But it's still the greatest.
Being fake is so “in” this summer.
Maxim released its "Hot 100″ list this morning, counting down the sexiest women in the world. This year, Miley Cyrus took the top spot, but the surprise pick of the year went to Lennay Kekua at #69.
Pretty funny, Maxim, but how do you think this makes the women who ranked below a fake person feel? Like Zooey Deschanel at #98? Or Ashley Benson at #82? Or, for that matter, every other woman in the world, all of whom could have had a chance at that #100 ranking if one of the higher slots hadn't been taken up by a person who doesn't exist?
Sometimes it just seems like Maxim isn't always sensitive to women's feelings.
Thanks, Birdman.
It freakin' hurts.
Via: Jeff Gross / Getty Images
The injuries are real, the rewards are tiny, but the convicts will stare down a charging bull just for the thrill of competition.
Via: en.wikipedia.org
Via: Sean Gardner/Los Angeles Times/MCT
Source: vimeo.com
An embarrassing team effort.
Via: @HPbasketball
Is the hustlin' Bull the NBA's most desired man?
Via: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images
Via: CHris McGrath / Getty Images
This is not how you should use a time machine.
For those of you who are unaware, star Clippers forward Blake Griffin can travel through time. It's all documented in a series of Kia commercials that have been running lately. He just hops in his Kia Optima, tells his "infotainment" system to send him back to some year, and BOOM! Blake is pulling a Marty McFly. It's that simple.
And what does Blake do with this incredible power? He chooses to go back in time to teach HIMSELF valuable life lessons.
You know, really important things, like...
Dwight Howard, go to your room.
Via: Damian Dovarganes / AP
It’s high-floating, not very badass, and surprisingly hard to defend against.
Follow NowThis News on Facebook and Twitter.
The NowThis News app is live -- and it's FREE! Download it.
Irresistibility is merely a haircut away.
Via: Craig Melvin / Getty Images
Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com
Source: sports.espn.go.com
Source: smelltheglove.ca
What does Thierry Henry, one of the best French players ever, get out of playing in the United States?
Via: Steve Dykes / Getty Images
There's no straight-up proxy in American sports for what aging-but-not-washed-up soccer stars do with their careers. When Chipper Jones can't be a full-time contributor to the Atlanta Braves anymore, he doesn't go to play for the minor-league team in Chattanooga. Henry is still capable of top-notch plays — like the bicycle kick or this sneaky goal during his brief return to Arsenal on "loan" last year — but is too old to be a team centerpiece at the highest level. But he can still be a centerpiece in MLS — and earn a lot of money doing it. Henry's making $3.75 million this year, which is a lot more than your typical Chattanooga Lookout. There's also a semi-philanthropic angle, in that Henry can use his fame to help spread the popularity of soccer in the U.S. Also appealing: he gets to live in one of the world's greatest cities in relative anonymity. Which is to say: if Chipper Jones could pull down $4 million a season to live in Rio, hit home runs in full stadiums, and become one of the faces of an up-and-coming game in a new country, he'd probably be on the beach right now.
This is not a good way to treat your sister, little girl.
Sorry bro, just telling it real.
Via: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images
Tonight, the Miami Heat play the Chicago Bulls in Chicago. The San Antonio Spurs play the Golden State Warriors in Oakland. And if you have even the slightest interest in sports as a form of entertainment or a worthwhile slice of American culture, you will watch these two games.
You will watch these two games because:
1. You want to see LeBron James, titan of basketball, one of the greatest human bodies ever created in the United States of America, a nearly flawless physical technician worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a force of mind and charisma who leaves black holes behind him, ply his trade as well as or better than any profesional athlete has ever or will ever plied his trade.
2. You want to see the rest of James' well-oiled machine, a deftly coached team buoyed by an ideally intense and creative sidekick (Dwyane Wade), an avian and elegant near-seven-footer (Chris Bosh), savvy and pedantic role players (Shane Battier and Ray Allen), and indomitable oddities (Chris "Birdman" Andersen, the Chalmers/Cole point-guard hydra), further develop basketball, like a virtuoso painter evolving his canvas.
3. You want to see the tattered roster of the Chicago Bulls, so injury-and-illness-riddled that they feel like a sequel to Contagion, keep getting surprising and bizarre performances out of the effectively one-footed Joakim Noah, one of the few star athletes to ever turn a personal narrative of popular hatred into public adoration, and Nate Robinson, an improbable dervish who is a coach's nightmare except when he's not.
4. You're curious about how a team can even summon the confidence to take the floor, much less succeed, when its two best players — Derrick Rose, with a torn-up knee and shattered psyche, and Luol Deng, so ill he's had to be drained from the spine and lost 15 pounds in a week — are debilitated mentally and physically.
5. You want to see how the city of Chicago, a sports mecca of durable fanaticism, will react to the return of its limping squad and the arrival of Miami, whose fans treated the Bulls with severe disrespect and disgust two nights ago.
