Worst Sports Week of the Calendar Year Thread

I figured it was time for a sports thread, but there’s a problem.

This week sucks.

The week of the MLB All Star Game is always the worst week of the year for sports. To be fair to MLB, baseball’s ASG is a lot less embarrassing than the NBA or NFL. At least it’s still the game. It just is meaningless baseball and I am not interested in watching meaningless sports. This is also why I won’t watch the NBA Summer League. The basketball is horrible–no one knows what they are doing yet or how anyone else plays and so it’s like an AAU game. Also, it is practice. I don’t watch practice.

Meanwhile, all college sports are done, we are post-NBA and NHL and pre-NFL. We might have had a nice reprieve but Copa America, Euro Cup, and Wimbledon all ended in the last 48 hours, so nope. Speaking of Wimbledon, I was bummed that Paolini didn’t win the whole thing, but what an outstanding semifinal match that was and she is super fun to root for. On the men’s side, I am glad Alcaraz won based on the principle of fuck Djokovic.

At least we have the WNBA. Speaking of that, it’s just great ball. The only reason I can think of not to like the WNBA is that the reason you watch sports is to see the most extreme athletes do the most extreme things, which is one reason to watch them. And biologically, that means you are going to watch men’s sports. On the other hand, if you like a great game, the WNBA is fantastic stuff. We are mercifully beyond the Caitlin Clark 24 Hour Coverage phase. Clark is great, but playing the point as a rookie is tough (see Scoot Henderson last year in the NBA on that point) and Angel Reese probably does deserve ROY. Also, my New York Liberty (the only NYC team I will ever root for but Portland doesn’t have a team and Oregon Mt. Rushmore of Greats Sabrina Ionescu is the rad point guard for them, not to mention Nyara Sabally as a key reserve) are absolutely killing it this year. They look crazy dominant, though they didn’t win it last year, so who can tell.

The other sports thing of note is also about New York, which is Jalen Brunson taking that way below value contract to keep the Nova Knicks together and win some titles going forward. The strategy of bringing an entire college team together in a professional never works (see what the Eagles did last year in the NFL after spending two years stocking their whole defense with Georgia players, most of whom were bad), but it sure seems to with the Knicks. Mostly, I am amazed about things actually going right for this team, given their epic history of mismanagement.

So in any case, there must be some sports stories to chat about here, so let’s do that. And that means no politics. No Trump assassination attempt. No RNC. No Vance. No Old Man Biden. Nothing. Just sports or other fun stuff like TV or food or whatnot.