News : Axios Sports: Mix-handedness mystery — Ivy League lax

Friday, May 28, 2021

Axios Sports: Mix-handedness mystery — Ivy League lax — MLB power rankings

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Axios Sports

By Kendall Baker ·May 28, 2021

🇺🇸 Happy Friday! We're off Monday, so we'll see you back here Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend — and take some time to honor those who gave their lives.

Today's word count: 2,323 words (9 minutes).

Let's sports...

1 big thing: 🏀 The mix-handedness mystery

Illustration: Rae Cook/Axios

LeBron James is right-handed on the basketball court, but he uses his left hand for almost everything else in life — and he's far from alone.

By the numbers: About 8% of the NBA's All-Stars over the last decade write with one hand and play with the other, per WSJ (subscription). James and four others are in action this weekend.

Russell Westbrook and Rudy Gobert shoot righty and write lefty.
Mike Conley and Ben Simmons shoot lefty and write righty (though many believe Simmons should be shooting right-handed).

What they're saying: While some mix-handed athletes know exactly when and why they started playing with the opposite hand, many — like James and Conley — are confused by their own bodies.

James: "I have no idea why I became a righty. I just thought it looked cool — 'til I got older. Now I wish I were a lefty because those shots look a lot better."
Conley: "I developed a left hand as a youngster and stuck with it. But if I took a five-year break from the game and you asked me to shoot a 3-pointer from the top of the key, I'm shooting it right-handed."

Other prime examples: Larry Bird was a natural southpaw who played right-handed, and Phil Mickelson is a righty who plays golf lefty.

Source: @bzcohen (Twitter)

The bottom line: This is great news for your sports dreams. While you're watching the NBA playoffs this weekend, just think: maybe you deserve to be out there and you're just shooting with the wrong hand.

NBA scoreboard:

Last night: Lakers 109, Suns 95 (LAL leads 2-1); Nuggets 120, Trail Blazers 115 (DEN leads 2-1); Bucks 113, Heat 84 (MIL leads 3-0)
Tonight: Knicks at Hawks, 7pm ET (Tied 1-1); Nets at Celtics, 8:30pm (BKN leads 2-0); Clippers at Mavericks, 9:30pm (DAL leads 2-0)

2. 🥍 A lost season: Lacrosse, minus the Ivy League

Illustration of a hand erasing a chalkboard bracket of Ivy League lacrosse teams

Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

When the Ivy League announced in February that it was canceling its spring sports seasons, thousands of athletes were impacted.

Between the lines: Lacrosse being called off for the second straight year was a particularly tough blow, as it is one of the few team sports where the Ivy League routinely competes for national championships.

Men: Princeton has six national titles, Cornell has three, and Yale won in 2018 and finished runner-up in 2019. Penn, Harvard and Brown were routinely ranked in the top 25 over the last decade.
Women: Princeton has three national titles, Harvard has one, and Penn has been one of the country's best programs this century.

🎙 Interview: With the men's and women's Final Fours taking place this weekend, I spoke with Penn men's lacrosse coach Mike Murphy about the lost season. (Full disclosure: I played for him at Penn.)

Take us inside this season. What has it been like?

It's been very challenging emotionally. You go back and forth from feeling like a victim to being like, "Well alright, these are Ivy League lacrosse kids, and there are people dying and losing jobs." So once you put it in perspective, you tend to relax a little bit about it.

The season certainly wasn't what we hoped, but I think we made the most of it. All the guys get their year of eligibility back, we played one game against Cabrini [2019 D-III national champions], which was a lot of fun. So it was a productive spring.

Walk us through the fall.

To our seniors' and captains' great credit, they basically ran the whole fall. We couldn't do anything on campus, so they had to find fields in Philadelphia to practice ahead of what we thought would be a season.

And they did an unbelievable job. The first time we saw them practice in mid-February, they looked great. Our theme as a program this season was to be entrepreneurial, and we did that.

How did things change in the spring?

The cancellation news in late February was the low point emotionally. Guys couldn't really leave their apartments, classes were virtual, we were losing people to positive tests and contract tracing. It was tough.

But around mid-March, we started to have a lot more fun with things like intra-squad scrimmages. And I'll tell you: We improved as much this semester as any team I've been a part of because we were focused on ourselves, rather than our opponents.

Could this lost season have a long-term impact on Ivy League lacrosse?

When sports got shutdown last March, Princeton, Yale and Cornell were all in the top five and I think we were ranked 11th or 12th. So we had four teams in the top 15.

