3 Point Buzzer

ESPN laying off around 100 people today has been devastating for me to follow as numerous sports journalists announce on Twitter that they are no longer employed. I can't imagine how it must feel for those journalists, their colleagues, their friends and their families. It's an awful day, and many wonderful people lost their jobs because of a situation out of their control. What hits hardest is that the sports journalists who lost their jobs today have been around me on Twitter for almost my whole high school career. Seeing people like Ethan Strauss drop a phenomenal Shoe Wars piece or Ed Werder tweet out dollops of juicy NFL gossip was the lifeblood of what got me through a mundane day in high school. While this carnage is probably a result of ESPN letting politics seep into their coverage and the declining business of cable networks, that just doesn't matter right now. What matters is 100 hard working people who all directly or indirectly contributed to me enjoyin...

Day 1 of the 2017 NBA playoffs kicked off with quite a bang. Every series looks to be competitive. Let's get to what happened. Cleveland Cavaliers vs Indiana Pacers Both teams were sieves on defense. The Pacers shot 49% from the floor while the Cavs shot 53%. If you are a defensive purist who digs watching hours of Andre Roberson ball harassment tape, this was not a game for you Myles Turner is going to be a fantastic center some day; in fact he's already pretty solid. In his first career playoff game, Turner flashed both unicorn-like playmaking and abject cluelessness. He recorded a game high 4 steals and wasn't afraid to tussle with the big Tristan Thompson down low. In the final minutes of the game however, Turner had the 6'1 Kyrie Irving on him. Turner got the ball, then awkwardly squared Irving up and immediately had the ball swiped from him. It was a pitiful sequence that reminded everyone that Turner still has a long way to go before he can realize hi...

Wow. This just in, the NBA community has been hit by a nuclear Woj Bomb. Kings superstar center DeMarcus Cousins and swingman Omri Caspi are headed to New Orleans to team up with another supremely talented big man, Anthony Davis. The Pelicans, according to Woj, are giving up Buddy Hield, Tyreke Evans, Langston Galloway and their 2017 1st and 2nd round picks to the Kings. Wow. It's been a while since the last superstar trade, and this one lived up to the hype. DeMarcus Cousins has been tangled in trade rumors for what feels like an eternity, so it's quite a numbing feeling now that he truly has been traded. Now, for the on-court impact. An Anthony Davis-Cousins front court pairing is going to be as fantastic as it sounds. Sure, it's going to take a bit for them to grow comfortable playing around each other, but there is a reason this trade is such a big deal. Cousins and Davis are both unicorn bigs; they can truly do everything on the basketball court. Both players...

Ever since the Carmelo Anthony trade, Denver has been a franchise stuck in the NBA's dreaded middle class. There have been good seasons (2013's 57 win team) but mostly, many bad ones ending with a lower lottery pick that never moves the needle. This predicament can become pretty unavoidable when a team is virtually forced to part with a superstar. Look at the Orlando Magic; ever since they traded Dwight Howard in a blockbuster four-team trade, they have been horrible, and only have Aaron Gordon to show for it. The Pelicans, even after losing Chris Paul and drafting Anthony Davis, still stink. The Thunder lost Kevin Durant, and now they are fighting for the 6th seed. Super admirable, but doesn't move the needle. When LeBron left the Cavs, they were awful for four years, and even Kyrie Irving could not lift the franchise back to the promised land by himself. Point is, when a team splits from a superstar, the only real path to climb back into the contender picture is to...

It has to be a curse. It just has to be. No other team in basketball has worse luck than the Los Angeles Clippers. Sometimes I feel it may be the ghost of Donald Sterling cackling over torn ligaments of star players. Sometimes I feel that the hideous new mascot, Chuck the Condor, brought this misery upon the franchise. Then I realize that it has been this way since the dawn of time, way back to the Michael Olowokandi days. From 1998-2010, the Clippers had managed to work their way into the lottery every single year. They were incompetent for 12 straight years and kept busting on draft picks and cycling coaches under a racist owner (though nobody knew he was one yet). Then Blake Griffin was drafted, and everything started to change. Once Griffin evolved into an all-out star (of course after missing his entire rookie year due to injury, because... they're the Clippers), Chris Paul came to town in 2011. With two stars plus an emerging DeAndre Jordan on board, the Clippers were r...

Boy, do circumstances change quickly. This time last year Los Angeles, the second largest market in the country, did not have a football team. It was actually pretty funny. Fast forward a whole year and now our city has two: the Rams and now the Chargers as well. Currently, it’s pretty sad. With the Chargers announcing their move last week to flee to LA and leave charming San Diego behind, nobody has benefitted from this relocation. Chargers fans are rightfully infuriated with owner Dean Spanos uprooting their lone football franchise of 54 years. Spanos had the option to self finance a new stadium in San Diego, where the NFL would lend him $300 million to help out with the move. He refused, instead trying to make the citizens pay for it out of their own pockets. They rightfully declined, since it is ridiculous that in 2017, billionaires are still trying to persuade cities into paying for their own stadiums. The worst part is that cities benefit minimally from stadium profi...

There has been a deserved buzz surrounding young big men in the NBA. Joel Embiid (22), Karl Towns (21), DeMarcus Cousins (26), Myles Turner (20), Kristaps Porzingis (21) and Anthony Davis (23) have demanded attention and proved that the league may be trending back toward the big men. Do not forget about 31-year-old Marc Gasol however. Gasol may not be as big a name to the average NBA fan as LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are. There are a swath of reasons Gasol is not as universally recognized as some of his superstar peers. For one, he is not the type of player to produce "SportsCenter Top 10" dunks, ally oops or rim rejections. He doesn't make killer crossovers or highlight-reel passes and he is not a freak athlete when stacked up against other stars. Top that all off by playing in Memphis, one of the smallest markets in the league, and you have a damn underrated and under appreciated player. None of that means he isn't the best all-around center in t...