… Now on his eighth team, the Atlanta Hawks, Carter has routinely been setting old-man records this season, most recently breaking his own record as the oldest player to score over 20 points in a game.
Carter was asked if there was a secret to his longevity, or if there was anything special he had to eat or drink to stay game ready.
“For me personally I feel like it’s a laundry list of things, but my willingness to do whatever it takes is getting me by,” Carter said. “I know I have to eat right, I have to train a little more than the average guy… Whatever it takes to survive and play at this level, I’m willing to do.”
It was an evening Loris Karius will never forget – and not in a good way. The Liverpool goalkeeper made two high-profile blunders in last season’s Champions League final against Real Madrid, as Jurgen Klopp’s side came up short in a 3-1 defeat in Kyiv. He has not played a competitive game for the club since, farmed out on loan to Besiktas as Liverpool spent big money to acquire Brazilian goalkeeper Alisson Becker from Roma.
Even now, Karius may not have completely digested the magnitude of his mistakes. The German’s blunders were broadcast all around the world in the biggest club game of the season, and he instantly became the butt of the internet’s unforgiving quips. As he drifted off to sleep the night before the final, he probably dreamt of being Liverpool’s hero by repelling Cristiano Ronaldo and co. in regulation time or saving the decisive penalty in a shoot-out. Instead, the evening of May 26 turned into a nightmare for the then-24-year-old.
“In watching that game, the goalkeeper [Karius] was showing real signs of stress and loss of concentration early on,” says Phil Johnson, a sports psychologist who has worked for a host of top European clubs, including Monaco.
FiveThirtyEight, Neil Paine and Travis Sawchik from
As reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Angels are closing in on a 12-year contract extension worth at least $430 million with outfielder Mike Trout, setting the all-time mark for both the largest contract (passing Bryce Harper’s $330 million deal from a few weeks ago) and the greatest average annual contract value in baseball history. Trout is a longtime object of fascination for us here at FiveThirtyEight; we’ve frequently extolled his virtues as baseball’s best and most consistent star. Now he has the record-breaking contract to match his talent — but one that might still represent a big bargain for the Angels. And the deal’s long-term nature only renews questions about Trout’s ability to win in L.A., as well as his potential to break through as a star off the field.
At first glance, about $36 million per year seems like a tremendous deal for the Angels. According to FanGraphs’ estimated market values based on wins above replacement (WAR), a player with Trout’s 2018 production should have been worth about $79 million last season. That’s nothing new for Trout: FanGraphs estimates that he was worth $55 million (in 70 percent of a full season) in 2017, $78 million in 2016 and $74 million in 2016. So if Trout continues his recent pace, the Angels will basically be paying him half of what he’d be worth on the open market over the next few seasons.
… While the Matildas, who are grouped with Italy, Brazil and Jamaica for their pool games, are widely expected to reach at least the last eight, the Socceroos, who lost narrowly to eventual champions France, drew with Denmark and were beaten in a dead rubber by Peru, were up against it from the moment their draw was made.
Milicic is expected to name his squad for the April 4 friendly against the USA – one of only two pre-World Cup international warm-up games pencilled in before France – later this week.
… “One-and-done isn’t great for college and not good for the NBA,” said San Antonio Spurs General Manager RC Buford. “We make them pretend to be college students for a year. No one is winning. I don’t know what the right answer is.
“We have to do a better job for development environment around basketball across platforms.”
The eventual solution may not be a one-size-fits-all option. Anything from college to wider overseas leagues to recent expansion in the G-League could be a viable professional pathway irrespective of the one-and-done rule’s future.
On Jan. 1, 2007, the Boise State Broncos upset the mighty Adrian-Peterson-led-Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl. The game ended with running back Ian Johnson’s game-clinching two-point conversion in overtime on a Statue of Liberty play, and after the game, during a live interview with FOX Sports’s Chris Myers, Johnson got down on one knee and proposed to cheerleader Chrissy Popadics. She said yes, and Johnson, a sudden celebrity, forever captured Boise’s heart.
