I haven't seen them all, so I can't say for sure. But it is about as bad as they come.
Mysteriously, the ball goes straight up in the air out of Felton's hands — it's actually kind of amazing how high it gets. Andray Blatche manages to corral it, leaving Felton to chase the Nets back down the court and wonder what the hell just happened to his body.
There's nothing quite like the roar of the crowd. And by crowd I mean Randy.
Image by Valerio Pennicino / Getty Images
Soccer is really popular in Italy. I know that seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's important to say here because this story might make you doubt it. Arrigo Brovedani is a big fan of Serie A (that's the top Italian soccer league, home to powers like AC Milan and Juventus) team Udinese. So when he had an opportunity to go see his squad play an away game at Sampdoria, he took it. What he found when he got to the stadium was that he was THE ONLY Udinese supporter there. That's not hyperbole. He was it.
Udinese went on to win 2-0 and dedicated their win to Brovedani and invited him to be their guest at their coming match against Palermo. But it wasn't just his beloved team that were grateful, the crew from the home stadium gave him coffee, a Sampdoria shirt, and maybe most surprisingly considering the stories you hear about European soccer fans, the home crowd invited Brovedani to drink with them after the game.
Meet Jeff, the giant dinosaur on the course at the Australian PGA Championship.
Image by Dennis Passa / AP
The Australian PGA Championship begins tomorrow at the Palmer Coolum Resort in Queensland, where some of the best golfers in the world will have to navigate an unusual hazard — a 26-foot-tall mechanical T-Rex named Jeff.
According to the AP, Jeff the T-Rex is situated between the ninth green and tenth tee, and "flips its tail and opens its mouth to unleash a menacing roar when anyone approaches." Jeff will be powered down during the tournament.
Predictably, the Australian PGA is pissed off, and will be moving next year's tournament to a new course after 11 years at the Palmer Coolum Resort.
In sum: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Australian John Hammond. Australian John Hammond destroys sanctity of golf.
The dinosaur will be a massive distraction for the entirety of the weekend, but Adam Scott and Greg Norman will cope with it, because golf, uh, finds a way.
Image by Staff / Reuters
This off-season, the proverbial hot stove is turning out some steaming hot trays of horrible trades.
Image by Dave Martin, File / AP
December is not a month you traditionally associate with baseball. The World Series is over, and most baseball players are engaged in their favorite off-season activity — denying that they own paintings portraying themselves as centaurs. But this weekend, amid actual football and basketball games, baseball cut through. Why? Because of HOT STOVE ACTION.
Let's get the less hilarious trades and signings out of the way first so we have something to look forward to.
1) The Rangers traded 36-year-old infielder/DH Michael Young to Philadelphia after 13 years in Texas. In exchange for a couple old copies of the Sunday Times — excuse me, two middle relievers — the Rangers agreed to buy out Young's no-trade clause, since he would've sat on the bench this year if he remained with Texas. This is one of those trades that everyone can feel good about: the Phillies get a third baseman, the Rangers create a better situation for a loyal player, and Michael Young gets to play.
2) The Dodgers, who are owned by Magic Johnson and Moneybags from the Monopoly game, signed Zach Greinke, a right-handed pitcher, to a contract worth $97 billion over six years. (Real number: $147 million, or the most lucrative deal for a right-handed pitcher in league history and the second-most lucrative for any pitcher, trailing only that time the Yankees pulled up to CC Sabathia's house with a cruise ship full of money.) Greinke was pretty much unanimously thought of as the best pitcher on the market, and as the Dodgers showed when they bailed out the Boston Red Sox TARP-style, they're not afraid of spending exorbitant amounts of money if it might help them win a few extra games. Zach Greinke will certainly help them win a few extra games, even if he does cost more than most Hollywood blockbusters.
