Yesterday was one of the worst days of my life.
@zaccrain
was an absolute giant, and I cannot imagine life without him here alongside us every day. We're so worse off. Dallas will be, too. Tell your people you love them.
NEW: At 63 years old, Steve Borden is the pro wrestling lifer he swore he'd never become. But he won't retire to his ranch in Waxahachie just yet. Not until he writes the exit he's waited on for more than two decades.
These are the last days of
@Sting
I realize Luka does not live anything resembling a normal life, but, like, imagine being 22 and the best athlete in the history of the sport — who is famous for being, uh, prickly — races over to give you a bear hug. My brain would melt.
The Athletic stopped being a local sports operation well before today's layoffs. It happened when all the editors were reorganized nationally in 2021.
Take it from one of them, who has since started local sports coverage elsewhere: the original idea worked & will keep working.
Tyrell Terry lets you trade Seth Curry.
Josh Richardson lets you develop Josh Green with way less pressure.
Tyler Bey feels a little like a DFS starter kit.
All of it makes sense, and makes them much bigger, and much better defensively.
Luka or no Luka, a team that blows a 16-point lead and can't crack double digits in the fourth-quarter of a must-win game probably doesn't deserve to be in the postseason.
If you're fortunate enough to know David, then you know this is him in a nutshell. The village is burning around him and he's still making sure to take care of people around him, particularly freelancers hungry for a chance to prove themselves.
I'm putting up some last stories that I edited at Deadspin, all submitted and edited before today. I want to get these writers paid and read. All these stories are good and I feel lucky to have worked on them. Here is one, by
@OAlmasri
:
Friends, let me distract you from this game with actual good sports news:
Texas Tech won another meat judging national title.
If you know, you know. If you don’t, here’s my Sports Illustrated story from last year on the greatest dynasty around
One by one, Dirk Nowitzki vanquished all of his old rivals before he retired.
Except one.
15 years after We Believe, it's Luka Doncic's time to finish what Dirk started and take down the Warriors.
@zaccrain
with the words to get you hyped for Game 1
Caleb Williams mostly replicating his Heisman stats with a supporting cast this subpar is an achievements he’s never going to get enough credit for.
On resume? A very special but not transcendent college QB.
On ability? I don’t think there are five better ones, ever.
Some people recognize bird calls.
Others pick out notes in a song.
Me? Within four words, I can identify whether Avery Johnson is talking on my television screen.
Mitch Garver is sneakily one of the best hitting catchers in the AL and the Rangers got him for someone who was in no way in their long-term plans. That’s a nice piece of business.
New column: The Porzingis trade isn't about who the Mavericks got.
It's only marginally about Porzingis.
It's about the Mavericks betting on themselves and their ability to acquire more talent by first acquiring less talent.
I profiled The Young Bucks five years ago today. Which feels more like 15 years ago on account of how much pro wrestling has changed -- and how much of that is because of them. Truly remarkable.
Christian Wood is extension-eligible this week, which means the window for Dallas to make up its mind on what to do with the big man starts now. Here's
@iztok_franko
on the Mavericks' dilemma.
Friends, I'm happy to inform you of the only Sunday sports news that mattered: Texas Tech won another meat judging national championship.
If you read my
@SInow
story from May, you understand. If you didn't, read about a dynasty that puts Alabama to shame
The more I think about the Maya Moore story, the more I'm convinced this would have been the single biggest story in sports had this been a male athlete of similar ability/resume. Which, to be clear, is messed up.
The Athletic is obviously very successful at what it does now, too, insofar as it got the place sold and their board paid out. A ton of awesome people still do great work.
But the first few years were proof of concept that there's a huge hunger for local sports coverage.
Hey! I'm beyond excited to (finally) announce that I've joined
@dmagazine
as its first sports editor.
As part of that, we'll launch a new sports vertical later this summer. It's called StrongSide & we've got some killer writers on board.
Here's more!
As I said on the
@SempreIntercom
pod a couple of weeks ago, the best moment was always going to be Handanovic lifting the trophy. Dude gave the best years of his career to the darkest days of the club. Never thought I’d see him win anything for it. Happy to be wrong.
The size of that hunger does not equate to "unlimited hypothetical growth," which is what gets VC folks out of bed in the morning.
