we Page 135 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...
Top candidates fit to manage Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani
Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Angels were on top of the world. They had the best record in the AL West. Mike Trout was healthy and playing at the level we’ve come to expect. Shohei Ohtani had gotten off to a rocky start on the mound, but he’d lowered his ERA to an incredible 2.82 after his May 18 s...
Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?
Rudy Gobert is this offseason’s CJ McCollum in that every GM is going to call about the star player and get counteroffered with the secondary player. Yes, we know you called about Donovan, but for the low price of a couple draft picks and a salary dump, you can have Rudy at $38 million to $46 millio...
The Tampa Bay Lightning have channeled Admiral Ackbar to get back into the series
Perhaps the biggest sign that a team has entered its own class in the NHL is that it can play any way it has to, or wants to, to win. Whatever you ask of them, they have an answer. Some pretenders like the Hurricanes, once you take away their preferred style — in the case of the Canes it’s dump it i...
6 Decades Before Jackie Robinson, This Man Broke Baseball's Color Barrier
Sixty-three years before Jackie Robinson became the first African American in the modern era to play in a Major League Baseball game, Moses Fleetwood Walker debuted in the league on May 1, 1884 with the Toledo Blue Stockings in a 5-1 loss against the Louisville Eclipse. Walker, a 26-year-old African...
4 Black Baseball Players Who Followed Jackie Robinson's Lead in 1947
Jackie Robinson wasn’t the only Black baseball player to suit up in the big leagues in 1947. After he broke the color line and became the first Black baseball player to play in the American major leagues during the 20th century, four other players of color soon followed in his footsteps....
9 Black Athletes Who Integrated Professional Sports
After Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ending a six-decade ban on Black players in Major League Baseball, opportunities slowly began to expand for athletes of color. Robinson’s historic achievement—a formative moment of the postwar civil rights moveme...
It looks like the NFL is getting a new owner — Rob Walton, another white guy
When Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them,” she was foreshadowing the actions of the NFL. ...
The price was right: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and other pros sell out to Saudi-backed LIV Golf
Just about everyone has a price tag. LIV Golf is trying to figure out what that price tag looks like for the biggest names in their sport. Greg Norman, the CEO of the new government-funded Saudi tour, claimed that LIV offered Tiger Woods a number in the “high nine figures” to come play for them, des...
Looks like that’s it for the Boston Bruins, the dynasty that almost was
In every sport now, it seems one of the most fascinating things to watch is when an organization decides a particular roster has run its course. Thanks to salary caps everywhere (or just the totally not but really is a cap in baseball) there always comes a time when you have to pull that trigger as ...
Just can’t go all-in on Russell Westbrook anymore
The Los Angeles Lakers and new coach Darvin Ham made a grave error on Monday....
The biggest thing to happen to the USMNT this weekend was not becoming the villain
The USMNT played two friiendlies this week, and in a normal year these would be the “World Cup Sendoff” games where the roster would basically be finalized. They would have been a lot more intensely watched by both Gregg Berhalter and fans alike, with the final cuts following soon after. The matches...
2022 NBA Draft Profile: Chet Holmgren
It almost feels too perfect. The scrawny, 7-foot, 195-pound sopping wet Chet Holmgren from Gonzaga playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s easy to imagine him sharing the court with Josh Giddey and Aleksej Pokusevski. Three caucasian dudes, all above 6-foot-8, and all with diverse skill sets and...
Rafael Nadal winning the French Open is still the most inevitable outcome in sports
Rafael Nadal’s dominance on clay courts is to be expected. When he enters Roland Garros, his path to the title is Jordanesque, Gretzky-like, Ruthian, or whichever GOAT athletes of the last century come to mind....
CM Punk's injury clears the way for MJF
Before All Elite Wrestling World Champion CM Punk could address the Ontario, Cali., crowd during Friday night’s episode of Rampage, his eyes were bright red. As tears developed around his corneas, it was easy to know what was going through the Second City Saint’s mind. And he hadn’t opened his mouth...
For someone who hates CM Punk, MJF sure knows the playbook
It doesn’t matter if you think it’s a work, or a shoot, or some combination of those words that tend to send wrestling fans into hysterics. What matters is MJF and AEW are the talk of the wrestling world. The business is about buzz, and well, a mile long swarm of bees wouldn’t produce this kind....
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...
Cut the semantics crap, Kevin, you know what Draymond meant about Steph Curry, and he’s right
As much as I’m looking forward to seeing the Golden State Warriors back in the NBA Finals, what I’m not looking forward to is paying them many compliments. They’re extremely fun to watch, no less fun than the League Pass alert days of 2013 and 2014. However, Charles Barkley is correct when he says t...
We need to talk about Oklahoma’s softball team
We complain about unbeatable, un-compete-able, unstoppable dynasties in college football, bemoaning how no one will ever be able to be on Alabama’s level, that any championship victory over them is but a blip in their seemingly god-given power. We shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders for years...