Sameer is back! Catching up since his last post
The Wednesday morning edition of "Seven things to know before 7 AM" is live!
Welcome back, everyone!
The last time I wrote a post on here on Substack (July 21, 2023), Jayden Daniels was entering his Heisman Trophy season at LSU; Shohei Ohtani donned the red and white with the Los Angeles *Angels*; three-time NBA regular season MVP Nikola Jokic won his first title with the Denver Nuggets; and the diminutive GOAT of soccer/futbol, Lionel Messi, was making his MLS debut with Inter Miami.
726 days (almost two years) later, there have been numerous changes around the sports spectrum. The NFL’s Washington Commanders went from longtime laughingstock to a potential dynasty team in the making with one of the most optimistic futures ahead of them. The NBA’s Chris Paul went from a Phoenix Sun to a Washington Wizard (without stepping foot in Washington D.C.) to a Golden State Warrior to a San Antonio Spur, and started all 82 games for the first time since 2014!
However, during this span, we had to say goodbye to several sports icons. Boston Red Sox knuckleball pitcher and 2004 World Series champion Tim Wakefield passed away at the age of 57 on October 1, 2023. College basketball Hall of Fame head coach Bob Knight of Indiana and Texas Tech fame, died at 83 on November 1, 2023. One of the best left guards of all time in the NFL, Larry Allen, sadly died at the young age of 52 on June 2, 2024. “The (NBA) Logo,” in basketball Hall of Fame guard Jerry West, who was a three-time champion for the Los Angeles Lakers and an Executive of the Year for the Lakers (1995) and Memphis Grizzlies (2004), perrished at 86 years old on June 12, 2024.
On the contrary, looking at the positives, we have seen new superstars burst onto the scene since July 2023. In the world of tennis, a budding rivalry between two young stars has taken shape in men’s tennis, now that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have since retired. World’s no. 2 in Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz (22 years old) has won Wimbledon (2024) and the French Open (2025), while world’s no. 1 in Italian Jannik Sinner (23 years old) captured the U.S. Open (2024), Australian Open (2025) and most recently, Wimbledon a couple of days ago. Both Europeans are miles ahead of world’s no. 3 in German Alexander Zverev and the rest of the competition.
With all that being said, this edition of Sameer’s Sports Snippets will be a rememberance of the seven greatest sports moments (in no order) since my last post one year and 11 months and a little under a week ago today. Why seven? Well, we are in the month of July, the seventh month of the calendar.
Without further ado:
Shohei Ohtani going 6-for-6 with 3 HR and 10 RBI, while also eclipsing the 50/50 record
Date: September 19, 2024
Significance of event: No MLB player in the long, 100+ year history of the sport, has ever reached 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. Players have come close, like Atlanta Braves’ outfielder Ronald Acuna reaching 41 home runs and 73 stolen bases in his MVP year in 2023.
Historically, Shohei Ohtani did so in spectacular fashion. The current Los Angeles Dodger had a huge black elbow brace all season after undergoing elbow surgery back on Sept. 2023, but showed no pain swinging the bat at LoanDepot Field in Miami, Fl. Heading into this late season game, Shohhei Ohtani was two home runs and one stolen base shy of 50-50. Ohtani went a perfect 6-for-6, tallying three home runs, two doubles and two singles with two stolen bases in a demolition of the Miami Marlins, 20-4.
Ohtani started the game with a leadoff double. He then stole third base a few pitches afterward, thus reaching the 50-stolen base mark.
In the second inning, he added his second and third RBIs with a second double.
Jumping to the sixth inning, Ohtani hit a towering two-run home run to the upper deck in right field. An inning later, he hit a solo shot into the Marlins’ bullpen in left field. With the game already out of reach, Ohtani added a cherry on top of this massive sundae of a single-game hitting production, crushing a 2-0 softball of a pitch (clocked at a slow 68 mph) from position player Vidal Brujan that reached midway in the upper deck of right field for RBIs 8, 9 and 10 on the night in the ninth inning.
This performance is arguably one of the best individual hitting performances in a single game, all time.
Steph Curry’s Golden Dagger
Date: August 10, 2024
Significance of event: Team U.S.A. was facing a monumental task ahead of them in preparation for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France. Their loaded team of LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Joel Embiid, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis and a load of other NBA all-stars (in totality, deemed ‘The Avengers’), were to potentially face their biggest challenge of talent across the globe. There was the defensive wall in Australia, who actually beat Team USA for the first time ever in Aug. 2019, in Melbourne. A young and deep Canadian team had future 2025 NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, along with nine other current NBA players, including his teammate in Luguentz Dort. Germany featured the Wagner brothers (Franz and Moritz), along with their best guard in Dennis Schroder. One cannot count out Nikola Jokic and Serbia and the biggest threat to Team USA in France, who had the twin towers of 7-foot-1-inch center Rudy Gobert and 7-foot-3-inch center Victor Wembanyama.
