rio Page 117 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Oilers enjoy the sounds of silence at expense of Calgary crowd
It’s tempting to try to glean some kind of lesson from big games. We all try to do it, all the time, just as fans. The playoffs are not all that different from the final few episodes of a prestige television series’ season. You know there’s not much left, and you’re looking for any clues you can get...

Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...

Those Game 7s were a dud, but that doesn’t dilute the outstanding performances from the second round that deserve recognition
That was quite an exhilarating second round of NBA Playoff action… until it wasn’t. ...

Kendrick Perkins says Draymond Green isn’t scoring enough, Draymond Green says Kendrick Perkins is ugly
Playoff Draymond Green showed up in Game 6 against the Memphis Grizzlies. Then, the Golden State Warriors forward took a break from basking in the glow of his 14 point, 15-rebound, eight-assist performance to address ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins’ comments about his 24 combined points in the first f...


Leafs on precipice of some kind of history
Nobody ever tweeted about a Florida Panthers playoff series victory before last night, when Carter Verhaeghe, off a pass from Claude Giroux – trade deadline acquisition and bringer of tons of vicarious Panthers fans from Philadelphia – lifted Florida to a 4-3 overtime win over the Capitals, and a 4-...

No, these aren’t the tightest NHL playoffs of all time
There’s a common phrase percolating through each NHL playoff broadcast about how this is the most “evenly-matched” postseason of all time. It’s like these commentators get a bonus every time they talk about it. It’s nauseating and more importantly, it’s not correct. ...

If you’re gonna be late, be late
One of the many lessons I learned from my older brother, most of them the wrong ones but they’ve made life more entertaining, was that if you’re running late for something, just go ahead and be late. He taught me this one day as I was hurrying and scrambling to 8th grade or high school, and I had no...

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, ...

Sacramento Kings may have dodged a bullet by choosing Mike Brown over Mark Jackson, yet they continued same failed hiring pattern
The Sacramento Kings chose their new head coach over the weekend. It came down to two finalists. In the end, the Kings are going with current Golden State Warriors assistant Mike Brown over former Warriors head coach Mark Jackson. Neither name is all that exciting, but Sacramento made the right choi...

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 Falcons played with Matty Ice and got burned
Matt Ryan is a Falcons’ legend. He’s the franchise’s all-time leader in passing yards (by more than double the next closest), passing touchdowns (by more than double the next closest), and Approximate Value. He also led the team to one of their only two Super Bowl appearances and won the franchise’s...

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....

Quarterbacks and Nakobe Dean fall in the NFL Draft. Also: Draft Matt Araiza, you cowards!
Well, the second round passed without a QB in sight, making this draft just the third in the past 30 years to only see one quarterback selected in the first two rounds. And perhaps even more surprisingly, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder went ahead of projected favorite Malik Willis, who the Seahawks pas...

2022 NFL Draft: A few thoughts on each pick in the first round
The first 10 picks of the NFL Draft are the Oscars in reverse. The biggest honorees are rewarded first. Fans show up and shout insults at the host and bone-rattling contact with Roger Goodell is encouraged....

Take Your Pick: The 32 best NFL first rounders at each draft slot since 2002
The NFL Draft is all about predicting the future. There are countless guesses as to which players will fit in a certain system or what position groups have the deepest talent pool that could affect where the league trends down the line. In preparation for those hypotheticals, most will look back at ...

The Mocking 2022 NFL Draft: Which realistic picks would anger their fans the most?
If you’ve followed this NFL Draft closely, you know that consensus isn’t exactly a thing. There’s no quarterback prospect worth lusting over, and even if that won’t stop teams from reaching on one, we won’t have a storyline until Chicago actually drafts Mitch Trubisky with the No. 2 overall pick....