basketball Page 323 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Finals Are Butt And I'm So Mad At The Cavs
First things first: They get no credit for making the Finals. LeBron James could win three playoff series in the East with any four Supreme Court justices as his running mates. Account for that, and what have these bozos contributed to the effort?...

How Good Is Kyrie Irving, Really?
When the Cavaliers were struggling to close out the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference Finals, ESPN’s Zach Lowe penned a column placing much of the blame on the Cavs’ defense, and in particular on Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. As he criticized their efforts in the pick-and-roll, he threw in th...

Six Ways The Cavs Can Get Back Into This Series
The Cleveland Cavaliers have been dominated by the Golden State Warriors through the first two games of the NBA Finals. Down 2-0, the Cavs are running short on chances to get back into the series, but I think they still have a shot if they make the following adjustments....

It Seems The Cavs Are Just Now Learning That The Warriors Play Small
The Warriors disemboweled the Cavaliers last night, winning by 33 in a game that didn’t feel that close, and while there are a million different reasons why, one of the biggest is how effectively Golden State played small. Down two to begin the second quarter, the Warriors went the next 12 minutes w...

Kevin Love In Concussion Protocol After Taking Elbow To The Head
This hasn’t exactly been the redemptive trip to the Finals Kevin Love was probably hoping for. After scoring 17 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in the Game 1 loss, Love had the worst night possible in Game 2. He scored five points and corralled three rebounds in 21 minutes, and had to remove himself...

Should Intent Matter When A Lousy Player Whacks A Guy In The Dick And Balls?
For my money, the strangest moment of last night’s lopsided NBA Finals Game 1 came just after Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova whacked Warriors forward Andre Iguodala in the dick and balls....

Andre Iguodala Delivers Withering Assessment Of Matthew Dellavedova
After getting thumped in the dick by Matthew Dellavedova last night, you knew Andre Iguodala would have something to say. Rather than going fire and brimstone, he delivered a devastating series of backhanded compliments, essentially calling Dellavedova a YMCA scrub. “To make a life, and to feed thei...

Shaun Livingston's Jumper Is The Poison On The Warriors' Blade
Imagine playing for the Cavaliers, and spending the better part of the last two nights stress-dreaming about how you will possibly be able to survive Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Then imagine playing in Game 1 of the NBA Finals and escaping their wrath with nothing more than a 20-point flesh wound...

LeBron James Returned To Cleveland With A Strict, Uncompromising Mentality
During his first go-round in Cleveland, LeBron James was pilloried for all manner of sins—real or perceived—most stemming from the belief that he acted like a tyrant and ran roughshod over the Cavaliers organization. For instance, here is Brian Windhorst the day after The Decision:...

An Extremely Helpful NBA Finals Preview For Basketball Morons
Hello, casual basketball viewer! The NBA Finals begin tonight, pitting LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers against Ayn Rand’s Golden State Warriors in a rematch of last season’s Finals, which the Warriors won in six games. Here’s what to expect, what to look for, and what to pretend to know about eac...

Report: David Blatt Agrees To New Deal With Obscurity
David Blatt has reportedly taken a job with Turkish basketball club Darüşşafaka Doğuş, which has to be the steepest career drop ever for a coach who was in the NBA Finals one year ago....

Marv Albert Screwed Up A Whole Lot Of Calls In The Western Conference Finals
The worst performance of the Western Conference Finals wasn’t Russell Westbrook’s four turnovers in the final two minutes of Game 6, Shaun Livingston’s disappearing act, or the referees letting Draymond Green get away with murder. No, the worst performance of the Western Conference Finals belonged t...

The Warriors Restored Order To The Universe
Over the last two seasons, the Golden State Warriors gained an air of inevitability. Besides putting up a ridiculous 140-24 regular season record and marching to an NBA championship, it came from the nagging feeling that, no matter how well their opponent was playing, the Warriors would easily rip o...

The Golden State Warriors Will Win The NBA Finals
Draymond Green is bad. Steph Curry is Chucky Atkins. No matter. Klay Thompson is a blank-eyed three-shooting robot from space and no one will ever stop the Warriors. I’ll die before they lose again. Burn in hell, Oklahoma City Thunder....

The Pelicans' Bryce Dejean-Jones Has Been Shot To Death In Texas (UPDATE)
Bryce Dejean-Jones, a 23-year-old shooting guard for the New Orleans Pelicans, is dead in Dallas County, Texas, according to a report in the Ames Tribune. The cause is being reported as a gunshot to the abdomen....

The Houston Rockets Have Reportedly Hired Mike D'Antoni
According to multiple reports, the Houston Rockets will hire Mike D’Antoni to be their new head coach....

The Thunder Are What's Wrong With The Warriors
So every frontrunner’s favorite twee basketball unicorns, the Golden State Warriors, the best regular-season NBA team of all time, got duffed by a combined 52 points in two blowout losses in Oklahoma City by the Thunder, previously every frontrunner’s favorite twee basketball unicorns. This was the ...

ESPN Finds New Way To Have Inane Debate Over Sports Analytics
It would be soul-crushing to read let alone write about every dogshit-stupid thing ESPN does, but this one has gone through the ESPN car wash, providing for ample discussion across the company’s platforms, so here we are....

The Thunder Discovered Their Own Lineup Of Death
The Golden State Warriors have spent two seasons terrorizing opponents with what has become known as the Lineup of Death. It’s a small-ball lineup featuring Draymond Green at the five and Harrison Barnes at the four, and it works for a few simple reasons: There are shooters all over the floor, they ...

This Is All Joe Lacob's Fault
After the Golden State Warriors turned back into the pumpkin they were for so many decades and were blown out by the Thunder for a second straight game, it felt natural to try and seek a rational explanation, to assign credit and blame. You could credit Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant for being t...