my Page 57 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The NBA is foolishly applying outdated sensibilities into its fresh product
Woop!-woop! That’s the sound of da (NBA image) police....

This inconsistent and deteriorating version of James Harden is a present and future problem for Sixers
After Tuesday night’s 120-85 loss to the Miami Heat, James Harden and Joel Embiid are Thelma and Louise-ing towards a cliff’s edge. In Embiid’s defense, the MVP runner-up has played with a broken bone in his face since Game 3. The franchise cornerstone will have better days ahead. Harden’s 31-point,...

How is Justin Verlander still doing this?
Justin Verlander served notice to those sleeping on the Houston Astros and their 39-year-old ace: He’s all the way back. ...

The stars come out in the NHL
Hockey followers love to taut that not only is hockey the ultimate team game — everyone gets a shift after all — but that the playoffs highlight this. It’s somewhat true, though it’s usually a top-end player or goalie taking home the Conn Smythe as the playoff’s most valuable player when all is said...

Strange doings on this nervous night in Anaheim
Well it wasn’t that nervous. The Angels won 12-0. But it got tense at the end, as Angels rookie Reid Detmers threw a no-hitter in just his 11th big-league start. And he did it while only striking out two batters, which is strange indeed. Eleven groundouts always helps, though. But in this day and ag...

Duncan Robinson has put the MIA in Miami against Philly
The Philadelphia 76ers tied their semifinals series 2-2 with the Miami Heat on Sunday night, defeating them 116-108. The momentum in this series has completely swung in Philly’s favor, and it’s no mystery why. Joel Embiid’s return, coupled with Miami missing 51 threes in the last two games, has made...

Josh VanMeter was forced to catch for the first time in 12 years. It didn’t go well
Ask any Pirates fan and they’ll tell you how bad a second baseman Josh VanMeter is. The 27-year-old is hitting .171 with a .496 OPS in 15 games this season. Well, after today, he’s not only the worst second baseman some Pirates fans have ever seen, but the worst catcher as well. ...

Philly’s Joel Embiid, Dallas’ supporting cast help get their teams back into series
The last two NBA Finals losers, the Heat and Suns, are in very similar positions in the second round of the playoffs. Both took care of business at home, then went on the road Friday night and got smoked....

The Cincinnati Reds are tanking hard and it (probably) won’t save them
The Reds are a joke. Not a gut-wrenching knee slapper either. I’m talking about a “force the audience to ask for a refund”-type joke, AKA just normal Amy Schumer material. The Reds’ record is an abysmal 3-22. To put that in perspective, only one team in the Modern Era of baseball (since 1901) had a ...

After much consideration, the Giants got the steal of the draft, and it’s not even close
The New York Giants haven’t just found their next Michael Strahan. As lofty as putting the former Oregon Ducks’ All-American into a threshold in the stratosphere, in Kayvon Thibodeaux they might have found a player better than the gap-toothed Hall of Famer. And perhaps Thibodeaux will end up hosting...

Alleged model MLB franchise St. Louis Cardinals having trouble nurturing homegrown hitters
A promising offensive prospect cratering back to Earth has become the St. Louis Cardinals’ version of Anchorman’s pancake breakfast: They do it annually. Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson both showed signs of potentially being long-term solutions to two-thirds of the Red Birds’ outfield a season ago, ...

Hats off to Mike Clevinger
588 days. That’s how long it had been since Mike Clevinger pitched in a regular season MLB game. That’s not what the Padres were hoping for when they traded six players to Cleveland for him, but through injuries to his biceps, elbow, knee, another undisclosed setback, and a brief appearance in the 2...

The Spurs in a different city, maybe even a different country? It's not a terrible idea
Does the Austin Spurs have a nice ring to it? How about the Monterrey Spurs, becoming the first team from a major American sports league to be located in Mexico?...

Tyler Herro deserves a better celebrity BFF than Jack Harlow
Casual NBA fans think of Jimmy Butler when they think of the Miami Heat. He can be great, but is more often than not, just really good, and that’s earned him such national TV ads as the Michelob Ultra commercial where he sings Hootie & the Blowfish on an airplane. As much as adolescent me wants to i...

I'm no mentor, says Ryan Tannehill
The subject of mentorship among veteran quarterbacks is a divisive one. There can only be one starter and there’s no more conspicuous rite of passage than an old vet buried six feet under on the depth chart by a young gun. Egos are fragile though. Kurt Warner has expressed his preference for showing...

How every team will lose in the 2022 NHL playoffs
As the chase to the Stanley Cup begins, the Eastern and Western Conferences have completely different outlooks. Colorado or Calgary look the part to be the Western Conference champions, and I’m not sure there’s anything the rest of the field of six can do about it. The Eastern Conference is as wide ...

Congrats, Browns, you weren’t inept <em>and</em> unethical
Congratulations are in order for Jimmy Haslam and the Cleveland Browns. The NFL’s independent investigation into former head coach Hue Jackson’s claims that the team paid him to lose games found “no evidence” to substantiate those allegations, proving that the team did not intentionally lose games b...

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: It’s pretty much downhill from here
Welcome, once more, to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, in which we catalogue the most bleak recesses of professional athletics and mock them. Hooray!...

Quarterbacks and Nakobe Dean fall in the NFL Draft. Also: Draft Matt Araiza, you cowards!
Well, the second round passed without a QB in sight, making this draft just the third in the past 30 years to only see one quarterback selected in the first two rounds. And perhaps even more surprisingly, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder went ahead of projected favorite Malik Willis, who the Seahawks pas...
