si Page 272 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The third period has become to the Rangers what the third quarter is to the Celtics
The New York Rangers lost their first game at Madison Square Garden during these Eastern Conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-1 last night. They’ve scored one goal in the last seven-and-half periods, and they haven’t really deserved much more than that....

Marcus Smart is the player Draymond Green used to be
The Draymond Green brand is still strong enough that LeBron James openly fantasizes about playing with him and his podcast is a hot topic even while the Warriors fall into a 2-1 hole against the Boston Celtics. Green, now 32, still benefits the Golden State Warriors in many ways. He sets bone-crushi...

Jocelyn Alo and the unstoppable Sooners
Chicks do dig the longball. Specifically, Jocelyn Alo. She’s been blasting pitches for home runs since she arrived at Oklahoma. As the Sooners’ coronation as back-to-back national champions appears inevitable, she will take her final swings of college softball. She’s Thanos. But instead of snapping ...

Was MJF really talking about Adam Cole?
We’re now deep into the second week of “MJF: Hamlet or Veruca Salt?” Maxwell Jaxwell didn’t appear on Dynamite this week, wasn’t mentioned, and there were stories that Turner execs wanted any mention of him scrubbed from AEW production. He isn’t even on the opening video package at the moment....

The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...

What’s it like to root for Draymond Green?
Being a Warriors fan must be relatively easy, at least compared to most other teams in any other sport. You already have three championships in the bag. The greatest regular season ever. Quite probably the greatest team ever in whichever iteration with Kevin Durant you choose. Back in the Finals aft...

Long Live the LIV?
The LIV Invitational Golf Series has been a drag on a PGA Tour that was already flailing to find its next superstar. LIV, which is funded by blood money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has sparked a mini-exodus of several PGA stars. By offering boatloads of cash for appearance fees, LIV ha...

Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?
Rudy Gobert is this offseason’s CJ McCollum in that every GM is going to call about the star player and get counteroffered with the secondary player. Yes, we know you called about Donovan, but for the low price of a couple draft picks and a salary dump, you can have Rudy at $38 million to $46 millio...

The Tampa Bay Lightning have channeled Admiral Ackbar to get back into the series
Perhaps the biggest sign that a team has entered its own class in the NHL is that it can play any way it has to, or wants to, to win. Whatever you ask of them, they have an answer. Some pretenders like the Hurricanes, once you take away their preferred style — in the case of the Canes it’s dump it i...

Stop comparing viewership numbers for the NFL and NBA
Viewership for the 2022 NBA Finals is up 37 percent from last year and its ratings are the highest they’ve been since the last time the Warriors were in the Finals in 2019. That said, there are some worrisome figures. For one, while viewership is up from 2020 and 2021, Game 1 of these Finals were th...

The Trail Blazers' offseason is a high-wire balancing act
This is the most important summer of Damian Lillard’s reign in Portland. For the past decade, the Portland Trail Blazers have been the Warriors’ little brother. Think Seth Curry and Steph Curry, but in franchise terms....

The odd construction around Shohei Ohtani certainly didn’t help Joe Maddon
With every passing year, the pressure on the Angels ratchets up just a little more as Mike Trout ages. It’s now common thought that the Angels have basically wasted the career of perhaps the best player of all time, and there’s a breaking point somewhere in the future but getting bigger on the horiz...

Richard Jefferson’s rant on shortening the season is off-base
Professional sports is not the easiest way to earn a living. That was part of what Richard Jefferson was trying to get at during his viral rant after Adam Silver dained to consider the idea of shortening the NBA season. Jefferson was drafted in 2001 and to his credit, the first 10 seasons of his 17 ...

In this edition of ‘Should That Be a Statue?'
Imagine if your lowest moment was so abysmal that people would want to build a statue to it? No, I’m not talking about the Southern part of the United States, I’m referring to Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final that earned him a red card before France fell to I...

You won’t have 15-year old figure skaters to kick around anymore
Anyone remember the hot garbage fire that was the Olympic figure skating finals in February? For those who don’t, allow me to jog your memory — 15-year-old star Kamila Valieva, the center of a Russian Olympic Committee doping scandal, sobbing after falling twice as the pressure of the PED investigat...

9 Black Athletes Who Integrated Professional Sports
After Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ending a six-decade ban on Black players in Major League Baseball, opportunities slowly began to expand for athletes of color. Robinson’s historic achievement—a formative moment of the postwar civil rights moveme...

The national anthem played on a saw? Now I’ve seen everything
Playing or singing the national anthem at a professional sporting event is an honor to several musicians. Not only is it an opportunity to showcase their tremendous talent, but it also provides validation to the artist, telling them, “Yes, your music is good. Would you do us the honor of starting ou...

It looks like the NFL is getting a new owner — Rob Walton, another white guy
When Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them,” she was foreshadowing the actions of the NFL. ...