2023-nba Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
College basketball is still the best route to the NBA, but maybe not for the stars
Of the 58 players selected in the 2023 NBA Draft, 46 went the traditional route: They played collegiately. NBA teams have drafted a handful of players outside of that pathway for years, especially in the second round. Nearly 80 percent of players selected coming through the college ranks might appea...
Scoot Henderson went third, but is still the second-best player in this NBA draft class
Scoot Henderson is not the ideal 2023 NBA basketball player. That archetype is a 6-foot-7 or taller shooter with good defensive instincts. Henderson is 6-foot-2 and his jump shot is still a work in progress. With the profile of a franchise point guard prospect from 2002, Henderson is considered the ...
Mike Dunleavy Jr.'s job is to keep aging Golden State Warriors at a championship level
Monday was the introductory press conference for Mike Dunleavy Jr., the new general manager of the Golden State Warriors. Three days later he gets the privilege of hitting the ground running with the Warriors holding the 19th overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft....
NBA Draft: From No.1 pick to the Hall of Fame
Tonight is the 2023 NBA Draft, which is taking place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Some years the No. 1 pick is up for debate. This year, it’s almost certain that the San Antonio Spurs, winners of the Draft Lottery, will take French prospect Victor Wembanyama first....
The Charlotte Hornets are where the 2023 NBA Draft begins
Many of the franchise-altering garden of forking path moments in NBA history began with contentious debates over the No.1 pick. In the rare situation where a phenom takes the reins, the second pick becomes the 2023 NBA Draft’s initial pivot point. A month ago, the Charlotte Hornets were left crestfa...
Deadspin's 2023 All-NBA Finals Team
The 2023 NBA Finals was not a sexy matchup on paper. A team from the mountain time zone with a mountain in the middle of lane, against a team from South Florida with no flash. These were the two teams that kept America from the NBA’s most classic championship matchup, Los Angeles Lakers vs. Boston C...
Miami Heat need Tyler Herro out there STAT
The Miami Heat have made sure to throw the pace of the 2023 NBA Finals into Karo Syrup. The Denver Nuggets have the best offensive rating of any team in the 2023 postseason, but have yet to score 110 points in the finals. This Heat run through the postseason has been mind-boggling, but after three g...
Heat can't get past Nuggets on guts alone
For once a Miami Heat 2023 playoff game played out the way that was expected. The Denver Nuggets are bigger, more talented, and won Game 1 of the NBA Finals by a double-digit margin — 104-93....
![These are your NBA Conference Finals All-Stars [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/f76d81f8c8a7ff5311833c932baa6622.jpg)
These are your NBA Conference Finals All-Stars [Updated]
Unfortunately, as hard as the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics played in the conference finals, a 2010 rematch did not emerge from the conference finals. Both legendary franchises fell to a 3-0 deficit. The Celtics held on for dear life, but should never have been down that bad. In the end both...
Don't tune out the rest of the NBA playoffs just because the Lakers lost
Some of you American sports fans might be done with the NBA for the 2022-23 season. With the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, and Golden State Warriors all eliminated, some may feel that it’s time to prepare NFL fantasy draft strategies. Feel free, but with the Denver Nuggets playing the Los Ang...
Good effort JJ, but invoking America’s gun problem is not the way to defend Ja Morant
JJ Redick is correct that there is a macro issue in this country with politicians using firearms as campaign posters. A majority of Americans would agree with him on that. In one space of that mass of plutocracy, policy, and posturing is Ja Morant posing with one of this country’s most polarizing an...
Denver defense nearly spoils Nuggets' greatest offensive performance in franchise history
What will always jump out most on the screen when watching the 2022-23 Denver Nuggets is their offense. Through three quarters against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, it looked like they reached the level of special that Keanu Reeves reached in The Matrix when he s...
LeBron James vs. Nikola Jokić, and the other Lakers-Nuggets Western Conference Finals storylines
We did not get Kevin Durant vs. Stephen Curry in the Western Conference Finals. Instead, the participants in the series are the best teams in the conference — the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers....
The NBA Playoffs have earlier start times from here on out — God is good
In 2015, I was in Los Angeles for the annual Online News Association Conference. It meant that as a Michigan native, I was up at 9:00 am PST to watch the Wolverines obliterate BYU 31-0 in a college football game that had a noon kickoff on East Coast time. That was also the day that I understood the ...
Celtics-Sixers Game on TNT foisted an unnecessary drone upon us
Game 2 of the Philadelphia 76ers vs. the Boston Celtics on TNT received a brief shot of life when it was announced that 2023 NBA MVP Joel Embiid was returning to the floor. He was ready to play after suffering a knee sprain that was more serious than viewers were led to believe, and is ready to go a...
Anthony Davis gives Golden State a browbeating
When the Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James were pushing to acquire Anthony Davis during the 2018-19 season, they had every reason to believe that they were going after the future face of the franchise. In the Lakers’ 117-112 Game 1 victory over the Golden State Warriors in the second round of the ...
The NBA playoff ratings have been FANtastic
Well, Phil Jackson, it turns out that the NBA has not woked itself out of the American television landscape. Some news that you won’t find on the disingenuous provocateur in Nashville’s timeline is that the first round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs was a smash hit. ...
James Harden actually rose to the occasion with Joel Embiid out
James Harden deserved to take a bow on Monday night, even if he decided to wait until he put back on his enormous pants to do so. In a game in which the Philadelphia 76ers were undermanned with their MVP candidate dealing an injury more serious than what was first made public knowledge, Harden was t...
Isn’t it ironic, don’t you tank?
The Dallas Mavericks went from the Western Conference Finals to being fined for punting on the postseason in less than a year. As a result of a decision to sit key guys and play Luka Dončić only a quarter in essentially an elimination game against the Chicago Bulls on April 7, Mark Cuban’s pockets a...
The NBA has a Charles Barkley problem — again
TNT’s flagship show Inside The NBA is at its best this time of the year, as fans tune in multiple times per week to watch Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, and Shaquille O’Neal do their thing. But what happens when the star of the NBA’s biggest and best studio show gets on TV to tell fans...