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Sunday Papers

Inside North Korean hockey, trash talk and dribbling to Brazil: the week's best sportswriting

Stick the kettle on, put the feet up and enjoy six of the best.

1. This is what a North Korean postgame press conference sounds like: “Today is the birthday of the Great Ruler Kim Il-sung whom all people in the world can’t help but admiring. So, even though we were very tired due to the long trip, we ran and ran with the only desire to make a report of a win to the generals and to the Ruler Kim Jong-un in my home country.”

Deadspin’s Peter Cox was in South Africa for the Division 3 World Hockey Championships and spent the week getting to know — or not — the North Korean team.

2. Boxing has rendered itself so inaccessible – at least to those not entrenched in the workings of splintered titles and diluted weight divisions – that Haye versus Fury provides something of a rarity. Bermondsey’s Haye, a masterful self-publicist, has both infamy and crossover appeal in his corner. His heavyweight exploits have been promoted on the BBC, while a successful reality television stint introduced him to a national audience. He is a well-known boxer who has C-list celebrity appeal.

With a showdown between David Haye and Tyson Fury in the offing, Andrew Harrison of Queensberry-Rules.com asks: is trash-talking ruining boxing?

3. Before Game 6, a lot of people said we shouldn’t judge LeBron or his legacy on what happened last night. That was bullshit, too. He’s one of the most stupidly talented players we’ve ever seen, and this was one of the biggest games of his career. Of course we should’ve judged LeBron on what happened last night, and that’s why it was so depressing when it looked like he was cratering all over again. Then the headband came off, LeBron turned into a superhero, and a double-digit deficit turned into a Heat win. He wasn’t totally perfect even during that stretch, and the game was insane for roughly 10,000 other reasons, but the raw power of LeBron down the stretch was unforgettable. He’s a monster.

How do you do justice to one of the greatest basketball games in recent memory? After a thrilling Game 6 on Tuesday night, Grantland showed us how.

4. He knew the names of all the roses, hundreds of them; knew their habits. But he didn’t dig the beds or do the pruning, or any of that stuff. He just wandered among the beds and planned. With the horses, it was the same. Breeding was the owner’s job. Stabling arrangements were the head man’s job (though he kept an eye on every detail, lights left on or horses left bridled, and would thrust his nose like a gourmet into each new delivery of hay). Winning was the jockey’s job: 3,000 wins from his stables, including 25 English Classics such as the Derby or the Oaks, after each of which the Cecil flag would fly triumphantly over Warren Place. But the planning—having a picture of how he wanted a horse to grow—that was the part he did.

The Economist pens a beautiful tribute to British champion horse trainer Sir Henry Cecil, who died last week aged 71.

5. Instead of a stadium, the taxi crept to a halt on a grass verge below which was a football pitch, fence on one side, ditch on the other. Think of those times playing underage soccer down the country when you got changed out of car boots, in shipping containers or sheltered under a tree and you’ve got the scene. The two teams changed while the nets were hung. Beside us, some soldiers cooked up a barbeque. The three match officials climbed out of a car and put on their yellow fluorescent tops. Maybe 250 supporters drank beer by their cars and trucks and congregated pitch-side in little groups.

On Eircom SportsHub, John Kelly investigates how football is being used to tackle HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

6. Not only did he feel like hoofing it all the way to Brazil, he figured that since he’d be going there to watch the World Cup, he might as well honor the game by dribbling a soccer ball for all 10,000 or so miles required to reach São Paulo, where the tournament will kick off. Perhaps it wasn’t the soundest of dreams. Even in his agitated and unemployed state, Swanson knew he’d seem crazy. But then a friend told him about One World Futbol, a charity that distributes “virtually indestructible” soccer balls to poor children around the world. If Swanson dribbled one of their balls along the way, the friend pointed out, he could raise awareness for a cause bigger than himself.

Richard Swanson died last month while trying to walk from Seattle to São Paolo in time for next season’s World Cup. Grantland tells his story.

5 talking points before this weekend’s Ulster and Connacht SFC action