With all that being said, Team USA was in a dogfight with France in the gold medal game. Team USA was up by five after the first quarter; up by eight at halftime, but only up by six heading into the final frame. Even though Team USA never trailed after intermission, the once 13-point lead to open the third quarter dwindled to just a three-point France deficit (82-79) with just over three minutes remaining.
Team USA superstar and future Hall Of Famer Stephen Curry, who struggled to find his iconic shooting stroke in group play (scored 11, 3 and 8 points against the likes of Serbia, South Sudan and Puerto Rico), was electrifying down the stretch in the gold medal game. He single-handedly took over the ballgame, captivating the French-dominant crowd with his quick trigger three pointers.
Curry was 8-of-13 from the field, with all eight of his made shots from beyond the arc. His last one was the most memorable. With under a minute left and Team USA precariously holding a six-point lead, Curry found himself double-teamed by longtime Frenchman Niocholas Batum and Guerschon Yabusele. Curry then passed the ball off to Durant at the top of the key, who quickly passed the ball back to Curry. Steph was again double-teamed, this time by Batum and Evan Fournier, leaving Curry no room to breathe. Curry launched a moon shot that could have touched the top of the Eiffel Tower, with the basketball dropping perfectly through the net on its downward trajectory.
Dagger.
Curry ran down the sideline, clasping his two hands together in his signature “night, night” celebration, putting the French to bed in this awe-inspiring performance on the world’s biggest stage.
The Russian Machine topples The Great One’s record
Date: April 6, 2025
Significance of event: Wayne Gretzky is widely considered The Greatest Of All Time in men’s ice hockey. His peak in the late 80’s/early 90’s can rival no other player, past or present. A superstar NHL player tallies about 100-plus points (goals and assists) in any given season. Gretzky, between 1981-1986, had four seasons eclipsing 200 points. Hockey enthusiasts mention if Gretzky the assist man and Gretzky the goal scorer were two different players, both would easily be in the Hall of Fame. But but the two together… And there’s the G.O.A.T.
Prior to the 2024-2025 season, Washington Capitals franchise star Alex Ovechkin was 42 goals shy of eclipsing Gretzky’s all-time goals scored record of 894 (regular season only). Going past one of these legendary Gretzky records seemed unfathomable for Ovechkin, following his sole Stanley Cup win in 2018. The Capitals were bounced out of the first round of the playoffs for the next four straight years (and five of the last six years). Caps fans were wondering… When is The Russian Machine going to hang up the skates?
Ovechkin faced another setback during the 2024-2025 season, in his chase for gr8ness (you see what I did there? Because 8 is Ovechkin’s jersey number). On Nov. 18, 2024, he collided leg-to-leg with Utah forward Jack McBain. Three days later, the Capitals announced he would miss between four to six weeks with a left fibula fracture. For a winger who has made thousands of bone-crushing hits, the NHL’s Iron Man, in his 20th season, would miss the longest stretch of the 39-year-old’s career. At that point, Ovechkin had an NHL-leading 15 goals in 18 games.
However, the Russian Machine remained unfazed in his comeback and recovery. Ovechkin returned to the ice on Dec. 28, 2024, five weeks after the broken leg, and continued his scoring rampage. He scored four goals in five games right after the gnarly injury, and was averaging almost a goal every other game since the surgery.
Then, on Apr. 6, 2025, Ovechkin was just one goal shy of breaking Gretsky’s goal scoring record, in a road game against the New York Islanders (then, 34-32-10). The Capitals fell, 4-1 on that Saturday afternoon, but the story was what happened with 13:34 left in the second period. On a power play (when Ovechkin tallies most of his goals towards the twilight of his career), right winger Tom Wilson was skating down the right side of the ice. Wilson, in the rightmost portion of the red circle, passed the puck across the ice to a streaking and trailing Ovechkin, who hit a one-timer past the helpless Ilya Sorokin.
In jubilation, Ovechkin belly-flopped to the blue line, with his teammates mobbing him at center ice on one of his greatest feats of his acclaimed career. There was a 20-minute ceremony immediately thereafter, acknowledging the achievement. Gretzky walked down from his suite to center ice to give his praise towards Ovechkin, on a lifetime record that may never be beaten again.
The blockbuster Doncic for Davis deal
Date: February 2, 2025
Significance of event: The young Slovenian All-NBA player Luka Doncic was coming off his first ever NBA Finals appearance with the Dallas Mavericks in 2024. The-then 25-year old was in his seventh year in the league, and what looked to be the heir apparant to another former European in Dallas in Dirk Nowitzki (the two only overlapped with the Mavs in Doncic’s rookie season in 2019).