Via: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
6. You want to see the bacchanalia of the Warriors' backcourt of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, which, despite having a combined age of 48 and a combined appearance of 25, has been firing off three-pointers so beautifully and seemingly without effort that when coach Mark Jackson hyperbolically called them the greatest pair of shooting guards (as in, guards who shoot) in NBA history, people paused for a second and realized he might even be right.
7. In particular, you want to watch Stephen Curry, the curiously toddlerish son of an NBA great, become more and more of an ultra-dynamic scorer and supremely creative offensive maestro, equipped with a crossover so fast it seems like something made in Final Cut and a release that's even faster.
8. You want to watch what might be the last stand of the Duncan-Ginobili-Parker Spurs, an NBA institution whose permanence has been so taken for granted that Duncan having one of the best years of his career at age 37 seemed not only appropriate but somehow scripted. You wonder if Parker can take hold of the carrot that's always seemed to dangle in front of him, and if Ginobili's disintegrating body can keep pace with his hyper-aggressive brain.
9. You think Gregg Popovich, the game's consistently greatest coach for more years than seems logical or fair, can deploy his role players and bench guys, like knights and bishops on a chessboard, to great-enough effect to overwhelm the Warriors' surge of youthful confidence. (But what if he can't? You'd want to see that, too.)
10. You know that the Thunder — once the easy Western Conference favorites — are injured and vulnerable with Russell Westbrook out, and the path to the Finals is wide open. You know that the Spurs have looked shaky. You know that the Warriors' crazed, rabid, insane home fans know both of these things, and know that their underdog sixth-seed team suddenly has a very good shot to make its first-ever NBA Finals in 38 (!) years. You know that Oakland is going to be LOUD tonight.
This is why you'll watch both of these games. You can still drink beer and talk to other people; that's why our forefathers invented bars with televisions. But if you understand the way five men, a ball and 20,000 fans can turn a concrete-and-steel stadium into a boiling cauldron of pure adrenaline, you'll keep an eye on that TV tonight. You don't want to miss something great.
If you’re a liar and work in sports, you will definitely be caught. And probably by Deadspin.
Via: Mel Evans / AP
Not three weeks on the job as Rutgers men's basketball coach and Eddie Jordan's honeymoon is already over. After taking over the embattled program in late April, a report from Deadspin's John Koblin threatens to unravel his employment prospects. It appears that, contrary to the school's explicit claims that he graduated in 1977, he was actually (according to a transcript obtained by Deadspin) quite a few credits short of graduation and never actually received a degree from the university.
This all comes barely a month after Mike Rice was fired by Rutgers after an ESPN scoop that he had been videotaped engaging in repeated physical and emotional abuse toward his players during practices over a long period of time. (The revelation also led to the ouster of athletic director Tim Pernetti.)
Here is Jordan's actual transcript, as received by Deadspin a few days ago:
There aren't any known examples of Jordan outright lying about his degree — and he did take four years of classes, so it's easy to see where others could get confused — but Koblin also ticks off a nice laundry list of instances where the erroneous claim was repeated somewhere Jordan or Rutgers really should've been able to set the record straight, most damningly at Jordan's induction into Rutgers' "Hall of Distinguished Alumni". It's yet another instance where Deadspin has blown apart a long-standing fact that the traditional sports media never thought to verify. (Just ask this guy.)
Remember, do not lie, because you will be caught. But if there's anything anyone would like to confess, operators are standing by.
Scott Kazmir would like to notify you that he can still pitch.
Via: Eliot J. Schechter / Getty Images
Via: Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images
Washington’s wunderkind isn’t perfect.
Major League Baseball’s farcical ump show needs to be fixed somehow. The answer may come from the 1930s.
Via: Scott Halleran / Getty Images
"There's no guesswork in calling balls and strikes with this apparatus."
In the summer of 1939, Popular Science peered into the fantastical future of athletics with a story headlined "New Inventions in the Field of Sports." In between the "merry-go-round training machine" for rowers, and a proposal for polo on horses in water — a "thrilling new aquatic sport" — there was a futurist gem: the Electrical Umpire.
A quarter-page illustration detailed the intricate system of light beams comprising the guts of the (entirely fictional) machine. "Electric eyes" several feet to the left and right of each batter would determine whether the ball passed through the strike zone, defined as the area from the upper chest down to the knees. A projector strung along a clothesline 10 feet overhead would shoot light straight down at a mirror under home plate and recognize if the ball passed over the plate, if it had broken the vertical beam of light. When a pitch satisfied those two criteria — in the strike zone and over the plate — an indicator light signaled a strike.
The trippy part of the illustration is the home plate umpire, the very character rendered irrelevant by the contraption, standing in the background, watching idly as his duties are automated by a colorful display of mirrors, lights, and geometry.
Most of the time when you see one of these old-time guesses at the future, it's for a laugh. We don't hovercraft skateboards or commute to work on jetpacks. (Yet.) But the electric umpire, in the form of PITCHf/x tracking, exists, more or less using the same principles that Popular Science suggested. Baseball HAS its flying car — but refuses to use it.
Wow.
The Houston Astros just can’t win.
On Saturday night, Nelson Cruz jacked a two-run homer off Astros reliever Philip Humber, giving us this shameful moment in sports history...
