There are many in things life that most of the population accepts as true that I find myself questioning. Benedict Cumberbatch is a good-looking man? Is it the accent? The fame? He’s pasty, has weird hair and a weirder name. Really, he’s me in high school.

Perhaps the most perplexing and confusing thing seems to happen at least once a year during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s that moment when NHL coaches and general managers cease to be experts in the construction and managing of hockey players and suddenly become masters of illusion, diversion and psychology.

Sharks general manager Doug Wilson wrote an angry letter the day after Raffi Torres was suspended after Game 2 of San Jose’s Western Conference semifinal series with the Kings after leveling Jarret Stoll. Wilson used the phrase “grossly unfair” to describe the suspension for the remainder of the series and defended his player passionately and eloquently.

Right around the same time, Rangers coach John Tortorella was doing his yearly routine of not answering harmless, normal questions and making a spectacle of himself. This came after his team lost Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Bruins.

Following both events, Wilson and Tortorella were hailed as masters of distraction. “They put the focus on themselves,” I’m sure some guy said. “No one is talking about the struggles of the team,” I’m almost positive some other person remarked.

“Have you people all lost your minds?” I wonder to myself whenever these “distraction” stories are written. Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re at a baseball game and you see a non-baseball athlete walking up to throw the first pitch, you assume the act will be routine. They have a body that’s capable of doing things mere regular humans can’t do, so therefore the simple act of throwing a baseball sort of accurately should be easy.

Too often, though, it isn’t. Just last week Toronto Raptors forward Amir Johnson planted his throw a few feet off the mound, despite much practice and anticipation. Skip to the two-minute mark below to see the carnage…

Thankfully, last night Chargers receiver Danario Alexander’s attempt at a Padres game didn’t end in similar crushing shame, as we see in the video evidence that also features Vincent Brown and his kid being a kid at a baseball game.

Thanks, Drew Fairservice

It might be the fantasy holy grail – what if you could figure out if a pitcher’s struggles were injury-related — before that hit the newswires? You’d look like a genius on your trades, at the very least.

We looked at off-season injury prediction here — based on past disabled list appearances, and pitch mix — but in-season would be sweet. Looks like there are at least some tools we can use in our efforts.

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The last time a high-profile German player faced Bayern Munich in a final before joining the club was in 1984. Back then, Lothar Matthaus was 23 and playing for Borussia Moenchengladbach, but he had already agreed to join Bayern the next season. Who should Moenchengladbach face in the German Cup final at the end of the season? Bayern Munich.

The game finished 1-1 and it went to penalties. Matthaus stepped up first and smashed his shot over the bar. Moenchengladbach pulled it back when Klaus Augenthaler’s shot was saved, but Bayern went on to win 7-6 after the shoot-out. The memory of the game had been doing the rounds in Germany this week, at least until Bayern-bound Mario Goetze was ruled out on Wednesday through injury. If the game went to penalties, how would he feel, and would he take one?

Goetze may not be the only Dortmund star heading to Munich after the game, even if, as a German player who has spent his whole career at the club, his departure hurts the most. The reason the two clubs fell out earlier in the season was over the future of Robert Lewandowski, the Polish forward whose four goals in the semi-final first leg against Real Madrid marked one of the most complete individual performances in the competition’s history.

Lewandowski has always denied that any deal has been struck but it has been reported that he told Dortmund this week that Bayern will be his next club either this summer, when he has one year left to run on his contract, or next summer, when he is a free agent. “My future will be solved after the season,” is all he would say to Polish paper Przegląd Sportowy this week. “I will decide then and speak out. It’s not the time to discuss this, I’m fully focused on the final,” he said. “I’m a professional. Who I’m playing against makes no difference, the most important thing for me is the team I play for.”
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Today we’re gonna take a look at relocating your team in Madden 25’s Connected Franchise mode. Moving your franchise is a big decision and it’s not an easy task to do. Sometimes things just don’t work out in your current city (no funding, small market, etc), so moving the team is the best option.

Before we begin, I should note that your team needs to be really bad before you can just up and move. Your record has to be bad, and the Fan Happiness level has to be low. So teams like the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots that have deep rooted ties to the city and are continuously successful probably won’t have the option to move. Teams like the Jaguars, Browns and Raiders have a better chance to move.

You’ll need to create yourself as an owner, then select “relocate”. Once there, none other than ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter questions your motive for moving, asking “You’ve been a highly successful businessman, and now you own a BFL Franchise, what’s the next step for you and this team?”

You then can pick from three answers (subject to change):

• “I’ve had a lot of success and now I want to have fun and give back to these fans and provide them with a great experience every Sunday.”   TICKET PRICE – Per Win +2%/Per Loss -5%
• “Part of being good at business is surrounding yourself with smart people, so that will continue to be priority A.  We’ll build a continual winner from the top down.” TEAM SUCCESS – Per Win +2%/Per Loss -5%
• “Business to me is turning a profit, so I want to make this franchise the one everybody thinks of first when they think of the NFL.” TEAM SUCCESS – Per Super Bowl Win +2%/Per Playoff Missed -5%

Depending on the answer you choose, you’ll hear back from the league, whether you can move or not. Here are the cities you can move to (subject to change):

Today’s live episode of The Fix starts at 11am ET. Click here to vote in today’s poll. Roy Hibbert will be sitting in, since he has nothing else to do.

In the latest installment of RaptorBlog Radio, Drew, Oliver and I get together to discuss the “sort of” firing of Bryan Colangelo, the current state of the Raptors organization, who may replace Colangelo, and what might become of Dwane Casey.

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Sergio Garcia would like to remind us that racism still exists. Unfortunately, his method for doing so was not a public service announcement, but a joke aimed at Tiger Woods that referred to fried chicken. There are two things that are awful about this: 1) The public reinforcement of an incredibly demeaning stereotype that the majority of us would love to do away with; and 2) His attempt at irreverence wasn’t even remotely funny.

It all started two weeks ago during the Third Round at The Players Championship at Sawgrass. Tiger Woods decided to take a wood out of his bag – signifying to the crowd that he was going for the green on the par-five second hole – just as Sergio Garcia was taking his swing. The crowd cheered Woods’s decision, causing Garcia to slice his shot.

During a rain delay, Garcia vented some of his frustration while speaking with the Golf Channel:

Well, obviously Tiger was on the left and it was my turn to hit. He moved all the crowd that he needed to move, I waited for that. You do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit and right as I was in the top of the back-swing, he must have pulled a wood and everybody started screaming. So that didn’t help very much.

… and so it began.

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