{"source":"Sports","paragraphs":["\u003cp\u003eThough the Nets had just been

eliminated by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the playoffs, they had
overachieved and shown some promise for the future. And Phil Jackson had become the
Knicks president the year before, bringing his triangle offense and a coaching
résumé that included 11 N.B.A. titles to Manhattan. Little did New York fans know
that it would be four dreadful years before playoff basketball would return to the
city. It finally will on Thursday night, when the Nets host the Philadelphia 76ers
in a series tied at one all. While there has been no playoff basketball in the city
in the interim, much has happened in those four years. And for Knicks and Nets
fans, not much of it has been good.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThe high point
remains the 4-0 defeat of Leicester City on Boxing Day, one of those rare
performances where each component part of a sporting machine appears to be
operating with some intimate, shared knowledge of the other pieces. Either side of
this there has at times been an air of double take about Liverpool’s run, of things
happening that stretch credibility, that verge on some kind of sporting magic
realism.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eNaturally, when teams shrug at the free-agent
market, it manifests itself in salaries below players’ expectations. But the
widespread rebuilding phenomenon — or tanking, as some call it — resulted in eight
teams with at least 95 losses last season, the most in history. It was no
coincidence that attendance also dropped by more than three million fans, falling
below 70 million for the first time since 2003.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eHis
original lawsuit against the Yankees and M.L.B. was dismissed in 2015, and last
October, an appellate court rejected his arguments to have that judgment
overturned. In fact, the New York State Supreme Court even ordered Zlotnick to pay
the league and the Yankees $745 in court costs, which he has refused to pay.
Editors’ Picks Yes, Fake News Is a Problem. But There’s a Real News Problem, Too.
The next, and possibly final step, is the state Court of Appeals in Albany, which
has received arguments from both sides and is expected to rule soon on whether
Zlotnick’s appeal can proceed.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eEven by his own high
standards Lewis Hamilton set a new benchmark in 2019. In a class of his own, his
sixth championship was defined by opening with an almost crushing, relentless run
that all but had the job done by the summer break. After Valtteri Bottas started
strongly and the teammates shared two wins apiece, Hamilton found another plane.
Four from four followed including harassing Sebastian Vettel into an error in
Canada, a tyre management masterclass in Monaco and a clinical, precision
dissection in France where he finished 18 seconds
ahead.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eRichard Lewis, the outgoing chief executive of
Wimbledon, hopes tennis can be \"off and running again\" by August, when the US
Open is scheduled to begin, although he admits there may be \"no more tennis this
year\". Speaking the day after the All England Club finally cancelled the
championships for the first time since the second world war, Lewis acknowledged
that uncertainty has gripped tennis because of the continued spread of
coronavirus.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAgüero’s latest goal puts him alongside
Alan Shearer in one respect. They are the only two players in the Premier League
era to score 20 times or more in six different seasons. Yet the more important
detail relates to what that goal means for the title race on a day when the
supporters of Liverpool, an hour into the game, might have dared to think the
momentum was about to swing dramatically their way.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eIt
seems every year there is huge growth in women’s sport. Each new year brings bigger
crowd figures, new competitions, increased television coverage and new records
being set. But as the nation took to social media to share in the emotion of
Phillips’ anterior cruciate ligament injury, it was clear there was another, less
quantifiable, factor at play. Earlier this month, journalist Isabelle Westbury
faced backlash on Twitter when she was critical of the criteria for Britain’s
Sports Personality of the Year award.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eAnd sure enough,
if they tune in to the upcoming Rugby World Cup in Japan, they will see many large
players on the field. There are the wide bodies, the 275-pound-or-so prop forwards
like Sekope Kepu of Australia, Charlie Faumuina of New Zealand or Steven Kitshoff
of South Africa. Then there are the tall timber guys — most often in the lock
position — like the 6-foot-10 Rory Arnold of Australia, his 6-foot-8 teammate Adam
Coleman, or Brodie Retallick of New Zealand and Eben Etzebeth of South Africa, also
both 6-foot-8, and quite a few others who look like they would be comfortable in
the N.B.A.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eNo sport is more often used to tell the
story of America than baseball. Yet Marcenia Lyle Stone, known as Toni, who became
the first woman ever to play big-league professional baseball when she took the
field as a second baseman for the Negro Leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns in 1953, has
largely been relegated to a footnote in history: one in a long list of African-
American women who endured hardships, overcame discrimination and helped shape the
nation only to be shoved aside, their contributions minimized.\u003c/p\u003e"]}