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Quinn Meinerz gives us all belly laughs — literally

People have been calling Andrew Wiggins a bust for what feels like forever.

Rookie mini-camp is an exciting time for all involved. It gives the new guys their first opportunity to strut their stuff in front of their coaches and teammates. Plus, it gives football-hungry fans something to talk about for a little over a week until we inevitably realize that the NFL season is still multiple…Read more...

Today, Frank Gore is another year older. At a spry (by NFL standards) 38 years old, he’s at the age when he’s outlasting quarterbacks, which is just not something running backs get to do.

The Minnesota Twins probably weren’t expecting to be where they currently sit heading into this season. Minnesota reached the playoffs in three of the last four seasons, and were looking to return once again in 2021 in the hopes of actually winning a playoff series for the first time since 2003. So far though — 35…Read more...

You gotta respect your O.G.s.

“I take an inhaler before the game since I’ve tested positive.”

Udonis Haslem might have authored one of the best send-offs in team sports history last night.

The NFL season is still four months away, but with the draft, the schedule release, and most of free agency in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to start looking forward to a season with lots of storylines to follow, more games than ever before, and fewer preseason games than ever before (three is still too many…Read more...

So they finally agree on something?

The Chicago Bears have their quarterback of the future in Justin Fields. Nobody really questions that. I certainly don’t. However, the question remains — how long before he takes over, and are the Bears even capable of effectively developing a quarterback?

This NBA season has brought a fresh energy to the regular season. The new Play-In Tournament and the rise of new teams to prominence (the Knicks are good now, wut?!) have made this one of the most compelling NBA regular seasons in recent memory.

Look at what it takes to get a seat at the table.

The Buffalo Bills’ cheerleaders, the Jills, have been at the forefront of the fight for fair wages and treatment in their craft for years. Their cause has been the focus of lawsuits and a documentary film. Now, the legislature in New York State is picking up the cause.Read more...

There is unavoidable, though sickening, symmetry in the news coming out of the hockey world today. And there’s a good chance that the NHL will try to avoid commenting on any of it, hiding behind the “open litigation” shield as most organizations do. But it’s the silence and the hope it all goes away that keeps landing…Read more...

Move over LaVar Ball, there’s a new MPP “most problematic parent” in sports, and her son hasn’t even taken a snap in the NFL yet.Read more...

The Portland Trail Blazers are coming into the NBA playoffs on fire, in NBA Jam terms.

After being sidelined for more than a month, James Harden returned to the Nets lineup on Wednesday night as he came off the bench to score 18 points, dish out 11 assists, and grab 7 rebounds in a 128-116 victory over the Spurs.Read more...

Football people are weird people, because we get giddy over something as simple as a schedule release. That giddy feeling happened last night, as the NFL (and it’s teams’ social media departments) released their full 18-week slate for the upcoming season, which will be the first in which every team plays 17 regular…Read more...

You ever heard of a “Temp to Hire?” That’s what Victor Oladipo is with the Miami Heat.

An NCAA Women’s Division I golf regional in Louisiana was canceled yesterday before any college athlete could tee off.Read more...

I don’t mean to turn this into “Chicago Controversies This Morning,” but it just so happened that another pretty gross story broke out of these parts last night:

It’s still a week where some states’ proposals to “placate” athletes’ desire to be compensated for their work and likeness still involve schools poaching 75 percent of said athletes’ income from such things. But still, it’s fun and satisfying to mark when a school has to take a step back, admit it was wrong, and a few…Read more...

Thanks to the haphazard scheduling of this NHL season and the need to make up games lost to COVID protocols and the virus itself, it’s hard to mark exactly when the season ends for a lot of fans. Some teams are already in the barn, while others still have a handful of games to go. Which leads to pretty hilarious…Read more...

Trainer Bob Baffert’s horse, Medina Spirit, who won the Kentucky Derby on May 1, tested positive for a banned substance. Apparently, according to Baffert, this happened because one of the groomers decided to take a piss on the hay in the horse’s stall after taking cough medicine, and the horse consumed it. This seems…Read more...

