Articles

Why We Watch: Royce White, The Double

Bethlehem Shoals

It's one thing to watch sports in search of some reflection of ourselves and the world as it exists. It's another and entirely more complicated thing to find it.

St-Pierre The Provocateur

Tim Marchman

Georges St-Pierre has to fight Carlos Condit on Saturday night, even though the fight itself doesn't quite matter. But in fighting his way back from injury, and fighting his way to the match-up against Anderson Silva that everyone wants, St-Pierre is running up against the stubborn fact at the core of his career. That's this: the more the world’s greatest welterweight wins, the more he pisses people off.

Bat Sounds: Re-Imagining Prince's Purple Rain As Batting Order

Dave Bry

Prince's classic album has nine songs. A batting order has nine spots. The rest is not as easy to figure out as you might think.

Why We Watch: Andre Miller, The Seer

Chris Collision

Andre Miller has been doing his strange, generous, effort-ful thing for a long time, now. It's remarkable because of how good he is at it, but also because he never makes it look easy except for the moments when it should be the hardest.

The Cost of Doing Business

Tom Breihan

There are times when a mere inflection is enough to make you curl in shame. Rachel Maddow, election night, in the process of gleefully detailing an absolutely brutal series of Republican losses, brought her best "I am amazed and delighted at how stupid this is" delivery to the phrase "professional wrestling." She was talking about Linda McMahon, the longtime WWE executive and wife of malevolent company figurehead Vince. And, if we're being honest, Mrs. McMahon had it coming. 

Why We Watch: Brook Lopez, Mr. Big

Mark Macyk

Brook Lopez needs to be a lot of things to a lot of people and given that he's smart, sophisticated and self-assured; it appears he has the tools to be the Big Man for the Nets. The only question that remains is whether or not he can do it while still being the Big Dude he's been all along.

I Want This Frikkin’ Million Dollars In This Game!

Daniel Roberts

He struggled through a torn MCL, losing 60 pounds and the indignity of being stuck on island with Blair from The Facts of Life; but ultimately, Jeff Kent's run on Survivor ended  because of his biggest vulnerability: how gosh darn likable he is. 

Yakkin' About Baseball: Jeffrey Loria's House of Games

David Roth

 et al.

The jokes are right there when it comes to Jeffrey Loria's recent situationist prank/gutting of the Miami Marlins. But even with baseball's evilest muppet acting his evilest in the middle of it all, it's tough to laugh at the latest bit of avant-garde shamelessness from baseball's worst owner. Tough, but not impossible.

Why We Watch: Rasheed Wallace, Outlaw

Netw3rk

Rasheed Wallace has been very good at basketball at different points in his career. But while the Knicks' 38-year-old victory blunt's best ball is in the past, he remains the NBA's foremost, most inspiring and most indelible transgressor of norms, compiler of technicals, and general outlaw genius.

In The Land Of The Fist Bump: Talking With Inman Majors About His College Football Novel, Love's Winning Plays

Jason Fry

A conversation with the novelist Inman Majors, scion of one of Tennessee's greatest football families and author of Love's Winning Plays, an alternately affectionate and savage satire of college football, college football culture, and grown men who wear golf visors at night.