The Washington Wizards barely qualified for the NBA bubble in Orlando and showed up with a dismal 24-40 record and without their best player in Bradley Beal. That didn’t exactly scream “playoff contender.”

But the team was given hope with the rule that a ninth-place team within four games of eighth place at the end of the regular season would be in a play-in scenario for that final spot. A great opportunity presented itself Sunday when the Wizards took on the skeleton crew that is the Brooklyn Nets.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t take advantage of it.

The Wizards opened play in the bubble with a loss against the Phoenix Suns. That had the team sitting six games behind the Nets entering play Sunday. A win would get the team within one game of that magical four-game deficit needed for the tournament. Alas, the final result was a 118-110 loss in which Caris LaVert and Joe Harris dominated for Brooklyn.

Washington entered the bubble with more than just a disadvantage in the standings. Beal is not with the team as he continues to recover from shoulder surgery. He’s the team’s leader scorer this season at 30.5 points per game.

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Steve Levy has been one of the more ubiquitous faces in charge of anchoring “SportsCenter” over the years, while Brian Griese made his name as a solid quarterback in the NFL. The pair have combined to form one of ESPN’s better college football teams over the years, but this duo just got a major promotion, per Jim Miller.

Levy, Greise, and well-respect analyst Louis Riddick have been named as the new Monday Night Football crew. Their first game will be the nightcap of a Week 1 doubleheader that will pit the Tennessee Titans against the Denver Broncos. Due to the cancellation of many primetime college football games, No. 1 college team Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit will call the earlier game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants.

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The Miami Marlins are dealing with a serious situation related to COVID-19. The number of players and coaches who tested positive continues to rise and the team is shut down until Sunday at the earliest.

The latest report, courtesy of Bob Nightengale, is that he believes one or more players on the team went out while in Atlanta. This news comes at the same time NBA veteran Lou Williams is facing his own quarantine after going out for wings in the city.

Nightengale seems to stand behind this belief by saying it was not a fluke that the team is dealing with an outbreak. Even just one player going out and contracting the virus can lead to a complete disaster.

This report should serve as a wake-up call to players all over the league. MLB decided against using a bubble and trust is being placed in the players to be smart. One player can shut down the whole league, let alone just one team.

Williams left the NBA bubble and reportedly went out just to grab some wings. The league is making him quarantine for over a week before he can join the team and move freely around the bubble in Orlando.

MLB has no such restrictions unless a player tests positive. Yet the Marlins players avoided public shaming, and potential quarantine, as they didn’t show up on social media. So it is possible players on other teams have been going out as well and just laying low.

The Marlins are a cautionary tale that didn’t have to be if Nightengale’s report is true. While it was funny to poke fun at Williams, he was just one individual. The scope of the Marlins’ outbreak is not yet known and we will all have to hope no one is seriously sick due to the careless actions of others.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci had a first pitch for the history books.

The status of the MLB season has been in flux ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States back in March. After four months, Opening Day finally took place on Thursday night with the World Series Champion Washington Nationals hosting the New York Yankees. Prior to the game, the Nationals had Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, throw out the ceremonial first pitch as a thank you for all the hard work he’s done trying to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Unfortunately, Fauci entered the history books as having one of the worst first pitches ever, right next to rapper 50 Cent and Howard Stern Show producer Baba Booey. During an interview with the Washington Post, Fauci joked that the throw was off target because he was a shortstop as a young kid, not a pitcher!

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Dan Snyder picked a heck of a time to unveil his “new team name.” As the NHL unveiled their 32nd team, the Seattle Kraken, ESPN’s Adam Schefter dropped the bomb that Snyder’s squad will be temporarily be known as the Washington Football Team for the entirety of the 2020 season.

Even with names like the Red Wolves and Red Tails picking up steam on social media, Snyder and company punted on officially rebranding. Terry Bateman, Washington’s Football Team recently-hired executive vice president, revealed the obvious: the organization was never close to selecting a new name.

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Finally! After what seems like an eternity, baseball has finally returned. It’s been exactly 266 days at the time of this writing since that amazing day in October when the Washington Nationals triumphed and won the world series. It will never get old, and we’ve got a couple of awesome products commemorating their legendary run to the title.

Every defending World Series team wears a gold-accented uniform for their opening homestand. The Nationals open their season at home, against none other than the New York Yankees. They’ve won enough World Series in their history, it’s time for the Nationals to be the big dogs. Get these quickly, as they will be selling fast.

