I was sure I must have written about this before, on this blog, the final organized sports competition I was part of, so many years ago. But I have searched the site with all manner of names and terms, and I got no results, so the search function is not working or I wrote about […]

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When we left Southern California for Abu Dhabi, in October of 2009, the Los Angeles Clippers sucked. They had always sucked. They would always suck. It was in the stars. They were poorly run, under slum lord Donald Sterling, and unlucky as well, as the injury to their top draft pick of 2009, Blake Griffin, […]

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ESPN’s president yesterday told the New York Times that the network will not offer a new contract to Bill Simmons, the most prominent sports journalist in the U.S. now and, perhaps, ever. Simmons’s current deal, agreed to in 2010, runs out later this year and is thought to have been paying him $5 million a […]

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This has turned into “weird Dubai-defining stories” week. The kid fined $136,000 for turning donuts on the streets of the UAE’s biggest city. The Dubai website that listed for sale an Airbus A340 jumbo jet for about $41 million. And today? The Dubai personal trainer who told a woman she was too fat to join […]

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This is a very Dubai story. An appeal to people with more money than common sense, people who believe wretched excess is the only kind worth pursuing. The kind of people who like to live in Dubai. For sale on Dubai’s leading retail website: One Airbus A340 jumbo jet, capable of carrying more than 300 […]

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We love our cars in the UAE. Yes, we do. The bigger and more muscular (or the sleeker and faster), the better. A 19-year-old Emirati recently decided to show what he could do at the wheel of his 4×4, turning donuts at an open road. He then compounded his silliness by posting the road mania […]

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“Park the bus.” I don’t know how far back in soccer history the term goes, but the first time I remember noting it was in regards to Jose Mourinho‘s Inter Milan side in 2010. I believe it referred specifically to Mourinho’s tactics in the second leg of the 2010 Champions League semifinals versus Barcelona. Inter […]

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I was re-reading some fiction and chuckling as I turned pages, with an occasional frisson of emotion and an appreciation for the use of the language … when it struck me. I much prefer English authors to American authors. Which I find odd to say, as an American … but also undeniable. And this preference […]

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Yes, more about the fight of the century. While doing research on fights I covered at the MGM Grand, I realized I had, in fact, seen Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight there, against Oscar De La Hoya. On May 5, 2007. I am going to paste the column I wrote, on the night of May X […]

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Floyd Mayweather defeated Manny Pacquaio tonight via unanimous decision in their “mega” fight, often described over the past months as The Fight of the Century. We are more likely to look back on it as a fight puffed into an enormous scope because of the pent-up demand of fight fans to see those two in […]

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