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Joel Embiid capped off his chase for the scoring crown on Saturday night by summoning a brilliant 41-point, 20-rebound outing in the Philadelphia 76ers’ 133-120 win over the Indiana Pacers. A dazzling 40/20 game was the perfect way to secure the best individual accomplishment of his career.Read more...

When Kyrie Irving rolled his ankle last year in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Milwaukee Bucks, it seemed like a common unintentional injury we often see on the NBA hardwood. Devin Williams, a trainer who works with Irving and other players, says it may not have been what we initially thought. Well, at…Read more...

Because the NBA regular season doesn’t really matter — seriously, the barometer of advancing to the postseason this year was, “are you better than the clock-struck-midnight on Julius Randle version of the Knicks or the bunch of corpses that LeBron James couldn’t animate to 35 wins in Los Angeles?” — the end of it kind…Read more...

Gil Brandt didn’t wake up knowing he was going to insult a dead man within hours of Dwayne Haskins’ death because he probably found out about the horrific accident that took the life of a young man on Twitter like the rest of us. Instead of trying to find something respectful or worthwhile to say about a player whose…Read more...

Fists flew on pit row during NASCAR’s Xfinity Series race at Martinsville. Rivals Sam Mayer and Ty Gibbs, the grandson of Super Bowl winning coach and NASCAR team owner Joe Gibbs, were the combatants in the altercation after Friday night’s race.

In the scene at the climax of Layer Cake, an English gangster flick Daniel Craig made two years before becoming James Bond, the antagonist goes on this tangent about taking shit, and how eventually, if you climb high enough, you forget what shit even looks like.

With Tiger Woods falling out of contention and Sunday at Augusta turning into a sleepy 3-year-old crashing off of sugar, wake yourself up by flipping on probably the biggest game of the English Premier League season. Man City sits atop the table but only barely. Liverpool, still chasing a potential quad, are only one…Read more...

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s XFL revival, scheduled to begin in 2023 after the former wrestler bought the league from a bankrupt Vince McMahon for $15 million following an inaugural season cut short by COVID, introduced a new visual brand identity earlier this week.Read more...

I forgot Joe Exotic existed. The Tiger King was the king of Netflix for a few months in 2020, and his fame vanished almost immediately afterward. Even Tiger King Season 2 wasn’t enough to bring Joseph “Exotic” Maldonado-Passage back into the forefront of American pop culture. Now, the man is imprisoned, sentenced to…Read more...

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins died Saturday morning in South Florida after being hit by a car, weeks shy of turning 25. The former Ohio State star was drafted No. 15 overall by the Washington Commanders in the 2019 NFL Draft before his current role in Pittsburgh.Read more...

Major League Baseball made this exclusive deal with Apple for Friday night games, and Mets-Nationals was the very first one, Max Scherzer’s debut for New York (which the Mets won 7-3), against his old team, featuring JUAN SOTO, whom the broadcast gushed over as constantly as he gushed over Apple – because the…Read more...

Brian Kelly is on a mission to make himself Public Enemy Number One in South Bend, Indiana, for reasons unknown. His daughter will be graduating from Notre Dame next month, and at this point, if I were Kelly, I wouldn’t be too keen about showing my face on campus.Read more...

After an offseason filled with turmoil and uncertainty, Major League Baseball kicked off the 2022 season yesterday...with two postponements, one of them Red Sox at Yankees. Yeah, that wasn’t a great way to kick things off. Pushing back the start of your marquee series is never a good thing,especially for a sport…Read more...

I debated between a Lethal Weapon 2 “Diplomatic immunity” joke and a “Maybe we should stop bringing the kids around grandpa” barb to start this story about Gary Player wearing a Saudi Golf League logo during the ceremonial opening tee shots at the Masters and then his telling a reporter that Phil Mickelson is “being…Read more...

The avalanche started with the fifth pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Ja’Marr Chase from LSU, reuniting Chase with national-championship teammate and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow, Cincy’s selection with the No. 1 overall pick in 2020. Those were far from the only reasons the…Read more...

