rant Page 32 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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,...

Jaren Jackson Jr. is showing off his talent on a national stage against the Warriors because, for once, he’s fighting through his biggest weakness
For those who watched the Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies first-round series, their assessment might fall in line with how they feel about The Beatles’ Revolution No. 9. Some people think it’s one of the highest forms of entertainment that a person can consume, exquisite excellence in t...

Mad Dog Russo went there
For Knicks fans born before 1990, Mike and the Mad Dog was a rite of passage for their fandom. The NYC afternoon radio show on WFAN ran from 1989 to 2008 and was a seminal source for New York Knicks talk. In addition, the show inspired many of the current Knicks YouTube creators, like Casey Powell, ...

COVID-19 is still the biggest X-factor of the NBA playoffs
The fat lady may be singing, but the coronavirus and all of its variants are still dancing like the party just started....

Big home win, hobbled star on opposing team — Golden State could get overconfident in Game 4, but they better not
The Golden State Warriors don’t always have to grind out a victory. They can press the right buttons on their good nights and have defenses whiffing on the wrong reads and getting lost on StephCurry/Klay Thompson/Jordan Poole relocations when Draymond Green is dealing....

So the James Harden-Ben Simmons trade looks like a dud
Upon hearing the news of any trade, the first reaction is to think about which team won the trade initially. In the NBA court of public opinion, that distinction usually goes to the side that obtains the more prominent name or superstar player. With Ben Simmons (and others) being traded for James Ha...

Kyrie Irving, you can’t say that, bro
Welp, it happened. He finally did it. Kyrie Irving carried himself like a martyr for the entirety of the NBA season, and now it’s official. He thinks he’s a martyr....

The Warriors’ wild ride
It feels like yesterday that everyone hated the Golden State Warriors, save for those living in Oakland. It was one of the few things NBA fans agreed on in unison. When the Warriors signed Kevin Durant in 2016, he temporarily broke the NBA. The Warriors had already won a championship in 2015 before ...

Budding Grizzlies-Warriors rivalry is highlighted by maturation of Ja Morant
The first two games of the Grizzlies-Warriors semifinals series have provided something for every NBA fan, no matter which side you’re on. If you can’t get excited about this series, then you aren’t a hardcore hoops fan....

Draymond is winning in the court of public opinion and basking in it
Look who gets to be the good guy. It is hard to get ejected from an NBA playoff game, but Draymond Green figured out how to pull it off on Sunday. He got sent to the showers in the first half for clocking Brandon Clarke during the Golden State Warriors Game 1, 117-116 victory against the Memphis Gri...

There were some outstanding performances in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, and those players deserve some recognition
The playoffs are not about individual accomplishments. This is the time where players make every single sacrifice from points to minutes without complaint — at least they’re supposed to. That’s why there aren’t any playoff awards except for Finals MVP and, of course, the championship....

Sixers fans, gird your loins for Harden time
Before Sixers fans could even breathe a sigh of relief over the possibility of going to a Game 7 despite a 3-0 lead, they’re gasping for air upon hearing the news that Joel Embiid is out indefinitely with a right orbital fracture and a mild concussion. The injury, courtesy of an elbow from Pascal Si...

NFL Draft Day provides a welcome rebuke to the NBA’s player empowerment era
It’s a widely known fact that Kyrie Irving is delusional. He’s a man of the people while walking among them unvaccinated. He thinks the Earth is flat, and has the NBA figured out even though he’s essentially a losing player without LeBron James. However, when he said he was going to keep “managing” ...

Yes, Nets got swept, but Kevin Durant still has time for Barkley and everyone that has something to say about it
If nothing else, you have to respect Kevin Durant for staying on brand at all times. The Brooklyn Nets completed one of the most disappointing seasons of all time by being swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics, and being the first team eliminated from the 2022 NBA Playoffs. Their experiment...

The Nets are so weird
And thus ends yet another attempt by the Brooklyn Nets to skip the line and crash into the NBA penthouse. Actually, “another Nets experiment” sounds a little more apt. Because the Nets, the Brooklyn version, have always felt like one....

Funny how the Boston Celtics took off once Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens were out of the way
Ime Udoka is who so many fans — and media members — desperately wanted Brad Stevens to be....

The Pelicans turned the NBA’s least interesting playoff matchup into can’t-miss television
Even after the New Orleans Pelicans’ disastrous 1-12 start to the 2021-22 season, it’s not as if there was some seismic shift. Their first winning streak came in mid-December when they tallied four victories in a row. Before that, they were still only 9-21 on the season. Since that streak they have ...

The NFL is trying to ‘Deebo’ Christmas Day games from the NBA
The sports calendar makes it so that you always know what time of the year it is based on which games are being played. The NFL is trying to make every season its own....

The Nets might get swept, but don’t put any of that blame on the supporting cast
“If Kyrie and KD average 30 and 35 points per game, that’s only 65 points. Where are the rest of the points going to come from?” ...