October 7, 2014
The Top 20 Shooters: How We Chose Them
Picking the elite of the elite isn’t easy. But Dirk, Durant, and Curry are comforting us.
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Who Will Be the First NBA Catfish Victim This Season?
Paul George set the tone last year with a rumored catfishing scandal. Trey Burke reminded us last week that NBA players, too, can be subjected to an iCloud hack (or something). Online scandal awaits basketball players. Today we ask: Who will be the first victim of a catfish hoax this season?
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NBA Windows: The Cavs Have All the Makings of a Title Contender
It may take time to make all the pieces fit together, but the Cavaliers have everything they need to raise the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June.
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Jonah Keri Podcast: Britt Ghiroli and Sam Mellinger
Jonah Keri talks to MLB.com writer Britt Ghiroli about Buck Showalter and the streaking Orioles, and to ‘Kansas City Star’ columnist Sam Mellinger about the red-hot Royals and the city’s love affair with the team.
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Explaining the Jets: Yes, They Definitely Have a Plan
Believe it or not, the Jets do have a master plan. Plus, why are there so many disappointing running backs this season?
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MLB Overnight, NLDS: The Giants Throw the Game Away, While the Cardinals Blast Their Way by L.A.
Playoff baseball has a delicate balance, particularly the kind of playoff baseball we’ve seen this year. Even a series that ends up 3-0 or 3-1 can be thrown entirely out of whack in an instant.
Read moreOctober 6, 2014
The Grantland NFL Podcast: Tom Brady’s Alive, and Other Week 5 Discoveries
As part of their Week 5 recap, the Grantland NFL Podcast crew go under the hood and find that Tom Brady isn’t actually dead after all.
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Chronicling Josh McDaniels’s Expanding Wake of Self-Destruction
The recent kerfuffle between Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and wide receiver Aaron Dobson is only the latest in McDaniels’s long line of confrontations with players and coaches. Let’s chronicle the madness.
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NBA Windows: A Depressing Discussion About Derrick Rose
The Bulls will be good regardless, but they’ll probably only be great if Derrick Rose is, too. Is that still possible?
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The 2014 Pigskin Pantheon: Week 6 College Football Awards
College football serves and is served by many gods, old and new. Here, week after week, we’ll build a temple to them, installing saints and erecting graven idols as we go. The temple is made of words and pictures from the Internet. Just go with it. Today: Week 6 awards!
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NFL Week 5 Winners and Losers: Be Afraid of Little Branden Oliver and Big Dez Bryant
This week, the Bills D, the Cowboys O, and a resurgent Brandon Lloyd won big. Those that lost? Well, they lost big.
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The Other Guys: How Benches and Bullpens Are Shaping the MLB Playoffs
It’s nice to have front-line starters and potent middle-of-the-order bats. But as this October is illustrating, it’s hard to win without impact runners and hitters off the bench and middle-inning arms out of the ’pen.
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Where Amazing Happens: Why the MLB Playoffs Have Been Insanely Exciting
There are somewhere between 15 and 27 games remaining in the MLB postseason, depending on whether baseball’s surviving teams give us sweeps or Game 7s. We don’t know if October will end on a high note; maybe all those games will be blowouts, and maybe the favorites will always win. Regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, though, we’ve witnessed a month’s worth of excitement in the postseason’s first six days. Let’s run through several ways in which the playoffs got off to a special start.
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How the NBA’s New TV Deal Could Blow Up the Salary Cap
The importance of the league’s cap situation cannot be overstated. It has been the single biggest topic of conversation among team executives for the last year. The salary cap rises and falls hand in hand with league revenues, and this TV contract will be the largest injection of revenues in NBA history.
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Embrace the Top-10-Consuming Chaos: Your Weekly College Football Wrap
The 2014 season is young, barely an adolescent. Let it find itself. Don’t bother sifting through the wreckage of this upset-heavy weekend in search of a new order. Enjoy the chaos. Embrace it. Watch every game with your arm slung around its shoulder. Beyond the specifics of the games themselves, the madness is the only thing you’ll remember, because it’s the only thing that’s real.
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Razor’s Edge: A Visit to Foxborough on the Occasion of Tom Brady’s Premature Funeral
If there is one constant to Tom Brady’s career, it is that he has had his doubters. This isn’t just the usual nobody-ever-believed-in-me bunkum that every athlete ladles out for the purposes of reinventing his autobiography on the fly. Very few people did believe in him.
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Ho-Hum: Chelsea Dispatch Arsenal, Continue EPL Dominance
Another week, another dominant performance by Chelsea.
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Week 5 Wrap-up: The Patriots’ Roller Coaster Continues
New England showed everyone it still has life, but Tom Brady’s future remains questionable. All of that, plus more news from Week 5 in the NFL.
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What Can the Triangle Offense Do for Carmelo Anthony?
If you ask Carmelo Anthony where he places himself in the NBA constellation, he’ll tell you he’s the most underrated superstar. Maybe. He’s definitely the weirdest superstar. As a scorer, he’s phenomenal, but as a helpful player within an offensive system, his virtues are less apparent.
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