Jack Tien-Dana Articles - Page 5

West Virginia, improbably, has become one of the most interesting teams of the college basketball offseason. After landing former Arizona point guard Kerr Kriisa in the transfer portal last month, the Mountineers pulled off another major coup on Sunday by signing former Syracuse center Jesse Edwards. One of the most coveted players in the transfer […]

Game 1 of the hotly anticipated Knicks–Cavs first round series is on Saturday, but it’s still hard to make any predictions given all the mystery and spycraft surrounding the teams. In this sense, the Knicks are keeping Julius Randle’s status on a strictly need-to-know basis; it’s easier to find out military state secrets than it […]

Mikey Williams, the 18 year-old high school basketball phenom and Memphis commit, was arrested on gun charges Thursday afternoon and faces five felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He was released from San Diego County Jail on $50,000 bond just after midnight on early Friday morning, but is due back in court on […]

For the last decade, the Raptors were the picture of franchise stability. Head honcho Masai Ujiri had built a self-sustaining machine—the Raptors were fundamentally the Raptors, regardless of which players cycled through. Dwane Casey gave way to Nick Nurse; DeMar DeRozan was replaced by Kawhi Leonard who was replaced by Pascal Siakam. This year, though, […]

The vibes in Toronto are off—teams don’t get rattled by a nine-year-old girl when things are going super well. Even if the Raptors salvaged some of their pride by finishing 41-41 and sneaking into the play-in tournament, their 109-105 season-ending loss to the Chicago Bulls was a fitting denouement to a season that’s carried the […]

Villanova basketball might be losing future lottery pick Cam Whitmore, but they already have his replacement lined up. TJ Bamba, a second team All-Pac 12 guard out of Washington State and one of the most coveted players in the transfer portal, committed to Villanova. In doing so, the highly coveted junior guard chose the Wildcats […]

On Thursday afternoon, Amari Bailey, UCLA basketball’s heralded freshman shooting guard, announced on his Instagram that he is declaring for the 2023 NBA Draft. “Since I was 3 years old,” Bailey wrote in a heartfelt letter he posted on Instagram, “basketball has been my first and only love. I have decided to bet on mysaelf […]

The Oklahoma City Thunder tanked the tank. That is to say: the Thunder are on the brink of making the NBA playoffs as they face the Timberwolves in the final round of the play-in tournament. Whereas the Thunder spent most of the last few years greedily hoovering up distant first round picks from desperate and […]

Still just 26 years old, New York Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres is finally looking like the superstar he was projected to be. After making consecutive All-Star games as a rookie and sophomore in 2018 and 2019, Torres hit a wall in 2020 and 2021, sinking from one of the most exciting young players in […]

Optimistically, the New Orleans Pelicans are a future contender hiding in plain sight, a powerhouse roster that could storm the upper echelon of the Western Conference playoffs as soon as next season. They have legitimate star power—Zion Williamson is a superstar, Brandon Ingram is on his way to becoming one and CJ McCollum is perhaps […]

On December 8th, the New Orleans Pelicans were the best team in the West. They were 17-8 through their first 25 games; Zion Williamson was a dark-horse MVP candidate for the Pelicans, averaging 26.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game. But now, with a heartbreaking 123-118 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in […]

The propulsive forces behind the Phillies rousing 2022 World Series run aren’t really around right now. Bryce Harper is recovering from Tommy John surgery on his right elbow that’ll keep him out until midsummer; Rhys Hoskins tore his ACL last month and will miss the whole year; JT Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos […]

Perhaps more than any other player, Chris Taylor represents this era of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball; the Dodgers are certainly good because they spend lots of money, but their real strength has always been their versatility and player development. Plucked from the Seattle Mariners‘ farm system in 2017, he entered into the Dodgers player development […]

On Wednesday afternoon, the NBA’s weirdest, most vicious rivalry got even weirder and more vicious as Spencer Dinwiddie and Kyle Kuzma traded absolutely nuclear blows with each other. On an appearance on FanDuel TV’s show Run It Back, Dinwiddie unloaded on Kuzma, calling him out for missing the playoffs and casting doubt on Kuzma’s commitment […]

Last month, a run-in with Floyd Mayweather turned Jake Paul from a boxer to a trackstar. After a March 8th game between the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers, Paul was approached by Mayweather and his friends outside of Kayesa Arena in downtown Miami, who were chirping Paul and giving him a hard time for losing […]

Is this Trae Young’s last hurrah in Atlanta? Possibly—in fact, probably! But hidden in all the hubbub about Young’s future with the Atlanta Hawks is the fact that this team is as talented as just about any other in the league. Although the Hawks haven’t reached the same heights as they did in 2021 when […]

The last time the New York Knicks were in the playoffs, Trae Young shushed and bowed and promptly bounced them in five games. But entering the 2023 NBA Playoffs, this Knicks team feels different. For years, the Knicks have been in a weird half-space of trying to compete while simultaneously looking to make a major […]

The NBA MVP race is as closely and viciously contested as ever. Nikola Jokic might just be the most statistically devastating offensive weapon of all time; Joel Embiid completed his metamorphosis into a seven-foot Kobe Bryant; Giannis Antetokounmpo is the most dominant player on the best team in the league. At a certain point, all three of […]

Everybody cares about the MVP race—that’s the big one, naturally. Defensive Player of the Year, too, usually gins up a certain frenzy. And this year, outside of the Embiid-Jokic-Giannis three-way holy war, none of the NBA awards is as tightly and passionately contested as the race for Sixth Man of the Year. While Sixth Man […]