So, the news of a blockbuster trade posted by NBA reporter Shams Charania at 12:12 a.m. ET on Sunday morning sent shockwaves across the world:
As you can see, 109 million people saw this tweet, and in good sense, millions thought this deal was posted by either a bot account or by a parody account of Shams (since blue checkmarks are no longer a legit way to see if the source is accurate - anybody can now pay $5 USD/month for that symbol).
Doncic - Dallas’s franchise folk hero - being traded for aging, oft-injured All-NBA talent in Anthony Davis? Blasphemy!
Also, the ramifications about team fit in Los Angeles came to the forefront of discussion, regarding Luka Doncic in Lakers’ gold and purple. How will two ball-dominant talents in LeBron James and Doncic jell together? Who is the current face of the Lakers’ franchise moving forward?
In Dallas, immediate outrage was directed solely at general manager Nico Harrison, who replaced longtime GM Donnie Nelson in June 2021. Harrison was the Vice President of North American basketball operations at Nike from 2003 to 2021, and represented players like Nowtizki as a regional field representative with the company before becoming GM of the Mavericks.
Millions of Mavericks fans across the globe wanted Nico fired. There were protests outside of the American Airlines Center, with a group of fans carrying a blue coffin, symbolizing a funeral due to the loss of Luka on the afternoon of the AD-Luka trade. Not only did the team trade away a franchise player at the peak of his career, but also got the proverbial ‘pennies on the dollar’ value in return. No multiple first round picks. No equitable talent beyond Davis, and no young talent from the Lakers or a third team. Worse, the Mavericks did not have trade discussions beyond the Lakers - adding more fuel for the Mavericks’ now-irate fans.
Like clockwork, in Dallas’s first home game since the trade on Feb. 8, Davis suffered two injuries - one to his eye and another to his groin in the third quarter. He would not return, and would miss the next 18 straight games with the groin injury. Davis did play eight of the last 11 regular season games for the Mavericks, and had his first triple-double of the season (21 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists, with 7 blocks to boot) in the penultimate game of the season. However, his star teammate in Kyrie Irving suffered a torn ACL in his left knee back on March 4th, adding to the mounting injuries the Mavericks’ organization had to deal with for the remainder of the 2024-2025 season.
In L.A., Luka and LeBron coexisted, elevating the Lakers to the third seed in the tightly contested Western Conference. However, with a hole at the starting center position, the Minnesota Timberwolves exposed Los Angeles, taking down the Lakers in just five games of a seven-game series in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs.
Questions still surround both franchises following one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history. With LeBron nearing the end of his career, how will he pass the proverbial torch to Luka? How can the Mavericks revamp their team sans Irving in a top-dominated Western Conference? Many questions, and very few answers for both the Lakers and the Mavericks, five months since the highly controversial trade.
The Hail Maryland
Date: October 27, 2024
No - the headline does not refer to any ice pellets falling down in this Mid-Atlantic state. In this case, the headline refers to one, Jayden Daniels, throwing an absolute prayer of a pass that reached the one-yard line, only for the ball to be batted in the air and subsequently caught by Washington Commanders wide receiver Noah Brown.
Significance of event: The Washington Commanders, who just underwent their second nickname change over the past decade, were one of those pro sports teams that any common American football team would tease about - one of the perennial bottom-ten teams in any given season from the year 2000-onwards.
On top of that, the organization was owned by the notorious Daniel Snyder, he who enabled a toxic workplace culture within the organization and offered hush money to accusors; withheld security deposits from season ticket holders; and requested lewd video footage of the team’s cheerleader photo shoot, without consent from the cheerleaders themselves.
Heading into the 2024 NFL season, the Commanders were under new ownership, a brand-new quarterback (no. 2 overall pick and Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels), and a myriad of new veteran faces in the coaching ranks (like head coach Dan Quinn, running backs coach Anthony Lynn and linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr.) and on the roster (seven-year versatile running back Austin Ekeler, 12-year linebacker and six-time All Pro first team selection Bobby Wagner and five-year left guard Nick Allegretti).
Now, moving onto this late afternoon and late October game between the 4-2 Chicago Bears and the 5-2 Washington Commanders, the teams were deadlocked in a low-scoring affair. The NFC battle was also a match between the top-two rookie quarterbacks selected in the 2024 NFL Draft.
However, both coaching staffs took different approaches towards the last drive of the game, which resulted in the highest of highs for the Commanders and the lowest of lows for the Bears. Then-Bears head coach Matt Eberflus (who was canned a month later) admitted the penultimate play of the game, in which Daniels found an open Terry McLaurin for a 13-yard catch to set up the Hail Mary, “did not really matter.”
