With the final round falling on Father’s Day, and especially because he has played second fiddle six times in the U.S. Open, Phil Mickelson will be the sentimental favorite of most fans and media this week.
No asterisk goes next to this result, and no excuses will come from the Miami Heat. Only one player pulled up lame and limped off with cramps, but it just happened to be LeBron James, the best player in the game.
A depressing era is ending. It spanned eight years, years of mostly mediocre and sometimes really bad baseball. Tim Chambers finally has put an end to it.
Time will tell if LeBron James stepped into a time machine this season and traveled back to Cleveland. That was where he spent seven years trying to resuscitate a corpse.
Fourteen quarterbacks were called during the three-day NFL Draft marathon, and at least half will be busts in the long run. Expect none to make a bigger impact this season than Josh McCown will for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
It could have been dumb luck that brought the Cleveland Browns and Johnny Manziel together. He was there for the taking, but team after team passed him by, and eventually everything fell perfectly into place.
As a quarterback, Johnny Manziel is a playmaker and risk taker, the definition of a gambler. Sometimes that’s a problem. But even the cynics can see his entertainment value is a sure thing.
At one point, it was almost a given that Paul George, the NBA’s next big star, would lead the Indiana Pacers to the stratosphere. The sharps and squares often are at odds and see things differently, but on this point, almost everyone agreed.
On any other day, Stephen Curry’s seven 3-pointers would have been the only story. Sideshow aside, Curry shot life back into the Golden State Warriors, and that’s what mattered most to underdog bettors. The Warriors were aiming to get even in a first-round playoff series. The Los Angeles Clippers are tied up in a full-blown media circus.
How about a rematch with Seattle and another road trip to New England? Those are the so-called highlights of the Denver Broncos’ regular-season schedule, which calculates as the second toughest in the league. It’s not necessarily a doomsday scenario, but for Peyton Manning, it’s definitely not getting any easier.
Everything starts with the coach. Gregg Popovich sets a steady tone for the San Antonio Spurs, who resemble the Aristotle theory that excellence is a habit, not an act.
A dig into Adam Scott’s closet uncovers no dirt, skeletons or porn stars. The new man to beat in golf is one of the good guys, and he’s a favorite around here because he’s a UNLV guy.
At this point, it seems to be a daily routine. Brush your teeth, eat lunch, get annoyed by bad drivers on the way to work, and, of course, watch Aaron Harrison hit a huge 3-pointer as Kentucky wins a thriller.
It’s easy to paint John Calipari as a con artist. He’s slick and perceived as shady, a reputation earned through great recruiting. The Kentucky coach runs an NBA farm team on a college campus.
In retrospect, some events are truly unbelievable, such as an airplane disappearing without a trace. It went against the odds, but Shabazz Napier knocking out Michigan State is not that hard to believe.
Money can buy happiness, at least temporarily. The Los Angeles Dodgers handed Clayton Kershaw the richest deal for a pitcher in baseball history, and a big bankroll has turned the odds in their favor.
In this high-stakes poker game, Billy Donovan is holding a real cool hand. The Florida coach has four senior starters and a sophomore who’s a hot shooter.
One day, maybe in the near future, Andrew Wiggins might rise as an NBA star. But the freshman guard went one-weekend-and-done and never had his shining moment in the NCAA Tournament.
All it took was one game to stain millions of brackets. Aaron Craft’s potential winning layup rolled off the rim as the buzzer sounded and Ohio State went down. And that was just the beginning.
It’s cool to be popular in high school. It’s not always a positive sign to be the public’s hot pick in the NCAA Tournament, so maybe Michigan State coach Tom Izzo should be concerned.
Believe it or not, it’s not all about underdog stories in March. Sometimes, it’s about a survival of the favorites, such as Kansas, which escaped early elimination by following freshman leader Andrew Wiggins.
It was not one of Anthony Ireland’s better games, and it was nearly the final game of the senior point guard’s college career. Loyola Marymount was down double digits and close to getting counted out.
