mb Page 180 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Sam Presti, mixed bag
Sam Presti is lucky he’s in Oklahoma City. He would be held accountable for his screwups if he were in charge of a larger market franchise with a longer-tenured and demanding fanbase. But, before we tackle those, Presti has proven to be one of the best judges of talent and character. He has crushed ...

Attention NBA teams with no desire to win: Call the Lakers because Russell Westbrook already looks checked out
Calling all tankers. Calling all tankers. If you are desperate to improve your chances at drafting Victor Wembanyama, there is a disgruntled guard on the Los Angeles Lakers who is on an expiring contract, and not as athletic as he used to be....

Clint Eastwood has an explanation for Yordan Alvarez’s hot streak
Once Clint Eastwood turned into his character from “Gran Torino” I haven’t paid as much attention to the Hollywood legend’s movies. So forgive me, I just saw “Trouble with the Curve,” and aside from more evidence that Justin Timberlake isn’t an actor, I walked away pleasantly surprised. It was a pre...

And the nominees for this NBA season’s only-great-in-video-games teams are …
There’s a rage-inducing aspect of NBA 2K every year that makes me feel like I need to take those seminars to avoid turning into my dad. A few crazy-talented teams become fan favorites and get overused to the point of exhaustion due to sheer star power despite being middling to garbage in real life. ...

The Dolphins are taking significant and unnecessary measures to get right after two losses
Remember when Donald Faison told Denzel Washington in “Remember the Titans” that football is fun? Washington’s reaction to Faison is the one the Miami Dolphins chose to take towards fun in their locker room. ...

Tom Brady, LeBron James, Drew Brees, and Kevin Durant are all pickleball obsessed, which is why you shouldn’t be
With the growing number of Nirvana shirts I see young people wearing, I’m eagerly awaiting the angst to match the apparel. Kurt Cobain’s era-defining band became popular because it was part of a movement that was in direct contrast to heavy metal hair bands and ’80s glam epitomized by cocaine and Mi...

Is MTV Cribs-era fashion making a comeback?
The split jersey look usually serves a purpose. It’s for parents with kids playing against each other in a nationally televised sporting event, or for a young woman who has to support both her brother and her new boyfriend who would go on to become her husband and an NFL bust....

The NBA’s Eastern Conference might see a bit of a shake-up in the standings this season
It’s October, so it’s Halloween season, but it also means the NBA is back. All the talk and some drama will be moved aside as teams return to the court, hoping to do what the Golden State Warriors did last season in raising the Larry O’Brien NBA Finals trophy....

The NFL could easily make its unnecessary roughness penalties more tolerable for the masses
Penalties that turned all of social media into Atlanta Falcons fans and made the crowd at Arrowhead Stadium even angrier than when they booed Unity in 2020 are not new. It only feels like the illegal contact to/with-the-head penalties are a result of the NFL being forced to admit the long-term effec...

Kevin Durant Disease is contagious
It used to be that a player would demand out of somewhere when the team he was on no longer — or never — did live up to his talent. It’s when he sought, and maybe deserved, teammates and a front office that matched his skills and ambition, which the current one couldn’t. ...

Ranking the 12 NFL head coaches hired straight from the Power 5 college ranks since 2000
Dear NFL GMs and owners, you may want to think twice about hiring a head coach straight outta the college ranks. While there have been success stories — Jimmy Johnson going from the U to Big D being the best example — that really hasn’t been the case in this millennium. Matt Rhule is the latest flop...

The Padres’ arms are coming for the Dodgers
Ignore the San Diego Padres all you want....

The NFL doesn’t have to make sense
It was a great showcase for all the NFL can be on Monday in Kansas City. Even if you put aside the defiant and ignorant Chiefs fans doing the chop on Indigenous People’s Day — a truly lovely touch — or Troy Aikman insulting any woman who might be watching the broadcast, it was also an example of how...

Victor Wembanyama is the NBA’s basketball comeuppance
Victor Wembanyama is the evolution of basketball personified. But evolution requires a catalyst. Sure Wembanyama’s genes play a significant part, but decades earlier he could have been Frédéric Weis. Weis was the first French center whose name was seared into the memories of American basketball fans...

It’s the Falcons’ fault that they lost, but it’s hard to win when playing against the refs and Bucs
Going into the fourth quarter down 21-0 is not the best strategy....

NFL Week 5 Takeaways: The NFC East, for once, is nowhere near the least — except for Washington of course
Most people who pay close attention to the NFL knew that 2022 was going to be a down year for the NFC. The conference with Kyler Murray, Matthew Stafford, and the aging greats — Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady — as its best quarterbacks has a clear lower level of talent at the position than what is in t...

It hasn’t been all smiles and sunshine for the Rams, but it also wasn’t for the last back-to-back champions — the Patriots
Saying the Rams have had a rough start to the season would be an understatement. Although they are 2-2, the offense has struggled and has become one-dimensional. It’s Cooper Kupp or bust and let the defense bail ‘em out if they can. Now the Dallas Cowboys are visiting in Week 5, bringing one of the ...

Two takeaways from college football on Saturday
There wasn’t much surprising about the results from Saturday. Oklahoma continued its free fall, getting shut out by Texas, 49-0. Even though Jimbo Fisher gave Nick Saban a game in Bryce Young’s absence, the Crimson Tide pulled through. None of the top 10 lost despite Oklahoma State playing with its ...

Brady knows best: NFL chock full of bad football
Tom Brady is right....

There’s a reason Mike Leach’s quarterbacks have never cost him his job
The next time a pundit says “Missing on such-and-such QB cost coach X his job” will be my next visit to the psych ward. You know why Spencer Rattler didn’t cost Lincoln Riley his job, and Paul Chryst couldn’t survive Graham Mertz? One looks at a chalkboard as a place to draw plays, and the other see...