basketball Page 184 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Universe Must Deliver A Rockets-Thunder Playoff Series
The Oklahoma City Thunder handed the Houston Rockets just their 7th home loss of the season Saturday night, by the relatively low score of 108-102. The Rockets were without Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson, but that’s not supposed to matter much—the Rockets had all of Chris Paul, James Harden, and Clin...
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before: The Washington Wizards Are Melting Down
God, the Wizards suck so bad. They are almost certainly the sorriest team that has not been eliminated from the playoffs: by win percentage (.525 as of Saturday morning) they’re behind the Western Conference’s 10th seed; they’ve lost four in a row and eight of 10; four of those losses have come to t...
Scott Brooks Looked Like He Wanted To Die
Last night’s game between the Cavs and Wizards was a fun one, featuring LeBron James fully rounding in playoff form and orchestrating a 32-14 run to close out the last 7:48 of the game. The game also offered us a chance to see Wizards head coach Scott Brooks’s soul die, little by little....
Steve Kerr After Warriors Squelched By Pacers: "It's Hard To Win An NBA Game If You Don't Put Forth An Effort At All"
The Pacers beat the Warriors for the second time in as many weeks tonight, and this time, it wasn’t close. For last week’s loss, at least, Golden State could claim that they were shorthanded—with Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry all sidelined. But all of those guys excep...
Big Boban Takes Little Ball
Hungrily, steadily, undeterred by failure, the Boban stalks its prey—then strikes, immobilizing it in an instant. This happened on Tuesday night and I still haven’t been able to get it out of my head....
Korean Basketball League's New Rule Makes Some Foreign Players Too Tall To Play
David Simon, a 35-year-old Anyang KGC center, has been playing overseas for more than a decade now, but a new rule means he’ll have to find a team in another country. He’s now too tall for the Korean Basketball League. ...
Kyle Kuzma Climbed The Rookie Wall
In an NBA season defined by incredibly tight playoff seeding races and an apocalyptic tanking campaign featuring a solid third of the league, only three teams were caught in the middle. The Pistons made a futile push for the eight seed, but they quickly joined the Hornets and Lakers as the only team...
Kyrie Irving Is Out For The Playoffs And The Celtics Are Hosed
Oh goddamnit. ...
Gaze Upon This Mavericks Box Score, And Despair
The Dallas Mavericks, who have spent most of the season doing everything they can to lose games on purpose, fucked up big time on Tuesday night when they beat a very good, playoff-bound Blazers team. This gave them 24 victories on the season, and put them in danger of being passed in The Great Tank ...
Markelle Fultz Update: Hey, He Took A Three!
It’s been a little more than a week since Markelle Fultz was activated to begin play for the first time since October, after months of working on rehabbing his busted shot. Entering tonight’s game against the Pistons, he’d shot 17-of-39 from the field since his return, but not one of those shot atte...
The Thunder Have A Melo Problem
Oklahoma City dropped a close one against the Warriors last night despite 44 points from Russell Westbrook. The loss dropped them to sixth in the cutthroat Western Conference, a half game behind Salt Lake City and San Antonio. They’re now 1-4 over their last five games, all of which came against fel...
Spring Is Here, And That Means It's Time For The Toronto Raptors To Wither And Die
The Toronto Raptors, the first-place team in the Eastern Conference, lost last night, to the third-place Cleveland Cavaliers. They lost to the badly depleted second-place Boston Celtics three nights prior. They’ve lost five of their last eight games, the worst stretch in what’s so far been the best ...
I Love Watching Kyle Anderson Do Hilariously Slow Basketball
Among the many reasons you’d be galactically screwed if you lined up on the perimeter to defend an NBA player, speed is the scariest. Before you stand some of the tallest, longest, twitchiest, most volatile athletes in the world, with good options available at every juncture: stop dead and pop a jum...
The Sixers Beat The Nets So Badly They Played The Sixers Victory Song With 11 Seconds Left
The Sixers do not have Joel Embiid for the foreseeable future. He’s out after surgery for a fractured orbital bone. So far, that has not mattered. ...
Dennis Smith Jr. With The Bounce Pass To Dennis Smith Jr. For The Dunk
The Mavericks are currently treading toilet water, with no real motivation to win, but tonight featured a few cool things: a victory over the Trail Blazers, and, more importantly, this nifty Dennis Smith Jr. dunk, assisted by none other than Dennis Smith Jr. himself....
Nerlens Noel Probably Really Wishes He Took That $70 Million Contract
The NBA announced today that they’ve suspended Mavericks forward Nerlens Noel for five games, reportedly following a third positive test for marijuana, a drug that is legal or decriminalized in much of the country. That alone is not a big deal, but Noel’s suspension—which will see him out for the co...
Villanova Coasts To Title On Back Of Record-Setting Bench Player Donte DiVincenzo<em></em>
For the bulk of the first half, tonight’s NCAA men’s basketball championship was Michigan’s game—not by more than a few points, not convincingly, but it was. With six minutes remaining, though, Donte DiVincenzo hit a three to deliver Villanova its first lead since the opening seconds, and then he se...
Boban Loves To Dance
Boban Marjanovic has been working on his craft. Yesterday he was seen bopping in an adorable huddle with new friend DeAndre Jordan and old friend Tobias Harris, who accompanied him from Detroit to Los Angeles in the January trade....
On Easter Sunday, The Denver Nuggets....... <i>Resurrected</i>....... Their Playoff Hopes
Listen. I want you to know that I endured probably close to 45 seconds of deep internal conflict over whether to form this blog around a groan-inducing forced parallel between the sudden restoration of the Denver Nuggets’ playoff hopes and the Easter story of Christ’s resurrection from death. And th...
This Is "This Is March": Unpacking College Basketball's Most Uncanny Twitter Account
Jon Rothstein is a real person. He was born in a town at the very outermost edge of what could be called exurban New York City and has covered sports for a living virtually from the moment he graduated from Ithaca College. Rothstein won a Dream Job contest at New York’s ESPN sports radio station, 10...