mad Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Miami Heat need Tyler Herro out there STAT
The Miami Heat have made sure to throw the pace of the 2023 NBA Finals into Karo Syrup. The Denver Nuggets have the best offensive rating of any team in the 2023 postseason, but have yet to score 110 points in the finals. This Heat run through the postseason has been mind-boggling, but after three g...

Why is it 'Playoff Jimmy' and not 'Playoff Jokic?'
How many triple-doubles do you have to pile up before you get your own playoff persona? When do the pundits start referring to “Playoff Jokic?” to differentiate Nikola Jokic from what goes on October-April? One would hope that Jokic is close to it by now, seeing as how he racked up his 13th out of ...

Josh Allen is good enough for the Madden cover, but how about Hailee Steinfeld?
If you were wondering what gets me through this job, it’s shoehorning something I want to write about into a sports story. So, seeing as I can’t get Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse out of my head a couple of days after watching it, I’m going to talk about Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Spider-Gwen ...

With PGA-LIV merger, the sportswashing of Saudi Arabia's human rights record is in full swing
The impending merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf series has brought Saudi sports washing efforts to an American pro sport. The alliance between the century-old PGA Tour and the upstart series, backed by the Saudi Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, is their boldest foothold into the American mar...

PGA and LIV merging, proving there's nothing Saudi Arabia can't buy
In a bigger shocker than Ben Curtis winning the 2003 British Open, the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf will merge to form one yet-to-be-named entity, according to CNBC. The deal between the sides is expected to be announced Tuesday and would end all litigation between the parties. The PGA a...

Jimmy Butler was good enough in Game 2
There was a little too much fouling of 3-point shooters for my taste on Sunday night, but other than that, the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets played quite the thrilling Game 2. The Nuggets threw run after run at the Heat, who ate every blow and kept countering. Eventually the Heat put the Nuggets on ...

Miami Heat can’t survive NBA Finals with a punchdrunk Jimmy Butler
Jimmy Buckets was in standby mode for Game 1. Maybe it was the altitude that Ball Center resides at, or the altitude of expectations, but regular season Jimmy Butler pulled up for Game 1. Butler seemed more intent on picking his spots and taking the Denver Nuggets’ temperature. Likewise, the Miami H...

The definitive NBA Finals player rankings
The NBA Finals are upon us, and it’s time to rank the players involved. You’ll notice Tyler Herro is just an honorable mention, and that’s due to his injury status and not fully knowing when he’ll play in the series. These rankings are based on the level of importance and influence each player will ...

Will Nikola Jokić lead Denver to its first title or will Jimmy Butler fulfill his playoff prophecy?
One of the least anticipated matchups in recent memory is upon us. The Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat. Let’s be real here. No LeBron, no Jayson Tatum, and no Boston Celtics legends in the stands. Media members have been openly grousing all week about having to cover the Nuggets. That’s a cornball pos...

Newsmax's Greg Kelly claims there's 'nothing gay' about baseball, which he clearly doesn’t watch
I can’t even claim to really know what Newsmax is, other than it has a name that sounds like something a satire show would come up with to spoof an enclosure of right-wing baboons throwing various feces at each other and the camera and the real thing being actually far more ridiculous than any spoof...

Believe in fun, believe in the Diamondbacks
There was always hope that a young, funky team would finally not just get the best of the Dodgers, but signal the end of the now decade long run of the Dodgers running roughshod over the NL West. Yes, the Giants got them once, in a season where the Dodgers still won 106 games. And we know what happe...

Sure, the Boston Celtics won but they still have a Jaylen Brown problem
The Boston Celtics rose to their feet, spit out the blood, wiped their mouths, and got back to fighting in their Eastern Conference Finals series against the Miami Heat. Down 3-0 after getting the snot knocked out of them on Sunday night, they got their first win of the series with Jayson Tatum and ...

Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics have Boston on the edge of misery
Joe Mazzulla versus Erik Spoelstra has been a lopsided showdown between two coaches with a devotion to film study. Spoelstra famously began his brilliant coaching career as a video coordinator with the Miami Heat in 1995. Joe Mazzulla is more of a pure cinephile. One of the more interesting peeks in...

The Miami Heat kicked the Celtics in the head, teeth, calf, and everyone else in Game 3
I have seen some ass-whuppings administered in my lifetime. I remember in the fifth-grade baseball playoffs beating the top overall seed by about 20 runs. To put a championship cap on Alabama’s 2012 football season the Tide ran through Notre Dame so viciously, that their opponents lost the desire to...

Boston and Miami battle to see who's the Beast in the East
In a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat are set to square off for the third time in four years to crown the Beast in the East. While the Celtics remain the No. 2 seed, the Heat have been forced to defy the odds of returning to the ECF as the No. 8 see...

Trevor Bauer sent to the Japanese minors
After posting a sparkling ERA of 8.40 and 1.867 WHIP, the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of the Japanese league have sent former Dodger pitcher Trevor Bauer down to the minor leagues. You hate to see it....

Stop praising Sports Illustrated’s N-word-using, criminal swimsuit cover model
There’s only one real reason to be mad about Martha Stewart gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and it’s not that they opted to showcase an 81-year-old woman — it’s that they went with a racist felon. I don’t find her personality redeeming, or her crime all that innocent. ...

The NBA's young stars balled out in the second round of the playoffs
The boisterous people of Sacramento were not a part of the second round, but the basketball as a whole was no less exciting. As predicted, the Miami Heat and New York Knicks matchup was late 1990s NBA without the fights, but the 2020s NBA was at its best in the other series....

We're all for the Miami Heat dunking on Stephen A. Smith
Longtime ESPN on-air personality Stephen A. Smith has made no secrets about where his NBA loyalties lie, and it’s in The Big Apple with the Knicks. And New York’s season ended Friday night with a Game 6 loss to the Heat. Of course, Smith took the loss personally, but that didn’t stop Miami from reco...

Chicago Cubs skipper David Ross is clueless
Modern baseball thinking has it that the manager in the dugout is just an extension of the front office. He pressed the buttons he was told to, and if he can help manage personalities and keep a bunch of millionaires from knifing each other over seven hot months, so much the better. So maybe David R...