2026-03-24 03:58:48
In what could be filed under a statistically unlikely outcome, Carlos Alcaraz suffered his second loss in three matches. The world No. 1 was upset Sunday in the third round of the Miami Open by Sebastian Korda, who once looked to be one of the top prospects of the current American generation. In that 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 victory, Korda served for the match in the second set and flinched, making three untimely errors, but in the deciding set the world No. 36 managed to complete arguably the toughest task in men's tennis.
Along the way to his win, Korda flexed the muscle that made him such an appealing talent in the first place: his ability to stand on top of the baseline and take every ball on the rise, with clean contact on both wings. He's a gifted ball-striker, and once you add in some superb spot serving, that's a difficult opponent to beat. This wasn't the erratic Carlitos that sporadically rears its head in moments of burnout; Alcaraz played a focused match and fought back from the cusp of defeat. The 25-year-old Korda simply played the best match of his career.
2026-03-24 03:45:29
When Connor McDavid speaks, Edmonton listens, because, well, who else is there? The man wasn't nicknamed McJesus for his knowledge of canonical law.
Thus, when he was asked after the latest Oilers' sack-fouling, a 5-2 home loss to Tampa Bay on Saturday, the two-time Stanley Cup finalist and no-time Stanley Cup champion went for subtle condemnation of his division. Depending on whose interpretation you choose to embrace, he also may have quietly groined his own team and its coach. We hesitate to be more definitive because even the ultra-polite Canadian soul gets very snippy in public when the local hockey team is disappointing the customers.
But McDavid used the entire wretched Pacific Division as cover for his own team's current run of walking, and it is a very stylish way of saying, "We stink, too."
2026-03-24 02:42:08
The beauty and tragedy of taking part in a great crowd pop is that you had to be there. The TV sound mixers will not do it justice, nor will that guy who filmed the whole thing on his busted iPhone. The YouTube video you’ll pull up years later, trying to remember the moment, will only underwhelm you in relation to the real thing. (You don't understand: I swear this Tim Hardaway Jr. three prompted the loudest reaction in the history of professional sports. I SWEAR!)
So here's the highest praise I can bestow on a highlight: The game-winning shot that sent fourth-seeded Minnesota to the Sweet 16 on Sunday caused such pandemonium that even the sound-mixed, through-a-screen YouTube version of it absolutely rules. Look at the cameras shake!
2026-03-24 02:04:05
The second government shutdown of the year, this one affecting only the Department of Homeland Security, went into effect on Feb. 14. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are still being funded by last year's One Big Beautiful Bill, and FEMA and the Coast Guard have funds to pay employees for several months, the Transportation Security Administration is shit out of luck.
Last week, TSA agents missed their first full paychecks. Some employees are still at work, with the promise of back pay when the shutdown ends. But others can't or won't forego paychecks. Hundreds have quit the agency over the last month, and others are just not coming in—more than half of TSA agents at one Houston airport called out sick this weekend, and more than a third in Atlanta.
2026-03-24 01:04:52
Ahead of Sunday's relegation melee between the visiting Nottingham Forest and hosting Tottenham Hotspur, a key match in the fight for Premier League survival, Tottenham fans went all-out for their side, rolling up to the streets of North London and making the whole thing feel like a trophy parade. There were flares, chants, and nervous excitement, as Spurs headed into a home match against the team directly below it in the relegation battle. It was quite a sight to behold:
And then, Tottenham had to play the game. How did that go?
2026-03-23 23:41:06
It wasn’t much of one, truth be told. It had little range. It was erratic, as all my attempts at prime athletic achievements were. It was not as erratic as my long-iron play, and only a little more erratic than my four-parry with an epee. It was deadliest from straight-on, since I did all my early work with it in my parents’ driveway, when I wasn’t turning my ankle on the raised edges of the driveway’s asphalt. And I realize now that I did more intensive work on my jump shot for a longer period of time than I have worked on anything else in my life.
It began when I abandoned my two-handed set shot, and my two-handed set shot was a weapon. If I had come up in the 1930s, I’d have been something else, boy. I learned its basics out of an old book by Nat Holman, the coach who led City College of New York to both the NCAA and NIT championships in the same year. However, on Feb. 18, 1951, three of Holman’s players—Ed Roman, Ed Warner, and Al Roth—were busted in Penn Station as they returned from a game at Temple in Philadelphia. The CCNY players were the centerpiece of the whopping point-shaving scandal that almost ruined college basketball in New York. District Attorney Frank Hogan set off one explosion after another, ranging as far as Bradley University in Illinois and, most spectacularly, as far as the University of Kentucky, where Adolph Rupp, the lordly racist coach of the Wildcats, bragged that New York bookmakers couldn’t touch his group of noble Caucasian youths. Hogan proved him wrong, arresting several members of Rupp’s most recent NCAA championship teams, including stars Alex Groza and Ralph Beard.
(That Kentucky team, including Groza and Beard, had been the heart of the 1948 U.S. Olympic team in London, where it is not difficult to find bookmakers. The U.S. went 8-0, and won seven of those games by an average of 36 points per game. However, they only squeaked past Argentina, 59-57. I’ve always wondered about that game.)
