Center Willis Reed, seen here in 1972, played on the championship New York Knicks teams of the 1970s.
Recently, Pope Leo XIV spoke about sports as a unifying factor, teaching athletes teamwork and respect for other traditions.
But is that true? With the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and the World Cup all in play, there has probably never been a bigger moment for nations to come together through sports. And yet if sports bring people together, teams and fans alike, they also divide.
Read MoreJustify streaks home with the Belmont Stakes win and the Triple Crown in 2018. The Bob Baffert-trained beauty would later face a drug-doping charge that was dropped. Photograph by Mike Lizzi.
It’s Triple Crown season, and once again controversy is afoot — or rather, a-hoof.
After the gallant win of little Medina Spirit in the Kentucky Derby, news broke that the horse had tested positive for Betamethasone, a steroid used to treat inflammation but banned on race day. throwing a cloud of suspicion on trainer Bob Baffert. The trainer of TC winners American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018) — who was also involved in a banned substance charge that was ultimately dismissed — Baffert has denied the allegations, claiming foul play, sour grapes and “cancel culture” were behind them. (More on “cancel culture” in a bit.) Turns out the anti-inflammatory was in an antifungal ointment that was being used to treat Medina Spirit’s dermatitis. But what Baffert knew and when he knew it remains subject to question.
Read MoreWhirlaway — the only Triple Crown winner to win the Travers Stakes — had a tendency to veer toward the middle of the track in races.
The fallout continues from Maximum Security’s DQ in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. Co-owner Gary West filed an appeal that was quickly shot down and will not run the horse in two weeks in the Preakness Stakes. That’s a shame because it could’ve been a kind of redemption and Maximum Security could’ve joined Man o’ War and Native Dancer as one of the greatest horses to never win the Derby. (Man o’ War’s owner, August Belmont Jr. — the Belmont Stakes was named after his father — thought his colt too young for the Derby. And the Dancer lost the 1953 Derby to Dark Star in a race in which his jockey, Eric Guerin, was criticized for taking “that colt everywhere around the track except the ladies’ room”.) It was the only race that the Dancer ever lost.
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