If we can get back to that, great. But if this hurts recruiting and we don't have as much success in 2022, then it could definitely have a long-term negative effect on lacrosse.

When they look back on this bizarre time, how do you think your players will remember it?

For the people who are successful in life, most of the time they've become successful because of their ability to fight through adversity. We talked about that a lot this year.

This is not going to be the worst thing that our guys go through. Athletically, it might be, but they're going to experience much harder things in life — and I think this year taught them a lot about resiliency and grit.

And how will you remember it?

This was my most challenging experience as a coach. Getting our team to land on May 1 in a positive emotional state was more difficult than going 8-0 in the Ivy League in 2019. There's just no playbook for it.

But the way our staff and players responded, I'm just so proud and have so much respect for them. We didn't play any games, but we developed a passion and perseverance that will live on through Penn Lacrosse.

3. ⚽️ A European final, with an American twist

Photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images

The world's biggest annual sporting event takes place this weekend in Porto, Portugal — and for the first time ever, two Americans will be on the field.

The state of play: Manchester City and Chelsea will face off in Saturday's Champions League Final (3pm ET, CBS), which draws more than twice as many worldwide viewers as the Super Bowl (~400 million vs. 150 million).

The Americans: Zack Steffen, 26, is Manchester City's backup goalkeeper, and Christian Pulisic, 22, plays midfield for Chelsea. Both grew up in Pennsylvania about an hour away from each other.
Of note: USWNT defender Abby Dahlkemper, also from Pennsylvania, plays on Manchester City's women's team.
Fun fact: Jovan Kirovski is the only American to win the Champions League, claiming the title with Borussia Dortmund in 1997.

Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

The big picture: Though most of their fans are in Europe, both clubs are focused on growing their U.S. presence, particularly now that they employ two faces of American soccer.

Manchester City is owned by City Football Group, which has built a global network of 11 soccer clubs, including NYCFC. CFG also owns Goals, a recreational soccer company that operates training centers and City-branded soccer schools throughout the U.S.
Chelsea, the world's 25th most valuable sports team (City is 13th), trailed only Manchester United in U.S. jersey sales in 2018 — and Pulisic's arrival has made the club even more popular stateside.

Go deeper: A Champions League guide for Americans who don't really watch soccer (SB Nation)

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4. 🏒 NHL playoffs: Canes advance, Habs survive

Photo: John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images

NASHVILLE — Sebastian Aho stunned the largest crowd to see an NHL game this year when he scored the OT game-winner to lift the Hurricanes past the Predators, 4-3, and into the second round.

Wild stat: The final four games of this series all required at least one overtime period.

Photo: Mark Blinch/NHLI via Getty Images

TORONTO — The Canadiens rebounded from blowing a three-goal lead to beat the Maples Leafs, 4-3, on Nick Suzuki's OT game-winner and force Game 6 on Saturday.

Wild stat: Toronto has now lost six straight series-clinching games, dating back to 2013.

📆 Tonight ... Wild at Golden Knights, 9pm ET (Tied 3-3)

5. 🏁 "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" is back

Photo: Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The 105th Running of the Indianapolis 500 takes place Sunday (12:45pm ET, NBC), back in its normal Memorial Day weekend slot after moving to August last year, Axios' Jeff Tracy writes.

135,000 fans (40% capacity) will be in attendance at the enormous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, making this the largest sporting event since the pandemic began.
At 253 acres, the infield — which won't be open this weekend — is so big that several other sports venues and international landmarks could fit inside (see below).

Courtesy: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The field: 33 drivers have their sights set on hoisting the Borg-Warner Trophy, led by New Zealander Scott Dixon, sitting in pole position.

Past winners: Dixon ('08 champ) is one of nine racers in the field with at least one Indy 500 victory. Hélio Castroneves ('01, '02, '09), Juan Pablo Montoya ('00, '15) and Takuma Sato ('17, '20) are three of just 20 racers who've won multiple times.
Fun fact: 33 isn't an arbitrary number. Organizers determined 1911's 40-car inaugural race was too crowded, and wanted each car to have 400 feet between them if evenly dispersed on the 2.5-mile track; 2.5 miles (13,200 feet) divided by 400 feet equals 33.

The intrigue: Simona de Silvestro is making her sixth start in the race, but this time she'll be part of women's sports history.

Four of her seven over-the-wall pit crew members are women, the most in motorsports history. Her two spotters, two of her engineers and the entire front office at Paretta Autosport are also women.
"My hope is that in five years, us being a team of mostly women is the least interesting thing about us," owner Beth Paretta told ESPN.

