It seemed like perhaps the best of several improvements to the NBA All-Star Game. A schoolyard pick-em to determine teams! I loved this idea. NBA all-stars sorted out using the same system that we used back in elementary school. Two captains, and they take turns picking players until the last unpicked guy, head hung in […]

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When did I last watch ice hockey? Might have been the gold-medal game of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Canada versus the U.S., with the Canucks in the living room of a big Abu Dhabi apartment nervous as hell and the Yanks amused to see it. Hockey is Canada; Canada is hockey. Forget all that stuff […]

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A very French story. A crime involving cheese. A heinous crime, then. Nearly 700 wheels of soft, pungent Saint-Nectaire cheese, a favorite of King Louis XIV and worth about $12,000, were stolen in the dead of night from a village in the Auvergne, a mostly rural region of south-central France. The heist is the latest […]

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So, that’s why Nick Saban is such a big deal. A big enough deal to be getting paid more than $11 million by the University of Alabama in 2017. His Alabama team was down 13-0 to Georgia at halftime of the College Football Playoff championship game tonight, and instead of persevering with sophomore quarterback Jalen […]

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The Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Two generically hapless NFL teams meeting, astonishingly enough, in the NFL playoffs. For the Jaguars, it was a first playoffs game since 2007, a streak of futility “bettered” by only one team: Their opponents, the Bills, in the playoffs for the first time since 1999 — the longest […]

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So, there we were, feeling … well, not fat and sassy about the Los Angeles Rams’ chances in the first round of the playoffs … but reasonably confident. Worried about the placekicker, a little concerned about the defensive secondary, but in all pretty optimistic about their chances of defeating the Atlanta Falcons at the Coliseum. […]

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The Los Angeles Rams should be well-prepared for their first home playoff game since 1985. –As winners of the NFC West, they get to play at home, presumably before a capacity crowd at the Coliseum, just like the old days, before the Anaheim interlude and the stint as that St. Louis Club. –Having clinched a […]

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Remember when Lonzo Ball looked special? Back during his one season at UCLA? Wow. Look at that pass. And he can make some threes despite that tragic shooting stroke! That kid is someone the Lakers can build their team around. Yeah. Yeah. And then the world got a load of Trae Young, likely a one-and-done […]

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Not a good sign when you just assume your neighborhood NBA team is tanking. Because they have been doing it so long. Take the Los Angeles Lakers, nuked 133-96 by the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight at Staples Center. Those acclimated to seeing a Lakers defeat and thinking, “ah, good” … well, it is sometimes difficult […]

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I am predisposed to dislike Nick Saban. Alabama’s football coach seems joyless and put-upon, as if he can’t catch a break and it’s somehow the fault of the rest of us — despite those four national championships. He is so concerned about security leaks that very little of Alabama’s practices is open to media. (Compare […]

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