2024-11-23 02:26:19
It's fun to speculate about bad team chemistry. Sometimes the sideline body language is revealing enough. Sometimes you get an uncharacteristically detailed and cogent Shams Charania report, like the one the Sixers suffered last week. Sometimes you can figure it out in the circuitous sentences of beat reporters, who are too polite or compromised to say it outright. And sometimes it can be deduced from the mere presence of Rudy Gobert, a man so unpopular among his colleagues that ESPN tried to learn why at feature length. Even as the team around him has changed, Gobert is still Gobert, with charisma about as strong as his low-post repertoire.
This offseason's trade between the Knicks and Wolves was, in some ways, trading like for like. One offensively gifted, sporadically infuriating big man was swapped for another, Julius Randle to Minnesota and Karl-Anthony Towns to New York. All things considered, the Towns-Gobert pairing was a pretty successful experiment, schematically and interpersonally. But Randle is a bit more dour than the man he was replacing. Gobert-Randle had tremendous grump-on-grump potential, and we're starting to see it, eight wins and seven losses into a Wolves campaign against a very soft slate of opponents.
2024-11-23 02:01:41
Looks like Adam Silver is out there again, tinkering away and trying to fix that rusted out old heap in the driveway that hasn't run right in years and has a wasp hive nestled against the drivetrain after years of inactivity. In other words, he's messing around with the All-Star Game.
Credit to him for trying, anyway. Silver is nothing if not persistent, and at his pay grade as commissioner of your National Basketball Association, he'd damned well better be. He is already being given credit for the largely illusory benefits of the in-season tournament, which is mostly just a tribute to schedule manipulation (good games between good teams are always that, Emirates branding be damned), some gym floor murals by 12-year-olds with an unlimited supply of spray paint, and a trophy nobody has any particular attachment to. But Silver does understand that customers will buy anything they can be fooled into thinking is worth the attention span. The challenge, where the All-Star Game is concerned, is that no one is fooled.
2024-11-23 00:18:24
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — You're probably going to have a good time at the independent wrestling show.
Just a few small things need to go your way: It shouldn't be longer than three hours; the matches should have a decent pace to them; the venue should have air conditioning; and the largest, sweatiest, most obnoxious men should avoid standing directly in front of you. Nail all these parts, and I can almost guarantee you that something will click. Maybe the entrances will remind you of a drag show. Maybe the flips will take your breath away. Maybe you'll love trying to decipher the inner workings of the performance. Maybe you'll really like gawking at shirtless men from so close.
2024-11-22 23:55:25
The chess world championship title goes on the line once again starting this Monday, where the incumbent Ding Liren will face off against the challenger Gukesh D for the highest title in chess! Playing 14 head-to-head games in Singapore over two and a half weeks, Ding is looking to correct his post-title form slump, while Gukesh could become the 18th world chess champion at just 18 years of age.
The chess is back! Let’s go!
2024-11-22 23:07:13
As fans in America, it's important to remain grateful for the ease with which we can indulge a truly gluttonous appetite for elite soccer, our consumption unshackled from the regional restrictions, splintered broadcast rights, and timezone issues that make it much more difficult for everyone else to watch as much of the best teams and leagues as we can. That being said, I do regret the fact that it's recently become a lot harder to keep up with the international game stateside.
For a couple years now I've spent most midseason international breaks spotting tasty UEFA Nations League matchups and CONMEBOL World Cup Qualifiers on the schedule, only to learn that watching them would require expanding my already bloated streaming service subscriptions to divorce-threatening levels. I'm about as motivated a soccer fan as there is, and yet even I refuse to stump up for the Fubos and Vixes and Fox Soccer Pluses of the world, especially when you can't even rely on those services to air every match in the competitions they have the rights to. It's gotten to the point where I've now all but given up even thinking about catching non-tournament national team games.
