basketball Page 225 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Sixers Blew It
With a little more than five minutes remaining in the first half tonight, Robert Covington drained a three, stretching the 76ers’ lead over the Celtics to 21 points. Philadelphia was in control here, with no signs of loosening their grip. And then they sent all of that to hell. Over the next quarter...

LeBron James Remains A Damn Miracle
The No. 1 seed Raptors, again, built a first-half lead tonight only to squander it, losing 128-110 to fall behind 2-0 in their second-round series against the Cavaliers. And while it may be tempting to file this one away as yet another classically Raptorsian playoff performance, there’s only so much...

Report: NBA Tells Drake To Stop Cussing At The Game
Drake spent time during the Raptors’ spectacular Game 1 choke getting into it with Kendrick Perkins, a man much larger than him, and at one point even called him a “fucking pussy” while the two were surrounded by approximately 500 security guards. It was one of those fake NBA fights where both guys ...

Kristaps Porzingis Is Seeking Companionship In Madrid :))
Since suffering a season-ending ACL tear, Kristaps Porzingis has done everything a Knicks fan could have hoped for. The 22-year-old is busying himself with two or three therapy sessions a day, strengthening his core and upper body, and sharpening his mind. “Reading bores me, I don’t like reading,” h...

Even If You Haven't Heard Of New Suns Coach Igor Kokoškov, He's Ready<em></em>
Last night, the Phoenix Suns announced that lead Jazz assistant Igor Kokoškov will take over as the team’s head coach next season. Kokoškov inherits a team full of young whippersnappers who logged the NBA’s worst record last season, and he has the tricky job of turning unrefined talent into NBA prod...

Dante Exum Is Now Doing Things
With Ricky Rubio out, Utah’s long, long specimen Dante Exum was stuck with one of the most frustrating defensive assignments in basketball: James Harden and the 1,001 dribbles. The stringy Australian has spent just over half of his NBA career injured, but in those healthy stretches has shown serious...

The Most You Can Do Is Keep LeBron From Feasting
There is no such thing as a LeBron Stopper. There are LeBron Inconveniencers, and if you are one of them, and have eaten a well-balanced meal and hydrated deeply and prayed to all the relevant deities, you might “hold” LeBron to a triple-double and 26 points on 40-percent shooting, as the Raptors di...

Rajon Rondo's Really Trying To Bug Draymond Green
The Warriors facing the Pelicans in the second round means that two notorious shit-stirrers will be on the court together, and even if the series result is lopsided, the antics of Rajon Rondo and Draymond Green will compensate for it in entertainment....

Draymond Green Dares Charles Barkley To Punch Him In The Face
As he often does during Inside the NBA, a show designed to bait its hosts into late-night ramblings, Charles Barkley got to talking shit last night. Specifically about Warriors forward Draymond Green:...

Steph Curry Makes The Warriors Invincible
The version of the Golden State Warriors that dispatched the Spurs in five games and cruised to a blowout Game 1 win against the Pelicans is a fine NBA team. One that, if not destined to, certainly looked capable of winning the title while being led by top-five NBA player Kevin Durant. The version o...

Nobody Pukes Up A Game Quite Like The Raptors
I’m not here to argue that the Raptors’ collapse in Game 1 of their second-round series against the Cavaliers is proof that their 59-win season was totally hollow and that they are in fact fraudulent pretenders unworthy of the No. 1 seed and should be expelled from the NBA so that no one ever again ...

Drake And Kendrick Perkins Start An Amusingly Lopsided Feud At Game 1 Of Cavs-Raptors
Noted Toronto fan (and former failed basketball player) Drake stirred a little beef with Cleveland bench goon Kendrick Perkins during tonight’s Raptors-Cavaliers Game 1. It started with some words at halftime......

Raptors Prove That They Can Choke Spectacularly Even When They're The Top Seed
After jumping out to an early lead, the Raptors caved and let the Cavaliers take a Game 1 victory in overtime tonight, 113-112. ...

Nigel Hayes Says That He And Wisconsin Teammates Discussed Boycotting 2016 Game To Protest NCAA
At a panel discussion on college sports this week, as reported by USA Today, basketball player Nigel Hayes said that he discussed boycotting a 2016 game with his Wisconsin teammates to protest the NCAA’s failure to properly pay its athletes....

Meet Al Horford, Playoff Monster
Coming into this postseason, Al Horford’s playoff reputation never really stood out. He spent most of his career on a series of Hawks teams that were doomed to be steamrolled by LeBron James every spring. In the 17 times he met James in the playoffs, he only won one game, and that was on his 15th tr...

Dear Celtics, Please Unleash The All-Beef Lineup
Last night’s Game 1 between the Celtics and Sixers was a pretty good time. Terry Rozier looked like fuckin’ Chris Paul out there and Joel Embiid was unstoppable and Jayson Tatum did some cool whirly-bird moves that made me go, “Ooh! Nice!” But what I was most excited to see was the late-game introdu...

Ben Simmons Went Between The Legs
Ben Simmons was soundly outplayed by wee Terry Rozier in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Simmons still had 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting but did not connect on any shot farther than three feet from the rim. Many of his usual pinpoint passes landed in the hands of teammates who collectiv...

The Celtics Gave The Sixers A Game-One Beatdown
The 76ers had nearly a week off between closing out their easy first-round series against the Heat and kicking off their second-round one against the Celtics, and it showed. Against a Boston squad missing Jaylen Brown, who was sidelined with a hamstring injury, they couldn’t hang—getting beat down b...

Pat Riley Calls Out Hassan Whiteside For Not Having His Shit Together In The Playoffs
Hassan Whiteside was awful for the Heat in their five-game playoff series against the Sixers, and everyone knows it. The 28-year-old big man, who broke out as an in-the-paint stud with Miami back in the 2014-15 season, looked completely checked out in his first postseason games since 2016. He was do...
