stern Page 36 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The NBA’s Western Conference is going to be like bumper cars with all the movement this season
It’s October, so Halloween season is upon us, but it’s also time for the NBA to return. All the talk and some drama will be shoved aside as teams return to the court, hoping to do what the Golden State Warriors did last season in raising the Larry O’Brien NBA Finals trophy....

The NBA’s Eastern Conference might see a bit of a shake-up in the standings this season
It’s October, so it’s Halloween season, but it also means the NBA is back. All the talk and some drama will be moved aside as teams return to the court, hoping to do what the Golden State Warriors did last season in raising the Larry O’Brien NBA Finals trophy....

Alabama’s gridiron clash with Texas A&M becomes a dud
It was dubbed the most anticipated college football game of the season. The narrative of a College Football Playoff-ready Texas A&M invading Tuscaloosa to truly see how strong its armor was against the impenetrable fortress of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Alabama held up its end of the bargain. The Crimson...

The Pelicans have finally taken flight
Bourbon Street in New Orleans exists in a loop. Every night the street clicks back into a state of debauchery, repeated with perverse precision. Lonely men drift in and out of red neon strip clubs holding cans of Natty Light. Police on horses stroll between sleeping bums, screaming preachers, pools ...

Iranian soccer players risking more than anyone
A truly incredibly scene unfolded on Tuesday when the Iranian national team, before their match against Senegal, took the field in black jackets and covered up any logo or emblem having to do with Iran to show solidarity with the current protests going on in their country over the murder of Mahsa Am...

The best-laid plans of Bulls and Balls…
The ideal version of this Chicago Bulls roster — the one that started last season 27-11 and featured three wing-sized guys on the perimeter that played defense, scored, and shared the ball — is like so many teams whose bright future hinged upon versions of players that no longer exist. Whether via i...

Qatar is conscripting its citizens to be security for the World Cup, so this is definitely going to go well
Here’s the thing about Qatar hosting the World Cup in about six weeks: Even if you could ignore the disgusting and egregious human rights abuses that built the infrastructure for it (which you can’t), or if you could ignore the country’s homophobia and sexism as state policy (which you can’t), or th...

Here’s the one area the dominant Buffalo Bills sorely need to improve
The Buffalo Bills have been the plow, while their first and their first two 2022 opponents — the Los Angeles Rams and Tennessee Titans — have been the snow. Both were pushed up and down the field with great ease as the preseason Super Bowl favorites have looked like that assessment was well deserved...

HBO picked the right time to take a look back at Jeremy Lin’s 15 minutes of fame
The NBA lockout season of 2011-12 was really 11 years ago....

How good are these Buffalo Bills?
The Buffalo Bills are pretty damn good....

Hopefully Robert Williams III is only suffering a small setback, but this isn’t the first one
I hope Robert Williams III believes that it was worth it....

Auburn vs. Mizzou: The hot seat will get even hotter for the losing coach
Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin and Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz are on a collision course, pushing their Southeastern Conference squads into the most important game of their respective coaching careers. The former mentor and pupil have yet to partake in a battle of wits as head coaches. Missour...

Winners and Losers of the NBA’s potential relaunch of the Preps-to-Pros Draft Era
The NBA’s preps-to-pros pipeline was welded shut nearly 20 years ago by the late Commissioner David Stern due to NBA general managers’ drafting tendencies beginning to resemble Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating preferences. The narrative that preps-to-pros prospects were too young, too unproven, and that t...

NBA report proves that Robert Sarver is a bad guy
It took almost a year, but the NBA has finally completed its investigation into Robert Sarver and the Phoenix Suns....

The WNBA Finals are A’ja Wilson’s to lose
Candace Parker’s repeat bid being squashed by the Connecticut Sun in Friday evening’s winner-take-all Game 5 against the Connecticut Sun was the sort of hoops history-altering that will reverberate more than Queen Elizabeth. Sue Bird is the all-time point god, but her career also arrived at its firm...

Here's what you missed from college football while watching Alabama-Texas
To begin the Saturday marathon of college football most of us were watching the shitshow in Austin that turned into an early Heisman resume builder for defending-award recipient Bryce Young. Plenty of other weird stuff went down in the early window of intercollegiate gridiron. Aside from Alabama, th...

The Buffalo Bills hype is there, but can they truly win it all?
People, are we really ready to do this? As a football-watching public, we’re going to stand and shout for all to hear that there is going to be a Super Bowl parade that sets a record for snowfall and broken tables....

Lakers GM Rob Pelinka started the summer in hot pursuit of Kyrie Irving and ends it with Patrick Beverley
The Lakers are a hot mess....

The DH could solidify the Dodgers’ transformation into the First Order
The perception of the National League to fans of AL teams is that of inferior baseball, due largely to the (until recently) absence of the designated hitter. This kind of bias happens in other sports, but it’s mostly unproven generalizations like the Western Conference is finesse basketball compared...

Pau Gasol is absolutely an all-time Laker great
Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals was a rock fight....