nl Page 59 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

IDIOT OF THE YEAR #4: Chicago Blackhawks, equal parts heinous and incompetent
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR festivities! Nos. 50 through 11 are available for your enjoyment here. And our top 10 thus far:...

Kyle Shanahan tried to defend John Lynch, but we saw what he did to poor Jimmy G
John Lynch really tried to explain away his Twitter gaffe by claiming that he was in church. On Christmas Eve, the day following Jimmy Garoppolo’s two interception performance in the San Francisco 49ers Week 16 loss to the Tennessee Titans, Lynch liked a tweet that had tagged him. It was from @40tee...

Hear me out: The NHL should split up its schedule
The NHL schedule has been jumbled by the league’s latest COVID-19 outbreaks, resulting not only in games being postponed now, but the withdrawal of the game’s top players from the upcoming Olympics....

Lakers on their way to wrong kind of history
Injuries and the novel coronavirus have played a role in it, to be sure, as has the fact that they’re now up to 22 players used this season and it’s not even January, but the Lakers stink....

IDIOT OF THE YEAR #8: Rob Manfred, who got everything wrong
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR festivities! Nos. 50 through 11 are available for your enjoyment here. And our top 10 thus far:...

The best from bowl games with non-New Year’s Six names
Making fun of lesser bowl games is easy and fun. Do we really need a Boca Raton Bowl? Or a LendingTree Bowl? Or a Gasparilla Bowl? Or a Cameilla Bowl? Or a Hertz Bowl? Or a Guaranteed Rate Bowl? (Only one of those is fake.) No, probably not. The answer to “Who’s better: Eastern Michigan or Liberty?”...

Thursday Night Football, Week 16: San Francisco vs. Tennessee in 2021 finale
It’s a battle of hot and cold teams fighting for postseason positioning tonight as the 49ers travel to Tennessee for the final Thursday Night Football matchup of the year. The 49ers have averaged over 28 points per game over their last four. Meanwhile, the Titans have averaged under 15. The Titans c...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Cole Beasley, Enes Kanter, Ron DeSantis, and more doofs
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Tony La Russa, Tommy Tuberville, every NFL referee, and other esteemed dummies
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...

Mizzou coach sits star running back for bowl game, looks like a helicopter parent
It’s no secret that a lot of bowl games are largely frivolous money grabs created to squeeze revenue out of free labor, profiting off every moment of eligibility until all that’s left to make money off of is sales of nameless jerseys that definitely don’t represent the likenesses of student athletes...

Dylan Larkin gives fan $20 to make up for spilled beer
There are few things more important in life than a beer you just bought at a sporting event. People are so desperate to get the tiniest of buzzes going that they’ll drop a whole Andrew Jackson on some watered-down alcohol. Thus, spilling that beer would be an absolute tragedy, fit for Shakespeare in...

Covidmania is here and it's attempting to ruin sports… again
Well, here we go again. It’s Covidmania in professional sports right now, and no league seems exempt from the ramifications of powering through the pandemic. The NBA announced early Sunday afternoon that it had postponed five games due to the glut of players in COVID-19 health and safety protocols. ...

Buck Showalter is the right guy in Queens
If it feels a bit like the end times lately, that feeling probably isn’t helped by the New York Mets — yes, the New York Mets — conducting themselves as a competent organization with a legitimate plan and hopes. ...

Cleveland has hope — and a pretty good basketball team
If there was a way to slyly tell you that Cleveland has the second best scoring defense in the NBA behind the Warriors, I would do that. But me doing the whole, “I bet you couldn’t guess who the second best scoring defense in the league is” bit isn’t clever, because Cleveland is in the headline of t...

Soccer, much like football, didn’t come home either
I wanted to resist the urge to give into the Timbers Army’s desire to claim Portland as “Soccer City USA.” It’s quite a label to bestow on yourself, and having grown up in direct opposition to Detroit’s “Hockeytown” self-flagellation, my alarms don’t need much prodding to go off. ...

Of course the Blazers say Damian Lillard is untouchable
There are a couple of ways to parse the report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe that the Trail Blazers are not willing to discuss trading Damian Lillard, “one of the Sixers’ top targets” in a potential Ben Simmons deal....

Replicating Pickett’s fake slide? No Ken do
If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again....

With a little luck, the Jazz can make a deep playoff run
The Utah Jazz have been a “Yeah, but… “ team for a few years now. And while it’s better than just being butt, it’s frustrating. You can tell how much of a pretender a team is by how mad their fans get when the media disregards their relevance despite the team winning 50-plus games every year. ...

Chauncey Billups thinks Steph Curry is the greatest combo guard in NBA history and it’s really tough to disagree
Stephen Curry is on the cusp of passing Ray Allen for the most 3-point shots made in NBA history. Classified as a point guard, Curry is already top three at his position all-time in the eyes of most that follow the NBA. Portland Trail Blazers first year head coach and former NBA Finals MVP Chauncey ...

No amount of complaining or passionate rants into a TV camera will change Anthony Davis into who you want him to be
We all need to accept Anthony Davis for who he is as a basketball player. He’s not a back to the basket jump hook type of scorer, a 3-point shooter, or the ball-handling guard that he would’ve been at Cleveland State — and only at Cleveland State — had he not grown seven inches between his junior an...