basketball Page 206 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Utah's Ekpe Udoh Is A Delightful Anomaly
There will probably never be much of a collection of YouTube game highlight videos from Ekpe Udoh’s NBA career, unless Udoh makes one himself. He is, without a doubt, one of the least consequential offensive players in the entire NBA, and always has been. Some adorable person made this 0:52 highligh...
The NBA's One-And-Done Draft Rule Is Just Dumb Enough To Allow One More Prep-To-Pro Star
ESPN reported this week that Adam Silver and Michele Roberts are more open than ever to changing the NBA’s draft eligibility rules, which currently require American high school players to be a year removed from the graduation of their high school class by the time of the draft in order to be eligibl...
Great Googly Moogly, The Nuggets Can Sure Fill It Up
Entering last night’s game the Denver Nuggets ranked a disappointing 14th in offensive rating on the season. They finished last season fifth in offense, at 110 points per 100 possessions; from December 15 onward—the day they moved Nikola Jokic into the starting lineup as a center—that number was 113...
Lonzo Ball's General Passivity Extends Even To Helping A Teammate In A Fight
In last night’s loss to the Phoenix Suns, Lakers guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope got a little territorial with Tyler Ulis of the Suns, and a brouhaha ensued. Not a fight, but certainly an altercation. As NBA “fights” go, this was more intense and physical than the LeBron-Enes Kanter conflict, but cer...
The Celtics Were Everywhere
After last night’s 92-88 win over the Warriors, the Celtics’ defensive rating is a suffocating 97.2. The last time we saw this team approach this level of defensive dominance was during the reign of the Big Three, when Boston won the 2007-08 championship with a defensive rating of 98.9....
Jaylen Brown Helps Carry Celtics Over Warriors With Emotional Win After Death Of His Best Friend
Jaylen Brown helped lead the Celtics to a come-from-behind win over the Warriors tonight, the day after the death of his best friend. After he led the team in scoring with a 22-point effort, he gave an emotional press conference about deciding to play after the shock of learning last night that Trev...
Boogie Cousins And The Pelicans Might Be Good, Definitely Are Great
DeMarcus Cousins is seven feet tall. He weighs, conservatively, 275 pounds. Here he is, doing pretty much all of the basketball stuff, in a single glorious ramshackle possession:...
Kevin Durant Says Sleepiness Made Him Send Bad Tweets<em></em>
Kevin Durant, who might not be the NBA’s consensus best player but is widely regarded as the league’s No. 1 lame, might’ve put his embarrassing Twitter fiasco from this summer behind him after apologizing and weathering the storm of jokes. But he never addressed the crux of the issue, the thing that...
Who Is The Best Two-On-Two Team In The NBA?
Ben Simmons dropped 18 points, 9 rebounds, and 10 assists last night and quietly flew under the radar. That is because Joel Embiid is a monstrous gift: His 46 points, 15 rebounds, 7 blocks and 7 assists blacked out the sun. There was a gazelle-like Euro step, a double Dream Shake, and easy pullups f...
John Wall Has The Nutmegging Of The Night
There are 11 games on tonight’s NBA schedule, several of which have yet to begin and none of which is yet even into the second half, but I still feel quite confident proclaiming this John Wall masterpiece in transition as the nutmegging of the night, because goddamn this is good:...
The Celtics Are Sitting Pretty
The early part of the NBA season has featured plenty of exciting young players and highly watchable teams, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of greatness to go around. The Warriors are still dominant, but the Cavs have looked downright bad at times, and the Thunder are still in beta testing. The Roc...
Pau Gasol Gets A Front-Row Seat To Dennis Smith Jr.'s Giant Dunk
Everyone from LeBron James on down knows that Mavs rookie Dennis Smith Jr. is an awe-inducing athletic talent with a penchant for all-out slams, so you can’t blame Pau Gasol for wanting a glimpse of Smith’s abilities for his own. As Smith dribbled with Gasol on him at the top of the arc, the veteran...
Stan Van Gundy: Athletes Protesting Inequality Are "Role Models Of American Patriotism"
Stan Van Gundy praised the work of Colin Kaepernick and other athletes who have protested racial injustice in an op-ed for Time magazine today, complete with a list of specific policy proposals on the subject....
Kristaps Porzingis, Please Get Better At Falling Down
It turned out that LeBron James Did Ruin It For Me, Dammit, and in as direct a fashion as humanly possible, but that’s okay, it was a good game. However, it did reveal something troubling....
Joel Embiid Packed A Season's Worth Of Shit-Talking Into One Game
The Philadelphia 76ers, who are maybe good, beat the Clippers, who are maybe bad, in Los Angeles last night, thanks to a big night from their big center Joel Embiid. The 7-foot-2 Cameroonian has been on a short minutes leash throughout his career, though his 32-point, 16-rebound performance against ...
Kyle Korver's Fourth Quarter Got The Cavaliers There
Tonight’s first half between the Knicks and Cavaliers inspired a bit of feeling that the Knicks might really be here: that their young talent could gel well enough to take down a top-tier talent like Cleveland, that Frank Ntilikina could be bold enough to shove LeBron around a little, that the team ...
Come, Bask In The Glow Of A Beautiful Moment
LeBron James and Enes Kanter briefly got into it in the closing seconds of tonight’s first quarter—a scuffle that was quickly broken up and didn’t result in much, but it did give us these beautiful photos of the incident captured by Elsa of Getty Images. ...
What The Hell Are You Doing, Peter Vecsey
General awareness of personal and social context is typically very important for any older white man who would like to go around quoting Notorious B.I.G. lyrics. Like, the below tweet was not a great context for former New York Post NBA columnist Peter Vecsey to try out this one:...
Boris Diaw Buzzer-Beat A Buzzer-Beater
Perhaps Boris Diaw left the country too soon, but it was hard not to be happy for the roly-poly polymath, ambling into the sunset with his ring, bound for better wine and pastries....
Report: Dion Waiters's "Dirty Play" Will Cost Rudy Gobert A Month
Rudy Gobert wasn’t real thrilled about Dion Waiters crashing into his knees Friday night, calling it a “dirty play” and implying that the move was intentional. Well, if it was intentional, it seems to have hit its mark:...