basketball Page 161 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Steve Kerr Reminds Us Who The NBA's Unifying Powers Really Serve
“The world is a complex place and there’s more gray than black-and-white.” That is how Steve Kerr rationalized his refusal to comment on the not-actually-all-that-complex topic of the NBA bowing to the Chinese government’s rage over an American in America exercising of one of America’s most fundamen...

Emma Meesseman Proved She Can Carry The Mystics To Greatness (As Long As She Wants To Play For Them)
Going into the WNBA playoffs, it would have been fair to underestimate the impact of Washington Mystics forward Emma Meesseman. Though she was one of the Mystics’ most efficient scorers—she’d be in the 40-50-90 club if she had enough attempts to qualify—she often felt like a lesser version of her te...

Reports: No NBA Team Has An "F" In Its Name
Deadspin sources, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, confirmed to Deadspin that no NBA team has an “F” in its name. This was discovered when the Deadspin staff was using our work chat to type “F” to pay respects to a dead Macbook charger, as one does. One callow staffer refused to do s...

Rockets Flack Tells Reporter To Stick To Sports After She Asks Players About Political Expression
Russell Westbrook and James Harden each dropped 22 points in the Rockets’ preseason victory over the Raptors in Saitama, Japan. In the postgame presser, CNN’s Christina Macfarlane asked a question of the two players:...

The Inherent Demeaning Effects Of Global Capital, Bootlicking, Things Of That Nature
In a better world, we’d all probably still work a decent amount. Probably not quite as much and definitely not under conditions that work in a thousand different ways to demean and diminish every human involved at every level, while somehow serving to enrich only the worst of those, but in that bett...

Maybe It's Not That Complicated
Over the last few days, many people in the NBA and wider sports media world have settled on a basic talking point when discussing the ongoing international incident that Rockets GM Daryl Morey kicked off when he tweeted a message of support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong: It’s complicated...

Connecticut Sun Survive Massive Mystics Comeback, Force Winner-Take-All Game 5
Kristi Toliver should have worn a different shirt. The Washington Mystics’ veteran guard was not quiet about her and her team’s intentions as they walked into enemy territory in Connecticut for Game 4 of the WNBA Finals: They wanted to clinch the franchise’s first-ever championship, and they wanted ...

Ben Simmons Hit Another Three! (In A Preseason Game) (Against The Guangzhou Loong Lions)
Ben Simmons’s extreme reluctance to attempt shots from outside the paint during his two healthy NBA seasons has been overshadowed somewhat by both the vastly stranger shooting struggles of a fellow 76ers top pick, and by Simmons’s own general two-way excellence. But his shooting stroke has been badl...

The Athletic Outrages White Men Everywhere By Censoring Their Opinions On China
The Athletic didn’t publish any articles about Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s since-deleted Friday tweet in support of pro-democracy Hong Kong protestors, or about the subsequent manic attempts at damage control by the Rockets owner and the NBA, until a couple days after the controversy began. It ...

Gonzaga Coach Mark Few On Paying Players: What About Mexico, And Also, Uh, The Homeless?
Stadium’s Jeff Goodman spoke with Gonzaga coach Mark Few yesterday about California’s recently passed Fair Pay to Play Act and the broader movement to see college athletes compensated for their labor. Few expressed some wishy-washy support for players being able to make some money, but only after bi...

It Was Marcus Morris's Turn To Get Ejected From A Knicks-Wizards Preseason Game
Marcus Morris is determined to bring some tenacity back to a moribund Knicks team that still lacks much by way of high-end talent, but could make up some of the difference by playing coherent basketball for the first time in years. Morris got a good start on establishing a certain toughness for this...

Hello, do you work for an NBA team, ESPN, or any other organization connected to the league? We’d love to see any memos or communiques sent from the league office about the Daryl Morey-China situation. You can send us anything you want at [email protected] or contact us securely using SecureDrop....

Stephen A. Smith Pauses Between Bootlicks To Tell Daryl Morey To Grow Up
Ahead of his radio program this afternoon, Stephen A. Smith clearly thought long and hard about Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors, the ensuing controversy and Morey’s subsequent backtracking, and the large-scale implications of all of the above on relationships between China and U....

How Much Is China Worth To The NBA?
Adam Silver has been credited for many things in his time fronting the money of the National Basketball Association, and even after you allow for the 30 percent reputational mark-up when compared with the other commissioners in North American sports, he’s done quite well. But now he is confronted by...

Joe Biden Tweets Best Recovery Wishes To Elena Delle Donne, Literally While She Is Playing In The WNBA Finals
Democratic presidential candidate and absolute spring chicken Joe Biden, who definitely has a very strong sense of what’s going on around him at all times and does not appreciate you constantly dabbing at his chin with a handkerchief, took some time out of his busy campaign schedule Sunday to wish M...

Markelle Fultz Shooting Form Update: At Least The Dunks Look Cool?
Markelle Fultz played basketball in an NBA uniform for the first time since last November on Saturday, in a preseason game between his Orlando Magic and the San Antonio Spurs. Fultz was inefficient, as you’d expect from a guy who hasn’t played in so long and is on a new team, but he flashed some too...

China Abruptly Pulls Away From Rockets Over Daryl Morey's Since-Deleted Hong Kong Tweet
The backlash in China to a tweet from Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting Hong Kong protesters has accelerated over the weekend, now to include formal consequences. The Rockets, long one of the most popular NBA teams in China, are now seeing their foothold in the country swiftly ...

Kansas AD Apologizes For "Acrobatic Dancers," Unclean Lyrics After Spicy Snoop Dogg Performance
When the Kansas athletic department hired Snoop Dogg to perform at its annual “Late Night in the Phog” kickoff event for the school’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, they expected, as anyone does when hiring the artist behind “Gin and Juice,” some good, clean fun for the whole family. Imagine th...

Report: The Sparks Imploded Because Derek Fisher Is An Overmatched Dingus Who Can't Handle Criticism
The Los Angeles Sparks’ 2019 season ended in ignominious fashion, as they were swept by the Connecticut Sun while their best player, Candace Parker, inexplicably sat on the bench for almost an entire half of a closeout game. After the loss, Parker raised an eyebrow toward her head coach Derek Fisher...

Jimmy Butler Will Reach His Final Form In Miami
It took zero days of Miami Heat training camp for cheese to continue cascading out of Jimmy Butler’s pores. In truth, the cheese began to flow T-minus 6.5 hours before camp even started: Butler got up at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday to squeeze in a morning workout, per the Miami Herald, and he made sure eve...