ric Page 81 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Zion Williamson thinks he’s slick, but we know he won’t ever be in the Dunk Contest
Each year following NBA All-Star weekend, we discuss the slam dunk contest for at least two to three weeks afterward. Whether it’s good, bad or somewhere in the middle, the conversation surrounding it blazes on for some time. Now we get Zion Williamson fanning the flames dunk contest banter, with hi...

The NFL’s franchise tag is un-American
What happens every time an NFL quarterback resets the QB market? A relatively crap quarterback gets overpaid. The reason Daniel Jones netted a four-year $160 million deal after one good season, instead of getting franchise tagged like he should’ve been, is Joe Burrow got enough money that, by compar...

The Avalanche have gone full Freddie Four Fingers
The NHL trade deadline has gotten into high gear a couple days before Friday afternoon’s deadline, so let’s roll through the highlights of what’s already gone down....

15 NBA players we wish competed in the Slam Dunk Contest
The NBA Slam Dunk Contest is on life support. The G-League’s Mac McClung has won the contest for a second year in a row. Despite Boston’s Jaylen Brown attempting to bring stars back to the iconic event, his dunks were relatively unimpressive. ...

Charles Barkley went from 'dying to vote' for Nikki Haley to wanting to punch Black Trump supporters. Make it make sense
Nobody asked for this, but, yet, here we are. In the middle of a volatile election year where Charles Barkley has free rein to spew his illogical political takes on TV. True bipartisanship looks like viewers from both parties working together to make this end....

Daryl Morey is Oppenheimer for the NBA’s nuclear offensive age
It’s Oscars Week, which feels like as good a time as any to draw up the NBA storylines and characters which could double as Oscar nominees. ...

The latest scapegoat for Ben Simmons’ back issues? His agent
Remember when NBA Twitter, now NBA X, spent an entire season obsessing over where Ben Simmons would be traded? It ended up being Brooklyn, and that ended up being the last time he was relevant to professional basketball. The latest update is there is no update, just Simmons’ agent, Bernie Lee, falli...

If you can’t trust Anthony Edwards, you can’t trust the Timberwolves
I’m not anti-analytics, because data matters, but there’s no way to factor in things like your best player missing tipoff because he was a late arrival, or a coach pulling his second-best player when he’s on pace for a 70 burger. The Minnesota Timberwolves are a very good basketball team, by record,...

Rajah Caruth’s historic NASCAR win is a feel-good story we should all celebrate
It’s simple. Since America loves an underdog, America should be applauding Rajah Caruth....

Do the Thunder have a Josh Giddey problem?
Need any more evidence that Gilbert Arenas’ bellyaching about Europeans and foreigners ruining basketball with their sweet outside strokes is all hot air? I’ll give you one: Josh Giddey. Now that his legal woes appear to be in the rearview mirror, the whispers about his liabilities in the Oklahoma C...

AEW's Sting sendoff was perfect in so many ways
Darby Allin crashed some 20 feet through a plate of glass onto the floor, spent a good five to 10 minutes having ringside medical staff picking shards out of his back, leaving Sting to perform his last-ever comeback and win, and it might have only been the third or fourth best match on the card for ...

It's make or break for the Los Angeles Clippers
Curses run deep. They fester in bloodlines, foundations and scorched Earth and are lamented in prose, lyric and declaration. From Shakespeare to Dostoevsky, curses are a part of the canon of human creativity. After the Boston Red Sox broke theirs in 2004 and LeBron James brought a championship to Cl...

Hopefully the Caitlin Clark effect doesn't end with Caitlin Clark
The buzz around Caitlin Clark eclipsing Pete Maravich’s record on Sunday was enough to get celebs to Iowa City for the occasion. I’m not talking about Travis Scott. Jake from State Farm might be sports’ Forrest Gump, but celebs walking into college arenas to dap up the TV insurance guy while neglect...

The Penguins lasted longer than they were supposed to
In the salary-cap era of the NHL, no team gets to go out on their shield, really. The Datsyuk-and-Zetterberg era of the Wings fled to the Eastern Conference, took a couple first-round beatdowns, and then slipped into the playoff-less ooze that the organization only might just be emerging from. Ovech...

LeBron James creates the 40K club, which he’ll populate alone for a long time
The next player to eclipse 40,000 points in the regular season will have a chance at the title of the NBA’s GOAT simply because the numbers LeBron James will retire with are going to be near impossible to top. It’ll either be someone with freakish longevity, or the most prolific scorer ever. At 40,0...

NCAA swears fealty to NIL collectives, pauses investigations
The NCAA pretty much had its last real vestige of power stripped after the ruling in the Tennessee case last week, and on Friday, announced that it’s pausing all investigations into booster-backed collectives or other third parties making NIL deals. Despite the chaos and malfeasance that will contin...

Sean Payton has a Russell Wilson problem; Cam Newton fight nonsense; Bears owners trying to get over on school kids; Patriots ruled a failure by players
Earth to Sean Payton: Russell Wilson is still on the Denver Broncos’ roster. There is nothing the Denver coach can say to make that $85 million in dead salary go away. The NFL salary cap for the 2024 season will be $255.4 million. That dead money would account for a third of their cap space, and the...

The pros and cons of proposed advancements in the NFL and college football
College football might follow in the footsteps of the NFL as the NFL mulls taking a page out from soccer. After the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, in-helmet communicators could be coming to FBS programs, as well as a two-minute timeout. The Shield meanwhile might eschew the chain gang for optical t...

Every No. 1 NFL Draft pick since 2000
The NFL Scouting Combine is the first sign for everyone to get serious about draft talk. It gives football fans just under two months to prepare for a new name to walk across the stage as Roger Goodell says, “With the first overall pick…” Will they become the new face of the league? Or will they fla...

It feels like Josh McCown is coveted more than Steve Wilks in the NFL — that’s a problem
Josh McCown might wind up being an offensive guru. Josh McCown could be a Super Bowl-winning head coach one day. Over the last few years, Josh McCown has been a highly sought-after candidate in NFL coaching circles. The only thing is, Josh McCown’s coaching resume is skimpier than the meat that new ...