Jon Rahm might’ve won The Masters, but the LIV Golf League golfers dealt a major blow in the ongoing PGA-LIV turf war. Despite the speculation and jokes that the low-stress environment of the LIV Golf League would leave its members ill-equipped to handle the rigors of The Masters, 12 of LIV’s 18 participants made the […]

Both the NCAA Tournament and NBA regular season are now over, so it’s now for the real fun to begin: NBA mock draft season. While the top of the 2023 NBA Draft is pretty calcified at this point (Victor Wembanyama is guaranteed to be the first pick), it gets really weird really quick. Is Nick […]

Heading into its third edition, it’s clear that the NBA’s play-in tournament has been a massive success. More teams are trying and more games matter. In particular, the final week of this season was a barn-burner as the entire back half of the Western Conference playoff field jockeyed for position; just three games separate the […]

In his three years as head coach of the Houston Rockets, Stephen Silas didn’t have a great time. Originally hired in 2020 to lead a contender built around James Harden and Russell Westbrook, Silas instead quickly became the steward of one of the NBA’s most severe rebuilds once Westbrook and then Harden demanded trades. Stuck […]

When San Antonio Spurs‘ coach Gregg Popovich talks, you listen. Beyond being a five-time champion and the winningest coach in NBA history and a Hall of Famer, Popovich has also established himself as the NBA’s moral conscience, passionately speaking his mind about social and political issues. In his final pre-game press conference of the year […]

If basketball never stops, neither do basketball rumors. With the Dallas Mavericks crapping out of the postseason in one of the most spectacular in-season collapses in recent history, the franchise’s entire future seems suddenly tenuous. Kyrie Irving, who the Mavs dealt for at February’s trade deadline, is a free agent; Luka Doncic is under contract […]

The Utah Jazz were the NBA’s most surprising team for four months of the season, sitting at 31-31 on February 25th, squarely in the Western Conference playoff picture. Despite dismantling a long-time contender by trading Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert for roughly eight dozen draft picks, the Jazz didn’t seem that much worse for the […]

As far as NBA awards go, none are less exact or more backhanded than Most Improved Player. While all NBA awards have an inexact set of criteria, the MIP is particularly confusing, its winners existing in some fuzzy halfspace between mediocrity and greatness. Here’s an award that’s been won by future Hall of Fame caliber […]

If you forgot to pay attention to the Washington Wizards this season, you didn’t miss much. Once again, the Wizards had a very Wizards-y year, selling out for a doomed play-in berth and refusing to tank even as two of their best players head into NBA free agency this summer. Sitting at 34-46 and in […]

In January 2021, Quinn Moffett, a 22 year-old University of Dayton student, died from an accidental drug overdose. While her death was accidental, it was the culmination of a two year battle that began when she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by a University of Michigan football player. On January 21, 2021, Mary Moffett, […]

You can’t win The Masters on the first day with a great round, but you certainly can lose it with a bad one. In fact, since 2005, only twice has the winner come back after finishing outside of the top 10 on the first day. Both times it was Tiger Woods, who did so when […]

There’s no shortage of blame to go around for this disastrous Dallas Mavericks’ season: their squishy defense, iffy chemistry, injuries to key players, Jalen Brunson’s dad. But the one place where Mavs’ owner Mark Cuban isn’t willing to pass the blame is to Jason Kidd, the Mavericks’ embattled head coach. In an unplanned media availability […]

In February, the Toronto Raptors were on the brink of collapse, sitting seven games below .500 and aggressively shopping franchise cornerstones OG Anunoby, Fred Van Vleet and Pascal Siakam. It was bleak—Nick Nurse, once the consensus top tactician in basketball, looked like he’d lost control of the team; the roster, masterminded by Masai Ujiri, contained […]

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett holds the fate of the franchise in his (tiny, boy-sized) hands. After being thrust into the starting role in Week Four, Pickett demonstrated a considerable amount of moxie, even if he didn’t show nearly as much consistency. In his 12 games as starter last year, Pickett went 7-5 and nearly […]

Heavyweights Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury have faced each other in the ring three times, but even that hasn’t abated their hatred for one another. While Wilder and Fury have largely been respectful and cordial when discussing each other in public over the last few years and even shared a hug at the Jake Paul-Tommy […]

With San Diego State in the national championship game against the UConn Huskies, the Aztecs have already made history as the first Final Four team from the Mountain West Conference. San Diego State is so good that they make even the most outré bold predictions for the national championship game feel safe and sane—three weeks […]

Despite being just a four seed, despite losing six of eight games during a brutal January slide, the UConn Huskies are a juggernaut on the brink of the 2023 NCAA Tournament title, pending a win against San Diego State in the finals. Just ask Miami or Gonzaga or Arkansas or St. Mary’s or Iona, five […]

Heading into 2023 NCAA Tournament finals against UCONN, San Diego State basketball isn’t huge on this whole stars thing. In fact, more than any individual performance by Matt Bradley, Lamont Butler or Darrion Trammell, their entire miraculous run to the national championship game has been predicated on their collective ability to snuff out their opponent’s […]

Boxing is a cruel sport. Even beyond the whole getting punched repeatedly aspect of it, the sport’s complicated, gnarled structure has a way of eating its own as fighters try to navigate the tricky limbo of promoters and match-makers. No other sport punishes losing quite like boxing. NBA teams can lose three of five games without blinking […]

The Memphis Grizzlies are so good (#2 seed in the West for the second straight year) and so young (fourth lowest average age in the league) that it seems somewhat inevitable that they’ll win the NBA Finals at some point. In fact, if you ask them, they’ll tell you that the only thing holding them […]