The New York Giants’ dumbfounding decision to trade an all-time great at the peak of his powers is the latest example of an NFL team valuing their culture and the allure of hope over talentThe Giants traded Odell Beckham Jr to the Browns on Tuesday night, weeks after paying the star receiver a $20m signing bonus, and after general manager David Gettleman proclaimed less than two weeks prior: “We didn’t sign Odell to trade him. That’s all I need to say about that”.Gulp. In return, the Giants picked up a first- and third-round pick, safety Jabrill Peppers … and $16m in dead money. It is the kind of trade that would cause a mutiny in your fantasy league. Related: 'Wow':...
Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom has connections with the American streaming site DAZN and if the latter signs up Deontay Wilder then a heavyweight unifying bout could be on the tableEddie Hearn’s assertion that there is a “brilliant chance” Anthony Joshua will fight Deontay Wilder in November or December, unifying the heavyweight title for the first time since Lennox Lewis owned the division nearly two decades ago, is the best news boxing has had in a long while.The sport and the business need an undisputed heavyweight champion. And confused fans want someone they can identify with as the best fighter in the world, without argument, someone who can rule for more than a few fights – like it used to be in...
The bad chemistry and bad fortune undoing the Lakers have wrought the unthinkable: an NBA playoffs without LeBronIt’s looking like LeBron James in the NBA playoffs isn’t the forgone conclusion we’ve come to presume.On Monday, the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Clippers, 113-105, slumping to a ho-hum 30-34 record, six games adrift of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference with 18 games left in the regular season. Not only will James almost certainly fail to extend his preposterous streak of eight consecutive NBA finals appearances, it’s looking more and more likely that he’ll miss the playoffs altogether for the first time since the 2004-05 season, when he was a 20-year-old in his second year. The...
A win without Perry Baker and Danny Barrett will alarm the super powers: the Americans are starting to find some depthIn Las Vegas on Sunday, the USA men’s Eagles beat Samoa 27-0 to win a second USA Sevens title in a row. It was their first gold medal on this season’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series but they took all four silvers before it and they are now clear at the top of the world rankings, five points up on New Zealand, the World Cup winners the Eagles beat in the semi-final. Related: 'Growing as men': Mike Friday on how USA rugby went top of world sevens We’ve identified and picked up and nurtured two or three players each year...
Administrators are arriving at a better understanding of the extent of anxiety and depression among top sportspeople and a finger is pointing at social mediaOn Friday night the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver, made a statement that was both shocking and profound: many of the league’s players, who have an average salary of $7m a year, were “truly unhappy”. He told the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference: “The outside world sees the fame, the money, all the trappings that go with it, and they say: ‘How is it possible they even can be complaining?’ But a lot of these young men are genuinely unhappy.”As he warmed to the theme of his players’ mental health, Silver told his audience that the NBA...