toronto Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Pascal Siakam Punked Kyrie Irving And The Celtics
By now, Raptors wing Pascal Siakam is no longer a shock. Sure, the 24-year-old dropping 44 on Washington a couple of weeks ago was surprising, but no one is doubting that Siakam is solidly one of the best basketball players in the Eastern Conference. Perhaps the only unknown quantity in Siakam’s gam...
Jilted Islanders Fans Have Harsh Words For John Tavares In Extremely Long Island Video
Thursday is a very special day in Nassau County. John Tavares returns to the Coliseum (where the Islanders are playing half their home dates, because that Brooklyn thing really isn’t working out) for the first time since leaving the Isles after nine seasons and signing with the Maple Leafs. But it’s...
Jilted Islanders Fans Have Harsh Words For John Tavares In Extremely Long Island Video
Thursday is a very special day in Nassau County. John Tavares returns to the Coliseum (where the Islanders are playing half their home dates, because that Brooklyn thing really isn’t working out) for the first time since leaving the Isles after nine seasons and signing with the Maple Leafs. But it’s...
Sweaty Blue Jays GM Offers Desperately Flimsy Pretext For Keeping Vlad Jr. In The Minors
It will suck for everyone when the Blue Jays make the inevitable, cynical-as-shit decision to plug Vladimir Guerrero Jr. back into their minor league system at the start of this season, in order to rig his MLB service time and extend team control for as long as possible. Young Vlad will be getting s...
DeMar DeRozan Was Cruelly Reminded That The Raptors Are Better Off Without Him
It’s not often that such an on-the-nose metaphor for an event that happened outside of a basketball court takes place in such a venue, but that’s exactly what happened in the dying embers of Toronto’s game against San Antonio on Friday night. ...
Oh Come On, The Blue Jays Still Won't Commit To Calling Up Vlad Guerrero Jr.
The Toronto Blue Jays don’t have much hope for this season, not for as long as AL East peers the Yankees and Red Sox and even the Rays continue to exceed Toronto’s abilities by such a wide margin. But there is one reason to get excited about the Blue Jays in 2019, and his name rhymes with “Rad Wheel...
Poop Johnson Is Back In The News
No, his first name is not really “Poop.” It’s Cory. That doesn’t take anything away from how this transaction was delivered, though:...
The Eastern Conference Playoffs Are Going To Be Good As Hell
The Eastern Conference has been dogshit since I started watching basketball, and though the conference’s 2019 Finals participant will surely be skiing uphill in pursuit of a title, the three most significant trades of deadline week all featured Eastern Conference teams getting better by acquiring pl...
This Is What It Takes To Sign Auston Matthews
The thing about building an elite team—something the Leafs have done for the very first time in the salary-cap era—is that, very quickly, you have to figure out how to pay for it. It gets top-heavy, and you either have to get creative, or see it all fall apart. The Maple Leafs already agreed to pay ...
Kenneth Faried Hustled The Raptors Into Oblivion
Kenneth Faried entered the league as an undersized, but explosive, power forward whose tenacity on the glass, high-flying dunks and absurd athleticism seemed to make up for the fact that he didn’t have many other discernible skills on the court. As his skills diminished in value and power—coupled wi...
Roy Halladay's Hats, Ranked
The late Roy Halladay earned a well-deserved first-ballot nod from the BBWAA on Tuesday, with 85.4 percent of voters enshrining him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The two-time Cy Young winner Halladay enters Cooperstown with 203 career wins, 2,117 strikeouts, 64.3 WAR, and a whole lotta hats worn, as...
Marcus Smart "Dunked" Onto An Injured Kyle Lowry
The Celtics are playing in a pretty big game against the Raptors right now, and Marcus Smart added two points for his team and a ton of humiliation for his opponents on a “dunk” that ended with the guard landing a forearm drop on a hurt Kyle Lowry....
Come On, Kawhi Leonard Can't Blame The Media For This
Kawhi Leonard played in San Antonio last night for the first time since being traded from the Spurs to the Raptors, and he was booed heartily every time he touched the ball. The home crowd even whipped up enough bile to hit him with a “Traitor!” chant while he was shooting free throws. Leonard, some...
DeMar DeRozan Kicked The Raptors' Asses In A Sweet Revenge Game
Well that was decisive. The home crowd was bloodthirsty, the Spurs were aggressive as hell, and the Raptors were evidently not ready for all the intensity. Kawhi’s ballyhooed return to San Antonio was mostly a big old dud, and the Raptors were routed, by the score of 125–107....
The Spurs And Their Fans Are Out For Blood
Spurs fans wasted no time ending the mystery of how Kawhi Leonard would be received in San Antonio in his first post-trade visit, booing the shit out of him every time he touched the ball during pregame warmups. The Spurs were reportedly on the fence about showing a Kawhi tribute video tonight, conc...
Kawhi Leonard Turned Off The Jazz
Kawhi Leonard buried the Jazz under the most assaultive offensive output of his career on Tuesday, hanging an alarmingly efficient 45 points on 16-of-22 shooting in a 122-116 win. The Raptor-for-now ascended to a higher plane in his 19-point third quarter, sinking every shot he attempted. He did all...
Please Enjoy This Nikola Jokic-Ass Layup
The Nuggets’ 95-86 win over the Raptors on Sunday night wasn’t the prettiest imaginable matchup between each conference’s No. 1 team. It looked a lot more like the league’s No. 4 and No. 7 defense dragging each other through the muck while coping with a rash of injuries and putrid shooting, which ha...
The Difference In The East Could Be Andrei Vasilevskiy
In a just world, the Lightning and Maple Leafs would meet in the Eastern Conference final. But it is not a just world, and because the two clear best teams in the East also happen to be the two best teams in the Atlantic Division, the NHL’s playoff format puts the two on track for a second-round sho...
The Raptors Didn't Even Need Kawhi Leonard To Punk The Warriors In Oakland
Last week, the Warriors traveled to Milwaukee and avenged their early-season loss to the Bucks with ease, dispatching one of their possible Finals opponents without ever having to do to much. They clearly made a point of putting the Bucks in their place—increasingly rickety Andre Iguodala played 28 ...
Kawhi Leonard Has No Time For Your Damn Holiday Cheer
This is so good. A reporter in the scrum ahead of tonight’s Raptors-Clippers game thought it would be a good idea to ask the famously loquacious and good-humored Kawhi Leonard to recall his favorite Christmas memory. Kawhi’s answer is just the most curmudgeonly thing....