mad Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The WNBA finally gets the sports documentary it deserves
In the early days of the WNBA, it wasn’t a given that the league was going to make it. A new film set for theatrical release this weekend, Unfinished Business, goes back to the first year through the lens of the New York Liberty, to lay out the stakes those young players experienced....

Mat Ishbia can still flop like the college scrub that he is
How do you know that Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia made being a go-hard his entire lifestyle?...

AI is all fun and games, until it’s not, which is part of why Hollywood has shut down
For those people who turned on The Tonight Show on Tuesday and the wacky game that Jimmy Fallon was playing with a guest looked familiar, that’s because it was a rerun. There will be no late-night television while the television and film scribes of the Writers Guild of America are on strike....

Real Madrid enter the next Galactico Era with the capture of Jude Bellingham
“The best players in the world must play for Real Madrid.”...

Completely blowing it in the first round is good for business, history says
The loyalists in the overpriced seats at Boston’s TD Garden for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference first-round should’ve-been shellacking between the hometown Bruins and barely made it into the postseason Florida Panthers went from agitated, to full-on bittah in booing the 135-point getters in the reg...

Don’t forget that the Cavs were holding Milwaukee’s beer
There’s nothing worse than waking up after a long night of being a hot mess, knowing the “Are you alive?” texts from friends are going to start rolling in as soon as they wake up. You just want to bury yourself in the sheets and sleep through the whole ordeal. However, if you’re the Cleveland Cavali...

How did the Milwaukee Bucks ever win a title?
I won’t pretend to be any kind of basketball expert, and my brethren here will spend the day breaking down the Milwaukee Bucks coughing up a curd-ridden hairball in the first round to the Miami Heat. But I know a deer caught in headlights look when I see one, and Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer spent a...

How come the Padres don’t hit good?
“If he’s a good hitter how come he doesn’t hit good?”...

The Devils go old school
Hockey looking back on its history is not usually a good thing. The game is better now, it’s faster now, there is more skill than ever before, and the sport is better off now that it’s moved out of its bar brawl past, even if Flyers fans still base their entire existence on thinking that’s how the g...

Giannis, please save us all from a Heat-Knicks series
My favorite part of the NBA playoffs is certainly not riding the highs and lows of the Jimmy Butler experience. As great as he plays two-three games per series, he’s better as an antagonist that a great team has to overcome. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player in the NBA, and with him returning...

Josh Hart is the playmaker the Knicks needed
Jalen Brunson is the straw that stirs the drink for the New York Knicks. My mea culpa on his free agency will come at a later date. All of that being said, the Knicks were in the Play-in Tournament and their record was a mere three games over .500 on Feb. 10. On that date they lost to the Philadelph...

Is the Cubs hot start a mirage? Will the Astros remain under .500? Let's examine
It’s about 20 games into the MLB regular season. It’s a small sample size, but no longer so small that we can completely dismiss it. Just like every year, there are some teams that are over-performing and underperforming expectations, but which of these surprising records are actually telling the tr...

The Gang Possibly Gets a Promotion
As season one of FX’s Welcome to Wrexham concluded, we saw the Welsh football club narrowly miss out on a promotion to the top four tiers of England’s professional football pyramid. And for those living under a rock, Wrexham is a small United Kingdom team that got that spotlight because they’re owne...

Finding the NBA playoff X factors
The NBA playoffs are where superstars can add to — or subtract from — their legacies. They may come up clutch, or absolutely choke under the spotlight. The same goes for coaches. But there are always subplots around certain youngsters, role players, and unknowns who can make a name for themselves. T...

Here's which NBA playoff teams will boom or bust
NBA fans are preparing for one of the most equitable and competitive playoffs in recent memory. The lack of an active dynasty or superteam has the door open for nearly any team to make a Finals run. We’ve highlighted five teams headed toward playoff glory and five teams destined for despair. We cons...

These NFL players have the best nicknames
Sweetness. The Refrigerator. Broadway Joe. Over the years, the NFL has seen some great players step onto the field, and some of them have garnered nicknames that fit them to a tee. A good or great nickname should explain something about the person it’s attached to. Something about their personality,...

Jeff Hardy and Darby Allin blur the lines for AEW, but not in a good way
The idea that the wrestling world and the real world are separate entities has generally been urinated on in recent times. With wrestlers and companies using social media to forward storylines and feuds, as well as the “dirt sheets” moving into their own industry with fans gobbling up whatever backs...

DeMar DeRozan’s daughter drop-kicked basketball analytics
Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill said in Goodfellas that your killers “come with smiles.” The Toronto Raptors’ killer was a nine-year-old girl who surely arrived at Scotiabank Arena with a smile on her face, because her father allowed her to miss school. Once the game began though, Diar DeRozan was more rele...