Basketball Page 837 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
NBA play-in tournament: Tuesday’s matchup preview
It’s play-in tournament time, and now that we know all the participants, let’s look at Day One, which will be the seven vs. eight seed in each conference. We have intriguing matchups here and two teams that weren’t expected to be dealing with the play-in when the season started back in October....
NBA playoff matchups we’d love to see (and one we wouldn’t)
The 2022 NBA playoffs is an annual garden of forking paths. Teams don’t know who to expect awaiting them in the next round or when their season will end. One injury can swing momentum in the other direction. What we do know is that there are particular matchups that are more palatable than others. C...
The Rockets didn’t win much, but they were a blast to watch towards the end of the season
Once the NCAA Basketball Tournaments come around, the rest of the NBA season can feel like a slog. If you were already upset about players missing games, the volume gets ratcheted up on that, and at that point it’s fairly clear which teams are the best in the league. It’s also hard to muster excitem...
And the award for Most Unreliable Player of the Year goes to…
The NBA season has finally ended, and now it’s time to hand out some hardware. But this isn’t your usual NBA award. We’re handing out the MUP for the Most Unreliable Player of the Year. The criteria’s open to anything from being unavailable due to frequent injury, dealing with bouts of narcissism, t...
This NBA season was not fantastic
The NBA ended its worst season in recent memory on Sunday. Yes, it was really that bad....
Why Embiid’s scoring title is a BIG deal
Joel Embiid capped off his chase for the scoring crown on Saturday night by summoning a brilliant 41-point, 20-rebound outing in the Philadelphia 76ers’ 133-120 win over the Indiana Pacers. A dazzling 40/20 game was the perfect way to secure the best individual accomplishment of his career....
Kyrie Irving thinks Giannis intentionally tried to injure him in last year’s playoffs
When Kyrie Irving rolled his ankle last year in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Milwaukee Bucks, it seemed like a common unintentional injury we often see on the NBA hardwood. Devin Williams, a trainer who works with Irving and other players, says it may not have been what we initially...
We forgot about Trae
Led by Trae Young, the Atlanta Hawks began this season with more buzz than the city’s best lemon pepper wings. They were a quality young League Pass team who’d matured into an Eastern Conference heavyweight overnight. The 2021 postseason served as the setting for Young’s glow-up from empty calorie s...
Have to admit, the Play-in is adding a lot of intrigue
Everyone’s favorite time of the year is finally here. We’re just days away from the NBA’s Play-in Tournament as eight teams battle for the right to get their spines pulled from them in the first round. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the Play-in when it was first introduced. I thought it water...
Oh no MJ, please don’t even think about trading for Russell Westbrook
MJ, please don’t do this....
Fictional Hooper Bracket: Billy Hoyle is the king of the silver screen
When Billy Hoyle told Sidney Deane he’s hustled players a helluva lot better than him, I was skeptical. How many times can you show up to a pickup game and aww shucks your way into a wad of cash? Well after six rounds and thousands of votes, it seems the scheme is still humming along....
Duke's Jon Scheyer faces an impossible task
As of this past Saturday, we have officially entered the Jon Scheyer era in Duke basketball. A first-time head coach, hand-picked by Mike Krzyzewski as his successor, Scheyer has been rising the ranks as an assistant coach with the Blue Devils since 2013....
Stop laughing at the Lakers for two seconds and give the Phoenix Suns a standing ovation
For those of you who were still awake when the Los Angeles Lakers sandcastle of a 2021-22 season finally washed away, we had a good time didn’t we? The jokes have been piling up all season with this new roster that improved on none of their weaknesses from last season and also had none of their stre...
Could the Kansas Jayhawks beat the G-League Ignite?
While TV talking heads and sports scribes fixated on Coach K and UNC, it took until the second half of the national title game for most fans to notice that Kansas was in the Final Four. College basketball’s 2022 National Champion hid under the radar all season. Not only because the Jayhawks are a va...
Breaking down the logjam for the No. 2 seed in the East
With three games remaining for Boston, Philly, and Milwaukee, and the three teams all squared up at 49-30 for the two through four seeds, The Race Not to Finish Fourth in the East has massive implications on who plays Phoenix in the Finals, who wins the MVP, and who likely faces Toronto in round one...
It should be demolition derby time for this Lakers team after finally being put out of their misery
A season that started out with so much hope in Los Angeles came to an end Tuesday night against the Lakers’ I-10 rivals, the Phoenix Suns, 121-110. The Lakers have three remaining games on the schedule, but the 11-point loss to the Suns eliminated LA from play-in contention. So, the Lakers have abso...
Kawhi Leonard was seen at a Clippers practice and there is absolutely a chance it changes the NBA playoffs
A ghost was spotted at the Los Angeles Clippers’ practice yesterday afternoon....
Kansas, just be happy with one natty, don’t act like it’s two
Congratulations to the Kansas University Jayhawks, the 2022 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champions! In a tournament defined by chaos, you kept a steady hand, being the only 1-seed to make it past the Sweet 16. You had the largest comeback in the history of the championship game, winning after being down by...
There are several reasons Joel Embiid isn’t the MVP, but the biggest one is availability
I’m already on the record as pro Nikola Jokić for NBA MVP, so don’t take this article as me piling on Joel Embiid — I know, says the person who is expressing more negative thoughts about him. With the regular season in its final week, the Philadelphia 76ers struggled with three consecutive losses, t...
Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell need to head for Splitsville soon
It’s time to face the music. Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert are a more discordant duo than Salt Lake City and jazz. Always have been and always will be. Their partnership has been filled with more personal drama than team success. The oversized egos don’t match the playoff wins. Great partnerships...