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Tag Archives: Sports

Cleveland Rocks

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June 20, 2016
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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OAKLAND, CA - JUNE 19: LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers holds the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy after defeating the Golden State Warriors 93-89 in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals at ORACLE Arena on June 19, 2016 in Oakland, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Photo: Ronald Martinez, Getty Images / 2016 Getty Images

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

At some point, somebody was going to hit a bucket. Tied 89-89 for what felt like several eternities, because playoff fourth quarters contain multitudes, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors kept hurling rocks at windows several stories above, waiting for the sound of shattered glass. When Kyrie Irving finally shattered that glass to put the Cavs up 92-89, a pin dropping in Oracle Arena would’ve registered many more decibels.

LeBron going down with an apparent injury with just over ten seconds left gave him one more opportunity to lift up a city against the odds, but he’d done that all series. The first missed free throw was vaguely Starks-esque in its presumed defeatism, but then, defeatism doesn’t get you anywhere when you’re trying to win, and it doesn’t seem likely that anybody has ever tried to win harder than LeBron was trying to win Game 7. He did, as we know, and now he is a champion as a Cleveland Cavalier, for the first time and for all time.

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Heavy is the Head

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June 14, 2016
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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Filed under “nothing we don’t already know,” playing with emotions is tricky[1]. At a turn, it looks like Russell Westbrook punching through a brick wall of defenders at light speed, a grass-fed Novak Djokovic urging the crowd to get behind him or Mark Messier shouldering the weight of a cursed franchise, as well as his own guarantee. It looks like Chris Paul scoring 61 points for his grandfather, or Brett Favre throwing for four touchdowns on Monday Night Football. It also looks like Russian hooligans bringing their country’s soccer team to the edge of disqualification at Euro 2016 over fits of violence with other fans and the police.

In Game 5 of the NBA Finals, we saw two facets of this imponderably massive spectrum. Draymond Green’s inevitable suspension for extracurricular activity gave rise to stellar performances from the four biggest stars in Oracle Arena, as LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson dared each other into the best game of the series thus far. Whether this acts as fuel to Cleveland’s fire or simply delays the inevitable made it an altogether more compelling spectacle.

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Mondays With Grantland

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November 25, 2015
America, Basketball, College Football, Movies, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Sports, Television
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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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welcome to madden nfl monday

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October 14, 2015
America, NFL, Sports
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Photo by Rory Masterson

Madden NFL‘s worst nightmare and greatest hope: Jon Bois.

Moving back to what LinkedIn refers to as “the greater New York City area” (read: Hoboken, New Jersey) affords one many luxuries not readily available in other parts of the country. Chief among them are actual bagels, the eternal winter and nightly concerts including bands you’ve never heard of in Brooklyn. One of the underrated aspects of the city, however, is the availability of free events featuring fairly prominent public figures at which you might learn a thing or two about a thing or two. When I learned that three of today’s most important Internet sports writers were gathering at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village to discuss the acclaimed Madden NFL video game series, naturally I had to attend.

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How To Spend A Day With The Stanley Cup

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June 18, 2015
Hockey
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The Stanley Cup is the greatest trophy in all of sports, and if you disagree, you’re wrong. It’s just a fact, you’re not allowed to have an opinion on this.

Part of what creates this aura around the Cup is that when you win it, you don’t keep it. You borrow it for awhile, and if you want to hang on to it, you have to win it again. As a player, you only get one day to hang out on your own with the Cup, so you better make it worth it.

One day doesn’t seem like a ton of time, because it isn’t. But I started thinking about this after the Blackhawks won the other night (third Cup in six years, dynasty, etc. etc. etc.). There are like, seven guys on that roster who have been around for all three. How do they keep coming up with things to do with the Cup? There is only so much you can do with a 35-pound trophy, only so many things you can eat out of the bowl on top, does it ever get boring? (The answer is obviously no, winning the Stanley Cup is never boring, it is always the most awesome thing to ever happen, STUPID question).

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True Grit

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May 19, 2015
Basketball, NBA
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Houston Rockets guard Pablo Prigioni steals the ball from Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin in Game 7 of the NBA basketball Western Conference semifinals on May 17, 2015.

AP Photo/David J. Phillip

The image of the gunslinger is one of classic American lore. A grizzled veteran of saloon shootouts and vigilante justice, he walks with a distinct swagger and carries himself with pride, knowing he is merely a poker game gone awry from coming face to face with his demise.

It seems that gunslingers will always dictate the history of the West. The barroom brawl that just concluded in Houston has left one team dazed and the other unfazed.

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A Modest Proposal

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August 26, 2014
NFL, Sports
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sam-bradford-8-of-the-st-louis-rams

On Saturday night, the St. Louis Rams lost their starting quarterback and implicit hero of the future, Sam Bradford, to a season-ending injury in a preseason game against, of all teams, the Cleveland Browns. Because of a 2012 trade involving draft picks which allowed Washington to select Robert Griffin III (himself no stranger to the infirmary), the Rams are essentially left without a Plan B outside of 34-year-old former Amsterdam Admiral Shaun Hill. For what it’s worth, St. Louis has expressed interest in acquiring Mark Sanchez from the Philadelphia Eagles, but you won’t see any positive letters of recommendation from this writer.

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The Hypothetical SuperContest – Week 4

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September 28, 2013
NFL, Sports
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Russell Wilson Looks Good

It had to happen.

I was not going to go the whole season without a losing week. To be honest, I eked out a 2-3 last week; I pick every game in a semi-legal picks-against-the-spread contest with some friends and went a dismal 5-11 overall. I was lucky to go 2-3.

But I will persevere. I have made it through worse than this. I sat through Transformers 3 in its entirety in theaters. I survived both the Bronx and North Philadelphia. Hell, I was dumped at an amusement park once. I have lived through pain; 2-3 won’t bring me down.

I am looking at this in the same way that I try to look at those previous struggles. I need to learn from my mistakes, bad sequels and cruel women. So what can I learn from last week’s 2-3?

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The Hypothetical SuperContest – Week 2

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September 13, 2013
NFL, Sports
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michael_vick_eagles610x

One week into the SuperContest, and I don’t hate myself yet. Oh man, it feels like it’s going to be a good year.

After starting out 3-2, I am currently hypothetically in the upper half of the table (!) and in good standing to move forward in my hypothetical gambling. You may think that it’s easy to pick five games a week and come out looking like a champion, but let me give you some perspective: This past week, only 3 people went 5-0 on their picks, 58 went 0-5. Read More

Purple Reign – Take Me with U

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August 6, 2013
Soccer, Sports
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Egon Schiele - Agony

Egon Schiele – Agony

“You can’t win ’em all,” so the adage goes. While the application of this saying has extended to the subjects of romance, academic pursuit, flying standby at the airport and khaki sales at Kohl’s, it is safe to assume that the most practical sense in which someone can say this to a fellow human being occurs when engaging in sport. You hear it all the time, and no matter how diluted those words can become, they still retain truth, and the truth behind them is difficult to accept when you have spent the majority of an athletic season buffered by a sense of invincibility. Read More