san Page 336 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

To Go With An Injury And A Loss, A Fan Stole Kobe Bryant's Towel
Not the best night for Kobe. After briefly leaving the game in the first with an ulnar nerve contusion (that's a bruised funny bone, and you don't need to be an athlete to know how obscenely painful it can be), and then seeing the Thunder shrug off an attempted comeback, Bryant had a towel pilfere...

Tuesday Night Fights: A.J. Daulerio On Why You Must Dress "Slutty, Sexy" To Avoid A Beatdown In Southwest Philly
Welcome to Tuesday Night Fights, a weekly celebration and analysis of street-fight videos found on YouTube. Tonight's fisticuffs: "HOOD FIGHTS|At the Club Sikira in Philadelphia, PA (women edition)." Tonight's commentator: Deadspin Editor Emeritus A.J. Daulerio. (Coming next week: The Fremont Stre...

Here's More Proof That Larry Sanders Is The NBA's Best Interior Defender
One of the best things to come out of this year's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was Kirk Goldsberry's paper on interior defense, in which he details which defenders are the best and worst at lowering opponent field goal percentage on shots at the rim. Surprisingly, the paper pointed to little-...

Jeff Carter Scored A Hat Trick On Hat Giveaway Night
The Kings' win over Nashville was bizarre, as far as 5-1 wins go. Scoreless through one, just 1-0 through two, Los Angeles just couldn't put pucks on net. The Predators blocked shots, clogged up the blue line, and made this one look like it would go down to the horn. Only, Pekka Rinne couldn't sto...

Kobe Dunks Like Kobe Hasn't Dunked In Years, And The Lakers Are At .500
After a stirring one-point win over the Hawks last night, the Lakers find themselves in a place they haven't been since Dec. 28: at .500. This means you can no longer objectively call them a bad team. You could call them an average team, but they've been on a quiet roll for more than a month....

Twitter Loves The Orlando Magic, Has Never Heard Of The Arizona Cardinals
The Wall Street Journal has helpfully assembled the sort of slow-news-month story that lets you forget that none of the four major sports (five, if you include college football) is playing many meaningful games at the moment. In it, the incomparably named Stu Woo compiled the Twitter follower counts...

Four Things You Can Learn About The NBA By Skimming Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Research Papers
The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is under way in Boston and, though we sent no intrepid reporters to Dorkapalooza this year, the conference happily made its research paper finalists publicly available on its website. Let's blearily page through and see if we can't learn a few things. (We're foc...

How To Cook Bacon, Eggs, And Toast: A Guide For Infomercial Skeptics
So I had the occasion, brain-fried and worked-over and at best quasi-sentient by the end of some long recent day, to plop my faltering attention on some cable channel well outside the familiar rotation and there, eventually, to be captivated—horrified, really, the gape-jawed half-smiling horror of e...

Here, Have This Blake Griffin Subway Coupon That Expires Feb. 29
Fox Sports West, which broadcasts Clippers games, has a promotion deal with Subway. Any time Blake Griffin goes for a double-double, you can print out a coupon to get double the meat on your sandwiches the next day. Griffin sprung for 18 and 14 against Indiana last night, so it's Subway time. As tha...

"Change This Face. Be Happy. Enjoy!" Says Ricky Rubio To A Bummed Out Alexey Shved
Man, why can't we live in a world where Ricky Rubio magically appears whenever we're having a bad day and tells us to turn our frowns upside down? Spilled coffee on your new shirt? Poof! There's Ricky reminding you that sea otters hold hands when they sleep next to each other so they don't float a...

Yet Another Weird Baseball Injury: Elvis Andrus Sits With Tattoo Soreness
Rangers SS Elvis Andrus is not in the lineup today, having been scratched with "Silly Non-Baseball-Related Malady." It's very common, especially in spring training. This particular incidence took the form of muscle soreness, caused by a giant tattoo....


Tuesday Night Fights: Lax Bruhs Are So Super Hardcore, They Brawl With Helmets And Gloves Still On
Welcome to Tuesday Night Fights, a weekly celebration and analysis of street-fight videos found on YouTube. Tonight's fisticuffs: "Lax Locker Boxing." Tonight's commentator: Deadspin bro Dom Cosentino. (Coming next week: TBA.)...

Dwight Howard's Shortcomings Were On Full Display Last Night
Dwight Howard finished last night's Lakers-Nuggets game with 15 points, 14 rebounds, and four blocked shots. That is a perfectly acceptable stat line, and it's the kind of line that Howard has been putting up all year. But last night's game also featured a collection of moments that served as remi...

Don't Look Now, But The NHL's Best Hockey Is Out West
You could be forgiven for feeling a twinge of nostalgia for the Western Conference yesterday, after news emerged that the NHL is nearing an agreement on radical realignment. The new setup is better almost every way: less travel, more geographic rivalries, the chance for every team to host every othe...

Here's Old Footage Of Bill Russell Going Coast To Coast And Jumping Over A Guy
This clip popped up on YouTube two days ago. According to the uploader, that's a young Bill Russell—playing for the University of San Francisco—grabbing a defensive rebound, streaking down the court on a one-man fast break, and jumping over some poor sap while gracefully laying the ball in. Accord...

Sandra Bullock Should Take Up Weightlifting
Sandra Bullock had some trouble opening the envelope for Best Editing last night, and perhaps she might avoid such embarrassing circumstances in the future if she starts a weightlifting regimen. After all, she's already got the liftface down pat....

Alex Smith Trade Is "All But Done," But To Where?
It's hard not to feel bad for Alex Smith. After years of underachieving in a miserable 49ers offense, San Francisco turned things around. And it looked like Smith had figured things out too—he was on pace for one of the all-time most accurate passing years in NFL history when he was felled by a conc...

Penn State Trustee Anthony Lubrano Says Board Deserves Refund For Freeh Report
You remember Anthony Lubrano: he ran for and won a seat on the Penn State board of trustees amidst the Sandusky firestorm after criticizing the way the school fired Joe Paterno. He was well-known in the community as the namesake of the Penn State baseball field and a four-year varsity letter man in...

A Half-Blind Pitcher With Almost No Depth Perception Is Trying To Make The Rays, And He's Impressing Coaches
In February of 2006, then-Mariners prospect Juan Sandoval, at that time hoping for a promotion to Class AAA, was eating at a restaurant in his hometown of Bonao in the Dominican Republic. A bouncer at the restaurant got into an argument with a drunk patron, and the patron went to retrieve his shotgu...