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Just hours before the MLB is set to resume, the MLB has lost one of its biggest stars. Washington Nationals star outfielder Juan Soto has tested positive for COIVD-19 and will not play in tonight’s season opener against the Yankees.

This was the MLB’s biggest fear as they prepare to kick off their season. Unlike the NBA, MLB players are not in a bubble, which could lead to larger-scale outbreaks within teams and the league as a whole. Hopefully, this an outlier and not the first of many. Word is that all of the Nationals are being tested again today but that won’t help if they take the field tonight and the infection spreads.

Soto is one of the MLB’s brightest young stars, which makes this a giant loss for the MLB in a shortened season. At only 20 years old, Soto was a huge contributor to the World Series-winning Nationals last season and was looking to take another step in 2020. Unfortunately, he’ll be out of the lineup for quite a while, as he’ll need to fully recover and quarantine before returning to the field.

Juan Soto was looking to take another big step in 2020.

Since Soto made his debut 2018, he has been a dominant force in the MLB. In 116 games in 2018, he hit .292 with 22 home runs and 70 RBIs. The following season, he took another leap forward, batting .282 with 34 home runs and 110 RBIs. He capped off his incredible 2019 season with an excellent playoff run, where he batted .277 with 5 home runs and 14 RBIs on his way to a World Series win.

The Nationals are now without their two best hitters from 2019, after Anthony Rendon signed with the Angels this offseason. They’ll need a ton of help from their pitching staff and depth hitters if they want to return to the Fall Classic.

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Bol Bol was apparently too dominant for the NBA’s liking.

Only one official scrimmage into his NBA career, the legend of Bol Bol has already grown taller than the rookie’s massive 7-foot-2 frame.

On Wednesday, as the sports world lovingly welcomed professional basketball back into its arms (from six feet away, of course), the Denver Nuggets‘ rookie saw his first bit of meaningful action.

He hadn’t suited up in NBA Summer League. He hadn’t played a single regular-season game for a Nuggets. But finally healthy, and with a shorthanded Denver squad needing able bodies on the court, the 20-year-old stretch-big was the story of the day.

He swatted shots. He knocked down a pair of 3-pointers. He ran the floor and finished over minuscule defenders with ease. When all was said and done, Bol had tallied 16 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks, finishing with a game-high plus-18 in his 32 minutes of action.

So, of course, the NBA had him scheduled for a “random” drug test afterward.

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The Washington Wizards star called out MLB for allowing one of their teams to be sold to “a billionaire with a long track record of shady dealings.”

The New York Mets are one of the richest franchises in all of sports. As of this year, the baseball club located in Flushing, Queens has an estimated value of 2.4 billion US dollars. But Fred Wilpon believes it’s time to move on.

It’s no secret that the team majority owner has been wanting to sell them for years. Wilpon, a Brooklyn native and real estate developer, is 83 years old and in his 40th year of front office management for the ball club.

This year, the bidding war for the franchise has ramped up, especially in the past few months. The most notable bidder has been former MLB superstar Alex Rodriguez and his fiancee, pop singer Jennifer Lopez. The recently engaged couple leads a group of celebrity investors determined to buy the Mets. One of these investors is Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal.

Considering Beal’s involvement in this bidding war, it makes sense why he called out another potential buyer: hedge fund manager and Long Island native, Steve Cohen. Friday morning, Beal tweeted out a link to a New York Daily News opinion piece detailing Cohen’s “questionable past.”

“We finally have a society paying attention to race, discrimination and injustice,” Beal wrote in his Tweet. “And now that there’s a chance to sell the Mets to bidders of color, MLB wants to give instead to Steve Cohen — a billionaire with a long track record of shady dealings?”

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Quinton Dunbar and Deandre Baker‘s incident is getting stranger by the day.

Nicholas Nehamas, David Ovalle and David Smiley of The Miami Herald report, “the case against two NFL football players accused of armed robbery in Miramar took a twist after it was revealed that detectives believe four victims recanted after being paid a total of $55,000 in cash — at the office of a South Florida defense lawyer and state lawmaker.”

This South Florida defense attorney and Florida State Representative in question is Michael Grieco, the man who represents the defensive back for the Seattle Seahawks. The allegation of the alleged pay-off was first broken by The New York Daily News on Friday night. The Herald obtained the police reports from Miramar on Saturday ahead of their publication.

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