Several NFL players took a knee, raised fists or did not take to the field while the National Anthem was played Thursday night before preseason games.
The actions came weeks after the league shelved its new policy regarding conduct surrounding the anthem until it reaches an agreement with the NFL Players Association.
The Miami Herald reported that Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills, along with wide receiver Albert Wilson, knelt during the anthem before a home game against Tampa Bay.
WTVJ Miami reported that Dolphins defensive end Robert Quinn raised his fist during the song.
The Philadelphia Daily News reported that Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett walked out of the tunnel during the playing of the anthem and headed to the team bench. The Daily News said Eagles captain Malcolm Jenkins and cornerback De’Vante Bausby raised their fists.
NEW YORK — A rising college basketball coaching star accused of throwing a punch that killed a New York City tourist who had apparently mistaken him for an Uber driver pleaded not guilty Thursday to an assault charge.
Wake Forest University assistant coach Jamill Jones attacked digital marketing guru Sandor Szabo around 1:15 a.m. last Sunday in Queens, causing him to fall and smash his head on the sidewalk, police said.
Szabo, visiting from Boca Raton, Florida, banged on the window of Jones’ SUV while looking for his ride after his stepsister’s wedding, police said.
A person familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press that Szabo may have been drunkenly knocking on car windows before Jones allegedly confronted him. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to speak publicly.
The coach got out, followed Szabo to the sidewalk, clocked him and was taken off life support Tuesday.
Jones, 35, of Kernersville, North Carolina, turned himself in to police Thursday, accompanied by a lawyer. He was arraigned Thursday night on a misdemeanor assault charge and released on his own recognizance after entering his plea. The coach’s next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 2, the Queens District Attorney’s office said.
Jones was with his family after the court session, his attorney, Alain Massena, told the AP.
“This was a tragic accident, and Mr. Jones and his family send their deepest condolences and their thoughts and prayers to the Szabo family,” Massena said.
In a statement, Wake Forest said the school would comment further once it gathered more information.
Jones, a Philadelphia native, joined the Demon Deacons staff in May 2017 after coaching at Central Florida, Virginia Commonwealth and Florida Gulf Coast and playing at Arkansas Tech and North Platte Community College in Nebraska.
Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning said at the time that Jones was a “well-respected bright mind” in the coaching world and brought “new blood” and “new perspectives” to Wake Forest.
Szabo, also 35, was “super outgoing, friendly, and an incredibly smart businessman,” said his company, at What If Media Group, based in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
“He was always upbeat, positive, kind and caring,” the company said in a Facebook post. “He was fun to be with, interesting, and always interested. He was a really good person.”
Szabo, who lived in Boca Raton with his brother, always had a bright smile and shared a love of fishing, cooking and family, the company said.
”His beautiful spirit and his love of life will remain with us,” the company said. “We are going to miss him dearly.”
Terrell Owens officially becomes a Pro Football Hall of Famer today, and he officially becomes the first Hall of Famer to boycott the enshrinement ceremony.
Owens instead gave a speech in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in which he critiqued the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selection committee, which is made up primarily of members of the media.
“The sports writers are not in alignment with the mission and core values of the Hall of Fame,” Owens said, via Kevin Boilard of 24/7 Sports.
Owens said he showed courage by sticking to his guns.
“I am a man of courage. Courageous enough to choose Chattanooga over Canton,” he said.
But if Owens wanted to be courageous, why not speak truth to power, show up in Canton and deliver the same remarks there, face to face with the Hall of Fame voters who attend the enshrinement ceremony? Why not follow the lead of Lynn Swann, who was snubbed for many years before finally getting voted in to the Hall of Fame, and who used his enshrinement speech to advocate for his teammate John Stallworth, who had been similarly snubbed. The next year, the voters put Stallworth in the Hall of Fame, too.
Owens gave his speech and made his case, but the voters he wants to persuade weren’t there to hear it.
RENTON, Wash. – The Seattle Seahawks announced a number of roster moves Sunday, waiving long snapper Tanner Carew and tight end Kayaune Ross to make room for wide receivers Marvin Bracy and Malik Turner.
