rot Page 12 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Euro 2021: For the last time, is this Belgium’s time?
For European teams, the lack of opportunities to actually win a trophy can muddy the results they do get. There’s only a trophy on offer every two years (when there isn’t a pandemic), and perhaps Spain at the beginning of the last decade altered our perception of what’s success and what isn’t....

Billy Hamilton (yes, him) is finally a fan favorite, as he was always meant to be
Major League Baseball is chock full of fun, meme-able characters that everybody loves to mock — but loves to root for even more. Take Bartolo Colon. He’d always been a solid player (even earned a couple of All-Star appearances in his final years), but was never one of the dominant arms in the game. ...

Kristaps Porzingis needs to remember who he is
It’s time for Kristaps Porzingis to start being the guy the Mavs thought he was....

John Cena has to apologize for being right about Taiwan — OK, sure
There’s an old George Carlin bit — I guess they’re all old now (sigh) — about The Big Club. Still rings true today, even though it’s some 25 years old now or more. And while that “Big Club” may not be owned by China, it’s certainly still a slave to the money that China can provide them. Which is jus...

The NFL’s statement on George Floyd proves the league will never care about Black people
In America, there are two types of racism. Type-A is often “tolerated.” It leads to microaggressions, redlining, gerrymandering, and voter suppression. These are the people that will donate money to just causes, but also get uncomfortable when their daughter brings a Black man home. Type-B, on the o...

Nathan MacKinnon is unplayable
Everyone knows that after his 105-point-in-a-56-game season that Connor McDavid is the best player in the world. But what my book presupposes is... maybe he isn’t? (an old joke, and I’ve come to have no use for Wes Anderson over the years and you likely have to, but it’s still a good one). ...

The NHL Playoffs are back and it’s fans-tastic
Look, if there’s an opening to make a Cinderella reference, I’m gonna take it. Just deal with it, and let me have what little I can get. ...

Video games, golf carts, eggs, and other odd ways players have gotten hurt
Before Saturday’s start, A’s pitcher Jesús Luzardo injured his pinky while playing video games. He wound up throwing hours later, going three innings and giving up six runs. After the game, he was taken in for an X-ray and put on the 10-day DL....

Idiot of the Month: Aaron Rodgers leads pack with monumentally bad ‘IMDb for sports’
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, in which we make fun of famous (and non-famous!) people who have done stupid things. As usual, our cup runneth over....

Atlanta Cockatoos always find a way to crap on themselves
The Atlanta Parakeets are officially taking calls for a potential Julio Jones trade....

The Derek Chauvin verdict is what Colin Kaepernick was kneeling for
From the time Colin Kaepernick first sat, and later kneeled, during the National Anthem to when George Floyd’s murderer was found guilty on all counts, 1,698 days, 40,752 hours, and 2,445,120 minutes had passed. ...

Sports world hails guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin
The sports world took to twitter before and after the Derek Chauvin verdict was announced Tuesday. Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of the murder of George Floyd, was found guilty on all counts, which included second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree mansla...

Hey Aaron Rodgers, could you not steal our stuff?
I’m going to tell you something that I’m not supposed to, given where I grew up and currently live. I like Aaron Rodgers. You can wave Tom Brady’s six rings in my face all you want, and I’ll still tell you Rodgers is the best QB I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen the dude with a frat house as an offensive li...

Red-hot Steph Curry scores 30 again but Warriors lose
Stephen Curry has been on one lately, and that continued on Saturday night in Boston, where he scored 47 points, made 11 three-pointers, grabbed seven rebounds… and Golden State still fell back to .500 with a 119-114 loss to the Celtics, who got 44 points from Jayson Tatum....

Cleveland fans react to Yu Chang’s game-ending error with racist messages
There was only one error in last night’s Cleveland-White Sox tilt. But it happened to be the defining play of the ball game. The final throw also inspired trolls on the internet to hurl racist slurs at Cleveland infielder Yu Chang....

No, Kevin Durant… you’re still short an actual apology
Y’see Kevin Durant, you don’t seem to get why you’re apologizing. In one sense, I appreciate how nakedly obtuse you are about the whole thing. It beats the PR department-fueled apologies we usually get from someone like you that are treated as the real thing. You’re making it easy for everyone to se...

Justin Fields, Dan Orlovsky, and the never-ending degradation of Black QBs with age-old stereotypes
I find myself often being perplexed by the way some things are happening. Currently, one of those situations is the seemingly-inexplicable decrease in draft stock of a quarterback prospect I love, Justin Fields, who before the season was the consensus second-best quarterback behind Trevor Lawrence. ...

Brian Cashman was ‘heartbroken’ about Masahiro Tanaka’s experiences with racism, but such reactions insult people of color
The ability to feign disbelief can be more harmful than the act that caused the initial shock. It’s a skill that some white people are either born with or have acquired over time. It’s a classic argument of nature vs. nurture, and Brian Cashman is the latest example....

Every scuff you take, every smudge you make, MLB will be watching you
It’s been the dirty little secret in baseball for years. Pitchers were doing something to baseballs to increase spin, which either helped with velocity or movement or both. This has been a factor in the far bigger problem than shifts for baseball, i.e. the inability for anyone to make regular contac...

White America still doesn’t get why athletes stand up for Black people
Even after Colin Kaepernick, Donald Trump, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, national protests, Jacob Blake, and the storming of the Capitol by homegrown American terrorists, a new poll has discovered that America — “the land of the free and home of the brave” — still isn’t fond of athletes taking a stan...