ray Page 43 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Long live Nikola Jokić, the NBA’s Most VORPable Player
The impending news that Nikola Jokić will be awarded his second-consecutive MVP award has sent the NBA community into a border war formation between respect for analytics and the eye test. Jokic’s back-to-back wins is a resounding victory for the NBA’s mathlete contingency. This isn’t a diatribe aga...

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....

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 ...

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?...

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...

The Arizona Cardinals are trying, but they just can’t avoid bad news this offseason
Just as the future was beginning to look bright for the Arizona Cardinals, it has been looking rough since Week 14. They led not only the NFC West, but the entire conference for much of the season. Then No. 1 wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins went down with a torn MCL in a home loss to a division rival,...

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” ...

Wide receivers are flying off draft boards and to new teams
There is a storm coming and Day 1 of the 2022 NFL Draft is just a fraction of what is to come. Tonight showed that the wide receiver market has become so inflated that teams would rather take a risk on young, unproven rookies than proven Pro Bowl-caliber veterans....

It was a good night to get one’s s**t wrecked
This time of year is far and away the most frantic for a sports fan. Usually both the NBA and NHL are in their playoffs, with three or four games per night each. This year, the NHL is dragging ass a bit, and there really is only one playoff race, but it still means one has to keep tabs on it. The NB...

Is Karl-Anthony Towns still ‘the man’ in Minnesota?
After three pitiful playoff games, on Saturday Karl-Anthony Towns put together the best game of his brief playoff career, finishing with 33 points and 14 rebounds on 47 percent shooting. And wouldn’t you know it, the Timberwolves won the game, tying the series at 2-2. Much has been written about Tow...

Miguel Cabrera becomes first Venezuelan-born player to reach 3,000 career hits
With an opposite field single in the first inning of Saturday’s game against the Colorado Rockies, Detroit Tigers’ slugger Miguel Cabrera, 39, became the 33rd player in MLB history to record 3,000 hits and the first Venezuelan-born player to accomplish the feat....

Baker Mayfield’s mood isn’t going be improved by his statue at Oklahoma
You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but the Baker Mayfield Heisman statue has gone up in Norman. It’s no Cristiano-Ronaldo-bust-level disaster, but it’s also definitely not Baker Mayfield’s face. My best hypothesis right now is that the sculptor took a guess at what the Heisman-winning quarterback i...

Don't count Ice Trae out yet
The East’s top-seeded Heat aren’t sitting so comfortably after last night. Trae Young heaved up a game-winner to put the Hawks right back into the series....

Blame Jerry Jones
Former Seattle Seahawks All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner was one of the headlining defensive names of this year’s free agency pool. Wagner, who does not have an agent and represents himself, joined Rich Eisen earlier this week to discuss his journey through free agency and eventual signing with the L...

Hunter Greene is who Major League Baseball would promote more if it cared about diversity
Playing baseball is hard. Living up to the hype is a bit harder. But so far, Hunter Greene seems up to the task. It’s too bad the league he plays in isn’t....

Once again injuries crashing NBA Playoffs party
Curse thou, NBA playoff injury bug. Why dost thou mar a glorious display with your vile presence and wretched sting?...

J.J. Redick found out that yelling about sports is Mad Dog Russo’s 3-point line
I didn’t grow in New York, so I didn’t get to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog. My most vivid memories of Chris “Mad Dog” Russo are working lunch shifts at a restaurant and watching his lips flap open and closed at 3X speed on a muted bar television playing MLB Network’s High Heat with no sound. At th...

Why do the basketball gods hate Chris Paul?
On Tuesday night, the New Orleans Pelicans were getting baptized by Devin Booker. The Suns’ shooting guard was dapping up babies en route to a 31-point first half. While the Suns offense was boiling hot in the first half, their defense couldn’t slow down the Pelicans’ offense, especially in transiti...

Marcus Smart’s move to point guard earned him DPOY
The most surprising aspect of the Boston Celtics in-season turnaround was that the team did it with a position change rather than trading a major asset. Acquiring Derrick White helped with some much-needed guard depth, but really Marcus Smart being allowed to run point solidified his role and gave h...