The 24-year-old Bracy originally signed with Florida State University out of high school to play football and run track. However, after redshirting his freshmen year with the Seminoles football program, Bracy left college to go professional in track.
Bracy holds a personal best time of 9.93 seconds in the 100-meter dash and won three consecutive championships in the 60-meter dash at the U.S. Indoor Track & Field Championships from 2014-2016. Bracy finished 14th in the 100-meter dash at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
In August 2017, Bracy returned to football and signed with the Indianapolis Colts as a wide receiver. He was waived on Sept. 2, 2017 and remained a free agent until signing with the Seahawks.
Bracy joins the following wide receivers on the Seahawks’ active 90-man roster: Brandon Marshall, Keenean Reynolds, Caleb Scott, Damore’ea Stringfellow, Marcus Johnson, Jaron Brown, Doug Baldwin, Amara Darboh, David Moore, Cyril Grayson Jr., Tanner McEvoy, Tyler Lockett and Malik Turner.
Click here to read more about Bracy on Seahawks.com.
The Seahawks first preseason game is on Thursday Aug. 9 against the Indianapolis Colts at CenturyLink Field.
Barkley: LeBron on ‘downside of his career,’ wants to be a Hollywood mogul
– Ask Charles Barkley a question, and he will generally give a loaded answer.
When queried about LeBron James’ recent defection from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Los Angeles Lakers, Barkley opined that James made a lifestyle choice, not a basketball one.
“I look at it strictly as a business decision,” Barkley told SI’s Ben Golliver. “He’s on the downside of his career. He wants to be a big Hollywood mogul. He’s going to be driving by the beach every day instead of going through the snow.”
Barkley also agreed with the conventional wisdom that the Lakers, as currently constituted, are not a top-four team in the Western Conference.
“(They) are not even close to a top-tier team. They’re a five- or six-seed in a best-case scenario,” Barkley said, adding that head coach Luke Walton has his work cut out for him thanks to L.A.’s unorthodox roster construction this summer.
“That’s an impossible scenario for Luke,” Barkley said. “He’s got LeBron who is going to do things his way. He’s got those young kids who are probably in awe of LeBron. He’s got those older guys who are going to try to seek attention. I don’t think Lance (Stephenson) and (Rajon) Rondo are going there to be the ninth or 10th guys on the bench and be quiet all year. They’re going to want touches.”
It’s been nearly a full week since the Steelers reported to training camp and there’s still no sign of Le’Veon Bell. Of course, no one in Pittsburgh is really surprised by that.
After Bell and the Steelers failed to reach a long-term agreement before the July 16 negotiating deadline given to players who have been hit with the franchise tag, Bell’s agent made it pretty clear that the running back would be skipping training camp.
This marks the second year in a row that Bell has skipped training camp, and after watching what happened last year, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin admitted this week that he’s hoping things go differently with Bell in 2018.
During an interview with CBS Sports NFL reporter Evan Washburn, Tomlin said there are two big issues surrounding Bell’s absence.
“I try not to have any preconceived notions, because there’s some variables at play that are significant, and that is: When he gets here, and the level of conditioning he’s in when he gets here,” Tomlin said. “I’m not going to assume that they’re going to be the same as last year.”
Tomlin then listed the two specific things he’s hoping to to see from Bell this year: He wants his star running back to show up to camp earlier than he did last year and he wants him to show up in better shape.
While watching the FIFA World Cup a few weeks ago, my boss noticed players sitting in race car seats, and ordered me to figure out why. So I reached out to one of the biggest race car seat manufacturers, Recaro. Here’s what I learned.
While I’m not sure who makes the exact seats coddling the butts of soccer players at this year’s World Cup (since numerous inquiries to Fédération Internationale de Football Association went unanswered), I did learn about how heavily-bolstered sports car seats wound up on the sidelines of a football pitch in the first place. At least, according to German automotive seat maker, Recaro.
