basketball Page 263 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Lonzo Ball's General Passivity Extends Even To Helping A Teammate In A Fight
In last night’s loss to the Phoenix Suns, Lakers guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope got a little territorial with Tyler Ulis of the Suns, and a brouhaha ensued. Not a fight, but certainly an altercation. As NBA “fights” go, this was more intense and physical than the LeBron-Enes Kanter conflict, but cer...

The Celtics Were Everywhere
After last night’s 92-88 win over the Warriors, the Celtics’ defensive rating is a suffocating 97.2. The last time we saw this team approach this level of defensive dominance was during the reign of the Big Three, when Boston won the 2007-08 championship with a defensive rating of 98.9....

Jaylen Brown Helps Carry Celtics Over Warriors With Emotional Win After Death Of His Best Friend
Jaylen Brown helped lead the Celtics to a come-from-behind win over the Warriors tonight, the day after the death of his best friend. After he led the team in scoring with a 22-point effort, he gave an emotional press conference about deciding to play after the shock of learning last night that Trev...

South Carolina Women's Basketball Team Declines White House Invite To "Focus On The Season Ahead"
The South Carolina women’s basketball team, last season’s champions, have declined an invitation to visit the White House tomorrow due to what coach Dawn Staley described as a scheduling conflict and a desire to focus on their current play:...

Boogie Cousins And The Pelicans Might Be Good, Definitely Are Great
DeMarcus Cousins is seven feet tall. He weighs, conservatively, 275 pounds. Here he is, doing pretty much all of the basketball stuff, in a single glorious ramshackle possession:...

Kevin Durant Says Sleepiness Made Him Send Bad Tweets<em></em>
Kevin Durant, who might not be the NBA’s consensus best player but is widely regarded as the league’s No. 1 lame, might’ve put his embarrassing Twitter fiasco from this summer behind him after apologizing and weathering the storm of jokes. But he never addressed the crux of the issue, the thing that...

Who Is The Best Two-On-Two Team In The NBA?
Ben Simmons dropped 18 points, 9 rebounds, and 10 assists last night and quietly flew under the radar. That is because Joel Embiid is a monstrous gift: His 46 points, 15 rebounds, 7 blocks and 7 assists blacked out the sun. There was a gazelle-like Euro step, a double Dream Shake, and easy pullups f...

John Wall Has The Nutmegging Of The Night
There are 11 games on tonight’s NBA schedule, several of which have yet to begin and none of which is yet even into the second half, but I still feel quite confident proclaiming this John Wall masterpiece in transition as the nutmegging of the night, because goddamn this is good:...
![There Are No Police Reports For Kansas's Billy Preston's Car Crash [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/qrrtqcdf7l2hgmg5dqeq.jpg)
There Are No Police Reports For Kansas's Billy Preston's Car Crash [Update]
Local and campus police records do not have any evidence of Billy Preston being in a single-car crash this weekend, as head coach Bill Self claimed yesterday in his explanation for sitting the freshman forward in last night’s game....

Shot, Chaser: Morgan William And Mississippi State Are Planning Their Encore
It’s not that Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer doesn’t have sufficient appreciation for The Shot. The floater that tiny Morgan William sank over the outstretched fingers of Connecticut’s Gabby Williams in last year’s NCAA Tournament gave the Bulldogs a 66-64 win, ended UConn’s...

The Celtics Are Sitting Pretty
The early part of the NBA season has featured plenty of exciting young players and highly watchable teams, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of greatness to go around. The Warriors are still dominant, but the Cavs have looked downright bad at times, and the Thunder are still in beta testing. The Roc...

Pau Gasol Gets A Front-Row Seat To Dennis Smith Jr.'s Giant Dunk
Everyone from LeBron James on down knows that Mavs rookie Dennis Smith Jr. is an awe-inducing athletic talent with a penchant for all-out slams, so you can’t blame Pau Gasol for wanting a glimpse of Smith’s abilities for his own. As Smith dribbled with Gasol on him at the top of the arc, the veteran...

Billy Preston Not Playing After Car Wreck; Kansas Says It Needs "A Clearer Financial Picture Specific To The Vehicle"
Shortly before Kansas’s game against Kentucky, the team announced that freshman forward Billy Preston would not play due to his involvement in a single-vehicle car crash with no injuries, which the administration is investigating for “a clearer financial picture specific to the vehicle.” Hmm....

Two Georgia Tech Basketball Players Suspended For Accepting Benefits
Georgia Tech basketball senior Tadric Jackson and sophomore Josh Okogie have each been suspended three and six games, respectively, by the NCAA after accepting benefits from Ron Bell, a former friend of Yellowjackets head coach Josh Pastner....

Stan Van Gundy: Athletes Protesting Inequality Are "Role Models Of American Patriotism"
Stan Van Gundy praised the work of Colin Kaepernick and other athletes who have protested racial injustice in an op-ed for Time magazine today, complete with a list of specific policy proposals on the subject....
![Marvin Bagley III Leaves Court After Getting Poked In The Eye [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
Marvin Bagley III Leaves Court After Getting Poked In The Eye [Update]
The number-one recruit in the country, Duke freshmen Marvin Bagley, took a freakish injury in the first half of his team’s game against Michigan State tonight. As Bagley went up for a rebound on a Spartan shot, teammate Javin DeLaurier caught him in his right eye with some force....

NCAA Rules Braxton Beverly Immediately Eligible To Play For NC State
Four-star freshman point guard Braxton Beverly has spent the past month in basketball purgatory, but today, the NCAA did something reasonably logical for once when it reversed its initial ruling and made Beverly immediately eligible to play for NC State....

Kristaps Porzingis, Please Get Better At Falling Down
It turned out that LeBron James Did Ruin It For Me, Dammit, and in as direct a fashion as humanly possible, but that’s okay, it was a good game. However, it did reveal something troubling....

Joel Embiid Packed A Season's Worth Of Shit-Talking Into One Game
The Philadelphia 76ers, who are maybe good, beat the Clippers, who are maybe bad, in Los Angeles last night, thanks to a big night from their big center Joel Embiid. The 7-foot-2 Cameroonian has been on a short minutes leash throughout his career, though his 32-point, 16-rebound performance against ...

LiAngelo Ball And Fellow UCLA Shoplifters Are Coming Home
After just under a week of speculation of how the legal process would play out for a trio of UCLA freshmen caught shoplifting in China, LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley, and Jalen Hill are on their way back to America. The group was released by Chinese police following their detainment for nabbing Louis Vu...