Yahoo Sports AM: The year's best sports weekends
In today's edition: Why the Divisional Round makes for one of the best sports weekends, the most dangerous ski race, the Celtics’ quest for perfection, and more.
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🚨 Headlines
🏀 ASG voting update: Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James remained the top-two vote-getters in the final update before All-Star Game voting closes on Saturday. Starters will be announced on Thursday.
🎾 Record-setting tiebreaker: Unseeded Anna Blinkova defeated No. 3 Elena Rybakina in their second-round Australian Open match after winning the third-set tiebreaker, 22-20 — the longest singles tiebreak (men or women) in Grand Slam history.
🏒 Oilers win again: The Oilers beat the Kraken, 4-2, on Thursday for their franchise-record 12th straight victory, tied for the longest winning streak ever by a Canadian team (1967-68 Canadiens).
⚽️ Pulisic ties Donovan: Christian Pulisic was named the U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year for the fourth time, tying Landon Donovan for the most such honors.
🍿 Messi trailer released: Apple released the trailer for its upcoming four-part series on Lionel Messi's career, "Messi's World Cup: The Rise of a Legend," debuting Feb. 21 on Apple TV+.
📆 The year's best sports weekends
Don't take the next few days for granted — the NFL Divisional Round makes for one of the best sports weekends of the year, Jeff writes.
Why it reigns supreme: Despite it being neither the biggest slate of playoff games nor the round with a championship on the line, it's hard not to argue that this weekend is the best of the NFL season, and thus one of the best across all sports.
Wild Card Weekend can too often be about separating the wheat from the chaff, particularly since expanding the playoffs a few years ago. Case in point: Just one of six games last weekend was decided by fewer than two touchdowns.
The Conference Championships and Super Bowl are of course marquee events, but with no games on Saturday they're more of a great day than a great weekend.
But the Divisional Round features two full days of football and eight teams who have either already won a playoff game or earned a bye after proving their mettle during the regular season.
Other great sports weekends…
March Madness tip-off: Buzzer beaters and busted brackets abound during a wild four-day stretch featuring 48 of the tournament's 63 games.
Masters weekend: The first major of the year is also the most iconic, ushering in spring with a daily dose of azaleas and pimento cheese.
Thanksgiving: College football rivalry week, plus NFL games on Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday.
Late October: The NBA and NHL have just begun, the NFL and CFB are in full swing and the MLB playoffs are reaching a fever pitch. The perfect recipe for a Sports Equinox.
Honorable mention: If you're a fan of auto racing, it doesn't get much better than Memorial Day Weekend, when the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 are all held on Sunday.
NFL Week 1, NY6 (and other bowl games that fall on weekends), Kentucky Derby… What'd we miss?
⛷️ The world's most dangerous ski race
The world's best skiers will descend upon the small town of Kitzbühel, Austria, this weekend for the most prestigious — and dangerous — race on the men's World Cup calendar: the Hahnenkamm, Jeff writes.
The main event: All eyes will be on Saturday's downhill event (5:30am ET, Peacock), where skiers will fling themselves down the Streif, a track so daring that most would prefer victory in Kitzbühel over winning Olympic gold.
What they're saying: "You have no chance for fear to set in at the Streif," says the narrator in Red Bull's video detailing the race. "Once you do that, you've already lost."
"You must have respect," Austria's Max Franz told NYT in 2017, a year after crashing and sustaining a season-ending injury during the race.
"Last year, I had two seconds without respect, and I landed in the net."
The Streif: The two-mile course features average speeds of 65 mph, massive jumps and perilous turns that make crashes so common a helicopter is waiting at the base to airlift skiers to the hospital.
Harrowing start: The first two sections give you no time to ease into the race, reaching 60 mph in just 8.5 seconds before launching into the famous Mausefall (mousetrap), a steep drop where skiers fly more than 260 feet through the air.
Critical turns: Immediately after that drop racers are met with a turn so intense it forces them to endure 3.1 g's, similar to astronauts during a rocket launch. That's followed by another steep turn considered one of the World Cup's most technically challenging slopes.
Halfway home: After a brief respite, skiers are met with a blind jump that requires them to rotate their skis in mid-air to be correctly positioned for the ensuing curve.
The final push: An exhausting "S" turn is followed by two final jumps, the first of which lands in a hard curve where a majority of the race's crashes occur. The second leads to the finish line after reaching top speeds of 90 mph.
Party atmosphere: While the racers do their best to make it down the mountain in one piece, the town below will be filled with 90,000 raucous spectators, transforming what's usually a fancy resort into a "riotous carnival."
Watch: Streif: One Hell of a Ride
🏀 Boston's quest for perfection
The NBA season has reached its midpoint, and the Celtics still have a chance to accomplish what no other team in league history has: go undefeated at home, Jeff writes.
The one-loss club: Boston — which is an NBA-best 32-9 overall — has a perfect 20-0 record at TD Garden, putting them a step ahead of the six teams who've fallen one game shy of home perfection.
2015-16 Spurs: 40-1 at home
1985-86 Celtics: 40-1
1949-50 Rochester Royals: 33-1
1949-50 Syracuse Nationals: 31-1
1949-50 Minneapolis Lakers: 30-1
1946-47 Washington Capitols: 29-1
Coming up: The Celtics face a huge test tonight with the defending champion Nuggets coming to town (7:30pm ET, ESPN).
🏈 49ers vs. Packers, Round 10
The 49ers and Packers will meet in the playoffs on Saturday for an NFL-record 10th time*, Jeff writes.
