basketball Page 226 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Sports Highlight Of The Day Is This Grandma's Bank Shot
In Arizona, one Native grandma will conclude her rez ball career with a perfect shooting percentage and the respect of every coach in the nation for hustling back on defense....
Sometimes LeBron Just Decides To Fuck You Up
This is in no way the most impressive highlight of LeBron James’s series-clinching performance in Game 7, which he started a perfect 7-of-7 from the field and finished with 45 points on 25 shots, but it’s the most representative of what it’s like to face LeBron James in a do-or-die scenario:...
Defiant, Moldering Melo, On Moving To The Bench: "That's Out Of The Question"
NBA exit interviews can be a hoot. Players are mostly fresh off a loss, and are feeling wistful or pissed off or utterly spent, and some use the occasion for a kind of honesty that might generally be inadvisable for public people. For example, John Wall used his to trash his team’s useless centers a...
The Warriors Revved Up And Beat The Pelicans At Their Own Game
There was a short period during the first quarter of Saturday’s Game 1 between the Pelicans and the Warriors when it looked like the Warriors were a little flustered by New Orleans’s frenetic pace. That five-game first-round series with the Spurs was downright sluggish, by Warriors standards: at 95....
Pour One Out For Joe Prunty, Who Turned A Bunch Of Shit Into A Pile Of Shit
Here’s a pretty remarkable stat: the Bucks used 16 different lineups Saturday night, in their Game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics; the five most used lineups of the bunch played about 35 minutes, and finished plus-11; the other 11 lineups played a total of just over 13 minutes, and were outscored by a...
Grim And Gritty Ricky Rubio Will Be Grimly And Grittily Cheering From The Bench In Game 1 Of Jazz-Rockets
Ricky Rubio, who looks like the very happiest bearded child in that damn photo up there, will reportedly not be available for Game 1 of Jazz-Rockets, to be played Sunday afternoon in Houston. The hamstring injury that sidelined him for most of the final game of Utah’s series-clinching win over OKC w...
The Raptors Finally, Mercifully Spared Us Any More Of The Washington Wizards
The Wizards, who won 43 games during the regular season—that’s three fewer than the Denver Nuggets, who failed to make the playoffs in the much tougher Western Conference—and were the Eastern Conference’s 8th seed, were eliminated on their home floor by the Toronto Raptors Friday night. ...
A Cool Thing Jayson Tatum Does A Lot
One of the best ways for a basketball scorer to shake free from a committed defense is to catch the ball while on the move, instead of from a stationary position, so that his individual defender and the broader opposing defense don’t have time to get between him and a good look at the basket. ...
NBA Says LeBron James's Outrageous, Pivotal Block Was A Goaltend
Victor Oladipo burned LeBron James one-on-one in what ended up being the Pacers’ last possession of Game 5, then went up for a scoop layup. James, in the mood to add some fresh tape to his career reel, recovered to pin the ball against the glass—but only after the ball had made contact with the gla...
There Are Too Damn Many NBA Jerseys
The Thunder beat the Jazz last night, staving off elimination in their first-round series. The Jazz were in white jerseys. They’d worn white in Game 4, too, but in game 1 they were in blue. In game 2, bright yellow. And in Game 3, they wore orange-red gradient jerseys....
Russell Westbrook Played Basketball And Stayed Alive
Once the Thunder were down 3-1, the Russell Westbrook obituaries had already begun to roll in; down 25, the eulogizers had probably started dipping their quills back in purple. What we’d already heard many times over was going to be repeated once again, at blaring, self-satisfied volume: You can’t w...
Ball Brothers' Short, Bizarre Lithuanian Experiment Comes To Predictably Silly End
With BC Vytautas needing to win their last two games to avoid relegation from the Lithuanian first division, LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball are headed back to the United States, thus ending LaVar Ball’s misguided attempt to keep his family in the news. Ball told Donatas Urbonas, who first reported the new...
Old LeBron Is Young LeBron
By now the thought has surely ocurred to you. After watching enough replays of LeBron James’s stunning, game-winning shot to wrap up Game 5 of the Cavaliers’ series agains the Pacers, it’s impossible not to recall one of James’s earliest buzzer-beaters. ...
Russell Westbrook Brought The Thunder Back
The Thunder weren’t supposed to get this one. Down 3-1 in their first-round series against the Jazz, and down by as many as 25 points as late as the middle of the third quarter tonight, this elimination game felt pretty damn close to a foregone conclusion. Until it felt like something else—a ridicul...
Once Again, Here Was LeBron
With a little more than seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter of tonight’s Game 5 between the Pacers and Cavaliers, Kyle Korver made a three. That was the last field goal that Cleveland would score until the buzzer sounded. ...
LaMarcus Aldridge Enjoys Playoffs' Shortest Press Conference
The Spurs were quietly bounced from the playoffs last night, thus ending a strange season that was marred by rare internal drama. LaMarcus Aldridge was San Antonio’s lone postseason bright spot, as he averaged 23.6 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 60 percent shooting from three for the series. In last nigh...
The Pelicans Actually Have A Chance To Give The Warriors Problems
Klay Thompson doesn’t have too many ugly nights these days. It’s easy enough to isolate the one so far this postseason: On Sunday, he shot 4-of-16 from the field and logged a -18 plus-minus in the Warriors’ sole loss to the Spurs. It was a reminder that the league’s best offense can still sputter ou...
“Bullshit” Blown Call At The End Of Game 5 Has The Bucks Frustrated<em></em><em></em>
The Boston Celtics fended off a tough Bucks squad last night at home to take a commanding 3-2 lead, thanks to a big night from Al Horford, solid defense from their bench, and a critical missed call late in the fourth quarter. With 1:14 left, Al Horford hoisted a three-pointer that clearly left his h...
Condoleezza Rice's Useless Commission On College Basketball Gives Useless Recommendations
Condoleezza Rice and her fellow members of the Commission on College Basketball stood on stage in Indianapolis Wednesday morning and announced to the world their plan to fix college basketball—aside from a few bright spots, it was a largely disappointing, half-hearted attempt at pushing back the ine...
A Video Of Kevin Garnett Yelling A Bunch Got Thon Maker Inspired To Start Kicking Ass In The Playoffs <em></em>
Stringy Bucks big man Thon Maker has come up huge for the Bucks in their surprisingly competitive and entertaining first-round series against the Celtics. Maker averaged just 4.8 points, 3.0 boards, and 0.7 blocks a game in the regular season, and he basically didn’t play through the series’ first t...