playoffs Page 41 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

LeBron Plants Seed of Failure by Once Again Throwing Teammates Under the Bus
For all we know, LeBron James could be right....

Connor McDavid Deserves Better Than This Garbage
If you’re lucky enough to have never known true despair and yet wish to understand, even only to show empathy, look into the eyes of Connor McDavid. Look deep, and see true hopelessness, the fear that the world will never truly understand what you are through no fault of your own, the knowledge your...

Baseball's 2020 Playoff Plans Are Simultaneously Absurd and Perfect
Major League Baseball’s plan for this fall, an expanded postseason in which 16 of 30 teams have a chance to win the World Series, is patently ludicrous....

Bryce, the Braves, and a Buffalo World Series? Our MLB Roundtable Predicts a Wild Season
It is, somehow, about to be baseball season, so Deadspin’s elite crew of people who have been tasked with making predictions about the 2020 MLB season, Chris Baud, Sam Fels, Julie DiCaro, and Jesse Spector, are here to make predictions about the 2020 MLB season. Everyone recognizes that this is a te...

The NBA Will Look A Lot Different When It Returns Next Month
The NBA is back, kinda....

Our Solution To NBA Restart? Let Playoff Teams Draft Players From Lottery Teams... We Did Two Rounds
When the NBA gets back on the court, it’s likely to be just for a made-for-TV playoff tournament. That leaves several big stars on the sidelines. At the same time, there’s a chance that a long layoff will lead to injuries among teams who do continue their 2020 campaigns, as well as the chance that p...

These Teams Will Be In The Hunt For The Lombardi Trophy, If We Have A Season
With the NFL set to release the 2020 schedule Thursday night on ESPN, we took a look at which teams would rise above the rest, if — or when — the players get back on the field....

Hear Me Out: NBA Resumes With Playoff Teams Drafting Players From Non-Playoff Teams
Whether it’s in Las Vegas or Orlando or somewhere else, the NBA eventually is going to get back to playing. It’s not something that should happen quickly, and a lot still has to be worked out, including how to protect high-risk individuals in the league, before there’s another game....

One Neutral Site Won’t Work For The NHL, But For Some Reason, Four Might?
Time for our routine check-in of the batshit ideas leagues are kicking around to finish their seasons and playoffs. They vary as to level of batshittiness (battyshit?), and the NHL is apparently lessening the level of theirs at the moment. Only barely, though....

The New NFL Playoff System Looks More Fair, But Is It?
As under the radar as the NFL can be (so not much at all), the owners voted to approve an expansion of the playoffs yesterday from 12 to 14 teams. The reasons for this are obvious to everyone. Two more additional playoff games are two more programming slots TV networks get to bid over, and there’s a...

It Took A Global Pandemic, But The Opportunity Is Here To Fix MLS' Dreadful Playoff System
When talking about MLS, it always feels necessary to proclaim your position and biases from the outset. Generally, any fight about the structure or workings of the domestic soccer league starts a food-fight of varying grossness, so it’s a good idea to stake out your position clearly so you know whic...

Screw It. Now That Coronavirus Has Ruined Everything, Let's Expand All Playoffs To Include Every Single Freakin' Team.
It was Major League Baseball that got the conversation started about expanding playoffs, and the NFL got on board when it included additional wild-card teams in its proposed collective bargaining agreement. At the time, it seemed for all the world like a stupid cash grab that would dilute the specia...

Highly Desired Talent Squandered In Crucial Moment, Wastes No Time Thinking About Future
The Washington Nationals won the World Series, which feels like an insane thing to write. (Be happy for them at your own discretion.) But let’s talk about Gerrit Cole. The Astros pitcher, one of the best in baseball, was nowhere to be found as Houston lost Game 7, 6-2. Manager A.J. Hinch revealed th...

Candies To Stress Eat While You Watch The World Series Game Tonight, Ranked
This World Series is depressing as hell, just like many other things that are happening right now and which we have no control over. Neither the Houston Astros nor the Washington Nationals (my team) have managed to win a home game. At Game 3, people were literally crying as we left the stadium, whic...

Astros One Win Away After Taking Game 5 Of World Series
The last baseball game of 2019 played in D.C. ended with a thud....

Donald Trump Gets Boos, “Lock Him Up” Chants At World Series Game 5
For once, Donald Trump got booed by a bunch of people in red hats....

Max Scherzer Can't Go Tonight, So The Nationals Are Turning To, Um, Joe Ross?
What was going to be a marquee Game 5 pitching rematch on Sunday night between the Astros’ Gerrit Cole and the Nationals’ Max Scherzer has taken a bizarre left turn, as Scherzer won’t be healthy enough to get on the mound for Washington. In a shock announcement this afternoon, manager Davey Martinez...

Alex Bregman Let Out All His Frustration With One Booming Swing
It seems likely that nobody in the World Series was more pissed off than Astros third baseman Alex Bregman heading into Game 4. The ’Stros’ top hitter in the regular season was only 1-for-13 in the first three games of the Fall Classic. His lone positive contribution was a meaningless dinger in a 12...

Don't Make Me Root For These Creatures To Be Happy
I am never going to forgive the Houston Astros. Not because they’ve dropped two straight at home to the Washington Nationals in this year’s World Series, although that was pretty grotesque. (They gave up a crucial home run to Kurt Suzuki, who is 129 years old.) No, it’s because their idiot assistant...