Go deeper: The women of Paretta Autosport (ESPN)

6. ⚾️ MLB power rankings: Divisions and teams

Photo: Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty Images

Just like that, the MLB season is nearly one-third over. As teams find their identities, the relative strength of each division has also begun taking shape, Jeff writes.

Division power rankings:

AL East (133-118; +95 run differential): The Orioles are the only team without a realistic shot of contending for a Wild Card berth and the race for the division title goes three deep.
NL West (130-123; +127): Just six MLB teams have 30+ wins right now, and half of them are in the NL West.
NL East (118-122; -16): Much like its NFL counterpart, the NFC East, this division should be by far the most competitive thanks to its top-to-bottom dedication to mediocrity.
NL Central (120-126; -99): Extremely similar to the NL East, but the Pirates make it a four-team race instead of five.
AL West (125-129; -75): There's a clear hierarchy that drops off after the Astros and A's, but the youth and talent comprising the other three teams still makes this a fun group.
AL Central (118-126; -34): There is no joy in Mudville, nor in the AL Central. Even the first-place White Sox are suffering from infighting.

Team power rankings:

1–5: 1. Padres (32-19); 2. Rays (32-20); 3. Dodgers (31-19); 4. Red Sox (30-20); 5. Yankees (29-21)
6–10: 6. White Sox (29-20); 7. Giants (30-20); 8. Athletics (30-22); 9. Astros (27-22); 10. Cardinals (28-22)
11–15: 11. Braves (24-25); 12. Indians (27-21); 13. Cubs (27-22); 14. Mets (24-20); 15. Marlins (24-26)
16–20: 16. Brewers (25-25); 17. Blue Jays (25-24); 18. Phillies (25-26); 19. Nationals (21-25); 20. Royals (23-25)
21–25: 21. Reds (22-26); 22. Angels (22-28); 23. Twins (20-29); 24. Mariners (24-27); 25. Rangers (22-30)
26–30: 26. Rockies (19-32); 27. Diamondbacks (18-33); 28. Pirates (18-31); 29. Tigers (19-31); 30. Orioles (17-33)

7. ⚡️ Lightning round

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the sponsors of the College Athletes Right to Organize bill. Photo: Graeme Jennings/Bloomberg via Getty Images

🎓 Dems new NCAA bill: College athletes would be able to form unions and would be considered school employees if the College Athletes Right to Organize bill, introduced Thursday, is passed into law.

🥎 Super Regionals: 16 teams are vying for a spot in the Women's College World Series, with games all weekend. The top four seeds: 1. Oklahoma, 2. UCLA, 3. Alabama, 4. Florida.

⛳️ Tiger speaks: Tiger Woods is no stranger to rehab, but in an interview with Golf Digest, he called the current process "an entirely different animal" and "more painful than anything I have ever experienced."

🏈 Congrats, Catherine: The Eagles have promoted Catherine Raiche to VP of football operations, the most senior-ranking team personnel position a woman has held in NFL history.

🎾 French Open draw: Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty are the top seeds at Roland Garros. Here are the full men's and women's draws.

8. 📆 May 28, 1957: Dodgers, Giants move West

Los Angeles baseball fans celebrating the news that the Dodgers would be moving there. Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

64 years ago today, National League owners approved moves out west for the Brooklyn Dodgers (to L.A.) and New York Giants (to San Francisco).

The backdrop: Though both teams wanted to move, they had very different reasons.

The Dodgers were a juggernaut, with six World Series appearances (though just one victory) and 94.5 wins per year in the preceding decade. But L.A. promised owner Walter O'Malley a new stadium — an offer Brooklyn wouldn't match.
The Giants equaled the Dodgers with one World Series victory in that same timeframe, but they were inconsistent, winning just 82 games per year and failing to draw big crowds as New York baseball's clear third banana.

New York Giants fans after news broke that they'd be moving to San Francisco. Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

The aftermath:

The Dodgers' first year in L.A. was their worst since 1944, but they quickly rebounded with World Series wins in 1959, 1963 and 1965. Dodger Stadium, still their home today, opened in 1962.
The Giants remained good but inconsistent and wouldn't win another championship until 2010. They also got a new stadium, Candlestick Park, which was built in 1960. In 2000, they moved to Oracle Park.
New York, meanwhile, was a Yankees-only town for just four years — the expansion Mets began play in Queens in 1962.

Go deeper: Giants and Dodgers in 1957, remember? (NYT archive)