van Page 47 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This is probably as close as Connor McDavid will get
There’s not much more that Connor McDavid can do. For that matter, Leon Draisaitl should be attached to that lament permanently now, after he also averaged two points per game in the playoffs with maybe two functioning limbs. They’re the only players to average two points per game in the playoffs ov...

Which NBA players saw their stock fall during these playoffs
A player’s worth is most accurately weighed in the playoffs. Just refer to last season’s Julius Randle debacle. Randle averaged 24 ppg, 10 rpg, and 6 apg on scorching shooting splits of 46%/41%/81%. Every metric but his FG% was a career-best. Then came the playoffs. In that first-round series vs. th...

Landon Donovan: Fall World Cup could hurt USMNT
Part of the charm of every FIFA World Cup is how it takes up a large chunk of summer. It either coincides with the tail end of the NBA and NHL playoffs, or misses it all together and only has to share sports airwaves with baseball’s slow ass. And it’s much more palatable to sit through a pair of 45-...

AEW always gets away with it
The days of AEW running out “perfect” pay-per-views, where everything hits and the length is manageable, are probably over. The roster has grown to the point where a lot has to go into them, and not all of them are going to be collecting star-ratings like a hoarder. No company has amazing booking th...

Icarus can kiss my ass
Perhaps there’s no bigger showcase of Lucy yanking the football away than Liverpool chasing The Quadruple. Because as it got closer, it only became harder and only felt further away. Which sounds stupid, because no team has gotten closer. But fatigue was clear for the last few weeks, and the more ma...

NBA expansion talk heating up
While the NBA’s Conference finals are making surface-level headlines, tectonic plates are shifting underneath the NBA’s crust. On Tuesday, the NBA’s scuttlebutt radar detected signals that could alter the composition of the league. If a report from Portland 750 AM host and Oregonian sports columnist...

This looks like Connor McDavid’s time
This could finally be it. The NHL is starving for its next superstar. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby’s first-round exits with Washington and Pittsburgh left a void for a television-ratings hockey juggernaut....

Real Madrid have more than just black magic against Liverpool
While four years is a long time in soccer, and teams can greatly transform a couple times in that timespan, Real Madrid and Liverpool look a lot like they did four years ago. Liverpool are still anchored by Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Andrew Robertson in defense and Sadio Mane and M...

Does Deebo Samuel have an infatuation with Dallas or merely trolling to get what he wants?
Deebo Samuel might have 19 problemz, but his contract is the biggest one. In pursuit of a big-money extension or trade, Samuel is taking the troll route. Deebo was in Dallas for Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference finals, surely showing support for the Golden State Warriors, and was seen shaking ha...

Nazem Kadri kept it in check, the Blues reverted to type and got it shoved where it belonged
At the top, this isn’t some kudos party for how Nazem Kadri reacted to the racist threats he received from Blues fans after Game 3. This is just about his response on the ice, and we’ll get to some deadbrained hockey reaction to the more serious stuff in a second. ...

Why don’t people talk about Marshon Lattimore like they do Trevon Diggs?
There was a time where Saints cornerback Marshon Lattimore was considered one of the top young shutdown corners in the league. During his rookie season, Pro Football Focus gave Lattimore an 87.7 grade in pass coverage, the highest among rookies that year and the highest of Lattimore’s career. After ...

Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...

Here’s to feelin’ good all the time
The NHL’s second round hasn’t gotten off to the most rousing start. The Lightning did that efficiency thing where they play just well enough for just long enough to win, even if it did involve Nikita Kucherov turning Aaron Ekblad into a tetherball set. The Avalanche looked unstoppable, and the Range...

The International Gymnastics Federation will break you… eventually
The ability of the sports world to churn on through societal decay is dismaying or courageous depending on how you frame it. Oscillating between the stoicism of the Ukrainian national team playing through an invasion, and Black athletes being asked to perform in front of white people a day after a r...

It’s time for the yearly symposium on whether this is finally it for the Penguins
This is yet another distasteful side effect of the NHL’s salary cap. Fans and observers of a certain team, especially a successful one, have to start judging just how much sand is left in the hourglass. They have to weigh the age of the best players, salaries of those players, when contracts run out...

We're seeing an NBA coaching reformation
If the success of Boston’s Ime Udoka and New Orleans’ Willie Green has taught NBA ownership anything, when it comes to hiring coaches, it should be out with the old, in with the new. These two rising coaching stars stepped into dysfunctional messes, with Udoka trying to bring together a team that wa...

Those Game 7s were a dud, but that doesn’t dilute the outstanding performances from the second round that deserve recognition
That was quite an exhilarating second round of NBA Playoff action… until it wasn’t. ...

Failure to capitalize: Washington out in first round for fourth-straight season
The Washington Capitals just pissed away their first-round Eastern Conference series against the Florida Panthers. The President’s Trophy winners were on the ropes in three straight games. And the Panthers won all three of those postseason contests in succession, two in overtime and one after traili...

Knicks fans have bought the most expensive tickets in the NBA for 12 consecutive years — this is so New York
The city that never sleeps doesn’t know how to budget, either....

Brittney Griner’s detainment extended by a month without explanation
WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner’s detainment in a Russian prison was extended by a month Friday after a court appearance, multiple reports stated. Griner had been expected to appear in court on May 19, despite not being formally charged with any crime. The early appearance yielding a short extension o...