New Orleans should be much better than its 23-28 record. When healthy, Nikola Mirotic’s perimeter scoring, Julius Randle’s versatility and Jrue Holiday’s presence as an elite two-way point guard should supplement Anthony Davis’ First-Team All-NBA effort. The Pelicans have cobbled together a hodgepodge of talented supporting specialists alongside Mirotic, Randle, Holiday and Davis. Unfortunately, the whole hasn’t been greater than [&hellip

Croatia and France’s matchup in the 2018 World Cup Final will be a rematch of the 1998 World Cup semifinal, where, 20 years ago, the French buried the Croatians 2-1 before winning their first Cup against powerhouse Brazil. Things may be different this year, though – both of their tournament runs are illustrative of international football’s entropy at work. Although [&hellip

Situated between the end of pre-Draft workouts and summer league, NBA free agency is a whole different playing field. Teams scour the market for talent that will give them an edge, and agents replace coaches as offseason tacticians scheming to get their clients into position to score exorbitant amounts of money. This summer, teams have been uncharacteristically restrained in their [&hellip

Russell Westbrook vs. James Harden’s MVP debate embodies the reductive qualatative vs quantitative debate surrounding the NBA. Can the advanced metrics which help determine our perception of top players really capture the essence of their value? Does it measure the qualitative size of a player’s heart? Or the uplifting and calming presence a leader brings to a team during the course [&hellip

For much of his decade in the NFL, Matt Ryan has been the quarterback fraternity’s embodiment of a tree falling in a forest. How many other quarterbacks at the helm of a blistering offense would be Rosa Parked into the rear of the MVP discussion for most of the year despite throwing for nearly 5000 yards and 40 touchdowns in [&hellip