basketball Page 193 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Dunk Gods Giveth, The Dunk Gods Taketh Away

Sunday’s big Cavs-Celtics tilt in Boston is not shaping up how you might’ve reasonably imagined: The Cavs, with four brand new guys making their first ever appearances in Cavs jerseys, are mostly giving the business to the Celtics. That business featured this highlight, when J.R. Smith smushed the b...

Old Geezer Dirk Nowitzki Dunked Himself Onto The Injured List

Old, old man Dirk Nowitzki had himself a bit of a throwback game against the Los Angeles Lakers Saturday night. In 24 minutes of action—just about all his body can handle, at this point—Nowitzki knocked home eight of 11 shot attempts, including all four of his looks from beyond the arc, to score 22 ...

Bobby Portis Plays Role In Derrick Rose-To-Wizards Conspiracy To Perfection

Saturday night, with the Bulls hosting the Wizards, teammate puncher Bobby Portis sent not one but both available Wizards point guards to the locker room with bloody head wounds. Clearly, clearly, this is part of the grand conspiracy to bring Derrick Rose to the Washington Wizards. ...

Evil Fate Is Conspiring To Bring Ernie Grunfeld And Late-Career Derrick Rose Together At Last

Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that the Wizards are expected to sniff around Derrick Rose, now that he has been waived by the Utah Jazz. In a closely related story, I am going to be sick....

Cruel Damian Lillard Needed Just 29 Minutes To Hang 50 Points On The Kings

Damian Lillard went absolutely nuts on the Kings Friday night, in Sacramento, to the tune of 50 points on 26 shots attempts, in just 29 minutes. He didn’t score a single point in the fourth quarter, and didn’t need to, because the Kings are sad and awful, and also because the game was never close af...

Maybe Now The Cavs Can Just Let LeBron Cook?

The Cavs did well at the trade deadline, shipping off several of their worst defensive players and returning a group of guys who seem better suited to playing alongside LeBron, for however long he’ll be around. LeBron himself said the changes “should be fun,” which probably means nothing but certain...

Michael Porter Jr. Still Wants To Play Again For Mizzou

Last November, Michael Porter Jr., Mizzou freshman and one-time favorite to become the top pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, was forced to undergo surgery on his back. He played just two minutes of college ball, and at the time, it seemed that he would miss the rest of the season recovering from the injur...

Tanking NBA Teams, Control Yourselves<em></em>

The End Of The Short, Strange Georgios Papagiannis Era In Sacramento

No personnel move is more emblematic of the reliably baffling Vlade Divac administration in Sacramento than the team’s selection of unknown Greek center Georgios Papagiannis with the 13th pick of the 2016 draft. Sacramento traded back from the eighth spot in that draft and smartly snared peppy Serbi...

Markelle Fultz Update: Uhhhh

Sixers GM Bryan Colangelo held a brief scrum with reporters today to update everyone on the status of No. 1 overall draft pick Markelle Fultz, who has not seen the court much this year after injuring his shoulder and then developing what appears to be a pretty serious case of the yips. So how is Fu...

Magic Johnson On Idea Of Being Able To Trade Luol Deng: "Hahaha, We Wish"

The trade deadline has come and gone, and to the surprise of no one, the Lakers did not manage to clear any additional cap space by finding someone to take on Luol Deng and the rest of the four-year, $72 million contract that he signed in 2016....

Report: Cavaliers Get Isaiah Thomas The Fuck Out Of Here<em></em>

After just 15 games as an active member of the Cavaliers, Isaiah Thomas is on his way out of Cleveland. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported this morning that the Cavs were acquiring Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance from the Lakers, with the Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor first reporting that Isaiah Thomas an...

LeBron Puts Together Goddamn Ridiculous Final 30 Seconds For Cavaliers Win

Tonight’s Timberwolves-Cavaliers game was stupidly fun on several fronts—an NBA record 40 three-pointers, for one thing; a total of 34 lead changes, for another—but the fact that it ended with an insane series of LeBron James plays, each more dazzling than the last, was maybe the most fun of all. ...

What Comes After Kristaps For The Knicks?

What Giannis Antetokounmpo did to the Knicks was cool as hell and involved leaping over an entire man. What Giannis’s torso did to the Knicks, due to purely incidental contact, was as ghastly as that was cool: Kristaps Porzingis landed awkwardly after dunking over him and tore his left ACL....

Paul George Is Everything The Thunder Need Him To Be

Last night, the Thunder traveled to Oakland and were the best version of themselves, a team that overwhelms and antagonizes the opponent while producing bushels of cool-ass highlights. If you’re into Warriors schadenfreude then you probably relished Draymond Green getting ejected for yelling a whol...

The Wizards Are Winning And Making John Wall Mad

Before dropping a game to the 76ers last night, the Washington Wizards were on a 5-0 run without star point guard John Wall in the lineup. Now let’s watch as the Wizards manage to turn winning a bunch of games in a row into a bad thing....

Russell Westbrook Magically Fouled By Floor, Own Feet

At the end of the third quarter of tonight’s Thunder-Warriors game, Russell Westbrook benefitted from a bizarrely bad foul call that was triggered by nothing but tripping over his own two feet, no meaningful contact from Golden State necessary:...

Giannis Jumped Over A Guy And It Ruled

It’s been a sad night for the Knicks and for Michigan basketball players, so why wouldn’t Giannis Antetokounmpo make things even more intense by jumping the fuck over Tim Hardaway Jr. on a fast-break alley-oop? Honestly, he slammed it so hard that nobody anywhere can feel anything other than breathl...

Cavs Reach New Low, Somehow

The Cleveland Cavaliers, a snake pit of internecine feuds, are playing like reheated slop at the moment, and tonight their on-court dysfunction reached a new, embarrassing nadir. Losing to a irrepressible Rockets by one million points on national TV is one thing, but getting owned by the Orlando Mag...

Kristaps Porzingis Helped Off Court After Ugly Knee Injury [UPDATED]

Kristaps Porzingis left tonight’s game against the Bucks in the second quarter after suffering an apparent knee injury while dunking on Giannis Antetokounmpo. He was helped off the court by teammates, clearly not putting much weight on his left leg after spending some time in visible pain under the ...