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“Grantland East” – Rembert Browne

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

Decked out in a red flannel shirt, the kind that suggests a casual work environment, Juliet Litman enthusiastically welcomed her congregation, a throng of young dudes, mostly white, with a few willing and able women scattered about. These parishioners had come to Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, site of the Madden lectures a little over a month prior, to pay final respects to the most important sports blog ever, the recently-deceased standard for longform pop journalism and the sort of offbeat topics you concoct in your dorm lounge late one night after several too many adult beverages. This was the Grantland wake.

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Well, that was embarrassing.

After touting my skills as a gambling picker to the collective consciousness of the Internet, Sunday proved me a fool to anyone who was paying attention. By all accounts, last Sunday was the worst gambling day of my life. Beyond my 0-5 performance in the Hypothetical SuperContest, I went 3-12 against the spread in my weekly picks league, worse than any week I’ve had in the past two years. Thankfully, as a fairly reformed actual gambler, my monetary losses were kept to a minimum, save for three fairly small bets I had my sister place for me in Vegas during the preseason, (sorry about the losses Russell, I’ll get you back when I can).

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The New York Rangers shake hands with the Tampa Bay Lightning after the Lighting defeated the Ranges by a score of 2-0 in Game Seven of the Eastern Conference Finals during the 2015 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at Madison Square Garden on May 29, 2015 in New York City.

Elsa / Getty Images

You cannot win if you do not score. In any sport, under any circumstances, that is how it goes. You can have the greatest defensive scheme with the most possession ever, and the best you would ever manage without scoring is a draw. The New York Rangers will not be returning to the Stanley Cup Finals for the second consecutive year. Their All-Star, all-world, all-universe, all-Jill Pellegrini goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, will again go into the offseason without a Cup to his name, or more appropriately without his name on the Cup, the one honor that eludes him and the one which allows anyone else into the conversation of best goalie of this generation. No, the Tampa Bay Lightning make their return to the Finals, over a decade since they won their only Cup, to face the Chicago Blackhawks, and not a tear is to be shed for New York. Sympathy is the devil there.

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SONY DSC

Happy New Year, ladies and gentleman of the NBA-watching populous. It’s that time of year again, when we use the descent of a magical disco ball in New York City as a metaphor for new beginnings.

We celebrate with copious amounts of alcohol and kisses at midnight. But New Year’s is really all about turning a new page. It’s an arbitrary day to do so, but plenty of things in life are arbitrary. So why not decide to improve your life the same day you hang a new calendar in your kitchen?

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Courtesy of Grantland

Courtesy of Grantland

Happy Holidays, from all of us to all of you. For Christmas, we got you a ridiculous (and also kind of practical) draft proposal to phase out the lottery and engender a culture of parity in the NBA. The New York Knicks winning the Patrick Ewing sweepstakes in 1985 and, more recently, the New Orleans Hornets being given the #1 pick in a rigged lottery process gaining the rights to Anthony Davis are two examples of a system which has caused much controversy since its implementation almost thirty years ago: the NBA draft lottery. One team executive has proposed a new system which, proponents claim, would eliminate the temptation of tanking. Meanwhile, Atlanta becomes the third team in the Eastern Conference to break .500, and the Charlotte Bobnets are ever closer to returning the Buzz to the Queen City.

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ESPN Retweet

It’s been a big week for me. OutKast is reuniting. The video for “Bound 2” was released. And, as you can see above, I got a retweet from ESPN. It was amazingly exciting, with RTs and favorites pouring into my feed like never before. There were 7.5 million strangers out there in the world following ESPN who could potentially be reading a joke I had carefully groomed to come in at less than 140 characters. I gained 32 new followers and have only lost one of them since. I even got some replies from Giants fans who wanted to yell at me. I decided that I might try to capitalize on this moment of attention, sending one more tweet to ESPN. Read More