basketball Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

Billy Donovan needs to end this Chicago tragedy and get back to college hoops
One thing that became apparent during the final night of the NBA’s In-Season Tournament Group Stage was that the Chicago Bulls stink. ...

Sorry, Congress, Adam Silver and the NBA aren't going to stop doing business with China
When the U.S. is at war with China in 20 years, on the list of microaggressions that incited the conflict will surely be NBA-China relations. The Association’s dealings in the People’s Republic of China are so well-documented and lucrative that they created in-roads for its players, who may not real...

The NBA In-Season Tournament: Where you can lose and still win
The NBA has really outdone itself this time. This In-Season tournament nobody asked for in the first place has gotten more convoluted as it extends into the later stages. Rewarding teams as they lose is the biggest participation trophy-era thing there could be. Sure, the analytics crowd is juiced ab...

The contrived vilification of Malika Andrews has reached a tipping point
There’s no such thing as a good echo chamber. Eventually, bad narratives begin bouncing around, spreading and taking root at a cellular level. ...

The real problem with the Josh Giddey statutory rape allegations
When you continue to embrace a man who reportedly impregnated a 13-year-old when he was in college, and honor that same man regularly by inviting him to marquee league events (like the 2023 All-Star Game) alongside Kareem Abdul Jabbar and LeBron James, it makes it really hard to discipline a current...

Texas A&M stoops to new low by unhiring Mark Stoops amid fan revolt
If you thought Texas A&M couldn’t stoop any lower after paying Jimbo Fisher a record amount to scram, you thought wrong because they did just that on Saturday night, as all signs pointed to the Aggies hiring Kentucky’s Mark Stoops. Reports by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman and Nicole Auerbach kicked o...

Deadspin Dead Ringers: Professional athletes and their celebrity doppelgängers
We’ve all heard of doppelgängers — people who aren’t related but look like one another. There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to finding lookalikes. There was a Saturday Night Live short on the subject. But have you ever looked at one of your favorite athletes, or a player on your favorite team and no...

These are the all-time NBA starting fives
While debating politics over Thanksgiving can cause irreplaceable family fissures, debating the all-time starting fives for each NBA team holds way fewer stakes. There are many different ways to build an all-time starting five, all of which illicit strong reactions. Some people prefer to choose the ...

The best fan-hosted NBA podcasts
With trust in the mainstream media dwindling daily, it’s no wonder corporate sports journalism is also losing ground. Partisanship and traffic-driven agendas have diluted the public’s trust in NBA talking heads. As anyone with a microphone and laptop can start a podcast, a DIY community of fan-drive...