Jack Tien-Dana Articles - Page 4

The New York Knicks don’t play pretty basketball. At their best, they display a brutal economy, kludging together a shockingly elite offense through by running up big rebounding and turnover margins and winning the possession battle. At their worst, it’s just plain gross. Against their opener against the Miami Heat in the second round of […]

The Dallas Mavericks were this season’s biggest disappointment. Despite retaining the bulk of the team that made last year’s Western Conference Finals and trading for Kyrie Irving midseason, the Mavs missed the postseason, failing to even qualify for the play-in tournament. Although it’s reductive to attribute their collapse to any single cause, Jalen Brunson’s defection […]

Move aside, Mannings, the Sewells are the new first family of the NFL. After the Chicago Bears picked Noah Sewell with the 14th pick of the fifth round in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Sewells earned the historic distinction as the first family to have four siblings play professional football at the same time. The […]

The Rockets are readying themselves for take off. Since Harden coerced his way to Brooklyn in 2021, the team has been bad and made no qualms about it. Winning didn’t matter as much as shoveling possessions and shots down the throats of Jalen Green, Kevin Porter Jr., and (to a lesser extent) Alperen Sengun. But, […]

It’s the song of the century, a track so soaring, so moving that hits at something so deep and elemental that it feels like its rhythm speaks to something coded deep within our very DNA. This song, of course, is “Go New York Go,” the hype anthem for the New York Knicks 1994 run in […]

With every passing season, it’s more and more clear that the Atlanta Hawks tricked the world in 2021. Although their Eastern Conference Finals run two seasons ago was thrilling, the Hawks greatly benefitted from matching up with a bootless Knicks team and a Sixers team freighted with neuroses and weirdness. As such, the Hawks have […]

It’s easy to not take the Knicks seriously because they’re, well, the Knicks. No matter how much you love them, they’re not serious people. The years of badness and weirdness engendered an inertia, a deep rooted cynicism that any scrap of Knicks success must be a joke or a bit somehow. As such, in the […]

When you know, you know. In the eyes of most draftniks and fans, the Detroit Lions made arguably the most shocking pick of the first round of the NFL Draft when they grabbed former Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs with the 12th pick. Gibbs was projected to be picked somewhere in the late first or […]

There are lots of good reasons to feel bad for Will Levis, the former Kentucky quarterback who languished in the green room all night for the first round of the NFL Draft without getting picked. Heading into Thursday night, Levis was gaining steam as a dark horse candidate to be the first pick in the […]

The weeks leading up to the NFL Draft are some nasty business. It’s part spycraft and part high school gossip as teams and agencies to erect smoke screens and circulate rumors. Here is a strange world where it matters if someone is a “backwards hat kinda guy” or if his teammates go to his birthday […]

Every good coach is alike; every bad coach is bad in his own way. For Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer, this badness manifested itself in a fatal passivity as Budenholzer bungled his way through the end of the Bucks’ season-ending Game 5 loss to the Heat as if he had forgotten that he’s allowed to coach. […]

The Minnesota Timberwolves are a cautionary tale. High off of the fumes of a 46 win season and their first playoffs appearance since 2004, the Timberwolves wagered that they were ready to make the leap from being a good team to a great one. In order to shore up their permissive interior defense and provide […]

When you picture a basketball game, what do you see? Teamwork? Individual brilliance? A jumper? A pass? In their looming second round series in the NBA Playoffs, the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns aren’t just competing for a spot in the Western Conference Finals, they represent two fundamentally different ways of thinking about and playing […]

If you don’t think that Hendon Hooker, a 25 year-old quarterback coming off a torn ACL, is worth a first round pick in the NFL Draft, prepare to have your mind blown. I dare you to watch this poorly shot video of Hendon Hooker slowly taking three steps backwards and then throwing a football to […]

Like every NFL Draft, the 2023 NFL Draft will be defined by its quarterbacks. The Carolina Panthers will most likely select Bryce Young with the first pick, but the real pivot points will be where and when Will Levis, Anthony Richardson and CJ Stroud are picked. Stroud is the prototypical pocket passer who posted gaudy […]

What will the Green Bay Packers look like next year? Who can say! After trading Aaron Rodgers to the Jets, the Packers’ quarterback situation is in flux for the first time in over 30 years. Nobody knows if Jordan Love is the long-term answer, but he’ll enter 2023 as the starter. The bigger problem, though, […]

DJ Uiagalelei had an eventful few years during his time as the face of Clemson football. In 2020, he filled in for two starts for a Covid-stricken Trevor Lawrence and looked like an absolute superstar, tossing for 871 yards and accounting for six touchdowns in the two games. As the starter in 2021, though, Uigalelei […]

Some time soon, the Oakland Athletics will be a total misnomer. Already, the “Athletics” part of the equation is in doubt—the Athletics are hardly demonstrating their elite athletic talent as the clear worst team in MLB at 4-18 with an abominable -103 run differential and paucity of power or speed or skill. And soon, they […]

Dillon Brooks, a career role player who has never averaged more than 18.2 points per game in any season of his career, has become the story of the NBA playoffs. The reason? Dillon Brooks is making everybody—and LeBron James, in particular—super mad. During the first three games of the Memphis Grizzlies first round series against […]

Emoni Bates, the wunderkind turned cautionary tale, is declaring for the 2023 NBA Draft. As a high schooler, Bates looked like the future, a budding Kevin Durant clone who graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in 2019 and became the first sophomore to win the Gatorade National Player of the Year in 2020. For years, […]