“The story about the car seats at the sidelines goes back to the 1990s,” Tilman Schaefer, a company representative told me via email. He went on, saying the owner of Recaro at the time, Ulrich Putsch, was on the board of the German soccer team F.C. Kaiserslautern, and apparently gave the team’s manager Kalli Feldkamp a sports car seat because “the guy had back problems”.
It wasn’t long before, in 1994 according to the company’s website, the rest of the team wound up sitting on a “custom-tailored players bench,” with Schaefer saying: “They put the seat right next to the bench. Because the players thought the seat to be just gorgeous Ulrich had a complete bench produced for the home team” as a part of a sponsorship deal.
That’s when customized sports car-inspired seats began taking over the sidelines around the world, and other seat manufacturers from other industries also wanted in, with Schaefer telling me:
Other teams became so excited that they ordered benches from RECARO – so this became a special sales project over the years.
Other seat producers–even airline seats–followed line and started to supply seats to teams they sponsor.
So this is kind of a standard today on soccer sidelines (plus baseball in Japan, plus business seats in the stadiums). In Europa and Japan RECARO is probably the biggest supplier.
Today, according to Recaro, over 70 top soccer teams—including Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Debreceni Vasutas SC and Ferencváros Budapest—sit on Recaro bucket seats.
As for the reasons why, Recaro’s spokesperson put it simply: “[The] seats are very comfortable and often supplied with a seat heating for the winter. And [they] look great.”
So while I’m not sure who makes the seats for this year’s World Cup (seats that still have the seatbelt holes that would be used for a five-point racing harness), it seems like this whole trend began in 1994 because of one man’s back problems
As elite players dictate their situations more and more, even an All-NBA player like DeMar DeRozan isn’t safe from becoming expendable
DeMar DeRozan is upset.
Fittingly, the four-time All-Star made his way to Drake’s house on the night he was traded from the Raptors to the Spurs for Kawhi Leonard. “Me and him sat and talked for a couple of hours. Not even on some hoops stuff,” DeRozan told Chris Haynes in an interview for ESPN on Tuesday night. “Just to hear the words that come from him being the person he is in this world, especially in Toronto. What I meant to this city. It was what I needed.”
As the league’s popularity surges, NBA players seem to have more power than ever. Well, not all players. Superstars—the cream of the crop—are managing to force their way out of unwanted situations more and more. But stars—the players a cut below the very best—are still at the mercy of their teams’ whims. It’s how DeRozan, an All-NBA selection the past two seasons, ends up feeling betrayed by the team that drafted him.
Though every NBA roster carries at least 13 players, the league is increasingly being shaped by only a handful of superstars. Teams know that these players matter most, and are willing to do anything to get them—even getting rid of their own beloved stars. DeRozan and Isaiah Thomas are perfect examples of this tough reality. They are not just cautionary tales, but also looper-like versions of each other. Thomas has been overlooked, traded, and like he put it in his own recent interview with ESPN, “F’d over,” various times in his career, most recently by the Celtics. It took DeRozan nine years in the league to experience this side of the business. He did everything right—including expanding his game to fit the Raptors’ adjusted offensive approach—but he wasn’t a superstar. It wasn’t enough.
”I gave everything I had to that team. Every single day and night, whatever was asked from me to make us better,” he said. “I felt like I wasn’t treated—what I sacrificed for nine years—with the respect that I thought I deserved.”
What does a player “deserve”? It’s a question that’s being debated not just in the NBA, but in other sports like the NFL, where contracts are shorter and come with a lot less guaranteed money. Most NFL players can lose their status in an instant, given that very few non-QB players are irreplaceable. Even onetime MVP candidates like running backs Adrian Peterson and DeMarco Murray have been cut in their early 30s, and All-Pro wideout Dez Bryant is currently having a tough time finding a job. A similar class system forms in the NBA, with the elite players at the top and everyone else underneath them.
The NBA’s upper class has made greater efforts to utilize the leverage their station provides them since LeBron James’s move to Miami. James, for instance, signed short-term deals in Cleveland to ensure that owner Dan Gilbert would stick to his word of building a contender. And then, another four years later, he picked up and moved to Los Angeles. In the past decade, James has turned into a roving franchise himself, able to set up a contender wherever he chooses.
Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry (7) and teammate DeMar DeRozan (10) celebrate a basket during first half NBA basketball action against the Washington Wizards, in Toronto on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
But players’ power has an unpalatable side effect on their peers: It limits the agency of other, non-superstar players. It’s how DeRozan becomes trade fodder months after leading his franchise to its best regular season. And it’s how Thomas, after capturing the hearts of Boston fans and risking his health, gets traded months after playing through serious injury and the death of his sister. Thomas and DeRozan were moved out in favor of Kyrie Irving and Leonard, who aren’t just top-level superstars, but were both upset with their respective situations. They wanted out and got out. All players like DeRozan could do was speak out after the fact.
“Everybody know I’m the most low-maintenance person in the world,” DeRozan told ESPN. “Just let me know, so I can prepare myself for whatever my next chapter is, and I didn’t get that.”
Though Kawhi’s situation feels like a once-in-a-blue-moon scenario given how long and thorny it became, it won’t be long before another player exerts his superstar power. There’s a precedent now, a blueprint any disgruntled star can follow—should he have the clout to do so. But it may come at the expense of players caught in between superstar and role player. Recent CBA negotiations have stopped short of abolishing the max contract, with the league and the players union choosing instead to distribute the money that would surely go to the likes of LeBron and others to the rest of the non-superstar players. But when it comes to choosing where to play, the superstars are more often than not the only ones who get a say.
With LeBron James in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Cavaliers have now committed to rebuilding the team around five-time All-Star Kevin Love.
USA TODAY’s Jeff Zillgitt reported Tuesday that Love agreed to a four-year contract extension worth $120 million. The contract will begin with the 2019-20 season and extend through the 2022-23 season, when Love will be 34. Team owner Dan Gilbert thanked Love for his “class” on Twitter.
Dan Gilbert✔ @cavsdan
The @cavsfranchise is proud to extend 5-time all-star and NBA champion @kevinlove four additional years. KLove has been nothing but class since he arrived in CLE in 2014. We look forward to his leadership and the exciting years ahead. We grind every day. Just like CLEVELAND.
Cleveland Cavaliers✔ @cavs We love@KevinLove!
Former teammate LeBron James congratulated Love on the deal via Twitter, telling love that dinner in California will be on him.
LeBron James✔ @KingJames Secure the 💼!!! Congrats brother @kevinlove. Nobu Malibu or Wally’s on you!!! 🤷🏾♂️ 💰 💰 💰 💰 💰
2:50 PM – Jul 24, 2018 85.8K 10.7K people are talking about this
It should be noted that James will make $9 million more than Love in team salary next season. Maybe he can cover the tip.
Serena Williams could feature at the Rogers Cup after being handed a wild card for next month’s event in Montreal.
Having returned from the birth of her first child, Williams has made four tournament appearances in 2018 — at Indian Wells and Miami before a run to the last 16 of the French Open, which preceded a sensational campaign at Wimbledon.
Williams just fell short of a 24th Grand Slam title, losing out to Angelique Kerber in the final at the All England Club, and the 36-year-old is looking to step up her preparation for the U.S. Open with a number of hard-court outings.
Having already entered tournaments in San Jose and Cincinnati, either side of the Rogers Cup, it remains to be seen whether Williams will feature at all three as she continues to feel her way back after a lengthy absence.
“We are, of course very pleased to be able to announce the participation of Serena Williams as we have awarded her a wild card,” said tournament director Eugene Lapierre of the three-time Rogers Cup champion.
Williams has been handed a wild card for August’s Rogers Cup as she looks to step up her preparation for the U.S. Open.
“After announcing our player list a few weeks ago, we were only missing Serena to complete our dream tournament. Serena has impressed everyone with the speed at which she was able to return to a high level of play.
“She has always been a fighter and she is proving it once again. I know that the fans will be happy to see her in action in Montreal. We are looking forward to welcoming her back.”