In addition, Bears’ cornerback Tyrique Stevenson was seen showboating while the Commanders’ receivers and the rest of the Bears defensive backs were heading to the right side of the endzone. At the time, the Bears were leading 15-12. Defensive players are told to knock the ball down on a Hail Mary attempt; instead, Stevenson ran to the scrum and was the Bears’ player to bat the ball upwards, allowing Brown to make the easy game-winning touchdown catch.
On the other sideline, Dan Quinn said in the postgame media conference that “the plays leading up [to the Hail Mary] were a big deal… To get out of bounds and to give our team a chance at the next play mattered a lot.”
Taking a bigger picture into focus, the Bears would lose 10 straight games (including the stunning defeat to the Commanders), finishing the season 5-12 overall and the ninth-worst record in the NFL.
The Commanders, on the other hand, used this game as a springboard to their successful season, culminating in an NFC Championship game appearance and one win away from the Super Bowl.
A tale of two teams, who went in two drastic directions, following a miracle in Maryland on Halloween weekend 2024.
Caitlin Clark breaks NCAA scoring record
Date: February 15, 2024
Significance of event: I have mentioned Caitlin Clark almost a dozen times in these Sports Snippets, with my most recent post when this former Hawkeye guard had a triple-double in a 95-51 win over Penn State back on Feb. 5, 2023.
But, what happened a year later put her among the women’s basketball collegiate greats, as Clark broke the all-time women’s scoring record.
In the early minutes of the first quarter, in front of a sold-out crowd of 14,998 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Clark grabbed a pass from teammate Gabbie Marshall at their own end of the court. Rushing forward, and with one sidestep dribble to the right, just in front of the MediaCom logo about 10 feet beyond the three-point line, Clark raised up and fired a contested long range bomb. Nothing but the bottom of the net. History was made in Iowa City.
Clark surpassed former Washington Huskie and current Los Angeles Sparks guard Kelsey Plum with that three-pointer, and she was not done scoring. Clark also broke the school scoring record in a game with 49 points on 16-of-31 shooting and 9-of-18 from beyond the arc against a 16-10 Michigan Wolverines squad.
Later that season, Clark carried the Hawkeyes to the National Championship game for the second consecutive year, but ultimately fell to another Southeastern Conference (SEC) foe in the title game (a 102-85 thumping by Angel Reese and Louisiana State University in 2023; and an 87-75 defeat to head coach Dawn Staley and South Carolina in 2024.
However, Clark’s historically stellar collegiate career enabled her to be drafted no. 1 overall by the Indiana Fever just a week after the loss to South Carolina. She averaged a team-high 19.2 points per game and a WNBA-best 8.4 assists in her rookie season with the Fever, resulting in a nearly-unanimous Rookie of the Year award.
Alcaraz v. Sinner at Roland Garros - 2025
Date: June 8, 2025
Significance of event: I mentioned earlier how Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are head above heels over every other male tennis player in ATP and how they have faced off several times over the past couple of years.
Well, Sunday’s championship French Open match in early June wasz the best tennis match in a decade - I would say only the peak Nadal-Federer and Nadal-Djokovic matches of yore would top Sinner-Alcaraz on the red clay court of Court Philippe Chatrier, in France last month.
Just look at the final score: 4-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (10-2).
Why so much praise over this tennis match? Well, it featured three set tiebreaks, and Sinner had match point thrice before ultimately losing that pivotable fourth set and the fifth and final set that also went into a tiebreak. In addition, the match took five hours and 29 minutes, making this slogging battle the longest French Open championship match in its 134-year history and the second-longest ever grand slam final - the only one longer? The 2012 Australian Open final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal on the blue hard court of Rod Laver Arena that took five hours and 53 minutes.
Back to the 2025 French Open final. The three match points Alcaraz saved were the most in any grand slam final in the Open Era (1968-present). To add to the greatness of this match, the winning player in Alcaraz dropped the first two sets (4-6, 6-7 [4-7 in the tiebreak]) before rallying to win the next three sets - the last one in a dominating 10-2 set tiebreak to win the French Open title in consecutive years. Another fun fact was that this was the first time in his career Alcaraz was two sets down and came back to win a match. Alcaraz also became the first man to successfully defend his Roland Garros title since… You guessed it… Rafael Nadal.
However, Sinner would have the last next laugh, as he dominated Alcaraz on grass (4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4) to win his first Wimbledon title earlier this month.
Thank you so much for those who have made it this far into reading my first post in nearly two years. I appreciate it so much.
More articles are in store in the near future - more on the current events in sports and possible WNBA Power Rankings, with the regular season reaching its midway All-Star weekend point.
Also, NFL training camps start next week, so American football finally returns after the long offseason. I will actually be attending my second ever training camp in just under two weeks - I am pumped about that opportunity!
Until next time, signing off.