nas Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The obliviousness of unfathomable wealth
It’s here that the Qatari rulers and FIFA would expect me to simply write about the quarterfinals of the World Cup that start today. And they are mouthwatering, in a vacuum of just soccer. All eight teams come in with a great story. Whether it’s Brazil not only trying to collect their sixth trophy b...

Carl Nassib helped save the Buccaneers’ season
The effect of an individual defensive player is hard to measure by statistics alone. It’s actually hard to even measure offensive players by traditional numbers. (What do 1,000 yards mean? Is it right to hold a single player responsible for his average yards per touch? How much should an individual’...

Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: Day 11
Game of the day: Mexico 2 - 1 Saudi Arabia...

Jeff Bagwell, you won the World Series, clown!
I didn’t realize that Jeff Bagwell had become that guy at the end of the bar who tells you about the time he saw the original The Wall Tour every single time you enter the place. Not what I would have picked for him during his playing days, but here we are. ...

Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: Day 10
And this is where the plot thickens. For the next four days, teams will move on, teams will meet the sword, and the drama ramps up to 11. I’m here to be your space coyote for it!...

The constant need for a ‘smoking gun’ to prove racism is why Jerry Jones will get off scot-free
According to the policy, Jerry Jones hasn’t done anything wrong. That’s because anti-Blackness is never a crime....

Come home, Kevin Durant
The NBA’s greatest epics have been built around a meteoric star crash landing in a small market, galvanizing the city around their greatness in hopes of delivering glory. Think LeBron James in Cleveland, Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas, Tim Duncan in San Antonio, Isiah Thomas in Detroit, Hakeem Olajuwon in ...

Did Qatar even want the World Cup?
The small Middle Eastern country — known for its poor human rights record — is the World Cup host, but did Qatar actually WANT it to begin with? Whichever government officials were responsible for bringing the world’s biggest sporting event to their country must’ve wanted it enough to take the initi...

World Cup Daily Diary Day 3: Whoops!
Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard might be the most handsome manager at this tournament, and he certainly didn’t have a problem taking a page from another handsome manager, Jose Mourinho. If you recall the cold war that Barcelona and Real Madrid had when Mourinho was at the helm at the Bernabeu, th...

Is there closure for Ben Simmons in Philly?
Maybe one day Philadelphia sports fans will forgive Ben Simmons for not taking the court at all for the 76ers last season, not shooting in four consecutive fourth quarters, and the play in which he passed the ball to the only Sixer who was arguably a worse shooter than him instead of dunking on Trae...

Hell no, keep Carlos Beltran out of Cooperstown
The 2023 MLB Hall of Fame ballots were sent out yesterday....

Kyrie Irving’s apology tour comes to a close, but he still has a few kinks to work out
In Brooklyn’s precarious position, scandal is a pitfall and Kyrie Irving has supplied it in abundance. Mics and social media are as much of an occupational hazard for Irving as soft tissue and ligament injuries are for his peers. In that regard, the Nets All-NBA point guard can be a walking OSHA vio...

It appears Kevin Durant has made peace with treading water in a sea of Nets chaos
Kevin Durant most definitely wanted to be traded this past summer....

The Astros did GM James Click so, so dirty
The Astros are World Series champions once again! [Editor’s note: Don’t remind me.] After doing a lot of damage control since the legitimacy of their 2017 title was put in question following the 2019 season, the Astros built almost an entirely new squad over the last three years. The 2022 Astros’ ro...

DeAndre Yedlin is USMNT’s only bridge to last World Cup appearance
Before we can truly look forward, we must go back in time, to a marvelous place where the United States men’s national team missing the World Cup was such an afterthought, it would be equal to falling into the abyss. Yeah, a few CONCACAF rivals like Panama and Costa Rica were rapidly improving and b...

Qatar definitely understands how this whole 'sports media' thing works
We’re less than a week away from the opening ceremonies for the World Cup (which, by the way, still don’t have an announced performer, after being turned down by Rod Stewart, Dua Lipa, and now Shakira), and things in Doha are progressing just about as well as expected when you hold a World Cup in a ...

The NBA's worst owners
When Robert Sarver announced he was selling the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team he had owned since 2006, after a lengthy investigation by the NBA for workplace malfeasance and offenses, I barely shrugged. How awful could it have been, I thought to myself. My concept of the workplace was poisoned by an ei...

Your 2022 World Cup safe bets
While every World Cup is unique in its own way, and this one especially, there are certain happenings you can count on. They come about every tournament. The pressure, the coverage, the overall oeuvre of the whole thing just drives people into the same patterns. Over the next month, you can look for...

Civil suit filed against Washington Commanders, Dan Snyder, NFL, and Roger Goodell by D.C. Attorney General
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced Tuesday his office is going after Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, the franchise itself, the National Football League, and league commissioner Roger Goodell, filing civil charges against the quartet....

The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow: NL Central
It’s officially the offseason now, as we’ve gotten Scott Boras’s Fozzy Bear-in-the-college-dorm act at the GM Meetings. So let’s keep this record spinning right round and move to the NL Central, which I don’t feel personally about at all....