2019-nba-playoffs Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Kawhi Leonard Is Just Very Frickin' Good
Look, man. I think the Toronto Raptors are still outright failing at lots of fairly basic manufacturing-a-series-win-type shit. They still have no plan, for example, for creating a steady diet of reasonably high-percentage shots. Or for attacking J.J. Redick, Philadelphia’s best shooter and most vul...
The Nuggets And Blazers Are Exactly What The NBA Playoffs Needed
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers had every right to give us a sloppy, disappointing Game 4. On Friday night, they played a four-overtime thriller that left both teams exhausted, one team utterly heartbroken, and one superstar out on his feet. All of this could have easily added up to an...
Boban Marjanovic Uses His Large Frame To Obscure Kyle Lowry's Line Of Sight
Boban Marjanovic provided excellent towering defense against Kyle Lowry as the Raptor tried to inbound the ball for the final possession of the half that Toronto got as a result of Lowry selling a foul well....
Steph Curry Blows Wide-Open Dunk In OT, Warriors Immediately Wave White Flag And Give Up On Comeback
The Golden State Warriors needed to score a whole bunch of points real quick at the end of overtime to keep pace in Game 3 tonight in Houston, and instead of doing so, they ended the game in one of the weirder ways you’ll see all postseason....
Nikola Jokic Explains His Body
There’s a charming feature on Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic, who’s been thriving in his first postseason, over at ESPN today. It addresses many questions that may have been lingering in viewers’ minds. To take just a few:...
Ben Simmons Gets Away With Elbowing Kyle Lowry In The Dick And Balls
This is some dirty stuff right here. In the second quarter of Thursday night’s Game 3 in the 76ers-Raptors series, Kyle Lowry boxed out Ben Simmons on the defensive glass, and Simmons toppled to the floor along the baseline. With Lowry teetering over him, Simmons threw an angry elbow directly to Low...
It Sucks That One Of These Teams Must Be Served Up To The Warriors Like Ann Darrow To King Kong
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers played a choppy and bloody and occasionally stupid but highly entertaining Game 2 Wednesday night, with the Blazers prevailing on the road, 97–90, to tie up the series headed back to Portland. The winner of this series should get a trophy and a parade an...
![Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/m3lwkjhcyhb8zvevmpzj.png)
Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]
Second-year forward Torrey Craig has been surprisingly huge for the Nuggets this postseason, playing about 20 minutes a night and posting a blistering 71 percent true shooting mark through eight games. The Nuggets benefit tremendously from his scrappy, versatile defense and respectable perimeter sho...
Draymond Green Got In Shape And Turned Back Into A Defensive Menace
After he spent the regular season fighting his teammates, averaging 7.4 points per game, and getting ignored by defenses, Draymond Green has taken a few old textbooks out of his hefty backpack and showed up to the playoffs with an intensity and focus unseen for almost a year. The Golden State Warrio...
The NBA Got Out Of Basketball's Way
When Allie LaForce was dispatched to get a postgame interview from Tuesday’s Rockets-Warriors game, she or maybe her producer chose the sport’s third eye, Klay Thompson. Not bad, as these things go. Thompson is always a better choice than nearly anyone else for these say-little-and-then-go-inside se...
The Warriors' Death Lineup Is, Well, Death
The Warriors took Game 2 of their second-round series with the Houston Rockets, 115–109. Golden State didn’t play especially well, and the Rockets were able to hang around and give the impression of putting up a fight, but only in the way that a small child can be said to put up a fight while you pu...
Steph Curry's Finger Mangled And James Harden's Eye Gouged In Opening Minutes Of Game 2
Basketball fans had every reason to expect Game 2 of the Rockets-Warriors Western Conference semifinal series to be ugly, with the Rockets working the officials in embarrassing fashion and franchise enemy Scott Foster assigned to the refereeing crew. But this was not the start that anyone imagined!...
Khris Middleton Feasts, Then Giannis Feasts, And Suddenly The Celtics Were Just A Tasty Meal
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton went nuts Tuesday night, and the Bucks cruised to an impressive Game 2 blowout win over the Boston Celtics, 123–102, in Milwaukee. Giannis devouring puny mortals is expected, but Middleton playing like a bloodthirsty maniac in a crucial playoff game is very...
Nikola Jokic Is Squashing The Doubts In His Big Soft Hands
From a skeptic’s perch, Nikola Jokic was a prime candidate for fraudulence come springtime. His youth, his floamy physique, the unprecedented weirdness of his game, his occasional habit of going passive when he should’ve gotten more shots up, his leadership of a No. 2 seeded Nuggets squad that never...
What The Absolute Hell Was Kyle Lowry Doing?
It was possible to miss this in realtime. I did. For one thing, it happened quickly, and devolved quickly into distracting chaos. For another, even if your eyes gathered the information and transmitted it whole to your brain, your brain may have processed it as an error and erased it, because it is ...
Nuggets Bozos Turn Fast-Break Into Slapstick Disaster
Late in the first half of Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinal series between Portland and Denver, Jamal Murray swiped a Blazers inbounds pass and tore ass the other way, in a two-on-two break with teammate Malik Beasley streaking ahead of him. With two skilled and athletic guards pushing ahea...
In Game With Gut-Sick Joel Embiid, Raptors Are The Ones To Shit Their Pants
Joel Embiid was listed as probable headed into Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the 76ers and Raptors, with a case of gastroenteritis. It’s a stomach virus, and is experienced as a lot of stomach pain and diarrhea, which is definitely not the condition you want to be in whil...
Bucks, After Having Butts Kicked All The Way Off In Game 1: Why Would We Change Anything?
The major question coming out of Game 1 of the ballyhooed Celtics-Bucks series is how the Bucks plan to recover after having home-court advantage yanked away in a discouraging loss. The long and short of it is, the Bucks, from head coach Mike Budenholzer on down, do not feel that strategic adjustmen...
The Rockets Are Only Embarrassing Themselves
It’s not enough that the Houston Rockets have to whine that they lost Game 1 because the refs didn’t take their signature gaming of the “landing zone” rule as seriously as usual. They elected to follow that snit with what is perhaps the most pathetically lame sports media leak of all time, as ESPN m...