AND
3) Kansas City. The Royals' citymates, the Kansas City Chiefs, are bad in just about every way. They're bad on the field; they're bad in the front office; they're bad in ownership and coaching. They're a bad franchise. Clearly, the Kansas City Royals are jealous of the attention the Chiefs are getting for this fact. So the Royals traded four of their best prospects — including MLB.com's 3rd- and 30th-highest rated guys — for two Tampa Bay Rays pitchers, Wade Davis and James Shields. How have some of baseball's better-known observers reacted to the trade? After half-jokingly calling it the worst trade in MLB history, Rob Neyer at Baseball Nation makes a convincing argument that the Royals probably just discarded the next MLB superstar hitter for a couple of pitchers with ceilings at "good." Wrote esteemed K.C. sportswriter Joe Posnanski, "I despise the Royals' trade of late Sunday night. Despise. Deplore. Deride. Disapprove. If there were a Royals Tradebook Page, I would click the "dislike" button at least 10,000 times." Widely respected baseball pundit Joe Sheehan accused Moore of screwing over the franchise's future in hopes of a short-term bump in wins that could help him keep his job.
This trade will indeed probably make the Royals — who had the MLB's 23rd-worst team ERA last year — a better team in 2013. But there's still a good chance Kansas City won't even make the play-offs next year and that they've just turned a team on the rise back into the usual small-market mediocrity. And the Royals' trade isn't even the most fan-disheartening transaction of the MLB off-season: That would be the one where the Miami Marlins initiated a fire sale to the Toronto Blue Jays so severe and one-sided that there were calls for Bud Selig to step in and stop it, like David Stern did when the Hornets tried to send Chris Paul to the Lakers. Essentially, the Marlins, who just last year opened a new stadium and changed their entire aesthetic, decided to push the abort button on a lineup that had only existed for one year, turning themselves into a stupid shell of a baseball team that will attract an even sparser attendance this year than the disappointing paucity of fans who came to watch the home run dolphin make its occasional orbit in 2012.
So for fans of the Blue Jays and Rays, this off-season has been great. The AL East will be highly competitive as usual. Baseball fans in general, though, can't be happy to have seen two exciting up-and-coming teams stab themselves in the eye with a fork. On that front, maybe we should unplug Nationals GM Mike Rizzo's phone for the next few months before he trades Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg for a jar of peanut butter.
The dangers of organized furry fights.
Source: youtube.com / via: sportsgrid.com
At a Kentucky high school basketball game between rival schools Male and Manual high schools, the team's mascots got together during a break in the game to throw down, but what started as innocent rivalry shenanigans quickly grew into something much more serious. The two student mascots had to be separated by administrators.
A sign of weakness ahead of the Aggies' bowl game?
Image by Scott Terna/Cal Sport Media/Zuma Press/MCT
Johnny Manziel is probably good at just about everything he does — after all, he won the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman. One arena in which Johnny Football struggles mightily, however, is the bowling alley.
Courtesy of his girlfriend Sarah's Twitter feed:
Maybe try again with the bumpers up?
I guess now that he's finally drafted a good player, he's earned a little floor time.
Image by David T. Foster III/Charlotte Observer/MCT
I imagine the Bobcats have mixed emotions about Jordan gracing the practice floor among them, rather than on the sidelines, and the obligatory quotes given out by players revealed as much. Sure, it's cool to play basketball with the greatest player of all time, but at the same time, Michael Jordan is a 49-year-old man playing one-on-one with his starting shooting guard. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist was born AFTER Michael had already won three NBA championships. Here's what Gerald Henderson told Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer:
He’s the best ever to play and he’s still got that competitive nature. He always feels he can help you,” said team captain Henderson. “We played one-one-one. That’s always fun. He wants to win...
Andrew Bynum takes his rehab seriously.
The photo was posted to Instagram but has since been deleted.
Via: crossingbroad.com
Via: crossingbroad.com
At least he's taking shots of some kind.
It was a landmark year for crossovers in the NBA.
It's fitting that we start with Jamal Crawford, because Jamal Crawford is one of the most lethal dribblers in the league. Poor Rudy Gay just doesn't know what to do.
Ray Allen doesn't fare much better — he ends up in a different zip code than Crawford by the end of this shot. At least he keeps his feet.
Crawford's teammate Chris Paul is always good for a few broken ankles every year.
For all his flaws, Nate Robinson can do two things very well: dunk and handle. Here, he's handling, and Reggie Jackson can't do much about it.
The game seemed to get away from them.
