9 Page 97 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Damian Lillard Experience Is The Sweetest Show In Basketball
Tell yourself you love basketball as a beautiful game, to watch the ball ping around the court as a team’s collective hive-mind hunts the best available shot. Then watch the last week of the NBA playoffs and see if you can stick to that conviction. Between Lou Williams’s rash of perverse leaners on ...

Vote In The Name Of The Year Sweet Sixteen
With plenty of real estate remaining in 2019, it’s masochistic to imagine what next year could look like. Emperor Trump? World Series champion Mariners? The mind reels! But whatever horrors might unfold in 2020, we have at least one pop culture stalwart to soothe ourselves in the post-Game of Throne...

Nikola Jokic Showed Gary Harris How To Soothe His Bashed Testicles
While Jamal Murray was catching fire late in the fourth quarter and leading the Nuggets to a dramatic playoff win over the Spurs, his teammates, Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris, were dealing with a separate problem....

Nothing Could Have Shaken Mike Malone's Faith In Jamal Murray
It’s hard to overstate just how bad Jamal Murray was through the first three quarters of Game 2 against the Spurs. The numbers are as plain and grim as numbers get: 0-of-8 from the field, two assists, and a plus-minus of -18 in 24 minutes. But even those numbers don’t quite capture the depths to whi...

What The Hell Happened To The Lightning?
Six days in April can change a lot....

Damian Lillard Boils Old Ham
Damian Lillard absolutely torched the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night with 26 points, six assists, five rebounds and three steals. It was a performance that came in a convincing 114-94 win that gave the Blazers an important 2-0 lead in the first-round series....

Jamal Murray Washed Away The Sins Of His Horrendous Start With A Near-Perfect Fourth Quarter
Late in the third quarter, the Nuggets were close to overcoming the 19-point deficit the Spurs had put them in just a few minutes earlier. Thanks to the efforts of Malik Beasley, Denver had whittled the lead down to six with about 1:30 remaining in the quarter, and San Antonio was forced to call tim...

The Lightning Should Spend The Entire Summer With Paper Bags On Their Heads
Never has an NHL team had more reason to be embarrassed. First period of Game 1 aside, the Tampa Bay Lightning who won 62 games in the regular season failed to show up in their first-round series against the tremendously underestimated Columbus Blue Jackets, and they paid the price. As the Lightning...

Montrezl Harrell Is Very Finicky About His Free Throw Routine
Clippers center Montrezl Harrell is a giant dude who will try to dunk on anyone and scrap for every rebound. He’s spent the first two games of the playoffs succeeding in both areas, going 20-for-24 from the field and causing trouble for the Warriors. He’s also rather fussy about how he is presented ...

Goddammit, DeMarcus Cousins Is Probably Done For The Playoffs With A Torn Quad
DeMarcus Cousins might be the unluckiest player in the NBA. After eight seasons on two of the NBA’s most cursed franchises, Boogie’s first-ever playoff run is almost certainly over after 25 minutes and 11 points, as the Warriors announced Tuesday that Cousins has a torn left quadriceps. ...

The Warriors Deserved That
Tiger Woods sat back and said, “Well, what I did was pretty damned impressive, but that? Did you see THAT?” “That,” of course, was the most spectacular pipe job in NBA postseason history....

Cale Makar Has Arrived And His Parents Are Just Barely Holding It Together
It’s been a busy few days for Cale Makar. On Friday, he was named the Hobey Baker Award winner for top college player. On Saturday, he and UMass played in and lost the NCAA Championship game. On Sunday, he signed an entry-level contract with the Avalanche, who had drafted him fourth overall in 2017....

Put Lou Williams In The Hall Of Fame For What He Just Did To The Warriors
The L.A. Clippers pulled off an absurd comeback victory against the Golden State Warriors on Monday night, tying the first-round series at one-all by winning 135-131 after being down 94-63 in the third quarter. They were aided by a DeMarcus Cousins injury and a late Kevin Durant foul out, but the Cl...

Nathan MacKinnon's Wrist Is Trying To Kill The Flames All By Itself
The Flames had one of those nights on Monday, going down 4-0 in 28 minutes before an eventual 6-2 Avalanche win to give Colorado a 2-1 series lead. They picked up two simultaneous penalties—including too many men on the ice—to give up the Avs’ first goal on a 5-on-3. They got outshot 56-29. They eve...

Joel Embiid Couldn't Keep A Straight Face While Apologizing For His Elbow On Jarrett Allen
Joel Embiid got hit with a flagrant foul late in the first half of his Sixers’ eventual series-tying 145-123 win over the Nets on Monday night when he unleashed the full force of his elbow into Jarrett Allen’s neck while trying to beat him in the paint. Allen got up right away, but my goodness, that...

DeMarcus Cousins Limps Out Of Game With Non-Contact Leg Injury
The Warriors are facing a scary situation early in their Game 2 battle against the Clippers, because DeMarcus Cousins had to head back through the tunnel after injuring his left leg while trying to make a steal....

Mitch Marner Is Everything For The Leafs
Probably the biggest story out of Monday night’s 3-2 Leafs win over the Bruins is the resurrection of Auston Matthews, who in the second period scored his first goal in the month of April to put Toronto in the lead for good. But if there’s an enduring image of this game for Leafs’ fans—particularly ...

Alex Ovechkin Just Dropped Andrei Svechnikov
The Carolina Hurricanes scored the first blow of their Game 3 matchup with the Capitals, getting a goal from Warren Foegele to go up 1-0. But Alex Ovechkin responded with a literal counterpunch—a whole bunch of them, in fact—to knock down Andrei Svechnikov....

Nazem Kadri Is Done For The Rest Of The First Round
As expected, the NHL hit Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri with a multi-game suspension on Monday evening for his high crosscheck on Boston Bruin Jake DeBrusk from Game 2 of their first-round series on Saturday:...

Ryan Reaves Wasn't Going To Let Joe Thornton Face A Suspension Without Getting In A Burn
The NHL’s Department of Player Safety has been busy in this young postseason. Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov was handed a one-game suspension for boarding, Toronto’s Nazem Kadri is probably going to get something like five games for this, and now it’s Joe Thornton’s turn for a hearing....