Win the championship? I don’t know, but it’s not a priority in my life. I’d be much happier if I knew that my players were going to make society better, who had good families and who took care of the people around them. I’d get more satisfaction out of that than a title. | | | | | Spurs coach Gregg Popovich in his day job. (Michael Tipton/Flickr) | | | | |  | “Win the championship? I don’t know, but it’s not a priority in my life. I’d be much happier if I knew that my players were going to make society better, who had good families and who took care of the people around them. I’d get more satisfaction out of that than a title.”
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| | rantnrave:// What is the purpose of a coach in modern sports? For generations the job has been framed as the role of not only a tactician but a leader and a teacher, as if somehow they are inextricably linked. That facade has long been shattered. NICK SABAN, the alpha coach of college football, did not look up from his film review to care to know what was going on ELECTION DAY. Certainly that would be a dereliction of duty if Saban actually was supposed to prepare his players for real life and not only winning. GREGG POPOVICH, however, has other ideals. Like Saban, he is impeccably qualified. Unlike Saban, he lives in the real world, not an ivory coach's suite. He'd rather his players -- professionals and not even impressionable college kids -- turn out worthwhile citizens than add more rings. In SAN ANTONIO, he has created an organization built around open-mindedness and with a roster akin to a model U.N. Since the election, Popovich has been an outspoken critic of PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP, not on partisan terms, but because he was bothered by the discriminatory rhetoric. When Popovich took the stage with Dr. Cornel West last month, he told the Sam Houston State students in attendance that he was there to listen. With that ability to balance basketball and his responsibilities to everyone else outside the Spurs organization, there's a reason Pop has few peers... Baseball's WINTER MEETINGS have begun and the trend to watch is how high closer salaries will fly. A top-tier closer now makes more than one of the five best (though injury-prone) starters in MLB last year. And he wasn’t even the best closer on the market this winter… Just a reminder: Freedom of speech gives you protections from government punishment, but not your company firing you for publicly supporting white nationalism. Even if you sling pistachios at CITIZENS BANK FIELD… BUD SELIG will be going to the HALL OF FAME, via the TODAY’S GAME COMMITTEE, while the same committee didn’t vote in MARK MCGWIRE. Selig is now willing to admit, perhaps, there was more he could have done to curb the STEROID ERA. Better late than never, I guess… The RYAN LOCHTE rehabilitation tour is upon us. He didn’t vote because he forgot to file for an absentee ballot and he’s struggling with his PINTEREST page for his wedding. Other than that, everything’s fine. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | The Undefeated |
| More times than not, white people can lawfully fear for their lives for coming into contact with African-Americans. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| With Kevin Durant’s arrival, the NBA’s gravitational force has moved west. Oakland -- not New York or L.A. -- is now the basketball media capital of the world. The Warriors don’t just see national writers swoop in for the night. They see national writers swoop in and stay. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| Think you have a tough Monday? Peek inside the Monday of an NFL player, who spends the day healing after taking a brutal pounding on the football field. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Hours after Iraan High School won a state football quarterfinal, a bus carrying cheerleaders and their sponsors was struck on a highway, leaving one dead. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| When faced with potential team crises, NFL coaches reveal what kind of leaders they can be. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| A century after its creation, the game is still a perfect balance of skill and chance. | | |
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 | Yahoo! Sports |
| You want an eight-team playoff, the bigger, bolder (and inevitable) successor to the current four-team stopgap compromise currently in place? Sure, easy. Here's one below that would be vastly superior for the sport. Stick around after, however, to consider the challenges at hand, the heavy lifting required to get it right and why college football might not want to jump right now. | | |
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 | Bleacher Report |
| Luck is the one on road trips who is providing history lessons at every turn. He's Ned Flanders in pads. LeVar Burton with a cannon. He'll recommend a novel to your teenage child (Little House on the Prairie is this month's recommendation!), and of course, he'll congratulate that blitzing linebacker who is foaming at the mouth and drilling him in the rib cage. | | |
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 | HardballTalk |
| Ballplayers who used PEDs are barred entry to the Hall of Fame. The man who presided over the Steroid Era is welcomed with open arms. | | |
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 | The Players' Tribune |
| To me, all of it -- foster care, my parents being in jail, moving from house to house to house to house -- was normal. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Last year, Americans collectively spent 31 billion hours watching sports on TV - a 40% increase from a decade ago. | | |
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 | Houston Chronicle |
| Why a strong relationship with his trainer set up James Harden's biggest year yet. | | |
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 | Vice |
| We are a long way from 'Pumping Iron.' | | |
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 | Hazlitt |
| Fandom allows us to locate some much-needed normalcy without ever accepting the current state of things as normal. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Athletes from the national team plan a mass defection. | | |
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 | The Hardball Times |
| Seeing fandom through the eyes of loved ones. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Three years ago Luvo Manyonga was a crystal meth addict. Now he is an Olympic silver medallist. This is his journey from the tik-addled townships to Rio glory, with the help of an Irish former street-sweeper turned strongman. | | |
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| Yahoo! Sports |
| The Milwaukee Bucks are in a unique position to challenge the way the NBA game is currently played. | | |
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| The Undefeated |
| A man who deserved better than this death on hard asphalt. | | |
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| Sports Illustrated |
| What impact will Schilling's incendiary post-retirement political statements have on his Cooperstown chances? | | |
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 | via YouTube |
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