Brian Flores was never the only one. Now, it’s undeniable.

Led by Trae Young, the Atlanta Hawks began this season with more buzz than the city’s best lemon pepper wings. They were a quality young League Pass team who’d matured into an Eastern Conference heavyweight overnight. The 2021 postseason served as the setting for Young’s glow-up from empty calorie stat-sheet stuffer…Read more...

Everyone’s favorite time of the year is finally here. We’re just days away from the NBA’s Play-in Tournament as eight teams battle for the right to get their spines pulled from them in the first round. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the Play-in when it was first introduced. I thought it watered down the…Read more...

One of the headlines coming out of the NBA yesterday was Adam Silver’s lament that the league’s star players don’t actually dress for enough games during the regular season. This has been a grievance lodged by the media and fans for a while now, ever since the term “load management” entered the lexicon. At least…Read more...

It’s becoming routine at this point. A player is up for extension. Their team refuses to give them said extension. The player publicly airs their frustration over social media. Fans of said team go crazy and start spouting out wild theories and accusations. The two parties come to an agreement and then everybody…Read more...

MJ, please don’t do this.

An amendment to Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL was filed in the Southern District of New York Thursday, adding longtime NFL defensive coordinator Ray Horton and former Cardinals head coach Steve Wilks to the complaint.Read more...

And it all comes together. The biggest stories of the 2022 NFL offseason have converged into one massive, film-script-worthy storyline today as PFT’s Mike Florio reported that the Tom Brady-Dolphins rumors floating around were not, in fact, fake — but his retirement was.

Rules are meant to be broken. That’s the saying, isn’t it? Where there’s a boundary, it must be tested in order to push the limits of the sport you’re playing. That was hockey innovator Roger Neilson’s ideology when he was a professional coach. From 1977 to 2002, Neilson was a menace to NHL officials everywhere. He…Read more...

The Buffalo Bills were 13 seconds away from advancing to consecutive AFC championship games for the first time in 30 years. Then the Bills fell apart on defense, squandering the lead and eventually losing in overtime, 42-36, to the Kansas City Chiefs

Pacific time zone hockey tends to get ignored in the same fashion as west coast baseball. It’s hard to win an MVP or another award when your games are on at 9 and 10pm, as you’re cutting into hockey writers’ drinking time. You have to put on a world-class and ear-shattering whining campaign to get someone to notice.…Read more...

Perhaps the ink isn’t dry, but it sure feels like current Ajax manager Erik Ten Hag is going to be leaving for Old Trafford after this season. Which is funny as all the reports of his hiring started spilling out just hours after SI made it pretty clear that the Man United board wasn’t exactly blown away by his…Read more...

Sometimes, olive branches can be extended from unlikely sources.Read more...

The hard-cap struggles of the NFL. How to improve, but yet stay financially flexible. It’s a dance every team does every offseason, but it’s especially important for those with generational quarterbacks. Sure the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl, but I wouldn’t argue with anyone who…Read more...

I spend a lot of time here pointing out everything that’s wrong with baseball. Maybe even most of my time. And for good reason. Baseball is broken, and the latest CBA doesn’t do nearly enough to address the problems. And those who are in a position to do anything about it aren’t interested in doing so, because it…Read more...

When Billy Hoyle told Sidney Deane he’s hustled players a helluva lot better than him, I was skeptical. How many times can you show up to a pickup game and aww shucks your way into a wad of cash? Well after six rounds and thousands of votes, it seems the scheme is still humming along.

As of this past Saturday, we have officially entered the Jon Scheyer era in Duke basketball. A first-time head coach, hand-picked by Mike Krzyzewski as his successor, Scheyer has been rising the ranks as an assistant coach with the Blue Devils since 2013.

