The roster has grown to the point where a lot has to go into them, and not all of them are going to be collecting star-ratings like a hoarder. No company has amazing booking th...
Jimmy Butler’s superstar card got declined when Miami needed it most
Earlier this month, FS1’s Nick Wright debuted a bit called the Superstar Club. I don’t usually endorse debate show takes, but this was a solid metaphor. Jimmy Butler was depicted standing in line, waiting for entry. In this year’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, he nearly cemen...
Landry Shamet hath brought a plague upon every house he’s entered
Athletes and fans are a very superstitious lot, and if rituals and patterns are to be taken seriously, Suns’ guard Landry Shamet should be forced to play for lottery teams for the rest of his career. If your team is contending for a championship, needs a piece in the offseason, and picks up or trade...
American Athletes who gave their lives in service
It may be rare these days, but there was a time when some of the best athletes in America went off to fight in wars. Some did so willingly, others were drafted....
Your AEW Double Or Nothing preview
It’s now a Memorial Day weekend tradition, as AEW has its other tentpole PPV (and they still call them “PPVs”) from Las Vegas. If you’re a weirdo like me, it’s no longer the holiday that kicks off summer but this event. It’ll actually be the start of a pretty frenzied summer of activity, given that ...
International stars are here to stay on All-NBA Teams
Thirty years after the Dream Team introduced the NBA to the world at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the league has transformed into something that the late David Stern would be proud of. Basketball has truly become an international game....
Is the NHL now rigging games for Connor McDavid?
OK, obviously not. But maybe?...
This looks like Connor McDavid’s time
This could finally be it. The NHL is starving for its next superstar. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby’s first-round exits with Washington and Pittsburgh left a void for a television-ratings hockey juggernaut....
The Flames cost us a truly transcendent moment
The going story out there has been that the NBA Playoffs have been kinda trash. It’s easy to see why people think that, because there’s been a ton of blowouts, and neither of the conference finals has produced a close game in eight tries. What we want out of the playoffs are moments and performances...
Twitter crowdsources Charles Barkley’s greatest hits
Charles Barkley: 11-time NBA All-Star, three-time gold medalist, and, uh, professional comedian? After a tweet this weekend about Barkley’s legendary sense of humor blew up, short, laugh-out-loud clips of the Inside the NBA analyst have started appearing in droves on Twitter. The original has over 3...
Kylian Mbappé is PSG’s only hope
Let’s be fair, it isn’t much of a sacrifice or even a hard choice to make more money than a lot of countries’ GDP and live in Paris. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and something 95 percent of the world would opt for (with the other five percent either already living there, making millions somewhere bette...
Oilers enjoy the sounds of silence at expense of Calgary crowd
It’s tempting to try to glean some kind of lesson from big games. We all try to do it, all the time, just as fans. The playoffs are not all that different from the final few episodes of a prestige television series’ season. You know there’s not much left, and you’re looking for any clues you can get...
Whose personality is more irritating: Current Jimmy Butler or prime Dwight Howard?
Everyone has had that coworker who kind of sucks but is really good at his job so the manager looks the other way when Glen takes 20 minute out of the weekly staff meeting to brag about his weekend jet skiing. Yeah, he’s annoying, but holy shit can he sell the hell out of reasonably priced Kias. Dwi...
No, Sasha Banks wouldn’t see AEW as a better opportunity
We’ve all done it the past couple days. Even though it’s pretty much impossible, we’ve all dreamed of WWE executives losing their minds, or Sasha Banks finding some loophole in her contract, and somehow instantly getting out of it. And then at Double Or Nothing, Thunder Rosa successfully defends her...
Troy Aikman says Washington is Carson Wentz’ last opportunity as a franchise QB
Carson Wentz is one of those lucky individuals who’s received chance after chance to prove himself as a starting NFL quarterback. Hall of Famer Troy Aikman even suggests this is likely Wentz’ last opportunity to show the league he’s a franchise QB. ...
An incomplete list of people we’d like to see at the 2023 Tom Brady Netflix roast
Tom Brady’s love affair with the spotlight will take yet another form come 2023 — Netflix announced yesterday that the recently unretired QB will be the executive producer and first subject of a new series, Greatest Roasts of All Time....
Tale of the tape: Battle of Alberta vs. Battle of Florida
The second round of the playoffs worked, in part, the way that the NHL dreamed up when it went to this postseason format of divisional brackets. You can question the wisdom of it happening in the second round, but we’re getting the Battle of Alberta and the Battle of Florida now....
Vince McMahon deserves whatever consequences come from booking Sasha Banks and Naomi poorly
Sasha Banks and Naomi took their ball and went home. This is far from a work or part of WWE’s scripted episodic weekly television programming. Two of Vince McMahon’s most talented female performers walked out of Scope Arena in Norfolk, Va., and didn’t return despite being booked in last evening’s or...