But you don't need anything near that to get a big audience and make money off of it. The Athletic showed it's there and then punted on it.
11 months ago, J.J. Barea wept on a training table, certain his career was over. It wasn't -- but the player who has spent his entire basketball life proving his worth has one last hurdle to overcome. My latest:
My father died two and a half weeks ago. This is a slightly abridged version of the eulogy I read at his memorial service on Saturday. I’m posting it because I want you to know who he was. I’m proud to be Joe Piellucci’s son, and I miss him dearly.
It's a great day in America:
@seanshapiro
is back writing about Stars hockey.
Here's his first one for us, about how Jim Nill's calling card -- patience -- built this new-look Stars roster:
The case for Jaden Hardy isn't about what he can do for Dallas this year, because it won't be much of anything.
It's that when you're over the cap with minimal trade assets & you're not going to the lottery any time soon, sometimes you take a swing on ceiling & see what happens
Luka Doncic asked security to eject this Suns fan, who was sitting two rows behind midcourt press row. The comment the fan made that drew Doncic’s wrath: “Luka, you’re tired! Get your ass on the treadmill!”
Programming alert: I'm now editing at
@TheAthleticNBA
. This account will involve the usual nonsense and I'll still be writing a bit, too. Still in Dallas. But if you see more NBA tweets than before, well, that's why.
The question isn't whether the Cowboys have looked worse under Mike McCarthy than yesterday. It's what really changes with a new head coach, QB, or playcaller, or whatever when this is the same organization.
@NotJackKemp
on the disaster against Green Bay
The message you should take from this, if true, is he's welcome to feel that way and maybe he's right and that nothing Dallas could do would fix that.
It isn't "Letting the most gifted offensive player of his generation orchestrate for a roster of non-All Stars is a bad idea"
“I’ve talked to people in his circle who think he has another level to reach that he just couldn’t reach with Dallas because he played with the most ball dominant player in the league.” 👀
-
@ChrisBHaynes
on Jalen Brunson
If they didn’t like what they got offered for Lynn now, I imagine they aren’t going to be thrilled to see what they get sent when he’s not pitching like a top-five pitcher in the AL and has even less control on his deal.
There is one certainty about this Mavs team: they do not quit. That’s why they’re still alive, and that’s why the Suns will have to give every ounce of what they have left to send Dallas home.
What We Saw, What It Felt Like together with
@iztok_franko
My story on
@ryan_hilinski
is a notable piece in this year's Best American Sports Writing.
Deeply grateful to
@GlennStout
for the inclusion,
@MattFutterman
for the editing and most of all to Ryan +
@HilinskisHope
for trusting me to tell their story.
Some personal news: Today is my last day at The Athletic.
I am beyond excited about where I'm heading next, and I can't wait to tell you all about it soon.
For now, though, I want to thank some of the many people who made the last two years so special for me.
So they got off Elvis’ deal, nipped any chance of outside noise on his playing time in the bud, got a couple prospects - one of whom could be their starting catcher before the year’s out - plus maybe someone else they could flip at deadline?
Yeah, that’s a good trade.
This is absolutely infuriating, and it's going to haunt Inter for the next 10 years.
And when the stakes are that high, not even a Scudetto this season is enough because Tonali-Barella would be the backbone of a midfield that can win five of them.
New column: The Mavericks hit bottom because of mistake after mistake on the margins.
Thursday was their best night in a long time because, for once, they maximized every inch of what they had
.
@iztok_franko
can confirm that the reasonable thing I wanted to see Dallas do was get an actual backup 5 who makes sure they won't get killed in the non-Lively minutes.
So presuming that compensation is in the second-round neighborhood, this is a very nice piece of business
Once upon a time, Dallas had three sports radio stations. That ended in March.
What led to the demise of 103.3 ESPN Radio?
@AlexFKelly
got to the bottom of it, with help from folks like
@BenRogers
,
@SkinWade
,
@coopmavs
,
@mattmosley
, and more
The NFL Draft is coming, and I'll be damned if we got just anyone to write about all the Cowboys angles.
