tanking Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

A playoff game for the top pick in the NFL Draft sounds good — until you remember that human beings would be participating in it
Professional athletes play sports for two reasons: They play to make money and to win games. There is no other incentive necessary, or that would even work, to get the maximum effort out of players. And what would certainly be a terrible idea, is adding a “playoff game,” in which the result is the w...

The Washington Wizards can't even tank properly
For some pro franchises, when it rains, it most certainly pours. The Washington Wizards entered the season with seemingly new life behind the acquisition of former Golden State Warrior Jordan Poole. Thus far, the tandem of Poole and Kyle Kuzma has been underwhelming, to say the least. The Wizards fe...

Try telling Kyrie Irving that ANTA is a significant step down from Nike
Kyrie Irving held a significant place in shoe culture up until he ran his mouth and got his Nike deal revoked. The mercurial point guard (pretty sure he single-handedly turned that phrase a cliche) consistently had the most popular sneaker at the company despite his on-again, off-again relationship ...

The NBA’s tanking problem is more perception than reality, and a relegation system won’t fix that
During NBA Commish Adam Silver’s apology tour session with beleaguered Phoenix Suns employees this weekend, he was confronted with another concern. In addition to apologizing for suspended team Governor Robert Sarver and his decades of misconduct, Silver was also besieged by a flood of questions abo...

NFL goes easy on Dolphins owner for tampering, tanking — and other things that shouldn't shock you
Another day, another embarrassment for the NFL....

The Cincinnati Reds are tanking hard and it (probably) won’t save them
The Reds are a joke. Not a gut-wrenching knee slapper either. I’m talking about a “force the audience to ask for a refund”-type joke, AKA just normal Amy Schumer material. The Reds’ record is an abysmal 3-22. To put that in perspective, only one team in the Modern Era of baseball (since 1901) had a ...

Laremy Tunsil could be the the greatest trade of the 21st century
Yesterday, the Miami Dolphins sent five draft picks to the Kansas City Chiefs in exchange for star receiver Tyreek Hill. While the Dolphins may not have any draft picks in the first two rounds of the 2022 draft, they still have an extra first-round and third-round pick in 2023, courtesy of the San F...

NBA Power Tankings: Who's No. 1 (No. 30)?
Oh goodie, misery. The last portion of the NBA season kicked off Thursday, and that means Cancun is in sight for at least 10 franchises. With their seasons already in the blender, they might as well add ice, Cointreau, Casamigos, agave, and an FT of lime juice before kicking back in the training poo...

Is tanking illegal?
Among the many incriminating allegations in former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL’s obvious and rampant discrimination lies what could perhaps be the most legally damning accusation: Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered to bribe Flores to “tank” games in the 2019 season in ...

So it really wasn’t necessary to blow up the Dolphins a second time after all
It was all over for the Miami Dolphins after the trade deadline. They were willing to sell all of their credibility and goodwill to trade for Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, despite the whole “Tanking for Tua [Tagovailoa]” hashtag in 2019. The No. 5 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft did ...

Rays Outfielder Excited To "Stick It To The Man," Fails To Realize "The Man" Is His Team's Owner
A shitty thing about baseball, stretching back to Bob Costas’s largely wrong-headed conditional invocation of socialism and beyond, way back into the sport’s dusty past, is it has a way of making the teams that pay their players lots of money out to be the bad guys. For one thing, those teams appear...

The Dolphins Are Stale Piss From The Gutter
The Dolphins, a team set up to execute one of the most brazen tanking campaigns in NFL history, were so bad in Week 1 that a handful of players were reportedly calling their agents after the game and begging to be traded. Somehow, Miami was even worse today against the Patriots....

The Dolphins Are Tanking Whether Or Not Brian Flores Wants To
It’s never a good sign when, a few days out from the start of the NFL season, reporters are asking a head coach questions like, “So, are you guys even going to try to win a game this year?” That’s the line of questioning Dolphins first-year head coach Brian Flores faced after his team traded Kenny S...

Commissioner For A Day: Let's Institute Geographic Relegation
This is a scintillating idea that I have previously put forward, with much more clarity and much less stammering, in blog form. ...

The Knicks Do The Unthinkable And Win A Basketball Game
For just the second time since the calendar flipped over to 2019, the Knicks have won a regular season NBA basketball game, topping the lowly Hawks—and in Atlanta, no less—by the score of 106–91. It’s been 41 days since the team last tasted victory, a span covering a franchise-record 18 consecutive ...

The Rest Of The Pelicans' Season Is Going To Be So Bleak
Now that he has to wait until this final third of the NBA season is over before he becomes a Laker or Celtic or something other than a Pelican, Anthony Davis is in the incredibly awkward position of having to play out the rest of the season alongside teammates he publicly dissed, in front of fans wh...

The NBA's Anti-Tanking Reform For Sure Hasn't Solved Sucking
The NBA recently messed with the odds in the draft lottery in order to discourage teams from tanking, but the real fruits of that move will be revealed over time, and anyway certain teams—looking at you, Phoenix—need no promise of draft lottery gold in order to just profoundly suck and lose all the ...

The Situation In Post-LeBron Cleveland Has Become Very Grim Very Quickly
Here is some fresh news about the Cleveland Cavaliers:...

Nick Kyrgios Is Just Another Grump Railing At The Umpire Now
Nick Kyrgios is no longer playing well or amusingly enough to justify the usual apologist disclaimer, so let’s just get to the point. On Monday at the Shanghai Masters, where he has tanked for two years running, he once again flirted with nihilism as he lost to world No. 104 Bradley Klahn, 4-6, 6-4,...

Tanking Master Bernard Tomic Is Back On His Bullshit
After what feels like an eternity of emotionally disintegrating in public, Bernard Tomic is somehow only 25 years old, with plenty of talent to spare, and was as recently as last season a top-30 player on tour. This season he’s been fighting to qualify for the majors, though the tortured former No. ...