The pandemic soccer season hasn’t thrown up a lot of drama across Europe. Either alongside or because of the oppressive schedule, which has led to exhausted players and pretty wretched games at various times, we’ve mostly gotten title processions instead of races. Bayern Munich sauntered to a ninth-straight Bundesliga…Read more...

They say all rappers want to be hoopers, and all hoopers want to be rappers.Read more...

This isn’t a column about Luka Dončić. But it is about how Luka Dončić is covered.

Only one horse has been disqualified for a drug test after winning the Kentucky Derby. That happened in 1968, when Dancer’s Image was DQ’d for testing positive for a banned anti-inflammatory. But Forward Pass, who finished in second was not declared the official winner until 1972.Read more...

You smell that?

Baseball can’t have anything nice. Jacob deGrom, who was doing his best impression of Bob Gibson circa 1968 so far this year, had to leave his start yesterday with discomfort in his side. This was just days after he had a start pushed back because of discomfort in his lat. We don’t know if it’s serious, and it might…Read more...

Not that the question needs answering. We all know. They haven’t been about the athletes for long before we were born. And now it couldn’t be clearer that they’re not for fans either.

DK Metcalf was not supposed to earn himself a shot at Olympic glory by winning today’s 100-meter qualifier event.Read more...

We need to push pause on the Tom Thibodeau slander.Read more...

You have to ask if there’s anything left of horse racing to kill. Perhaps it’s entrenched so deeply into irrelevance, outside of four or five days a year, that just about nothing can make it worse. This is an industry basically surviving on the courtesy of state governments, really.Read more...

“Safe is death.”

The Washington Wizards are nothing to play with.

Buzzer beaters never get old, do they?Read more...

For more than half a century, Oscar Robertson stood alone in NBA history, his 1961-62 campaign representing the only time anyone averaged a triple-double for a full season.

Sometimes, instant replay is a real drag. It takes forever to review some minor call that doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway, the flow of the game is broken, and you wonder if we’d be better off without it, even if sometimes bad calls do get corrected, because even though they do, a lot of bad calls still…Read more...

None of the athletes we talk about would be where they are without their mothers, so to commemorate, here’s a list to honor some of the most memorable mom moments in sports history. It’s not necessarily a top 10, but a collection of highlights (and yes, one lowlight) to honor Mother’s Day 2021.Read more...

When Day 1 of the 2021 NFL Draft concluded, several first-round talents had yet to be taken. Many viewers were shocked to see names like Asante Samuel Jr., Teven Jenkins, Trevon Moehrig, Jevon Holland, Christian Barmore, and Levi Onwuzurike still available after 32 picks. However, the most notable exception from the…Read more...

The University of Hartford men’s basketball team set a new standard for the university in 2021, earning the program’s first ever March Madness tournament bid. Despite losing to eventual tournament champion Baylor in the first round, the ground-breaking achievement was celebrated by the entire Hartford community.

Shane McMahon uses the Naughty by Nature song “Here Comes the Money” as his WWE entrance theme, and, well, his enthusiastic dance to it does fit how it feels to see the NCAA finally coming to terms with the fact that it cannot grab every last dollar associated with college sports.

If you think finding love is difficult, you’re not the only one. A sports YouTube personality had every notable sports team in his home state of Arizona working together to help him get the girl, and still...true love was not to be.Read more...

Finally, an actual boxing match.Read more...

David Griffin can expect to find himself writing a check to the NBA after the Pelicans executive blasted the league over the lack of calls for Zion Williamson in the paint, now that the star big man will be out indefinitely with a broken finger.Read more...

Francisco Lindor is definitely telling a true story that half the Mets rushed up the tunnel from the dugout to see him and Jeff McNeil were arguing about whether there was a rat or a raccoon roaming the bowels of Citi Field.

The White Sox will not be adding Albert Pujols to their lineup, Chicago manager Tony La Russa said on Friday.

Sports people are weird — myself included. We love our stats and our oddities, and our trends and our records. Something that will speak to the hearts of sports fanatics everywhere is a lovely confluence of memorable events that all happened on this very day.Read more...