Head-to-head: Amazingly, the league's most frequent postseason matchup didn't get its start until January 1996. Green Bay won four of the first five games, but the Niners have won the last four to take a 5-4 advantage in the all-time series.
1995 Divisional Round: Packers 27, 49ers 17
1996 Divisional Round: Packers 35, 49ers 14
1997 NFC Championship: Packers 23, 49ers 10
1998 Wild Card: 49ers 30, Packers 27
2001 Wild Card: Packers 25, 49ers 15
2012 Divisional Round: 49ers 45, Packers 31
2013 Wild Card: 49ers 23, Packers 20
2019 NFC Championship: 49ers 37, Packers 20
2021 Divisional Round: 49ers 13, Packers 10
*Breaking a four-way tie: As it stands, Packers-49ers is tied atop the list with Packers-Cowboys, 49ers-Cowboys, and Rams-Cowboys, at nine meetings each.
📆 Jan. 19, 2002: The Tuck Rule game
22 years ago today, Tom Brady's lost fumble with less than two minutes remaining was overturned and called an incomplete pass thanks to the league's "tuck rule," keeping the Patriots' drive alive in their Divisional Round comeback win over the Raiders, Jeff writes.
A "what-if" for the ages: Brady and the Patriots won their first of six Super Bowls two weeks later. If the tuck rule never existed, and this win had instead been an early playoff exit, do they still go on to become the NFL's greatest dynasty? Does Brady become the GOAT?
⚾️ 1972: At 36 years and 20 days old, Sandy Koufax became the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
🏀 1974: Notre Dame beat UCLA, 71-70, snapping the Bruins' 88-game win streak — the longest by far* in men's Division-I college basketball history.
*The top five: UCLA, 88 games (1971-74); San Francisco, 60 games (1955-57); UCLA, 47 games (1966-68); UNLV, 45 games (1990-91); Texas, 44 games (1913-17).
📺 Watchlist: Eight teams left
The NFL playoffs resume this weekend with the Divisional Round, as eight teams hope to punch their tickets to the conference championship, Jeff writes.
Texans (+9.5) at Ravens (Sat. 4:30pm ET, ESPN): Baltimore and likely MVP Lamar Jackson handled Houston with ease in their season-opening victory, but since then C.J. Stroud (4,108 yards, 26 total TD, 5 INT) has put together arguably the best season ever by a rookie QB.
Packers (+9.5) at 49ers (Sat. 8:15pm, Fox): This game looks like a huge mismatch on paper, but so did Green Bay's surprising rout of the Cowboys last week. Can Jordan Love (14 total TD/0 INT in his last five games) stay hot?
Buccaneers (+6.5) at Lions* (Sun. 3pm, NBC): Former No. 1 picks Baker Mayfield and Jared Goff square off in Detroit as the Lions look to win multiple playoff games in the same season for the first time since 1957 — the year they won their most recent championship.
Chiefs (+2.5) at Bills (Sun. 6:30pm, CBS): Patrick Mahomes holds a 2-0 edge over Josh Allen in their playoff matchups, but this is unfamiliar territory for the Chiefs' signal-caller, who has never played a true road game in the postseason.
More to watch:
🎾 Australian Open: Days 6-8 (Fri-Sun, ESPN2/ESPN+)
🏀 NBA: Nuggets at Celtics (Fri. 7:30pm, ESPN); Nets at Lakers (Fri. 10:30pm, ESPN)
🏀 NCAAM: No. 24 Iowa State at No. 19 TCU (Sat. 2pm, ESPNU); No. 20 BYU at No. 25 Texas Tech (Sat. 6pm, ESPN2); No. 1 UConn at Villanova (Sat. 8pm, FS1); No. 22 Ole Miss at No. 13 Auburn (Sat. 8:30pm, SEC)
🏀 NCAAW: No. 5 UCLA at No. 3 Colorado (Fri. 8pm, Pac-12); No. 6 USC at No. 20 Utah (Fri. 9pm, Pac-12); No. 2 Iowa at No. 18 Ohio State (Sun. 12pm, NBC); No. 13 Louisville at No. 23 UNC (Sun. 2pm, ESPN app); No. 6 USC at No. 3 Colorado (Sun. 3pm, Pac-12)
🏒 NHL: Avalanche at Flyers (Sat. 1pm, NHL); Canadiens at Bruins (Sat. 7pm, NHL)
⛳️ Golf: The American Express (Fri-Sun, Golf/ESPN+/Peacock); LPGA Tournament of Champions (Fri-Sun, Golf/Peacock)
⚽️ Friendlies: El Salvador vs. Inter Miami (Fri. 8pm, MLSsoccer.com); USMNT vs. Slovenia (Sat. 3pm, TNT/Max)
*Historically expensive ticket: With Detroit hosting its first divisional playoff game since 1992, the average ticket price on the secondary market is $1,186 — the highest price ever for a game in this round.
🏀 College hoops trivia
John Calipari earned his 400th win with Kentucky on Wednesday in his 516th game, becoming the third-fastest active coach to reach that milestone with one program.
Question: Which two active coaches got there faster?
Hint: One in the Midwest, one on the West Coast.
Answer at the bottom.
🚗 Not that kind of driving range
A woman driving through foggy conditions near Fresno, California, on Tuesday missed a stop sign and launched her car onto the 8th hole at Eagle Springs Golf Club, Jeff writes.
Fortunately, no one was hurt. But it's unclear whether she yelled "Fore!" or replaced her divot.
Trivia answer: Bill Self, Kansas (484 games); Mark Few, Gonzaga (499 games)
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