USA SPORTS TODAY
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Article one :
- Basketball
- Article two:
- American Football
- Article three
- Tennis
How the Lakers Beat the Heat in Game 1 of the N.B.A. Finals
LeBron James is not accustomed to Game 1s like these. James’s teams
lost the series opener in eight of his previous nine trips to the
N.B.A. finals, but Wednesday night’s start to the 2020 finals against
the Miami Heat went as well as James and the Los Angeles Lakers could
have hoped. The Lakers cruised to a 116-98 victory after stretching
their lead to as many as 32 points in the third quarter.
Anthony Davis rumbled for a dominant 34 points in the first finals
game of his career, and James added an efficient 25 points, 13
rebounds and 9 assists for a near triple-double. The Heat could not
build on their early 13-point lead and, more worryingly, watched two
of their three best players hobble off with injuries. While the Lakers
were dominating the boards (54-36) and limiting the Heat to just 14
trips to the free-throw line, Miami lost point guard Goran Dragic
(left foot) for the entire second half and center Bam Adebayo (left
shoulder) for most of it.Jimmy Butler managed to stay on the floor to
log 33 minutes despite rolling his left ankle late in the first half
and led the Heat with 23 points. Miami, though, has little shot to
keep this series competitive without Dragic or Adebayo — especially
when Davis and James are rolling like they were in Game 1. Sports fans
tend to be irrational, and many Lakers fans are surely so: They expect
to win a championship every season. Over the first decade of this
century, they almost did.
N.F.L. Week 4 Predictions: Our Picks Against the Spread
The N.F.L.’s nearly perfect record in containing the coronavirus took
a major hit when multiple members of the Tennessee Titans tested
positive following last week’s win over Minnesota. Now, a huge matchup
between Tennessee and Pittsburgh — both of which are 3-0 — has been
delayed indefinitely and the rest of the league will be contemplating
what would happen if another shoe dropped.
The situation further complicates the season for a league that often
finds itself hard to root for, but assuming everything goes off as
planned, here is a look at N.F.L. Week 4, with all picks made against
the point spread.It’s good to be the Buccaneers (2-1). Tom Brady is
settling in well and the team’s defense has proved that it is a force.
An injury to wide receiver Chris Godwin takes away a little of their
offensive upside, but Tampa Bay seems like it might be a playoff team
— one that could struggle against the elites, but also one that can
handle middling teams just fine. The Chargers (1-2) likely also view
themselves as a playoff team, but while there will be plenty of focus
on whether Tyrod Taylor or Justin Herbert will start at quarterback
this week, the larger concern is on defense, where Los Angeles expects
to be without defensive end Melvin Ingram, defensive tackle Justin
Jones and cornerback Chris Harris Jr. That could lead to more time for
Brady to throw, and more room for wide receiver Mike Evans to get
open. The potential is there for a Tampa Bay blowout, but a narrower
win should be expected. Pick: Chargers +7 The Colts (2-1) have
followed their embarrassing Week 1 loss to Jacksonville with a pair of
convincing victories over fairly weak competition. That qualifies as a
good start, and it is one that is much more sustainable than the
perfect record of the Bears (3-0). Rarely has a team seemed so
unjustifiably undefeated, but Chicago has been bizarrely magical in
the fourth quarter. Last week’s come-from-behind win over Atlanta
convinced the Bears that Nick Foles should be starting at quarterback,
which is a positive change, but they probably can’t rely on the Colts
to collapse like Detroit and Atlanta did. Pick: Colts -2.5
How Elite Tennis Players Crank Out Serves at 150 MPH
IT’S EARLY AFTERNOON in Orlando, the hottest time of day on a
characteristically sultry Wednesday in Florida, a state famous for its
perennially warm, wet, shirt-soaking conditions, which just so happen
to be pretty much perfect for playing tennis. Or so I’m told. I’m
standing—sweating, squinting, panting—at the opposite end of a court
from 21-year-old Ulises Blanch, one of the many elite athletes who
train here at the United States Tennis Association’s National Campus.
I’m here to learn about the upper limits of the serve, the most
nuanced stroke in tennis and one of Blanch’s specialties. I tell him
I’m ready. He toes the baseline, lobs the ball into the air, and sends
it bolting past me. “One hundred thirty-one,” says the speed-tracking
system. From across the court I see Blanch grin. Sadistically, I
think. It’s his seventh serve, and his seventh ace. Blanch possesses a
tremendous serve, yet it remains far from the most powerful. It’s been
clocked at 138 miles per hour, which 30 years ago would have put him
in the running for the biggest hitter in all of tennis. But serve
speeds at the professional level have been climbing for decades. The
1990s saw the first official serves in the 140s. By the early 2000s,
they were in the 150s. The fastest serve ever recorded came in 2012,
when Australian Sam Groth was measured walloping a ball at 163.7 mph.
But the Association of Tennis Professionals doesn’t recognize Groth’s
serve, because he delivered it at a challenger event, where, according
to an ATP spokesperson, serve-speed guns don’t adhere to the same
standards as the ones used in tournament play. The fastest serve
recognized by the ATP was delivered at 2016’s Davis Cup by American
John Isner, at a speed of 157 mph. “There are three big factors in
optimizing for speed,” says physiologist Mark Kovacs, an expert in
serve mechanics. “Technique, technology, and height.” The sport’s
latest generation of athletes, he says, have pushed the limits of all
three.
A former tennis pro himself, Kovacs works with some of the best
players on earth to help them wring as much power as possible from
their serves. The technical elements of a stellar stroke, he says, are
well understood. You need strength, obviously, but flexibility is
equally important—particularly in the upper body. During a serve, the
majority of a player’s power originates in their legs, but conveying
that power through the body and into the racquet requires stockpiling
additional energy in the hips, lumbar, and shoulders, by rotating all
three elements in sequence as the ball rises into the air. Tennis
types call that rotation coiling. A big serve requires a limber,
practiced player—someone strong and loose enough to twist their torso
taught like a rubber band and uncoil themselves a fraction of a second
later, with timing so precise that it not only translates the energy
from their legs but augments it. Hard hitters like Blanch excel at
storing and releasing energy throughout their bodies in this way. But
they’re also working with more power, in general. While a typical
amateur might produce between 700 and 900 newtons of ground force with
their legs, Kovacs says the most propulsive pros can generate upwards
of 1,500. There was a time when tapping into that kind of power on the
court was risky. With older, wooden racquets, which dominated the game
of tennis for much of the 20th century, serving too hard significantly
increased your odds of overshooting, sending the ball out of bounds.