For those of you who were still awake when the Los Angeles Lakers sandcastle of a 2021-22 season finally washed away, we had a good time didn’t we? The jokes have been piling up all season with this new roster that improved on none of their weaknesses from last season and also had none of their strengths. Their…Read more...

While TV talking heads and sports scribes fixated on Coach K and UNC, it took until the second half of the national title game for most fans to notice that Kansas was in the Final Four. College basketball’s 2022 National Champion hid under the radar all season. Not only because the Jayhawks are a vanilla, efficient…Read more...

You don’t need sportswriters to tell you that the Dodgers are going to be better than the Diamondbacks this year. You already know that. At the same time, it feels wrong to go into the baseball season without looking ahead at it, without trying to gaze into a crystal ball to make some kind of picks.

With three games remaining for Boston, Philly, and Milwaukee, and the three teams all squared up at 49-30 for the two through four seeds, The Race Not to Finish Fourth in the East has massive implications on who plays Phoenix in the Finals, who wins the MVP, and who likely faces Toronto in round one and Miami in round…Read more...

Over the weekend, the NFL’s third all-time leading rusher Frank Gore announced his retirement after 16 seasons. From just that sentence alone, you’d probably think Gore is a surefire Hall of Famer. It shouldn’t matter that Gore only averaged more than five yards per carry once in his career (2006). It shouldn’t matter…Read more...

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about his frustrations with the “white moderate” when he was sitting in that Birmingham jail, he was talking about Pete Carroll.

A season that started out with so much hope in Los Angeles came to an end Tuesday night against the Lakers’ I-10 rivals, the Phoenix Suns, 121-110. The Lakers have three remaining games on the schedule, but the 11-point loss to the Suns eliminated LA from play-in contention. So, the Lakers have absolutely nothing left…Read more...

What an interesting offseason, huh?

The NFL has been trying to expand its appeal overseas for decades. They’ve had several games hosted in London. They’re set to have a game in Germany next season. A few years ago, they even partnered with Pro Football Focus, a football data analytics company that was founded in the UK. Still, they have not had the…Read more...

As another baseball season is about to descend upon us, there’s a scourge you must be aware of that is partially responsible for the state of MLB today. While the CBA was a small step toward progress, we still are dealing with far too many teams diving for the bottom without worrying about the water pressure, and even …Read more...

It’s been 25 years since Tiger Woods walked onto Augusta National and shocked the world with a record-breaking Masters win at the age of 21. It’s been three years since he won his comeback Masters, and just over one year since he was in a car accident that nearly killed him. The ability to walk again wasn’t assured…Read more...

It’s been a turbulent time in Dallas since their season ended at the hands of long-time rival San Francisco 49ers in January’s wildcard round debacle. Since then, the Cowboys have traded Amari Cooper, had Randy Gregory stolen right from under them, cut La’el Collins, and let wide receiver Cedrick Wilson walk away in…Read more...

A ghost was spotted at the Los Angeles Clippers’ practice yesterday afternoon.Read more...

At least for one night, I didn’t manage to motherfuck something. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers put on a hockey game dressed as Calvinball last night, with the Cats getting a 7-6 win in OT. It wasn’t even that simple, if a 7-6 game can ever be simple.

Congratulations to the Kansas University Jayhawks, the 2022 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champions! In a tournament defined by chaos, you kept a steady hand, being the only 1-seed to make it past the Sweet 16. You had the largest comeback in the history of the championship game, winning after being down by 16 points. Well…Read more...

In a sport where some stadiums still adjust the scoreboards by hand, it’s not surprising it took a massive sign-stealing scandal for the MLB to try technology. The league announced it will allow teams to use PitchCom this season, a device worn by catchers, pitchers, and a player or three that lets them signal pitches…Read more...

Find the nicest pocket square possible and stretch your pinky out for this year’s Masters Champions Dinner. Well, only if you own a green jacket. The ultra-exclusive meal with a menu chosen by the most recent green jacket winner, Hideki Matsuyama, features one of the most expensive proteins in the world. The…Read more...