well Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Formula 1 expands its footprint in America, but please don’t make me watch
Formula 1 is coming to Las Vegas, and “the fastest growing sport in America” is so popular I want to avoid it entirely. There’s nothing wrong with car racing — I played a couple of the Gran Turismo games, and they were fun — I’m just not going to add it to the never-ending list of sports I follow....

Washington seems intent on screwing up the Kristaps Porziņģis trade
The Washington Wizards are still playing basketball, and I thought I’d inform you because you may have forgotten about them like the empty La Croix can on your coffee table that’s been there so long it’s basically a centerpiece. “Ignored garbage” is probably the most apt way to describe this team af...

What milestones might we see in baseball this year?
The coronavirus pandemic is going to wreak havoc on long-term baseball achievements for years to come. Obviously, anyone chasing career records took a hit from the 60-game season in 2020, and a lot of players were in and out of the lineup last season due to the virus. That also means interruptions t...

Can anyone fill the void left by Serena Williams and now Ash Barty?
Ash Barty’s retirement from professional tennis was a blunt instrument between the eyes of the WTA community. Barty was coupled with Naomi Osaka as the future of women’s tennis. At 25, she was coming into her own after winning the Australian Open in January, Wimbledon in 2021 and the 2019 French Ope...

Fictional Hooper Bracket: Rucker Region
This region is a little more unconventional than the Venice Courts. There are old favorites like Tommy Sheppard, but also characters from anime, commercials, and a Ray Allen appearance that you might have forgotten about from the early 2000s....

Kyrie Irving has his way with Orlando, scoring 60 points one game after Durant drops 53
If I told you Kyrie Irving was cooking on the court last night, you’d probably say, “OK, what’s new,” right? But Kyrie was on an entirely different level in Tuesday night’s 150-108 win against the Orlando Magic, going for 60 points in only 35 minutes of game action. Irving had 41 in the first half, ...

Chris Finch is the NBA’s Coach of the Year
The Minnesota Timberwolves’ surge up the NBA standings has been a warm fire during another frigid winter. For the past decade, this has been an utterly moribund franchise. The time was nearing for Karl-Anthony Towns to begin asking for an escape hatch as his super-max contract approached its expirat...

The most dazzling tournament runs (by players who didn’t win it all)
One byproduct of college basketball’s March Madness’ 68-team, single-elimination format is it provides an avenue for players from programs major and mid-major to upgrade their stature. When certain players get their opportunity, they unlock a level few mortals can reach and sustain for multiple week...

AEW out-Manias <em>WrestleMania</em>
AEW has been such crazy fun and so ridiculous that it pretty much makes me a hypocrite on a weekly basis. I’ve said, on more than one occasion, that trying to compare AEW and WWE is pointless and a bit too cynical. They’re two different things, even if they’re in the same general industry. And yet y...

Your AEW Revolution Preview
It seems like every time we gather to preview an AEW PPV, we marvel at how it’s the biggest card they’ve put together. I’ve said “Jiminiy Jillikers!” so much the words have lost all meaning! But we can’t help it, as this card is probably as stacked, maybe more so, than September’s “All Out.” I guess...

Kliff Kingsbury has never accomplished anything
The Arizona Cardinals are a team on the verge of ruin, draped in Gucci. Their situation appears ideal from the outside looking in, but underneath the aesthetic of an exhilarating No. 1 overall pick and a stacked offense is a team who took a dirt nap after their 10-2 start. Going 1-5 in a crucial por...

Can we talk about the most dominant team in sports right now?
There’s an outlier on the South Carolina women’s basketball schedule. It happened nearly two months ago in Columbia, Missouri to begin Southeastern Conference play against Mizzou. The Gamecocks were at full strength while the Tigers were far from it. An Omicron outbreak knocked out six players, leav...

The best NBA Players to never make an All-Star appearance
The National Basketball Association has had some great players step onto the court in its 75-year history. Some outstanding players have been left off the All-Star team each season in the NBA. Many of these names get snubbed year after year, and others made their names off big moments but probably s...

Phil Mickelson doesn’t care about Saudi Arabia’s awful human rights record
Phil Mickelson will stop at nothing to spite the PGA Tour — not even willingly joining up with the Saudis’ new golf league while simultaneously acknowledging their human rights abuses....

Aaron Donald’s reign of terror places him in pantheon of generational defensive players
Offensive highlights litter every catalog of the greatest plays in Super Bowl history, and even fewer of those great plays involve lumbering defensive linemen. A two-yard loss isn’t as exciting as a 25-yard scoring throw or a running back trampling an entire defense. But when the story of Super Bowl...

What the hell is Jonathan Allen even talking about?
Another day, another completely avoidable problem for the Washington Commanders. It’s Thursday, you know what that means. Another problem! How about hiring an investigative firm to look at claims of sexual assault against the franchise’s owner? Nope, it already happened this week. What about that la...

A Matt Stafford victory is a win for all mid-career professionals
During the summer of 2006, I was a fledgling student journalist baking under the blistering sun at a preseason practice at UGA, capturing B-Roll of a fellow pimply-faced true freshman from Texas. The quarterback phenom was about to be the talk of the SEC. Matthew Stafford’s singular talent created r...

If Lillard and McCollum didn’t work, then why was it so much fun?
I just saw CJ McCollum in Chicago like a week ago. He seemed fine — he had 29 on 13-of-23 from the floor and played well — but the team wasn’t itself anymore. It was a Sunday morning, and I was in bed when my girlfriend asked, “Hey Portland’s playing today. Want to go?”...

MJF is the best wrestler in the world
“Love to hate” is a term that gets lazily thrown around by media types. It’s generally the only phrase they can come up with to describe someone who is generally hated or reviled but also pulls in huge attention. Or it’s used as a cover for not actually digging into why someone is loathed by the mas...

Being a Black head coach in the NFL is a Catch-22
Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL has multiple elements to it. On different levels, Flores is alleging, and claiming to have receipts for, behavior in the league that’s long been suspected, but would be damning to have shown as true — especially to the extent that Flores is...