basketball Page 166 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Warriors Need DeMarcus Cousins Now, Which Is Concerning For Everyone Involved
Kevin Durant is short a limb. Kevon Looney’s ribs are splayed open like a blooming onion. Andre Iguodala has rocks in his shoes. The Warriors need two more wins, and medicine is not on their side. DeMarcus Cousins is, though....
Who The Hell Knows How This Ends, But At Least It's Not Without A Fight
Nope, I have nothing for you. I cannot explain how the Golden State Warriors won Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and neither can any of you. A team in tatters refused to shred, and it remains obstinate in the face of a hockey team’s list of injuries. This is almost not at all about the Toronto Raptors any...
Who's To Blame?
The reactions to a catastrophic NBA injury usually unfold in very simple terms. Stomachs drop, deep sympathies are expressed for the player involved, and everyone moves on while shaking their heads and grumbling about how sometimes life just isn’t fair. Rarely do such injuries lead to the general ma...
The Raptors Blew It
Coming close hurts all the more when you can quantify just how close you came. One shot, or one missed shot, or one call the other way, or ... one timeout? The Raptors came oh so close to winning a championship Monday night, and it’s not the one-point final margin that’ll stick in craws and steal sl...
Kevin Durant's Achilles Injury Sounds Like Bad News All The Way Around
Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers spoke at the postgame podium Monday night following his team’s 106–105 victory over the Toronto Raptors in Game 5. That’s an unusual step for a personnel honcho, but these are unusual circumstances—it fell to Myers to announce that Durant’s injur...
Several Minutes Of Horrendous Basketball Result In Warriors Surviving Game 5
Game 5 was anything but pretty. The first half was defined by Kevin Durant’s triumphant return, and then Kevin Durant’s disastrous re-injury. The second half was defined by one transcendent three-minute stretch from Kawhi Leonard, and then three minutes of ridiculous, frantic, slapstick mutual failu...
Success Spoiled Golden State Warriors Fans
A year ago, Steph Curry told SLAM how grateful he was that Oakland had embraced him “as one of their own.” He’s done his part, there: tons of local charity work, putting Oakland on a shoe and then giving 30 of them away. All of which is to say that he could likely tell you more about the town other ...
Report: Kevin Durant's "Expected" To Play Game 5
The Golden State Warriors are facing elimination, but Kevin Durant, who hurt his leg a month ago, isn’t a sure thing for tonight’s game against the Raptors. At today’s practice, head coach Steve Kerr wouldn’t say anything beyond calling his player a “game-time decision” for Game 5 of the NBA Finals....
Kevin Durant Practiced, But Maybe Not That Much, And Nobody Knows What The Hell Is Going On
Kevin Durant’s month-long absence from the Golden State Warriors while he tries to recover from a calf injury has thrown the NBA Finals totally out of whack. Now, with the Warriors down 3-1 to the Raptors and facing a potential dynasty-ending Game 5 on Monday, Durant’s return seems like the only thi...
The Raptors Are The Warriors Now
Recency bias is a hateful but dominant force in the best-of-seven world, so the clear assumption to be made from Game 4 of the NBA Finals is that Game 6 seems unlikely. The Toronto Raptors are the new Golden State Warriors, and the Golden State Warriors are finally all about the trailing step, the a...
Kawhi Leonard Took Over And The Warriors Couldn't Do A Thing About It
The Warriors as currently constituted are “merely” a great NBA team. In just about any other context, it’s peak roster construction. A couple of all-world shooters, a couple of bangers down low with shots of their own, a scattering of role players each with their own specific skills, and an overall ...
![The Old Knob Who Shoved Kyle Lowry Is Warriors Minority Owner Mark Stevens [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/lent7n5pnligdcnsm8op.jpg)
The Old Knob Who Shoved Kyle Lowry Is Warriors Minority Owner Mark Stevens [Update]
The man who pushed Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry during Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night was none other than Warriors minority owner Mark Stevens, the team has confirmed. The news was first reported by Axios. ...
The Raptors Won But Finals Chaos Still Reigns
It’s cheap to say that the Raptors beat the Gldn Stae Warors (which is to say, 63 percent of the Golden State Warriors) in Game 3 of the NBA Finals; in fact, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that the Raptors might have won the game anyway....
Raptors Snatch Back Home-Court Advantage With Game 3 Beatdown Of Gutted Warriors
There may be no satisfying takeaway from Toronto’s Game 3 123–109 victory over the Warriors in Oakland, beyond the completely obvious reminder that however great Steph Curry is, he cannot beat an NBA Finals team completely by himself. Steve Kerr held Klay Thompson out of the action, and so the Warri...
What If The Raptors Had To Choose Between Kawhi And Drake?
There are rules to the Deadcast, although we don’t generally pay that much attention to them. For the most part, as you might have noticed, it goes like this: Bullshit/sports, sports, sports/Funbag, Funbag. It’s not a lot of structure, but it keeps us honest. This week, though, we faced a Funbag que...
Bored Man Who Got Paid: "Board Man Gets Paid"
As Kawhi Leonard plays the most impressive basketball of his NBA career, The Athletic’s Jayson Jenks checked in with Leonard’s teammates from his two seasons at San Diego State. It may not shock you to learn that Leonard was, even then, a man of few words. But the words that he did select were perfe...
Commissioner For A Day: Let's Get Rid Of The Clock In Basketball
Good news everybody: I’ve become the NBA commissioner for a day, and I’m going to abuse my brief, ill-gotten power to take a big sledgehammer to every game clock in every arena in North America. At least for the last three minutes....
![Kevon Looney's Cartilage Injury Makes Warriors' Title Hunt That Much More Absurd [CORRECTED]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ohv8odkahs0c10gz2ai6.png)
Kevon Looney's Cartilage Injury Makes Warriors' Title Hunt That Much More Absurd [CORRECTED]
What was initially described somewhat confusingly as a “sprained collarbone” for Warriors center Kevon Looney has, upon further inspection, been revealed as a fracture. Looney, an underrated non-star contributor for the Golden State Warriors, seems unlikely to return for the rest of the NBA Finals....
The Layup Faces Of Game 2
For Sunday’s Game 2 in Toronto, a pair of remote cameras were set up at one end of the court. One (the angle you see above) appears to have been in the stanchion itself, and was operated by Getty Images’ Gregory Shamus, and captures the action just below the basket. The other (the first photo below)...
The Weirder The Finals Get, The Better
The news from the NBA Finals is all good, kids, and it is this: Nobody has any narratives left to invent. The events of Games 1 and 2 have savaged all the preconceptions, conceptions, and the way it’s looking, the post-conceptions of this series. Nobody has any idea what’s coming next, and nobody wi...