Month: October 2024

It’s been almost a year since Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett ripped off the helmet of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph and began to clobber him with it into the turf. Garrett, Steelers Maurkice Pouncey, and Browns David DeCastro were all ejected. Garrett’s hit on Rudolph came with less than 10 seconds left in the game, and it caused a media frenzy. Sunday will be the first time the Steelers will face the Browns with Garrett active since the incident. Let us all never forget that, while Garrett’s repulsive behavior was unexpected, the event began a reflective analysis about how crappy 2019 was going (Little did we know…). It all seems nostalgic now. We were eagerly waiting for 2020 to arrive, thinking, “2020 HAS to be better.” Meanwhile now we kn…

The National Basketball Players Association had two choices heading into the 2016 offseason regarding the salary cap, which was due to spike dramatically on account of a huge revenue influx: Smooth out the cap and increase it incrementally over the course of several years, or take it all in one lump sum. The union chose the latter, and the NBA is still dealing with the aftermath of that decision. With that, the cap jumped from $70 million to a whopping $94 million for the 2016-17 season, by far the largest single jump in NBA history. That gave teams a whole lot of money to make a whole lot of dumb decisions, like signing Evan Turner for four years and $75 million; Timofey Mozgov for four years and $65 million; Matthew Dellavedova for four years and $38 million; and so on. That inflate…

Yes, many people are already writing their Top 10 movie lists for
2013. We're saving ours for the last week of the year. While we wait
for this terrific movie year to wind down, we're going to start
looking back at some highlights. Today, it's our favorite individual
scenes. Grierson: The opening shot of Gravity When Sandra Bullock appeared
on in early
October to promote Gravity, Jon
Stewart (who loved the movie) made one thing clear from the beginning of their
interview. "I don't want to know how you made it," he told her, and even when
Bullock began explaining the amount of painstaking effects work that went into
the sci-fi disaster movie, he cut her off. "You were in space," he insisted. "You
were in space." It's a complime…

For those who don't really enjoy scrolling through Baseball Reference spreadsheets, there are some great artists and analysts out there constantly developing new ways to elegantly present the data of sports. Below are the 10 best sports infographics/data visualizations from 2012, in approximate order of publication. The Rise And Fall Of Scoring In Baseball Craig Robinson of Flip Flop Flyin' did a lot of great work in 2012, but his best may be the graphic (partially) shown above, which he created for the Smithsonian. Follow how run scoring changed through 141 years of baseball history, with the effects laid bare of outlawing spitballs, lowering the pitching mound, and adding the designated hitter. Where The Heat And The Thunder Hit Their Shots What could a geography prof…

Mike Wise is a sports columnist for the Washington Post, which means he has to write about bad teams and bad executives and bad coaches and bad players. (He's perhaps best known around these parts for a high-profile Twitter stunt in 2010, in which he made up news about Ben Roethlisberger's impending suspension.) And when one writes for a living about terrible sports, one is presumably bound to double back on one's work at one point or another. All that said, it shouldn't be this obvious. Here's Wise in January 2008, writing about the head coaching vacancy that eventually went to Jim Zorn (emphasis ours): Gregg Williams is the best candidate to coach this team—not Bill Cowher or Pete Carroll or any other prominent name thrown about by misguided souls who beli…

data-mm-id=”_fj6joar9k”>The Los Angeles Chargers could be on the move again. Thanks to the abject disaster that is their move to Los Angeles, the league has reportedly discussed shipping the franchise to London as the NFL's first international franchise. And the Chargers are listening. The Athletic's Vincent Bonsignore — who has long defended the Chargers' move to Los Angeles — broke a bombshell story Monday night. In it, Bonsignore claims the rest of the league would be happy if the Chargers were out of LA because of the franchise's struggles. As a result, London might be the team's lifeline.”Finally, The Athletic has learned that NFL owners are concerned enough about the Chargers’ situation in L.A., where a crowded sports market and the presence of the mo…

data-mm-id=”_c5xe8qur”>In news that is not entirely surprising, Darren Rovell got worked up on Twitter last night over a photograph. Rovell tweeted two pictures of the seats at Staples Center ahead of the first Lakers game following the Kobe Bryant tragedy. Rovell did not take the photo, and credited the USA Today photographer who did, Sandy Hooper. Hooper told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he wanted to use their pictures, he should subscribe to the service or simply retweet Hooper. Rovell did not take kindly to this suggestion. Here's the initial tweet and following exchange: He did Sandy, He did.. pic.twitter.com/KMJRWOoQNQ— Patrick Highley (@TheRealHighley) January 31, 2020Wait are you serious? You want me to delete it? Would be glad to. Our organization licensed USA To…

data-mm-id=”_qrrcwx1ny”>ESPN's upcoming Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, would have been hyped up to nearly unbelievable levels in the best of times. Right now, with all sports on hold in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, it may very well be the most-watched ESPN documentary of all time by the time it's all said and done. I'd even consider that likely. Ahead of Sunday's debut episode, Ramona Shelburne penned a tell-all piece explaining just how the documentary came to be. It's filled with a ton of interesting tidbits; Adam Silver, now the commissioner, was the man in charge of convincing Jordan and Phil Jackson to allow a film crew access to the team's 1997-98 season, and only convinced Jordan because he told MJ the footage would o…

data-mm-id=”_swfyxiteh”>Shaquille O'Neal did an interview with Extra and talked about the NBA bubble. Shaq said that the lack of fans could be an advantage for some, but noted that he once played his best game because he saw Halle Berry in the crowd. Let's check that fact. Shaq says that the game was "at the Knicks." According to Basketball-Reference, Shaq only had two games where he scored more than 40 at Madison Square Garden in his career. In 1994 he had 41 points and 17 rebounds in a Magic loss to the Knicks. Then in March 2000 he had 43 and 10 in a Lakers win. Unfortunately for this story, neither of those games would qualify as his "best game." Shaq had two other games against the Knicks where he put up 40+ in Orlando and one in Los Angeles. The one …