Dallas Braden has had an issue with Alex Rodriguez ever since a 2010 incident between them, and the former Oakland A’s pitcher explained the root of the beef.
Back in 2010, Rodriguez angered Braden by running across the pitcher’s mound following a double play during an April game (video here). As I wrote at the time, Rodriguez’s actions were disrespectful to the pitcher, but Braden also overreacted to the offense.
11 years later, Braden still has an issue with A-Rod. The former pitcher joined “Moose & Maggie” on WFAN in New York on Friday and elaborated on what about Rodriguez bothered him so much. He feels that A-Rod big-leagued him.
“These are the people that you bleed and sweat with day in and day out,” Braden said. “These are the people you sacrifice with. The minute you vault yourself above each one of those individuals regardless of what the back of their baseball card looks like, I don’t know that you and I are going to be breaking bread. That’s how I go about things. If you spend one day in the big leagues, you’re a big-leaguer the rest of your life. I’m definitely not the guy to tell you that you’re not.
“And it just felt like he’s an individual who at times kind of did that, and that just doesn’t rub me the right way,” Braden explained.
His mentality makes sense. He feels like he earned a level of respect that Rodriguez did not give him.
Braden, 37, pitched for the A’s from 2007-2011. Besides his beef with A-Rod, Braden is best known for the perfect game he threw on Mother’s Day a month after the A-Rod spat. He’s also known for faking people out with his Rollie Fingers tattoo.
Joel Embiid was so dominant on Friday night that teammate Tobias Harris was left contemplating the big man’s place in NBA history.
Embiid dropped a career-high 50 points and collected 17 rebounds as the Sixers beat the Chicago Bulls 112-105. The center was so good that Harris crowned Embiid as the best player he’d ever played with — or would.
Embiid certainly is establishing himself as one of the league’s best players. He’s a legitimate MVP candidate and Harris probably has a point about him being the best he’s ever played with.
The irony is Embiid has never been shy about crediting his teammates. In fact, his GM thinks they’re a big reason behind his huge step forward this season.
Jamal Murray took the road less traveled to his 50-point game on Friday. In fact, he took a road completely untraveled.
Murray scored 50 points in the Denver Nuggets’ 120-103 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Amazingly, he did so without attempting a single free throw. He became the first ever player to score 50 points in a game without attempting a free throw.
Murray shot an impressive 21/25 from the field and went 8/10 on threes. It was his sharp outside shooting that did the trick.
Incredibly, the Elias Sports Bureau says that Murray’s 84 percent mark from the field is second only to Wilt Chamberlain for the highest percentage in a 50-point game in the shot-clock era.
While Murray was on fire, most of his teammates were content to feed him the ball. Nikola Jokic ended up with 10 assists and only attempted eight field goals. Michael Porter Jr., who had 22 points, was the only other Nuggets player with double-digit shot attempts.
Jokic had a great quote about Murray, comparing him to a flamethrower.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone was blown away as well by the performance.
“To do it as efficiently as he did it is really remarkable,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone. “That’s an incredible stat line.”
It was incredible, and it’s also the first of its kind.
Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard was the highest-profile snub among NBA All-Star starters, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll be losing much sleep over it.
When asked about his omission from the Western Conference starting lineup, Lillard essentially shrugged it off, noting that he’s been overlooked his entire basketball career.
“Even before the NBA, I’ve always been the person to get the shorter end of the stick. That’s kind of my story,” Lillard said, via AJ McCord of KOIN News. “I wasn’t a top player in Oakland in middle school. All the way to my last year in high school, people in Oakland didn’t know I was one of the better players. I didn’t get recruited heavily. I went to Weber State. Even when I was the sixth pick in the draft, nobody really knew who I was.
“I think it’s widely known that I would be irritated and frustrated with it, and people would be like, ‘Oh, he’s crying. He’s mad.’ I didn’t deal with it that way. That’s just been the battle for me my whole career. Now that I’m 30 and I’m not starting the All-Star Game, I’m just not moved by it. Part of that is because it’s always been that way.”
Lillard is averaging 29.8 points and 7.7 assists per game, and has the Blazers firmly in playoff position despite injuries to key contributors. He deserves to start, and plenty of people were mad about it. Lillard isn’t, but that doesn’t mean he won’t use the snub as motivation.
Myles Turner is leading the NBA with 3.5 blocks per game this season. Now he is even sending back a fan’s weak shot attempt as well.
Turner and the Indiana Pacers lost this week to the Chicago Bulls. After the game, an angry Pacers fan with the Twitter handle @Life_Of_Cole sent a Venmo request to Turner for $100. The fan believed that Turner, who went just 2-for-10 against Chicago, was responsible for losing the game. Turner hilariously replied back by sending the fan exactly one cent on Venmo with the message, “Here’s a penny for your thoughts.”
Turner then turned the beef into a positive with the help of a few other Pacers fans. He pledged to match any Venmo response this weekend and donate it to Texas families in need during the state’s current weather crisis.
Indiana still has the fourth-best record in the East, and Turner’s strong end-to-end play has been a big reason why. As for the fan, he should probably know by now that Turner does not let that weak stuff fly in his paint.
Lindsey Vonn and PK Subban announced their breakup a few months ago, and now it’s time to start dividing things up. Accordingly, they are selling a home they purchased in April.
Vonn and Subban have listed their four-bedroom luxury home in Beverly Hills, Calif. for sale at $7.175 million. They purchased the home in April for $6.75 million and appear to believe market appreciation accounts for a 6 percent boost in value.