A few weeks later at the 2009 NFL combine, Johnson ran a running back-best 4.46 40-yard dash, but he ultimately went undrafted. He toiled in obscurity on Viking, Cardinal, Niner and Dolphin practice squads from 2009-11, and then joined the rest of us in civilian life. All the while, Boiseans lamented that the NFL wasn’t “giving Johnson a chance,” and many were convinced it was because he was just a small fish from a small city.
Really, it was because Johnson couldn’t move left and right. As his 40-yard time dictated, Johnson’s straight-line speed was great, but his lateral movement was stiff. For an NFL running back, a player’s most important trait is the ability to move laterally—especially w
… Thought Beanie, founded by Alyn Morgan and Simon Harrison in 2015, will move from its current base in Bristol to the £40m facility this spring.
The startup’s patented EEG (brainwave monitoring) technology uses sensors embedded in headwear together with AI and machine learning to allow individuals to track what is going on inside their brain.
It is currently conducting trials of pre-production sports headwear with other potential applications in sectors such as construction and corporate wellness, and is working with the Cognitive Neuroscience Department of the University of Leeds (UoL).
As wearable devices and medical implants become more common, their likelihood of being targeted by hackers increases, with stakes that could be even higher than traditional computer viruses. But researchers at Purdue University have developed a way to improve both the security and longevity of these devices: a switch from conventional electromagnetic wireless signals to lower-frequency electro-quasistatic signals.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge successfully developed a fully printed transistor technology with high gain, low power, low noise, and mechanical bendability that unlocks new possibilities in wearable and implantable technology. The printed transistor readily lends itself to analog sensor interfaces in wearables for electrophysiological signal monitoring at ultralow power and high-resolution.
Wearable and implantable electronics have enabled electronic devices that can monitor humans in real time for continuous healthcare management. Although a number of products have been successful in the market, several fundamental requirements still need to be fulfilled to maximize the potential of this technology. These include increasing the comfort of the wearable device on the skin and the ability to acquire as much human physiological information as possible.
Researchers at East Carolina University are using motion-capture and eye-tracking technology to understand how baseball players process visual information when batting and turn that into a swing.
Their findings will help players and coaches know what hitters see, how and why they react to it, and, ultimately, turn them into better players. Specifically, they are focusing on what a hitter’s eyes see as a pitch is hurling toward them at upward of 100 miles per hour and how the brain processes that visual information and then instructs the body to swing. It’s the science of hitting.
Cordasco et al. “Return to Sport and Reoperation Rates in Patients Under the Age of 20 After Primary Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine (2019).
NFL free agency is in full swing, which means big multiyear deals are flying around. Most savvy fans know that those contracts aren’t set in stone. But just how fluid are they? We analyzed five years’ worth of free-agent agreements to see how long they really last—and how much they really pay.
SB Nation, Blueshirt Banter blog, Joseph Fortunato from
It’s hard to believe that we’re talking about this at the end of March, in a season where the Rangers have been out of the playoff picture for months and just finished their second straight selloff at the deadline, but here we are.
Just a month removed from the news dropping that Jesper Fast isn’t really practicing and has been playing through an injury for at least two months, we’ve come to find Chris Kreider is going through something similar.
The enormity of such a decision shouldn’t be lost on you. This is a hockey team with no playoff aspirations, who would be better off dropping points wherever they can, and who have been sitting healthy forwards in the press box every night, making a joint decision to keep playing guys like Kreider and Fast even though they’re hurt. This isn’t Ryan McDonagh playing through a broken foot in the Eastern Conference Finals, or Keith Yandle playing through a shoulder injury in the playoffs, this is Kreider and Fast — that we know of — playing for no reason in a lost season.
This has already proven to be a breakthrough season for the English Premier League, which has won half the spots in the Champions League quarterfinals for the first time in a decade and has two teams in the quarterfinals of the Europe League. Add it up and six of the EPL’s 20 teams have claimed berths in the final eight of the continent’s top two club tournaments.
At the other end is France’s Ligue 1 which, for the third year in a row, saw no team advance past the round of 16 in the Champions League. Just one French team, Rennes, got that far in the Europa League.
And money, not talent, is the biggest reason for that disparity.