The one constant over the last four chaotic years in Brooklyn is that yesterday’s roster is not today’s roster. Having speed-run through the process of building and unbuilding a superteam in record time, the Nets enter this offseason with a raft of possible paths. Do they reload around Mikal Bridges by making free agent splashes […]

Donovan Mitchell is many things—an All-NBA superstar, the face of the Cleveland Cavaliers, a dunk contest champion. But, after scoring just 11 points in a 5-18 disasterclass in the Cavs’ 102-93 Game 4 loss, he’s mainly the butt of Knicks’ fans jokes. After dicing the Knicks up in the first two games of the series, […]

After being suspended for Game 3, Draymond Green will come off the bench in Game 4 of the Golden State Warriors‘ first round series against the Sacramento Kings, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Anthony Slater. With Draymond Green coming off the bench, the Warriors will start Stephen Curry, Jordan Poole, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins […]

At long last, it might be time for Damian Lillard to run from the grind. After years of unyielding devotion to the Portland Trail Blazers, the franchise legend is faced with a career-defining choice: he can either lose in Portland or win somewhere else. With the Trail Blazers seemingly keen on rebuilding, the 32 year-old […]

On Saturday night, Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis will face off in the biggest boxing fight of the year. Although it’s a catchweight fight with no larger title implications, it’s the rarest and most beautiful kind of fight: two of the best fighters in the world, at the peak of their powers, squaring off without […]

After five years, 227 wins, three playoff appearances and a championship, the Raptors have fired Nick Nurse. Although Nurse had earned a reputation as one of the NBA’s brightest tactitians, he lacked tact in other areas; he butted heads with players and front office members as the Raptors regressed from a 48-34 team to a […]

Eventually, artificial intelligence will change the world. For now, though, it’s mainly a tool for weirdos and freaks to plumb uncanny valley for some of the most unsettling, least appealing content the world has ever seen. Following in the proud tradition disturbing AI applications like Distended Nightmare Fingers and Holograph Of Your Grandma’s Ghost, German […]

For most MLB teams, 19 games means practically nothing. The massive scope of baseball guarantees that any 18 game sample is noisy with the kind of variance that 162 game season is meant to smooth away—Patrick Wisdom has had a good little stretch, but it doesn’t mean that he’s going to shatter the home run […]

The Brooklyn Nets are not who or where the Brooklyn Nets wanted to be. They entered the season with an All-Star trio Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons that seemed like the bulwark of a championship team; now, in late April, the Nets find themselves halfway to getting swept out of the playoffs by […]

For years, NBA’s biggest heels have gravitated towards LeBron James like moths to a flame and, this year, the Memphis Grizzlies are no different. Having antagonized the Timberwolves and setting up a REIT in the Warriors’ head last year, the Grizzlies have hardly ingratiated themselves with Lebron James or the Lakers through the first two […]

In his legendary four year career at Oral Roberts, powerhouse point guard Max Abmas left no doubt that he’s a certified bucket. Across his final three seasons with the Golden Eagles, Abmas cemented himself as one of the greatest shooters in college basketball history, averaging 23.0 points and nailing nearly 40 percent of his 9.2 […]

Robert F Kennedy Jr (JFK’s nephew and the most prominent living Kennedy) believes some weird stuff. Until recently, he’d mostly been shunted to the edges of polite society but he’s recently returned to prominence as his fringe conspiracy theories (i.e. vaccines, tap water, aluminum and cell phones cause autism and peanut allergies in kids) have […]

In Game 2, the Cavs crushed—punked, demolished, cowed, buffaloed—the Knicks. The Knicks lost 90-107 and even that lopsided score flatters them—the Knicks never got within 17 points of the Cavs in the second half and were down by 27 with just under four minutes left. It was a comprehensive, resounding victory; Darius Garland scored 26 […]

Rayan Rupert is probably one of the five best French NBA Draft prospects ever. The son of a former pro basketball player and the star of France’s youth international teams, Rupert has the stats and pedigree to show he’s every bit as talented as recent highly touted young guys like Ousmane Dieng, Killian Hayes and […]

Midway through the second quarter of Game 2, the Los Angeles Clippers had the Phoenix Suns on the ropes in their first-round playoffs series. After stealing a 115-110 Game 1 win, the Clippers held a 49-36 lead over the Suns with 5:32 left in the first half, seemingly coasting to a shocking 2-0 series lead. […]

The top of the 2023 NBA Draft is more or less set. Regardless of who wins the NBA Draft lottery on May 16, Victor Wembanyama will be the first pick. Similarly, Scoot Henderson is fairly locked into second while Brandon Miller and Amen Thompson will go third and fourth in some order. In this sense, […]

Once one of the NBA’s foremost marksmen, Gilbert Arenas is now perhaps the league’s most incendiary takes-man. The host of the No Chill With Gil podcast, Arenas has become the center of a mini media ecosystem, disseminating his takes across viral clips on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. This is Gil’s Arena and we’re all just […]

The four-way quarterback horse race has certainly been the center of attention heading into the 2023 NFL Draft on April 27, but there’s just as much intrigue and important around the edges—literally. In this sense, former Texas Tech pass rusher Tyree Wilson has steadily risen up draft boards since the combine as teams such as […]

In Game 1 of the 2023 NBA Playoffs, the Minnesota Timberwolves were bad, unable to summon the same conviction or convincingness that they demonstrated in the play-in tournament. It wasn’t just that the Timberwolves were blasted off the court 109-80 by the Denver Nuggets as much as it seemed that the Nuggets never had to […]