basketball Page 171 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

An Ailing Joel Embiid Isn't All That Ails The 76ers
The 76ers were blown out in Game 5 Tuesday night, 125–89, by Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. Nothing much worked for Philadelphia—the closest they came to a functional offense was Jimmy Butler willing his way to the line for 11 free throws. By the midpoint of the fourth quarter, the game had ...

Report: The Lakers Have A Supremely Jacked-Up Hiring Process
The Lakers are reportedly in the process of hiring former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue to replace the fired Luke Walton. Contractual parameters are being sorted out, according to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports. Lue’s hiring would come with the blessing of LeBron James, who of course won a...

Giannis Antetokounmpo Is The Most Demoralizing Man In The NBA
These here Boston Celtics seem dead, filleted and breaded and fully cooked, and their feeble attempts to bridge a series of late deficits last night strongly suggested that, one recent example of a blown 3-1 lead notwithstanding, this is a mentally broken basketball team with one single game betwee...

The Unflappable Warriors Are Being Flapped By The Feisty Rockets
It wasn’t pretty—it hasn’t been pretty, no two-minute stretch of this series has been the least bit aesthetically pleasant—but the Houston Rockets outlasted the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 to knot their conference semifinal series at two games apiece....

The Celtics Appear To Be In The Deepest Of Doo Doo
The Celtics are left with a couple bad omens from Game 4, which ended Monday night with Boston fans booing their team off the court at the end of a pivotal 113–101 loss. Apart, that is, from the fact that the Bucks are now in a commanding 3–1 series lead, with Game 5 back in Milwaukee, where the Buc...

The Nuggets And Blazers Are Exactly What The NBA Playoffs Needed
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers had every right to give us a sloppy, disappointing Game 4. On Friday night, they played a four-overtime thriller that left both teams exhausted, one team utterly heartbroken, and one superstar out on his feet. All of this could have easily added up to an...

Boban Marjanovic Uses His Large Frame To Obscure Kyle Lowry's Line Of Sight
Boban Marjanovic provided excellent towering defense against Kyle Lowry as the Raptor tried to inbound the ball for the final possession of the half that Toronto got as a result of Lowry selling a foul well....

Steph Curry Blows Wide-Open Dunk In OT, Warriors Immediately Wave White Flag And Give Up On Comeback
The Golden State Warriors needed to score a whole bunch of points real quick at the end of overtime to keep pace in Game 3 tonight in Houston, and instead of doing so, they ended the game in one of the weirder ways you’ll see all postseason....

The Four-Overtime Slog Between The Nuggets And Trail Blazers Caused An NBA Y2K
The Portland Trail Blazers survived the 68-minute marathon against the Denver Nuggets on Friday with a 140-137 win at home. Since it had been over 60 years since the last time a postseason game had gone the distance of four overtimes (1953), neither team had exactly prepared for this particular scen...

Bulls Give Another Contract Extension To That Hardass Everyone Hated
The Chicago Bulls, fresh off a successful season of not winning too many games to miss out on a primo lottery spot, reportedly have signed a “multi-year” extension with head coach Jim Boylen. Boylen, who took over for Fred Hoiberg as interim coach during last season and had already signed an extensi...

The Raptors Are Doing Whatever The Hell This Is Again
Well, shit....

It Sucks That One Of These Teams Must Be Served Up To The Warriors Like Ann Darrow To King Kong
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers played a choppy and bloody and occasionally stupid but highly entertaining Game 2 Wednesday night, with the Blazers prevailing on the road, 97–90, to tie up the series headed back to Portland. The winner of this series should get a trophy and a parade an...
![Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/m3lwkjhcyhb8zvevmpzj.png)
Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]
Second-year forward Torrey Craig has been surprisingly huge for the Nuggets this postseason, playing about 20 minutes a night and posting a blistering 71 percent true shooting mark through eight games. The Nuggets benefit tremendously from his scrappy, versatile defense and respectable perimeter sho...

Draymond Green Got In Shape And Turned Back Into A Defensive Menace
After he spent the regular season fighting his teammates, averaging 7.4 points per game, and getting ignored by defenses, Draymond Green has taken a few old textbooks out of his hefty backpack and showed up to the playoffs with an intensity and focus unseen for almost a year. The Golden State Warrio...

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...

Poor Shaq Is Just There To Get Laughed At Now
The recurring theme of this latest iteration of TNT’s Inside The NBA concerns Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley’s friendly rivalry occasionally transforming into real enmity. If last night’s edition of Shaq vs. Chuck is any indication, though, the storyline may be done and dusted. ...

Donald Trump Threw A Real Grandpa Party For Baylor's Women's Basketball Team
Philly had boxed or maybe promoted boxers, or possibly just wanted to be thought of as someone who was associated with boxing and boxing promoters in some sort of way. He remains the only person ever to produce a quarter from behind my ear, a magic trick that once defined the absolute outer boundary...

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...