“Her resolve becomes even more admirable when the 32-year-old explains how she fell so ill in October 2015 she ‘had to learn to walk again’. She had been infected during one of her regular visits to her late father’s village of Nri in Nigeria. As a Liverpudlian of proud Nigerian heritage, Onuora is wary of any negative depiction of Africa because malaria can be found in most tropical climates. She also offers evocative descriptions of how much Nigeria means to her. But raw emotions emerge as she describes the pain and fear of malaria.”
– The Guardian’s Donald McRae writes the untold story of Anyika Onuora, Britain’s Rio Olympic medal winner who nearly died.
“In a normal contest, LeBron dunks over opponents the size of Paul Pierce with ease. On this night, he’s holding the ball for several unproductive seconds, burning clock, failing to conjure plans, firing bailout passes to the far corners. A man who averaged almost 30 points on the season makes only three shots all night. Almost every jumper is short. LeBron’s performance — the Celtics cruise to a 120-88 win — will be bizarre enough to launch media-consuming conspiracy theories about undisclosed injuries and off-court distractions of all kinds. Perhaps you’ve heard a few. But what if there was a simpler explanation? What if James was just… exhausted?”
– Is LeBron James slowing down? ESPN’s Henry Abbott begs the question.
“To Frade, his approach is a management philosophy, a personal dogma and a belief system rolled into one. It is a way of thinking more than a way of playing, one conceived and crafted in this office, at this university, but that can now claim devotees around the world. Its most famous evangelist is José Mourinho, who deployed it to considerable success at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, and who now hopes it can revive Manchester United. But Mourinho is not alone.”
– Cybernetics, Cesarean Sections and Soccer’s Most Magnificent Mind; Rory Smith of the New York Times on Vítor Frade, one of the football’s most noteworthy theorists.
“Granted, McCaffrey wouldn’t be the first elite athlete to repeat the I-get-no-respect mantra for self-motivation. And on that basis alone, his words could’ve been easily dismissed. But this is what gives McCaffrey’s comments actual meaning: He’s white and a star player at a position dominated by African-Americans for decades. McCaffrey, ironically, has faced a much higher bar than his black colleagues just to prove he belongs. That’s a bit of the burden black players have endured at several positions – most notably quarterback – throughout football history. Now that he’s on the NFL’s doorstep, McCaffrey will soon become even more of an outlier.”
– Jason Reid and Jane McManus on the NFL’s racial divide for The Undefeated.
”The discussion surrounding whether heading leads to concussions in soccer is not a new one. As far back as 1996, US Soccer conducted a study in which it compared MRIs of players on the men’s national team with athletes from a track club. The results, published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, showed that ‘there was no difference between them,’ according to Dr. Bert Mandelbaum, who has been the US men’s physician since 1991 and is also Major League Soccer’s assistant medical director. ‘The conclusion coming from that was that it was not the purposeful heading [that was a problem] but if any athlete — a track athlete or a soccer player — had a concussion, it was a problem,’ Mandelbaum said. In other words, concussions are bad, no matter how they are sustained.”
– The Ringer’s Noah Davis asks: What happens when soccer bans heading?
“To be honest, he doesn’t look like he should be on a basketball court at all. Not a professional one, anyway. He is 5-foot-9, a physical attribute so rare in the NBA that in league history, only 24 others have been that short. Only 10 of those men managed to log more than 1,000 career minutes. Only two of them have played in an All-Star Game. Only one of them has played in multiple All-Star Games. Only one of them has recorded a triple-double. This guy here is that one.”
– ESPN’s Carvell Wallace on the big picture for Isaiah Thomas.
“Just as the real lesson here is that money is an eviscerating force in football, the market is not kind, or wise or tender in its ministrations. The stockpiling of talent as a long-term investment bond, like buy-to-let London housing, or land-banked supermarket acres, is ultimately a destructive act. Gabriel Jesus might be bold enough to escape the effects. Kylian Mbappé is surely too good to fall for it. But modern football is also littered with young talents who took the money, moved too soon and saw those delicate developmental years flushed out into a desiccating light.”
– Dele Alli, Twitter loneliness and the cautionary tale of Renato Sanches, by The Guardian’s Barney Ronay.