Vonn, a former Olympic gold medal-winning skier, and Subban, an NHL player, met in 2017. They announced a year later that they were dating. The two got engaged in 2019 and had plans to marry last year, but that was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They ended up announcing their breakup in late December with identical statements.
Vonn, 36, retired from skiing in 2019. Subban, 31, is a defenseman for the New Jersey Devils. He is in the second-to-last season of an 8-year, $72 million contract he signed with Montreal in 2014.
Things could get pretty intense between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers this season if Friday night’s Twitter activity is any indication.
Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard took a shot at Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer over Bauer’s handling of free agency. Bauer was courted by both the Dodgers and Mets, and made no secret of either, culminating in Bauer’s official website briefly offering signed Mets caps by accident before his decision had been announced. The Mets themselves even reportedly thought they had a deal with Bauer, but he ultimately decided to join the Dodgers. The whole situation was chaotic enough that Bauer issued an apology to Mets fans and pledged to donate to several New York-based charities.
Syndergaard clearly didn’t think much of the whole episode, because he took a clear shot at Bauer on Twitter Friday evening.
Bauer, not one to shy away from controversy, took note and responded to Syndergaard, offering a sharp response to the Mets pitcher and criticizing some of his previous interactions with fans.
Syndergaard’s response was to invite Bauer to “keep digging.”
After Bauer said he’d see Syndergaard at the bottom, the two pitchers appeared to reach some sort of truce.
Bauer isn’t shy about getting himself into Twitter feuds, but it’s more interesting when he’s doing it with a fellow big leaguer. It gets even more interesting when you consider that the Dodgers and Mets are considered among the leading contenders in the National League for 2021. This could add some spice to any potential matchup down the road.
Ben Simmons is putting together perhaps the best all-around season of his career, and Philadelphia 76ers GM Daryl Morey thinks it is about time for the criticism to stop.
Morey hit back at Simmons’ critics this week, especially those who focus too heavily on the 24-year-old’s lack of shooting ability.
“The reality is if Ben was on a different team, where everyone on the floor was a shooter in space, that would be optimal for Ben. But it wouldn’t be optimal for … his chances to win a title,” said Morey, per NBC Sports Philly. “But that’s why people see these glimpses from Ben, it’s when everything around him is optimized.
“He’s an extremely talented player on both ends,” Morey added. “That’s just a treasure to have. The focus on the things he can’t do is pretty maddening, personally, to me. When I had Yao Ming in Houston, there wasn’t like a million people saying, ‘He should be able to do this and this.’ They just sort of appreciated Yao Ming for what he was.”
Simmons just dropped a career-high 42 points against the NBA-best Utah Jazz this week, so he definitely still knows how to get buckets. He is also averaging 8.3 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game this season while solidifying himself as one of the top defenders in the league.
Granted, Simmons’ recent boast about himself did end up backfiring a bit. But Morey is a very analytics-driven mind who always emphasizes the importance of the three-point shot. Thus, his ringing endorsement of Simmons here regardless certainly carries some extra weight.
The NFL salary cap is set to fall in 2021, which is bad news for free agents hitting the market this offseason. It could lead to some unforeseen consequences that could hurt league parity instead of help it, too.
ESPN’s Dan Graziano reported on Thursday that the 2021 salary cap is likely to be between $180 million and $185 million, likely toward the lower end of that range. That represents a notable drop from the $198.2 million cap in 2020, largely due to pandemic-related revenue losses.
Due to the reduced cap space teams will be working with, NFL Network’s James Palmer told The DNVR’s “Three Ring Circus” podcast that some around the league believe some veterans will take less money to sign one-year contracts with Super Bowl contenders, potentially heralding some one-off NFL “superteams.”
“There’s people around the league that I talk to that think there’s going to be some super teams attempted to be put together for one year because of this style of where the cap is,” Palmer said. “Guys are going to take less money and go play with Tom Brady in Tampa for one season. And then we get back on track and they’re going to ask for their regular money.”
In a way, the Buccaneers did assemble their 2020 Super Bowl winners that way. Rob Gronkowski didn’t want to play anywhere else, and Antonio Brown wanted to join Brady as well. That said, Gronkowski was retired and only came back for the Buccaneers, while Brown was damaged goods and had no other suitors. Now, some players could turn down other contenders to play for Tampa Bay.
Here’s one name that could fit the bill if the Buccaneers are serious about getting even more talent for Brady.
One of the more bizarre happenings in the NFL over the last month has to do with Aaron Rodgers’ engagement.
Rodgers revealed in his MVP acceptance speech two weeks ago that he was engaged. That news came only days after a rumor saying he and actress Shailene Woodley were dating.
Even more surprising than that announcement was when Rodgers shouted out actress Jodie Foster when listing all the people he wanted to thank.
Many people wondered why Rodgers mentioned Foster. There was some speculation that she may have introduced the actress and quarterback.
Foster was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Thursday and was asked about the matter. She said that she and Woodley talked a lot while working on “The Mauritanian” together.
“[Shailene] is fantastic,” Foster told Kimmel. “We spent a lot of time on The Mauritanian together in a little tent with a little air conditioning spitting at us, talking about our lives and, you know, recipes and people we hate and things like that.”
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Foster was a big fan of Rodgers as a partner for Woodley and supported their relationship. Foster being in his corner may have helped Rodgers’ relationship with Woodley. That could explain why he thanked her in the speech.
Some people were surprised by Rodgers and Woodley getting engaged so quickly after the quarterback’s breakup with Danica Patrick. Whatever the case, Rodgers seems to be very happy, and Foster does too.