Which means it's
@timeforjeffrey
. Here's his first one, on why the offensive line really is Dallas' biggest issue & who can fix it in the first round
The Padres could be the worst team in the history in baseball and I would not be able to sign the paper fast enough if I was offered $350 million to live in San Diego for 11 years.
What I’m saying is Manny made the right call considering the Padres also happen to be quite good
New story: I wrote about my friend, Jonathan Tjarks, and what all of us -- the people in his life, the city he lived in, the sport he covered -- will miss without him.
Enormous thanks to
@bobbykaralla
,
@jonnyauping
, &
@tim_cato
for sharing their memories
I've seen Klay Thompson. You've seen Klay Thompson. I wanted to read about him from someone who *watched* him night in, night out.
So I asked
@ThomasAwful
to write a few words for us, and damn did he deliver. One of the best pieces you'll read this week
Nobody wants to hear this in a game like this, but
@DaveDuFourNBA
hit the nail on the head from our show on Monday (with something I’ve said before, too): a lot of the talent problems start with Luka being so good that they couldn’t tank their way into a supporting cast.
You may know there's an F1 race in Austin this weekend. What you probably don't is in 1984, there was a race in Dallas. And it was chaos.
As in, the track melting and a dude trying to push his car over the line.
Hell of a debut from
@ArnoldcommaJon
It's
@iztok_franko
on Luka, which really is all I need to say. But I hasten to add this: he's improved more this season than he has at any point since his rookie year.
Let Iztok show you why like only he can
A little bittersweet that this was the last big Dirk moment, because it’s hard to imagine a more impactful journey between a city and an athlete than what Dallas has had with him.
Ahead of the Finals, I decided to write a few words about how we're living through the greatest sports moment in Dallas history and why these last nine months matter so much for a place other cities like to look down on:
Now it's on smart, non-VC-poisoned people to realize it, recruit great talent, and run it sustainably. Because if you do that, the audience is there, and the cycle of sports layoffs can slow down. It's not a hard ask. Just be smart and not greedy.
But that just makes more room for a place like D Magazine to listen to me when I insisted there's opportunity in Dallas. Or what DNVR /The All City Network (shoutout
@Adam_Mares
!) is doing in Denver, Phoenix, and Chicago. Or Five Reasons in Miami.
A while back, I put the opinion out there on 77 Minutes that the Mavs are habitually a step slow strategically.
Well,
@iztok_franko
wrote about it today much better than I or anyone else could. This is *the* issue that should scare you about this team.
The more EJ Liddell slips, the harder Nico Harrison should be investigating just how far-fetched it really would be to buy into the second round to get him.
Our man in Slovenia, the great
@iztok_franko
, makes his D debut today writing about his favorite subjects: Luka and Slovenia.
Here's what the Mavs can and should take from Slovenia's Luka-powered run at the Olympics.
So this is cool: I wrote our cover story for April.
It’s on Clayton Kershaw & his wife, Ellen. We talked baseball, including the possibility of him ever pitching for the Rangers. We talked Dallas. We talked lots of other stuff.
On newsstands 3/30. I hope you enjoy!
None of that makes today less shitty. Days like these suck. But a lot of what I saw in the early days there and doing what I do now has me more optimistic about sports editorial coverage than I was in the year or two before that. It's just a matter of these shops getting built.
New column: I wrote about the death of the Iron Skillet, and why TCU's decision to kick SMU to the curb may not help them and definitely won't help anyone else.
Mark Cuban said on ESPN that they would "put together a program" for the people who work for the
#Mavericks
on an hourly basis, affected by the games being on hiatus
Really dig that her move was just "Look, I'm pregnant, I'm not dancing. And I'm not going to bring someone else out to upstage me, because fuck that. Now allow me to pistol whip you a whole bunch of No. 1 hits."
More people are going to see that in time. The business is changing in bad ways, too -- we're probably not getting smart boutique shops like VICE Sports again, for instance.
But sports coverage isn't going away. There's too much money in it. The future is just going to be local
Still pining for the Mavs to go get another center? Maybe you don’t have to.
Because after watching him in Summer League,
@garooya
believes Dereck Lively II is going to be ready sooner than you might think. Here’s why:
I’m not saying Luka Doncic is going to be a top-20 player as soon as this year. I’m just saying it’s way more plausible than it ever should be for a second-year guy.