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THE THRONG of media in the Spurs’ pregame interview room was large enough for even Gregg Popovich to take notice. “Is this the playoffs?” the Spurs coach asked. No. It is just another day of Wemban-mania. In mid-January, San Antonio made its lone trip through Boston, which meant a fresh crop of reporters to pepper Popovich about his star rookie, Victor Wembanyama, and a sold-out crowd to get a first look at him. Fans arrived early. Camera phones rolled. The game itself was anticlimactic: The Spurs trailed by five after one quarter, 25 at the half and fell behind by as many as 30 in the third quarter before settling for a 19-point defeat. When a reporter suggested the game was fairly even save for a lopsided second quarter,…
The Dodgers’ winter haul—the team added Shohei Ohtani (who will only bat in 2024) as well as starters Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow—makes them the firm favorites heading into this season. Their latest futures odds on SI Sportsbook are +350. (The next shortest belong to Atlanta, at +650.) But does that bode well for Los Angeles (or bettors looking for a sure thing)? Not really. Ten of the last 12 World Series winners had preseason odds of +1000 or higher, with last year’s champs, the Rangers, opening at +5000. One of the takeaways from Texas’s title run is that when it comes to the playoffs, anything goes (page 14). The Rangers were still only +1000 on Sept. 1 and had actually dropped to +1800 heading into the wildcard round.…
READ MIND GAME by Julie Kliegman WRITING A book—at least one people will want to buy and read—about athletes and mental health isn’t easy. It’s a serious subject, to say the least. In the words of Julie Kliegman, the author of Mind Game: An Inside Look at the Mental Health Playbook of Elite Athletes, “My biggest fear when I was writing this, was that it would come off like a textbook. It’s not like people say, ‘Oh, let me go get the mental health book for Christmas for my friend.’” But Kliegman has succeeded in writing a book that is engaging but at the same time important. The stories of athletes such as Simone Biles (above), Chloe Kim, McKayla Maroney, Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan, among others, are especially…
AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX THERE’S A moment in the second episode of NASCAR: Full Speed in which driver Bubba Wallace says, as he’s settling in for an interview, “Is this the Drive to Survive moment when they sit down and get all situated? Is that what we’re going for?” It’s a cheeky statement that addresses the elephant in the room: Would Wallace (above) even be in said setting without the success of Netflix’s other auto racing documentary series? It’s a good question, especially given the fact that Full Speed is one of three Netflix series released already this year that’s aiming to capitalize on the Survive model. Behind-the-scenes shows on men’s tennis and international rugby—both produced by the same team that puts out the Formula One docuseries—also hit the airwaves…
THE INSTAGRAM feed of Richard Blais is an interesting mix. Occasionally he’ll post a picture of himself many years—and many pounds (like, 60)—ago, before the chef and TV personality committed to living and eating better. Blais had wrestled and played lacrosse and baseball in high school. “I always felt like I was Deion Sanders,” he says. “A really horrible version of Deion Sanders.” But when he started working as a chef, he started doing what many in the industry do: taste a lot of food, then settle in after work with a burger and some wine. At the same time, the now-veryit 52-year-old posts an astonishing number of videos of himself basting fish or other meat in an ungodly amount of butter. It’s proof that you can take care…
FROM PLANT FORWARD FOR THE NUGGETS • 1 large head cauliflower, broken into golf-ball-sized florets• 2 tablespoons olive oil• 1½ teaspoons salt• ½ teaspoon freshly ground blackpepper FOR THE BUFFALO SAUCE • ½ cup Frank’s RedHot Original sauce• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted• ¼ cup crumbled blue cheese for garnish (optional) DIRECTIONS 1. Preheat the oven to 400°. Have on hand a nonstick sheet pan or line a pan with parchment paper. 2. Toss the cauliflower in the olive oil and season with the salt and pepper. Spread the cauliflower on the pan and roast until just tender, 30 to 40 minutes. 3. Make the Buffalo sauce: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the hot sauce and melted butter. 4. Remove the cauliflower from the oven once tender…
