A winner says, 'What's the best way to do it?' A loser says, 'That's the way we've always done it.' | | | | The King slams.
(Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “A winner says, 'What's the best way to do it?' A loser says, 'That's the way we've always done it.'”
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| | rantnrave:// SHOHEI OHTANI is coming. ALVIN KAMARA is flourishing. BEN SIMMONS is here. LEBRON JAMES isn't going anywhere. Basketball and football are trending towards positionless sports. The NHL is on its way. Versatility has been replaced by malleability. Otani would be baseball's largest step forward (and a return to its roots). The two-way player is like baseball myth and there are a few popping up. Ohtani is the highest profile yet. HUNTER GREENE has potential. It would be a fun clapback to baseball's affinity for specialists -- the LOOGY and the designated hitter. A rebuke to the modern developmental system which makes young athletes prioritize one sport and one skill. In the NBA, there are only ballhandlers, wings and bigs, and those are quickly merging together. A league dotted by unicorns. Chasing the harmony of the DUTCH's TOTAL FOOTBALL. The NFL is full of hybrids. Offensive players like Kamara, TYREKE HILL and LE'VEON BELL are offensive weapons capable of switching between positions to give defenses fits. Defenses adjust with hybrid safeties and linebackers, everyone trying to get faster. It makes games more exciting, less predictable, not as rigid. Creativity is virtuous and victorious... Landmark rivalries like ALABAMA-AUBURN. Upstart programs like BOISE STATE and OREGON. Campus legends like MICHAEL VICK and JOHNNY MANZIEL. The traditions and history that make college football a religion. SportsSET: "Great Stories on the Gridiron: College Football Oral Histories"... OUTSIDE MAGAZINE isn't playing around. Sexual harassment and assault are serious issues and the mag isn't here to suffer fools who don't recognize that. Not easy to push away readers and consumers for digital and print media company but Outside should get credit for sticking to its ethos. Sexual harassment happens at the TODAY SHOW. At MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO. In CONGRESS. We need Outside to write and report about it in the outdoors... ESPN is laying off 150 more people. These, reportedly, aren't the faces we see on TV so it won't get as much attention. Still, it's more bloodletting. Is this ESPN reducing its ambition?... How well do you know your NFL calls?... Awesome. Also, frightening. Not sure I want to fly anymore... Let's play two... "We're on to entitlement reform"... WORLD CUP posters as art... WAYNE ROONEY, cheeky... RIP STEVE "SNAPPER" JONES. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | REDEF |
| Landmark rivalries like Alabama-Auburn. Upstart programs like Boise State and Oregon. Campus legends like Michael Vick and Johnny Manziel. The traditions and history that make college football a religion. | | |
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 | Vanity Fair |
| After serving nine years for armed robbery, O.J. Simpson is out on parole, living in borrowed luxury, and swamped with selfie-seeking fans and business proposals. Yet he’s also a fugitive--from Fred Goldman, who’s still determined to make Simpson pay, literally, for the 1994 killing of his son, Ron. Mark Seal chronicles this latest chapter in the increasingly surreal O.J. saga. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Over the past five years, WAR has caught on with the baseball-watching public in a way that no other sabermetric stat has. But as the recent debate about the MVP race between Aaron Judge and José Altuve revealed, we can’t fully move forward with the stat until we agree on what it’s meant to do. | | |
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 | Grantland |
| Hack-a-Shaq, inconsistent officiating, poisoned room service, and the road to the last three-peat: an oral history of the 2002 Western Conference finals, between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings, the final chapter in one of the greatest rivalries in recent NBA history | | |
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 | Victory Journal |
| A wiseguy’s son steps out of his father’s shadow--and into the boxing ring. But the legacy of organized crime isn’t so easy to leave behind. | | |
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 | Yahoo Sports |
| There is a phrase for what 23-year-old Shohei Ohtani seeks here, for this Ruthian mission on which he dares to test the conventions of an arena that knows itself, perhaps to a fault. In Japan, it is, "Yakyu o suru." Here? "Play baseball." Just, play baseball. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| Sleep architecture, theta and high-beta scores, to-do lists galore--it's all part of Cousins's process. And while it may sound excessive, it clearly works for Washington's quarterback. | | |
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 | The Athletic |
| I met him 40 years ago at Maryland, where he once called me “that sumbitch.” I had last seen him 20 years ago, when he took a job that provided him a tiny, bare, cinderblock office at Georgia State. After he retired, I lost track of him. Then, this fall, I saw a sportswriter’s note arguing that Lefty should be in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. I thought, “He’s not in?” | | |
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 | CBSSports.com |
| An inside look at how Holtmann handled his much publicized, unexpected reunion with Butler in Portland. | | |
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 | Men's Journal |
| Three primetime matches in November of 1982 led to death and injury. They may have also destroyed boxing as we once knew it. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| In the darkest night part of morning they came 60,000 strong -- to watch undefeated world heavyweight champion George Foreman take on challenger Muhammad Ali. It was another time. The 20th of May Stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire, is now the Stade Tata Raphaël in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and The Rumble in the Jungle, as it was known, was scheduled to begin at 4 a.m. | | |
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 | GQ |
| Alex Honnold walks us through how he pulled off such an audacious feat, and what ran through his mind as he climbed his way to the top. | | |
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 | Outside Online |
| You can't be super-lean all the time, so pick your moments--and watch your health. | | |
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 | SB Nation |
| In 1992, a little-known pitcher from Mahopec, N.Y. won 17 games for the Mariners and showed how sports can unite an entire town. | | |
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 | FanGraphs |
| Pitch clocks are likely coming to an MLB stadium near you in 2018, according to a report by Buster Olney from earlier this month. There's a practical reason for the introduction of the clock and for the commissioner's interest in it: the game keeps slowing down. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| Thanks to a combination of novelty and voter fatigue, it's rare for an NBA player to remain MVP bridesmaid for too long. For every block of seasons where a Michael Jordan or LeBron James dominates the consensus at No. 1, a Charles Barkley or Derrick Rose will still manage to slip in and break up the monotony. | | |
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 | Awful Announcing |
| Everyone wants to be an ace sports reporter for a national outlet. So how did Shams Charania pull it off before commencement? | | |
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 | Polygon |
| There was already a dinosaur, you’ll be OK. | | |
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| The Ringer |
| As told by Vince McMahon. | | |
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 | Pacific Standard |
| The shady money and politics behind the country's biggest, most expensive sports arenas. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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