2018-nba-playoffs Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Let The Cool Players Try To Trash Each Other
Here is a thing that happens way too often in the NBA: Two teams with stars at the same position face each other and, instead of the cool stars checking each other, so that they are competing directly at both ends of the floor, the coaches assign various other designated defenders to do the job of g...
LeBron James Held To 15 Points In Game 1 Loss, Still Finds A Way To Remind Us He's The GOAT
There aren’t many players in the world that can hijack a Game 1 blowout loss simply by flexing their steel trap of a memory. Then again, there aren’t many folks out there like LeBron James....
Cavs Comprehensively Wrecked By Scrappy Celtics
Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was never close. The Celtics went on a 17-0 run in the first quarter, and that was that. The central question of this series is whether Boston’s impressive team defense will be able to slow down a Cavs offense that ranked number one in the NBA in offensive eff...
Dwane Casey Paid For All The Mistakes The Raptors Never Made
They did everything right....
Sprout God, Porcelain Mamba, And Six-Step LeBron: The Stories Behind China's Best NBA Nicknames
It’s no secret that American sports nicknames are not as good as they used to be. Seemingly half the time, present-day nicknames are just the player’s initials and a number (CP3, RG3, TB12, etc.). This is what happens when the brevity of hashtags and social media combines with wealthy player-entrepr...
Jayson Tatum Gave The Celtics Everything They Needed
As the Celtics dispatched the Sixers with shocking ease, observers were quick to point to Al Horford’s defensive heroics and Terry Rozier’s sudden emergence as instrumental in Boston’s unexpected conference finals appearance. After all, Boston needed to stymie Joel Embiid (which the supposedly stout...
Some Pretty Funny Things That Happened In The Sixers-Celtics Series
Here’s a list:...
The Rockets Aren't Fun To Watch
Spend a few days away from the drumbeat of dipshittery and various dreary outrages of Online and something happens to your brain. A bunch of things, actually, but I am thinking of one particular one—the mind, even the most web-damaged mind, returns to something like a normal state. This is not to sa...
The Philadelphia 76ers Should Blow Up The Team And Not Worry About The Short-Term Consequences
After half a decade under head coach Brett Brown and four years and two contracts into the career of star center Joel Embiid—the team’s only All-Star—the Philadelphia 76ers and their fans face a moment of reckoning. It’s a painful one, but it won’t get any less painful if we ignore it. The facts are...
Ben Simmons Was Bad But So What
Nobody needs it explained to them that it’s relatively normal for a rookie, no matter how talented, to play like ass for an entire series in the second round of his first trip to the playoffs. This is how things are generally supposed to go....
The Frail Celtics Still Took Down The Sixers
The Celtics are one more decently bad injury away from barely being able to field a full NBA-caliber rotation, but that didn’t stop the guys they have left from carrying their team to a 114-112 Game 5 win over the 76ers, clinching Boston’s spot in the Eastern Conference Finals....
The Warriors Are Infuriatingly Too Pretty To Hate
The Pelicans had earned a fleeting lead towards the end of Game 5's second quarter last night. They’d sunk five straight shots from four different guys, with the one-browed god Anthony Davis doubling up on feral dunks. Both these teams are lean and love to run, and at this point the tempo was furiou...
The Rockets Better Not Fuck This Up
The Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors wrapped up their five-game eliminations of, respectively, the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans last night. Like the series they ended, neither game was particularly closely contested; both losing teams did just enough to preserve their dignity and no m...
Charles Barkley And Shaq Got Each Other Steaming Mad By Yelling About Some Stupid Shit
In the right corner: Charles Barkley, man who thinks coaches need to have great relationships with their best players in order to win. In the left: Shaq, who would like to use his history being a toxic shitheel as proof that players and coaches can win while hating each other. What follows is a fail...
Chris Paul Stuck The Dagger In The Jazz
Chris Paul is advancing beyond the second round for the first time in his NBA career, and he did so by putting the Rockets on his back for their 112-102 Game 5 win against the Jazz. Paul got a new playoff high of 41 points, with 10 assists, seven boards, and no turnovers. And after Jazz rookie Donov...
What's Eating Rodney Hood?
In the second postseason of his career, Rodney Hood has done very little to speak of. So far the Cavs’ trade deadline pickup has coughed up 4.6 points a game on 40-percent shooting from the floor and just 13-percent shooting from the arc, making him an especially useless cog in a LeBron Plus Shooter...
Raptors Barely Bother To Show Up For Their Last Game Of The Season
Let’s get this straight first off: the Raptors were dead the moment LeBron James’s floater went off the backboard and through the net to end Game 3. But at the very least, the number one seed in the East could have put up a fight before packing their bags for summer vacation. Instead, Toronto laid d...
T.J. McConnell Saves The Sixers From A Sweep
A last-second surprise from Sixers coach Brett Brown proved to be the difference-maker in his team’s Game 4 against the Celtics. For only the second time all season, reserve Philly point guard T.J. McConnell got a spot in the starting lineup, replacing small forward Robert Covington, who had failed ...
You Check Ben Simmons The Same Way You Defend A Campsite
When I look at Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons, I see a very tall and extremely talented young basketball player with a resting dick face and no jump shot. When Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens looks at him, he sees a curious foraging bear. For this reason, he is a basketball coaching genius....
Donovan Mitchell Was Invincible For A Minute
Donovan Mitchell spent his first-ever playoff series incinerating both his defenders and every reasonable expectation for even the most precocious rookie. In pouring in 28.5 ppg on 46 percent shooting from the floor and 36 percent from three, Mitchell managed serious volume without loss of efficienc...