w Page 2780 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Bryce Harper Pummeled The Nats Until He Heard Cheers
If there were any questions about how Nationals fans would greet Bryce Harper in his return to Washington, they were answered well before first pitch. A tribute video—the thing that usually inspires warm fuzzies, before the rancor begins—was played on the scoreboard and booed vociferously. Then Harp...

Impossible To Imagine Bryce Harper Recovering From This Devastating Fan Sign
Sure, Bryce Harper may have gone 3-for-5 with a double, a dinger, and three RBI in a dominant Phillies win over his form team, but one angry Nationals fan made a savage sign out of a grey “Bryce Arnold” image, framed by an oddly formatted and incomplete border, on a wrinkly and curling sheet of 8.5"...

Russell Westbrook Dedicates Historic 20-20-20 Triple-Double To Slain Rapper Nipsey Hussle
Russell Westbrook completed the ultra-rare double triple-double Tuesday night, in a 119–103 Thunder win over the visiting Los Angeles Lakers. The counting stats are absurd: 20 points, 20 rebounds, and 21 assists, in 37 minutes. He had 10 assists in the first quarter, and 17 by the mid-point of the t...

Nationals Fans Greet Bryce Harper With Lots And Lots Of Booing
Bryce Harper returned to Nationals Park Tuesday night, making his first appearance in Washington since he signed his mega-deal with the Phillies back in February. Fans who’d been waiting to unleash their burns on Bryce were forced to wait through a 45-minute rain delay, but that’s a small price to p...

Draymond Green Got Fined $35,000 For His Cryptic Subtweets
After last Friday’s brouhaha between the Warriors and NBA referee Marat Kogut, and the team’s subsequent public dressing down of the officiating on the night, it was only a matter of time before Golden State got hit with the league’s fine-hammer. Today, the league handed out its punishments....

Report: Wizards To Replace Ernie Grunfeld, Finally, My God, I Thought They'd Never Do It
The Washington Wizards have fired longtime team president and head personnel honcho Ernie Grunfeld, according to a tweet by the Times’s Marc Stein that made the top of my head explode like Mount St. Helens, splattering the interior walls of my home with confetti and glitter....

WrestleMania Week Is Testing The Limits Of How Much Wrestling One City Can Bear
As exhausting as WrestleMania week can be, especially with fans gladly taking on the growing second-shift slate of late night shows, last year’s Mania week in New Orleans was one of the most manageable in recent memory. It was good, too, but the surprising thing was how user-friendly and accessible ...

Hugo Lloris Reminded Us That There Are Infinite Ways To Craft A Goalkeeping Howler
History will show that Tottenham defender Toby Alderweireld’s 90th minute own goal was responsible for gifting Liverpool a 2-1 win during a tight race for their first league title since 1989-90. History can be a strange and misleading thing. In this case what Alderweireld is responsible for is stand...

The History And Future Of The Franchise Tag, The Bane Of The NFL's Best Players
The top of this year’s NFL free agent class was stocked with defensive linemen and edge rushers. Most never hit the market....

Report: The Nationals' Second Offer To Bryce Harper Was Smaller Than The First
Tuesday night the Phillies travel to Washington, and with them, their new superstar Bryce Harper returns to the city where he spent seven extremely productive seasons and became the face of the Nationals. But D.C.’s relationship with Harper, especially in the later years, was increasingly fraught, s...

The Yankees Are Torn Up And Full Of Holes
How are things for the Yankees in the season’s early going? Well, their new third outfielder got to New York so hurriedly he’s living in a hotel room with his mom and his cats. They aren’t sure who their starter is going to be on Wednesday and may throw a bullpen game. Someone called Mike Tauchman w...

Max Muncy Bat Flips On A Harmless Fly Out Like A Complete Buster
Bat flips are great, as a stylish way of punctuating a mighty dinger. It’s less cool but probably acceptable to bat flip after a particularly well-hit non-dinger, if that non-dinger should be a walk-off RBI single. However broadly you are prepared to abide the spread of the bat flip, probably baseba...

It's Too Early To Say The Cubs Are In Trouble, But Not Too Early To Enjoy Their Fuck-Ups
The Cubs have not gotten off to the start anyone envisioned over the winter. They’re 1–3, having dropped a season-opening series to the Rangers, and having absorbed a deflating 8–0 loss to the Atlanta Braves Monday night. This is a vanishingly tiny sample size, and the Cubs were picked by various ex...

Extremely Unchill Giannis Antetokounmpo, To Uncooperative Hoop: "Motherfucker!"
Giannis Antetokounmpo had a bit of a frustrating performance against the Brooklyn Nets Monday night. Yes, his Bucks beat a playoff team on the road; yes, Giannis personally had one of those beefy box scores where there are positive integers in many columns. Still, in the context of a guy who shoots ...

Will Cain Was The Salty Butt Of The Only Good April Fools' Joke
April Fools’ jokes are always exhausting or unoriginal or impressively tone deaf, except when, every once in a while, they’re not. And this year, it was ESPN of all places that managed to pull off a genuinely good April Fools’ Day prank, mostly because the butt of the joke was ESPN’s resident idiot ...

Something Weird Is Happening With UNC Women's Basketball
The University of North Carolina released a vague and ominous statement today about their women’s basketball program, announcing that the entire coaching staff has been put on paid administrative leave while a law firm conducts a review and “assesses the culture of the women’s basketball program.” T...

Duke Is Out. What Will You Do With Your Hate Now?
At the exact moment Duke lost to Michigan State on Sunday, our sporting Borg collective went through the following thoughts, in this order and all within a second:...

What's The Future Of Women's Hockey In North America? (Update)
The disbanding of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, and the narrowing of North American women’s hockey back down to one professional league—the USA-based NWHL—is not exactly surprising, even if the sudden announcement on Sunday may have come as a shock. For a quite a while now, the people in a pos...

Fixing MLB's Broken Economics Is About More Than Free Agency<em></em>
There have been a number of significant hints that MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association are headed for some very combative collective bargaining in 2021, but the two sides being willing to talk about economics ahead of schedule will stand out to anyone who has ever been through thi...

John Oliver Just Gave Pro Wrestling Fans Something To Chant For This Weekend
WrestleMania is Sunday! It’s time to crack open a cold one and get ready to sit in front of the television for anywhere from six to nine hours. And it’s also time for the wider public to pay attention to WWE for a week....