The girls from Bloomington South High School played the girls from Arlington High on Tuesday night in Indianapolis. What happened is the most harrowingly one-sided affair basketball has seen since Michael Jordan practiced with the Looney Tunes in Space Jam.
Bloomington South defeated Arlington 107-2!. Arlington's only two points came on free throws in the second and third quarter. Bloomington coach Larry Winters was dismissive of the accusation that they ran up the score on Arlington:
"I didn't tell my girls to stop shooting because that would have been more embarrassing (to Arlington)," Winters said, telling the Star that Arlington's defense was in an aggressive 2-3 zone. "We were not trying to embarrass them or run up the score."
Arlington has now lost 23 straight games dating back to last season.
H/T ESPN.
He could have blown his whistle, but that would have been way less athletic.
Source: youtube.com
H/T HyperVocal.
NBA players are not the best singers.
Source: youtube.com
Source: youtube.com
Pretty inspiring — and impressive — stuff.
Maybe stick to skiing, Bode. (WARNING: graphic image.)
Image by Alessandro Trovati / AP
Via: @MorganEBeck
“Blade Runner” takes on all challengers.
The race was held to promote the "Definitely Able" campaign in Qatar, which works to eliminate discrimination against disabled and Paralympic athletes. The horse really stumbled out of the gates, but it seemed like Oscar had the horse beat anyway. We'd like to see him take on a cheetah next.
H/T The Telegraph.
This volleyball is a serial killer.
Source: youtube.com
H/T Brandon Stroud at With Leather.
It doesn't make these videos any less amazing.
Source: youtube.com
"WOW! Did you see that uppercut?" the commentator shrieks as the fighter, scarred and hulking, evades his opponent's torpedo-like legs and drills his fist — his entire body, really — into the challenger's head. It's a knockout blow. "That was... that was..." The commentator can't even find the words to finish his sentence. The victory is an upset.
This isn't the year's best boxing match or an explosive mixed-martial arts bout, though — this is the Super Street Fighter II Turbo Asian Semi-Final Qualifying round for Capcom's Street Fighter 25th Anniversary tournament. A videogame.
The world's most beloved fighting game turned 25 this year, and part of Capcom's blowout birthday bash was a series of tournaments held all around the world. Capcom recently dumped videos of several of the Grand Finals matches onto YouTube, and they are sublime, even if — well, especially if — you didn't spend a significant chunk of puberty hiding from girls in a dark, musty arcade, hunched over a worn cabinet, the glow of the CRT monitors softly reflecting off the row of tokens perched just above the joystick, staking your claim to take on the reigning champion. (Not that I did that. Nope. Noooooope.)
A pair of commentators cover each match, emoting exactly as if they were watching two real human beings destroy each other's bodies, flesh and bone working like machinery to pound another person into a limp sack of meat. Yips of "wow!" punctuate perfectly technical-sounding bits of sports commentary — "[he] punishes a hurricane with a standing fierce" — to the point that if you were listening to an audio-only feed, you might be convinced you're simply listening to a thrilling kickboxing match, albeit with oddly named opponents like WW MCZ Laugh and Poongko. At least until a commentator offers an insight like, "I think the question is whether there's going to be an ultra cancel after the roundhouse," and the camera cuts to a pair of sallow, skinny nerds, slouching in between bouts of frantically wagging very phallic knobs as they machine-gun tap on a set of six concave buttons the size of half dollars.
These matches parallel real sports broadcasts in a way that borders on surreal, especially when you consider that some gamers very much want their coordinated button bashing to be seen on the same level as the athletic events these tournaments are aping. Below are the Grand Finals matches for a handful of Street Fighter titles featured in Capcom's Street Fighter 25th anniversary tournament — and watching them is well worth your time.
Source: youtube.com
A distrusting baby, mind-blowing facts, and general weirdness.
This ended up being a "hoax" JaVale played on the media, but we'll never forget platypus #swag.
He doesn't look or sound too good.
Wut?
I wonder if he's got a contract with Nike?
If he doesn't, Champs will be notified PDQ.
Ad agency: Zambezi, Venice Beach.
Rob Parker went on the air and decided to question Robert Griffin III's “blackness.”
Source: @espnmikes
Source: @ArianFoster
