rte Page 28 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Can Denver avoid the choke when it counts most in the Western Conference Finals?
The NBA is down to its final four as this year’s conference finals have brought about Déjà vu, although this isn’t an illusion of the mind. Less than three years ago, we saw the same teams representing the NBA’s Eastern and Western Finals. In the west, we’ve got the Lakers and Nuggets in a rematch f...

Joel Embiid is right
Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokić are starkly different people. Yes, they are MVP centers who were not raised in America, but the similarities largely stop there. One player is from Africa and the other is from Europe. One player is the most physically dominant in the NBA, the other combines size, court ...

Jamal Murray has been instrumental in Nikola Jokić’s playoff transcendence
Nikola Jokić’s first two MVP seasons were snapped short by title contenders with heavier artillery in the lineup. A year ago, Golden State broke their spirits by targeting Jokić defensively. In 2021, a shorthanded Denver Nuggets team got trounced in a four-game sweep by the Phoenix Suns. ...

NFC quarterbacks, have your track shoes ready against the Cowboys in 2023
Micah Parsons will be doing what he does best for the Dallas Cowboys full-time during the 2023 season — rush the passer. Surely he will be depended on to use his linebacker skills to stuff running plays and drop into coverage from time to time, but his main job will be to chase after opposing QBs....

Meet the Mets…they stink
The thing about being Steve Cohen, and being the New York Mets, is that it has to work. Otherwise, it’s less likely that other owners are going to feel the need to compete with him. The MLB expanded playoffs kills a lot of that urge anyway, but if the Mets are running away with the NL East year afte...

Bill Belichick’s level of pettiness is something to be marveled at
Bill Belichick’s penchant for trading back in drafts is typically justified by his accumulation of more picks, which he then wastes on an abundance of offensive linemen, safeties, and the occasional ex-lacrosse All-American. ...

The New York Rangers eat dirt like the frauds they’ve always been
It’s important to review recent New York Rangers history to know why they ended up with a handful of their own dicks in the first round, to a New Jersey Devils team that is far more equipped for what wins in the NHL these days. Two years ago, James Dolan took a break from his normal paint-huffing ro...

Completely blowing it in the first round is good for business, history says
The loyalists in the overpriced seats at Boston’s TD Garden for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference first-round should’ve-been shellacking between the hometown Bruins and barely made it into the postseason Florida Panthers went from agitated, to full-on bittah in booing the 135-point getters in the reg...
![Georgia DL Jamaal Jarrett apologizes for uttering racial slur while streaming NFL Draft [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/fdd92d2514e043c183d269764cbe2e3c.jpg)
Georgia DL Jamaal Jarrett apologizes for uttering racial slur while streaming NFL Draft [Updated]
Before officially playing a snap for the two-time-defending-national-champion Georgia Bulldogs, one of their star incoming freshmen is drawing more negative off-field attention to the team. Defensive lineman Jamaal Jarrett was caught on a live stream making a racially insensitive comment toward Asia...

Weston McKennie is not having a good time
Soccer moves fast, and it moves faster in the January transfer window. All the things Weston McKennie had to consider when a move to Leeds United from Juventus was probably thrown at him in a matter of days, if not hours. Questions of role, money, future, and the allure of moving to a country where ...

Examining the 2023 NFL Draft’s most polarizing war rooms
Drafting is an inexact science. If it were an exact one, teams wouldn’t rely on so much vacuous football speak during the evaluation period. That uncertainty is what makes the draft an annual crapshoot. The 2023 edition is no different. After the top two picks, the draft pivoted into unpredictable t...

Playoff hockey is stupid anyway
The NHL Playoffs gets its jollies from defying logic or explanation, and reveling in its unpredictability. That doesn’t mean it’s always a free-for-all, as hockey and its fans would have you believe. But it delves into the chaos and silliness more often than its brethren, that’s for sure....

Howie Roseman continues to rough up the NFL in trades
The bully on the block in the NFL is Howie Roseman. Other NFL general managers need to hide under their desks when he calls, because he is coming for their lunch money. For the second consecutive NFL Draft, Roseman has used the three days to significantly upgrade his roster both with rookie, and vet...

These 9 NBA veterans are crucial to their team's playoff success
Older generations have always had critiques of where the game is going. Each generation, old heads critique how soft and easy the game has become. You can track this through podcasts, interviews, and any episode of the NBA on TNT with Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. While revisionist history a...

2023 NFL Draft Winner and Losers
The first round of the 2023 NFL Draft is over and Thursday proved to be one of the needle-moving days on the league’s calendar. Lamar Jackson finally got paid and several teams addressed some of their biggest needs ahead of next season. There were only 31 first-round picks this year (haha Miami) and...

Black QBs make NFL Draft history while white QB sits in green room
What happened to Kentucky quarterback Will Levis wasn’t funny. It felt cruel watching someone experience their most humiliating moment on the night in which their dreams were supposed to come true. But for African-Americans — or at least for myself — it was impossible to ignore the irony. For decade...

Nick Saban made his presence known at the NFL Draft
I see what you’re doing Nick Saban. You knew that you were going to have two players selected top five in the NFL Draft, and you were not about to let that recruiting opportunity go to waste. It was time to remind the world who the true boss is in college football....

Deadspin watched the NFL Draft so you didn't have to
Welcome to the Deadspin 2023 NFL Draft tracker. If you love the NFL, but hate sitting through the NFL Draft, you’ve come to the right place. Maybe you’re out playing pickleball, or you can’t stand Roger Goodell, or the annual traditions of super-cringey interviews with players and family put you off...

Pep Guardiola is about to complete his masterpiece
My brother had a college friend who had an overarching theory of Led Zeppelin. This isn’t much of a surprise, as I assume college students for some 40 years all had their own theory of Led Zeppelin. I remember telling a friend that I had to have a serious talk with him, made it sound really grave, t...

So you traded the No. 1 pick — now what, Chicago?
The Chicago Bears failed in the most ideal way possible last season. They finished with the worst record in the NFL, and still found a way to unleash breathtaking athleticism from Justin Fields. ...