December 18, 2013
How to Survive Bad Basketball
The NBA season is 82 games long, and for fans of many teams, to watch those games is to enter an endless, Kafkaesque hellscape that lives outside of time. Non-fans simply avoid the sight of such teams unless some other interest-inducing factor compels them to watch. The Eastern Conference is a wreckage of bad luck, […]
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Q&A: Nene on the Wizards, His Health, and the Future
The Wizards are 7-32 without Nene in the lineup and are 42-46 with him since trading for him at the 2012 deadline in exchange for JaVale McGee, JaVale McGee’s antics, and various flotsam. That stat says a lot about both Nene’s splendid all-around skill set and the medical issues that have sadly torpedoed his impact […]
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Men in Blazers: With Special Guest Andrew Luck!
The Men mourn André Villas-Boas and marvel at Luis Suarez’s redemption story. QB Andrew Luck guests, and the search for the pod’s “Biped of the Year” begins. Listen to this podcast here. Subscribe to the Grantland Network on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page. To subscribe to the Men in Blazers podcast feed, click […]
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All-22 All-Stars: Andrew Whitworth, the Bengals’ Adaptable Advantage
The All-22 All-Star Team is an attempt to provide some insight on the NFL’s 22 most underappreciated players. Some will be All-Pros who haven’t fully gotten their due; some will be names few casual fans have ever heard. All will, for one reason or another, have been overlooked. Two weeks ago, as the Bengals prepared […]
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Grantland Channel Video: ‘Tough Calls,’ a New Game Show, With Anthony Bennett and Nick Young
A couple of months back, David Jacoby told me we had the opportunity to interview Anthony Bennett, the no. 1 overall draft pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Nick Young, the no. 1 draft pick of the universe of swag. We racked our brains for about 20 minutes and decided the thing to do was […]
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Damian Lillard Is in the Zone and He Can Hear Jimi
I went into the Cleveland-Portland game thinking nothing could be more entertaining than the pregame rumors that Dion Waiters wanted to be traded to the Sixers because, and I quote Bleacher Report quoting an unnamed source here, “he thinks he’d be the best player on the team. That’s his mind-set.” My mind-set is that Waiters […]
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About Last Night: Mamba Time
In case you were busy trying to convince the world that the vote of confidence you gave your mistake-prone quarterback was genuine, here’s what you missed in sports on Tuesday: Kobe Bryant’s return hit its high-water mark as he scored 21 points while matched up against Tony Allen in the Lakers’ 96-92 win over the […]
Read moreDecember 17, 2013
Week 15 Fantasy Football Review: Run Like the Wind (Especially the Bay Area Wind)
Remember those random weeks in 2012 when Romeo Crennel would inexplicably not use Jamaal Charles? The weeks when you wanted to rip through your TV screen and say, “Romeo, I realize your extensive coaching experience dwarfs mine, but why make this the Matt Cassel–Brady Quinn show when you have one of the best running backs […]
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Bad Quarterback League: THE END
The season is winding down, and Eli Manning will not be denied. Back in Week 3 we wrote, “The Giants are so awful right now that either they’re going to win the Super Bowl or they’re going 5-11, Eli’s throwing 30 picks, and Tom Coughlin will pop five different blood vessels in his face.” And […]
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Thank You for Not Coaching, Week 15
This week’s Thank You for Not Coaching seems to revolve around team and context, which are absolutely critical in decision-making. I can’t stress that enough. It isn’t right to go for it on every single fourth-and-short or to try to win the game at every opportunity for aggressiveness. Slapping league-average win probabilities onto situations and […]
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Cheap Heat Podcast: TLC and the Undisputed Championship
Peter Rosenberg and “The Masked Man” David Shoemaker discuss TLC, the undisputed championship, and the tenuous illegality of crotch shots. Listen to this podcast here. Subscribe to the Grantland Network on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
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The End of the Andre Villas-Boas Experiment at Tottenham
And just like that, Tottenham Hotspur’s Andre Villas-Boas experiment is over. Less than a year and a half after being hired, and only 16 games after being gifted with seven new first-team players to integrate into his squad, Villas-Boas was shown the door by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy (technically, it was a mutual agreement of […]
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The Year in Prodigies
Somewhere in my parents’ house, there is a giant box of magazines that’s a gold mine of late-’90s, early-’00s sports. Maybe they’ve been thrown out by now, but the box weighs enough so there’s a good chance those 250 or 300 old magazines will just sit there forever. I saved everything. Sports Illustrated, SLAM, and […]
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We Went There: Nets-Sixers With a Brooklyn Fan Who Happens to Be in Vampire Weekend
“An expectation of defeat.” This was how my friend Chris explained his mind-set as a Nets fan in the 1990s — and they weren’t even that bad back then! He grew up in Imlaystown, New Jersey, equidistant from Philadelphia and New York, in that liminal space where you could probably convince yourself you shared more […]
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The Venn Diagram of Hockey Hate
There’s an old stereotype that hockey fans hate everyone. And like most stereotypes, it’s simply not true. For example, we don’t hate Teemu Selanne. And, uh … well, that’s pretty much it, actually. Other than Selanne, yeah, we hate basically everyone else. But we hate some people more than others. And our hate isn’t random […]
Read moreGrantland Channel: Body Language Doctors
Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose break down the unspoken statements of Tim Duncan, Rajon Rondo, and the surprising Sixers.
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NBA Overnight: The Final Days of Mike Woodson, the Golden Age of Pop, and Joe Johnson and Josh Smith Go Off
Every once in a while, the NBA throws a randomly awesome night at us and we need to run through the games and savor the flavor. Last night was one such night. Dig in. The Agony of the Knicks, the Ecstasy of the Wiz YEAH. THAT’S JAN VESELY DUNKING IN TRANSITION ON AMAR’E. NO, YOU […]
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The Lions Can’t Seem to Help Themselves
In the end, the Lions were the Lions and the Ravens were the Ravens. A must-win Monday Night Football contest between Detroit and Baltimore saw both teams stay true to form, as the Lions wasted opportunities and played sloppy football before taking a fourth-quarter lead, only to blow it when a desperate Ravens team came […]
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About Last Night: Pacers Lose at Home?
In case you were busy regretting a decades-old decision to allow your son to play football so long as he was just the punter, here’s what you missed in sports on Monday: The Detroit Pistons, fueled by Josh Smith’s 30 points on 29 shots, handed the Indiana Pacers their first home loss of the year, […]
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