basketball Page 246 - 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....

Xavier Holds On Against Creighton After Pair Of Fouls On Would-Be Game-Winners
Fifth-ranked Xavier avoided its fourth loss of the season thanks to a fortuitous foul call with less than a second remaining, just moments after fouling a Creighton three-point attempt that gave the Bluejays a very short-lived lead....

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...

Of Course, N.C. State-UNC Is A Rivalry. It's Just A Bad One.
Three days ago, before Duke poo-poo’d all over itself during a ghastly second half and gave the folks in Chapel Hill something to be happy about, Joel Berry II did what every single Tar Heel fan does before each of the annual clashes between N.C. State and UNC. Yes, he denied that the Wolfpack and T...

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...

Louisiana Tech Player Ejected For Being Too Rad
Unless you live in Ruston, La., chances are the name Jacobi Boykins won’t ring a bell. That’s a shame, because the senior Louisiana Tech guard is and has been a great watch during his four years with the Bulldogs, albeit one sequestered to Conference USA games. He’s the best three-point shooter on a...

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: Colorado State Plans To Fire Larry Eustachy
Colorado State reportedly plans to fire men’s basketball coach Larry Eustachy, while players boycotted practice today over frustration with the athletics department....

Lawsuit Accuses Georgia Tech Coach Josh Pastner Of Trying To Force Oral Sex From Woman
Georgia Tech men’s basketball coach Josh Pastner is being sued in Pima County Superior Court for sexual battery, sexual assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. One of the parties whom Pastner filed a defamation suit against earlier this year filed a counterclaim today accusing the...

Ohio State's Keita Bates-Diop Is A Monster Killer
Ohio State forward Keita Bates-Diop is a man of many talents; none of them is more important for the Buckeyes than his ability to be precisely the kind of multi-purpose offensive spear that turns an otherwise average attack attack into one of the best in the country....

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. ...