basketball Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
'Haliburton time' doesn't quite have the same ring to it
The Pacers advanced to the championship game of the NBA in-season tournament last night after Tyrese Haliburton knocked down a 3-pointer late in the game to beat the Bucks....
If NBA teams can raise division-title banners, they should be able to raise a banner for the In-Season Cup
The inaugural In-Season Tournament is nearing its conclusion, which can only mean one thing: How can we find a new way to dump on it? Fortunately, a contrived controversy has been delivered on cue. The winner of this weekend’s In-Season Tournament will have to navigate the thorny situation over how ...
Why is no one screaming about the NBA’s MVP race yet?
There’s one unquestioned upside to the NBA’s In-Season Tournament. The endless promos and exhausting exposure to promote Adam Silver’s baby — and debate over if it’s working or if it matters — has overshadowed the usual topic de jour as we hit the quarter-season mark: The MVP race....
Ms. 3,000: Iowa's Caitlin Clark in pursuit of Plum
Iowa basketball phenom Caitlin Clark continues to do things that will put her on the Mount Rushmore of women’s college basketball. ...
Anthony Edwards is salty about being called an All-Star
The next time you’re out and about and happen to run into Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards, don’t dare refer to him as an All-Star. Even though he is indeed a one-time All-Star “selection,” he won’t acknowledge this fact. He doesn’t count it since he wasn’t a first-choice selection to the...
LeBron James wants to win the NBA Cup because Michael Jordan didn't
The NBA Cup/In-Season Tournament finally concludes in Las Vegas this week. LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers outlasted the Phoenix Suns in a scrappy game Tuesday night to advance to the semifinals. James put on a show against Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, scoring 31 points, dishing 11 dimes, ...
The Winter Meetings don’t work that way, Shohei
If you exist on a plane outside the insular world of sports Twitter (sports X?), you might not be aware that the world currently hinges on MLB free agent Shohei Ohtani picking a new baseball team. Until said team is chosen, those of us left behind in the bubble can do nothing but hit “refresh” on th...
Selling the Mavs is a Faustian bargain for Mark Cuban
What do Donald Trump, casinos, the Holocaust, and the Dallas Mavericks have in common? The answer can be found in a comic book. In Art Spiegelman’s seminal tome on his family’s survival of the Holocaust, the graphic novel Maus, the underground comix writer analyzes the cyclical effect of trauma, not...
Tyrese Haliburton has the Pacers skipping the NBA waiting line
There are three tiers of NBA existence: Teams stuck in the mud, teams trying to fit through a championship window and future contenders waiting their turn. Prior to Tyrese Haliburton’s first full season as a Pacer, Indiana was rudderless and stuck on a road to nowhere. Aside from Haliburton, there w...
Refs defend controversial LeBron timeout call
Officials from last night’s Los Angeles Lakers-Phoenix Suns game have confirmed the controversial timeout call that helped punch L.A.’s ticket to the In-Season Tournament semifinal....
The NCAA's latest NIL 'solution' is nothing but a shell game
College sports’ has once again ripped off its student-athlete robe and revealed its naked capitalistic body. By leaving out Florida State because its starting quarterback suffered a season-ending injury in late November, the College Football Playoff Committee showed that its goal is to put the best ...
Oregon just got hit with a Title IX lawsuit and the allegations are rough
On Friday, 32 members of the University of Oregon’s women’s beach volleyball and rowing teams filed a class action lawsuit in federal court that accuses the University of depriving female athletes of “equal treatment and benefits, equal athletic aid, and equal opportunities to participate in varsity...
It’s time Dr Pepper eliminated the chest pass from its Tuition Giveaway contest
Gerrit Cole doesn’t throw bounce passes from the mound. LeBron James has never tossed an off-speed slider on a backdoor cut. So then, why do we have to watch college students throw footballs like basketball-chest passes to win scholarship money?...
How to hate-watch the rest of the NBA's In-Season Tournament, Part 2
Human nature drives us to dump on new concepts and the IST has inspired a whole host of reasons for the NBA Cup to receive hate. There’s a lot not to like including the scoring differentials playing a role in who advances, sneakers sliding around on the NBA’s personalized ice rinks, the 30-team fiel...
How to hate-watch the rest of the NBA's In-Season Tournament, Part I
The NBA In-Season Tournament’s single elimination stage tips off this week. Human nature drives us to dump on new things and the IST has inspired a whole host of reasons to hate it. There’s a lot not to like. The scoring differentials playing a role in who advances, the personalized courts playing l...
Ime Udoka was wrong to go at LeBron James
Everyone who works for the NBA or one of its franchises should always behave in a professional manner. That being said, the head coach is supposed to be the person in charge of the team. A head coach is like the general manager of a store. That person may not own the place, but the person does need ...
Golden State’s third quarter super powers are gone and that’s left them mortal
For the second time, this week, the Golden State Warriors went cold in the fourth quarter. Twice this week, the Warriors blew leads of 20-plus points. Against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday, they played so frantically trying to achieve a +13 points differential in a win that would allow them to adv...
We've seen Klay Thompson overcome the whispers that he's washed
The Golden State Warriors should be reeling after squandering a 24-point lead against the Sacramento Kings in their NBA In-Season Tournament’s group stage exit. Yet, they’re oddly sanguine about backsliding below .500 since they launched out of the regular season gates to a 6-2 start. Klay Thompson ...
Hate James Harden all you want, but the Clippers are actually good
Some people in this world delight when James Harden is not successful as an NBA basketball player. His iso-heavy style of play is an acquired taste, but so is coffee and yet a Starbucks gift card can win the heart of the average American adult. What really grinds peoples’ gears in regard to Harden i...
The NBA's In-Season Tournament takes from soccer but isn’t a cup
I’ll give the NBA this, as a soccer fan. It’s the only league to take notice of soccer’s consistently rising popularity and attempt to capitalize on that by co-opting some element of it. This is where anyone like me has to fight a blinding urge to scream about promotion and relegation, and earlier t...