It is fitting July, which begins each year with Canada Day, has been the month launching Vancouver Whitecaps teenage sensation Alphonso Davies onto the world stage as soccer's next star prodigy. Davies, the Edmonton-raised former refugee and recent Canadian citizen, lit Major League Soccer on fire this month, scoring an array of beautiful goals. 2018…
Category: The Big Leagues
Professional sports coverage
Goodbye, DeMar DeRozan: Raptors Choose Superstar Potential Over Loyalty
The dawn hours on Wednesday morning brought the most significant move to date in the history of the Toronto Raptors. The recently speculated blockbuster deal to bring Kawhi Leonard to Canada became official. A #WojBomb served as the day's wake-up call, with the message blaring out that Raptors' fan favorite and All-Star DeMar DeRozan was the…
Wrestle Review Wednesday: On Hulk Hogan, Josh Hader, and Hate
WWE's reinstatement of Hulk Hogan may have been announced on Sunday, but it was inevitable long before that. Released in 2015 from a Legends contract and the payday that came with his not-infrequent TV appearances, WWE began incrementally reintroducing Hogan in the past few months. HBO's documentary Andre The Giant documentary provided WWE an outside party in…
Q&A: PK Subban, EC3 and Underachieving College Football Teams
Last night's solstice marks the true beginning of summer, coinciding with my four-year-old's last day of preschool. Summer means travel season, so it seems only fitting this edition of The Open Man Q&A come in a travel size. Though not as robust as more recent entries -- check out last week's on best offensive lines…
All Aboard The PUMA Revolution
Last summer, I downplayed the launch of LaVar Ball's Lonzo Ball's signature shoe, the ZO2. Fifteen years earlier, in the summer of 2002, I made runs to the sketchy gas station to pick up cases of liquor with my fake ID in hand and a pair of PUMA Suede Classics on my feet. The two…
John Beilein Would Make A Great NBA Coach
Friday afternoon's massive Woj Bomb tying Michigan head coach John Beilein to the vacant Detroit Pistons job piques my interest. The University of Michigan's John Beilein interviewed for the Detroit Pistons coaching job on Thursday, league sources tell ESPN. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 1, 2018 Readers of The Open Man already know we think…
EuroLeague Champ, MVP Luka Doncic is Already A Successful Pro
Prior to the EuroLeague Final Four in Belgrade this weekend, Luka Doncic's 2017-18 season already approached the best pre-draft campaign ever for a European prospect. Winning the Eurobasket with Slovenia in the summer and dominating NBA players along the way, Doncic's EuroLeague season with Real Madrid matched the same level of success. Doncic was named…
Watching The WNBA for the First Time
Certain moments of fatherhood etch into a dad's memory with LeBron-like photographic accuracy. I had one such moment this past March when my wife and 3-year-old son returned home from an evening play date, and I was parked on the couch watching the NCAA national semifinal between UConn and Notre Dame. I grew up in…
#TBT: The David Robinson Rookie Card
My dad's office space in my childhood home had shelves full of books on basketball, VHS of various taped games, and boxes upon boxes of trading cards. In its own, separate Plexiglass case lived a mythical artifact of basketball memorabilia: the NBAHoops David Robinson rookie card. David Robinson was my favorite NBA player during…
The Third Phase: Punters advancing on to the NFL
Did you miss me? I missed all of you. I thought it would be appropriate to bring this column back from vacation. Why do you ask? Well, the NFL Draft came and went. Of the more than 200 prospects selected over the weekend, four were punters. Three went in the fifth round and the fourth…
2018 NFL Draft First Round Recap: Ruttig and Walsh
The Open Man's NFL analyst Chase Ruttig and Ryan Walsh of the Cohen and Walsh Project teamed up for a 2018 NFL Draft diary. Here are Ruttig and Walsh's HOT TAKES™ from the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft. Some strong language and overall silliness can be found below: 1. Cleveland Browns, Baker Mayfield, QB Oklahoma…
Bellator 198: Frank Mir and Fedor Emelianenko set to take MMA back to 2009
Bellator's 2018 highlight, the Heavyweight Grand Prix, is already steeped in nostalgia after bouts featuring Chael Sonnen vs. Tito Ortiz and established veterans Matt Mitrione and Roy Nelson squaring off in the two opening round bouts to date. However, the nostalgia factor kicks up to another level this weekend at Bellator 198, when two of…
Trust Your Process
A clever lede can make a ho-hum attempt at creative content into something so much more than it is. A few wildly obscure adjectives or odd homages from something distant in memory but close enough to be accessible, and you have yourself a hit. Ledes, the (hopefully) short opening paragraph that introduces a reader to…
Through Rice Commission, NCAA is Passing the Buck to the NBAPA
After seven months of deliberation and the formation of a committee headed by none other than Condoleezza Rice, Tuesday morning the NCAA finally announced a plan to address the FBI investigation and related scandals that have plagued college basketball. It's passing the buck to the NBA and NBA Players Association. That was the takeaway as Rice began…
A Word on NBA Playoffs Breakout Sensation Jrue Holiday
A Twitter thread recently came across my timeline, wherein an NBA blogger declared New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday would be the best player on roughly a dozen teams. Now, I am not typically one to base an entire column off the premise of a single tweet, unless it contains something newsworthy (like Rick Steiner's…