9 Page 93 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

Brad Marchand Has Given Up Being Creatively Annoying And Just Punched A Guy In The Back Of The Head
The truly frustrating thing about Brad Marchand is that he’d be a star without all the bullshit. He’s on the top line of the team with the best odds to win the Cup because he’s really, really good at hockey, not because of the other stuff. It’s just that the other stuff—“pest” feels insufficient to ...

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...

San Diego Sports Radio Station Gets Completely Shut Down In The Middle Of A Show
San Diego sports radio station The Mighty 1090 had been off the airwaves and in an online-only format since April 10, courtesy of its parent company Broadcast Company of the Americas. Its future was extremely uncertain. On Monday, it was killed off for good in the middle of the day....

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...

Esa Lindell Kept Diving And Diving And Then Suffered Cosmic Justice
Let us stipulate that diving, or flopping, is not so common in hockey as it is in some other sports we could name, nor is it generally treated with anything but outright contempt. It does exist, and it does, unfortunately often, work, but it’s not regarded with the grudging respect for its value it ...

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...

It's Time To Remember Al Horford Again
Al Horford is good. This is a sentence that’s never punctuated with an exclamation point between the months of October and March. Then, once again, you see him stopping the least stoppable players in the Eastern Conference, and making all the right decisions on the other side of the floor, and it’s ...

If This Is Rockets-Warriors, Let's Just Get It Over With As Soon As Possible
In case you ever decide to hate sports without the crutch of a rooting interest, financial, familial, or simply laundry-based, here’s your ticket. The pre–NBA Finals NBA Finals are already a drunken bar argument, and they’re only going to get worse. The Houston Rockets ... the Golden State Warriors ...

The Islanders' Best Hope Against The Hurricanes Is A War Of Attrition
A team playing its ninth game in 18 days on Sunday afternoon, the Hurricanes, were struck by disaster in the very first minute of Game 2 against the Islanders. Carolina defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk got checked hard against the boards by New York’s Cal Clutterbuck, knocking him out for the whole ga...

Dave Gettleman Now Has Everything Riding On Daniel Jones
New York Giants GM Dave Gettleman apparently did not enjoy watching the majority of NFL fans and media make fun of him for selecting Duke quarterback Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick of the 2019 NFL Draft. He’s responded to the criticism by going on a media campaign of his own, sitting down ...

Now The Sharks Want An Apology From The NHL For A Controversial Call
The Sharks watched, amused, as some rough officiating in the first round led to their improbable Game 7 comeback, and as the league quietly apologized to the still-salty Golden Knights. Not that it did Vegas any good; they’re still golfing. (The Sharks’ general reaction to that kerfuffle could be su...

Well That Was An Officiating Clusterfuck
In an ironic twist, it was James Harden that spoke up about officiating problems in Game 1 of the Rockets-Warriors series. He told reporters after the game that “he just wants a fair chance” and that he’s willing to live with whatever results come from the game as long as it’s called “the way it’s s...

The Celtics Stole Giannis Antetokounmpo's Lunch Money And Stuffed Him In A Locker
Game 1 of the Bucks-Celtics series seemed to prove that there were little to no overarching takeaways from the first round of the playoffs that could have been used to predict how this game would go. The Bucks were not the world-beaters they looked to be in their four-game sweep of the Pistons; the ...