2025-11-22 04:01:03
Soft tissues are having a moment. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr rang the bell on the tissue issue this week when he told ESPN's Anthony Slater that he is "very concerned" about the dangers inherent to the NBA's ascendant style of play. Shooting has warped the floor. Active, frantic defending is now required across all but a narrow band of space straddling the half-court line. To make matters worse, the game is once again getting faster: The league's average pace, a measure of possessions per 48 minutes, is presently at its highest level since 1989. Also, ESPN says that players are covering more distance and at higher speeds than at any other time in the tracking era, which goes back to 2013. The schedule is relentless, and the league now fines teams for what it considers ill-timed load management. These conditions, as Kerr sees it, are causing a breakdown of the important stretchy things found in human joints.
It cannot be denied that soft-tissue injuries are rampant, and it is only mid-November. Eight teams played games Thursday night, and every one of them came in mangled by injuries to key players. In Orlando, the Clippers brought a team featuring James Harden but missing Kawhi Leonard to face, and to lose to, a Magic squad waiting for the return of Paolo Banchero. Leonard, who due to injuries has been functionally a part-time NBA player since 2017, has been out since Nov. 3 with foot and ankle troubles. The Clippers were 3–3 during his brief brush with good health, and they are 1–8 without him. Banchero, the only player on the Magic roster to ever have made an All-Star team, has now missed four straight games with a groin injury; head coach Jamahl Mosley declined Thursday to even provide a loose timeline for his recovery.
2025-11-22 02:56:14
At this juncture of the baseball offseason, trade rumors are broadly wishful fantasies for Yankees fans. I know this because yesterday, Barry Petchesky dropped a tweet in Slack from a Yankees fan account that read, "Would you rather trade for Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal?" According to a report that reads faintly like Yankees fanfiction, Skenes had told his Pirates teammates that he always wanted to be a Yankee. (He later denied this report after winning the National League Cy Young award.) Skubal has no such report regarding the siren call of New York City; he is, however, the American League Cy Young winner, has just one year left on his existing contract, and has failed to reach agreement on an extension with Detroit Tigers management. And thus, let the trade packages be proposed.
There are some truths here that may or may not mitigate ill will toward the Tigers front office: Skubal is newly 29 (happy birthday to Tarik Skubal!); by the time he starts his next contract, he will be 30. Despite his age and injury history, he has won back-to-back AL Cy Young awards, and goes about the sport the right way, i.e. by barely walking batters. He is also a client of Scott Boras, whose clients historically go to free agency rather than signing extensions, to give themselves maximum leverage in negotiations. Whatever the Tigers have offered Skubal for an extension, it wasn't enough to avert an inevitable-seeming free agency outcome.
2025-11-22 02:22:51
On Thursday afternoon, the WorldTour cycling team formerly known as Israel–Premier Tech unveiled its new form: NSN Cycling Team, which will be licensed out of Switzerland and based in Spain. A few short months after its presence at the Vuelta a España incited fierce protests, the IPT project has unraveled. According to reports, IPT's cantankerous owner, Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, is out of the sport.
What will replace IPT? NSN, short for "Never Say Never," is an "international sports and entertainment company" based in Barcelona and co-founded by Catalonian soccer legend Andres Iniesta; its official website boasts that it is positioned on "a global cross-cutting axis between Barcelona, Tokyo, Mexico City, and Emirates," whatever that means. Though only NSN's name will be on the jerseys, the cycling team is a partnership between NSN and Stoneweg, a Swiss money-management outfit with some €11 billion in assets. NSN also owns the Danish soccer team FC Helsingør—currently in last place in the Danish second division, with seven points from 16 matches—and the gravel bike brand Guava; the cycling team instantly becomes the company's biggest and most prominent venture to date. NSN's logo looks like the Nine Inch Nails logo.
2025-11-22 00:21:41
I started running when I was 14. After many years of playing recreational soccer, I realized that I did not have the skills to compete on the high school level against girls who had played on club teams their whole lives. The older kids in my neighborhood ran cross country and they encouraged me to join. I had played midfield in soccer, a position that demands nearly constant running, so I’d built up a strong stamina. Stripped of competitive trappings and bare of any other purpose, I discovered what it felt like to enter a dialogue with my own body. Any runner will tell you that while yes, competition technically does exist, the real race is mental, a battle to decide which self will govern you that day.
Running, which had previously felt like a punishment or a chore, became its own wonderful reward. Like any drug, my relationship with running is primarily about chasing the last, best high, and the favorite highs I can remember always seemed to hit in the early autumn.
2025-11-21 23:50:45
This piece was originally published on FOIAball, a publication covering college football programs using this country’s robust Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws. They are doing great work, so if you like this story, please consider becoming a FOIAball subscriber.
2025-11-21 23:16:17
Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.
Ray: Not to keep both of you in suspense, but Oberlin finished its season 0-10, losing the final game to Ohio Wesleyan, 35-0, and the season by an average score of 57-5. They remain “Our Beloved Yeomen,” in part because they didn’t go the sleazy route and fire head coach John Pont like their wealthier ingrates (FBS schools), but along the way we gave short shrift—well, no shrift at all, to be fair—to Sul Ross State, which went 0-11 and was outscored 666-129 in the Division II Lone Star Conference. The Lobos did their damnedest, but they scored 16 touchdowns to Oberlin’s seven in a tougher conference (we assume), so we are still Go Yeo, and looking forward to bigger and better things next year, whatever they are.
