The Tufts Daily

If I tried to count the number of fiascos, scandals, controversies or near-heart attacks in sports this year, I’d be here all day. Today, I instead wish to look forward to 2021, a year that promises to still be difficult but with a markedly greater sense of hope.

Christmas belongs completely to basketball. Whatever your family’s preference may be, you’ve likely caught a glimpse of one of these marquee games at a holiday gathering. For some, it’s background noise for prepping the turkey. For others, it’s an intensive three hour-plus ritual, orchestrated to the minute.

Aiden Herrod breaks down the trade between the Phoenix Suns and the Oklahoma City Thunder that sent star point guard Chris Paul to Phoenix.

Read Aiden Herrod's own knowledge and conventional industry wisdom alike to deliver to you the ultimate guide to winning your leagues as we move past the halfway point of the NFL season into weeks which dictate the playoffs for fantasy leagues.

As the days removed the NBA finals have turned into weeks, the time has allowed me to appreciate on an even more fundamental level how much I enjoyed the NBA bubble.

Baseball in 2020 was tainted — that is, until the World Series. 

The NFL is a team sport first, but the awards at the end of the season are where individual accomplishments are highlighted in the best and brightest players of the league. We’re almost halfway through the season at this point (wow), and I wanted to use some outside-the-box awards picks as a way to shine a spotlight on some of the most exciting or under-appreciated players in this bizarre NFL season.

To fill some of that basketball void that’s been lingering since the finals wrapped up, I’ve decided to look ahead and evaluate what the basketball landscape will look like in 2021. There are some exciting narratives and teams to explore, as well as several key players coming back from prolonged absences.

At this point, we’ve seen plenty of trends emerge. The next few weeks are crucial for teams to course-correct on the negative trends and capitalize on the positive ones.

I am firmly and unabashedly proclaiming my love for this Miami Heat team. I have immense respect for well-built, deep and complementary rosters, and the Heat are just that. They bring the energy every night on both ends, and the competition they’ve dispatched to get here is superior to what the Lakers dealt with.