basketball Page 79 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Investing in NFT ticket stubs is likely one of the NBA’s next big crypto ventures
NBA Top Shot, a collection of NBA NFTs featuring highlights, GIFs, and other classic NBA moments, recently surpassed $1 billion in sales. There have been ups and downs during the company’s lifespan, and it surely hasn’t reached the same heights it teased in early 2021, but Top Shot has remained a vi...

Upcoming sale of the Trail Blazers could partially atone for team not hiring Becky Hammon
If the recent sale of Chelsea FC taught us anything, it’s that sports franchises are as valuable as ever. The English Premier League club sold for $5 billion, and there was no shortage of suitors. That should make Portland Trail Blazers’ fans sleep better in the coming months as a sale of the team i...

International stars are here to stay on All-NBA Teams
Thirty years after the Dream Team introduced the NBA to the world at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the league has transformed into something that the late David Stern would be proud of. Basketball has truly become an international game....

Not to worry Luka, it happens to the best of them
Sure he had to hear his eulogy while he was still living after Andrew Wiggins read him his last rites in Game 3, but Luka Dončić has nothing to be ashamed of. The Dallas Mavericks star led the NBA postseason in scoring, but his singular output was futile against a Golden State Warriors team that pla...

A 75-year streak is in danger of being broken tonight
2021 saw the end of one of the most famous Finals streaks of all-time. Thirty-seven consecutive NBA Finals between 1984 and 2020 saw at least one teammate of Shaquille O’Neal’s on one of the competing rosters. No one on last year’s Suns or Bucks rosters had ever played with O’Neal during his career....

What are the Miami Heat?
Three teams have been pillars of culture in the modern NBA: The San Antonio Spurs, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Miami Heat. No matter the players, these three franchises have established systems where players come in to fill a role, commit to the vision, and buy in completely. Of the trio, onl...

Get rid of position quotas from All-NBA teams already
If there was ever a reason to finally do away with the positional rankings for All-NBA teams, it’s Joel Embiid’s flagrant omission from First-Team All-NBA honors. The powers that be thought it appropriate to put the direct runner-up to MVP on the Second Team to adhere to a positional preference more...

NBA expansion talk heating up
While the NBA’s Conference finals are making surface-level headlines, tectonic plates are shifting underneath the NBA’s crust. On Tuesday, the NBA’s scuttlebutt radar detected signals that could alter the composition of the league. If a report from Portland 750 AM host and Oregonian sports columnist...

Whatever sport the Heat and Celtics are playing, it’s trash
A lot of sports fandom and analysis is about feel vs. facts, which can go pretty haywire at times. It definitely “feels” like these NBA playoffs have been uniquely blowout-heavy, but it kind of turns out they haven’t been. There just hasn’t been any game-turning shots in the last minute or buzzer-be...

Not giving Kyrie Irving an extension makes all the sense in the world, except the Nets have little choice
Logically, it makes zero sense to give Kyrie Irving a long-term contract....

We have parity in the NBA playoffs, and be honest, it’s making you miss the 2017 Warriors
For those who were sick of the Golden State Warriors and LeBron James winning all the time, you finally have what you wanted in the NBA: parity. Going into the playoffs there were at least six teams who had a legitimate shot at winning the championship. But one question: has it been fun?...

It won’t matter whom the Lakers hire as head coach, they’ll find a way to screw it up
The Los Angeles Lakers are currently searching for a new head coach. Once they settle on a candidate, this will be the Lakers’ sixth full-time head coach since 2012. That’s shocking for a franchise that has won as much as the Lakers have in their history. But this coaching search feels destined for ...

The Nuggets are Kroenke’s side piece, but still, a little more effort could go a long way
The Denver Nuggets are an NBA executive factory. Some of the best front-office talent in sports has come through that organization, and hopefully that’s because they have a development system like the San Antonio Spurs, because they continue to lose talent. On Monday the Minnesota Timberwolves hired...

The Grizzlies and Heat reacted completely differently to plays where their stars were seemingly injured
Acting like you’ve been there before might be cliché in the world of sports, but it really is the only way to operate for some franchises. For other organizations, it’s a few words some lame old guy threw together ages ago....

The Dallas Mavericks turned into pumpkins
When I wrote the Dallas Mavericks were a mess earlier this season, it was right after they traded one terrible contract in Kristaps Porziņģis for two terrible contracts in Spencer Dwindiddle and Davis Bertans. My argument was not that the Mavs had made the wrong move in ditching the Latvian bum. Nor...

Jason Kidd’s flippant attitude toward the Mavs’ playoff fines shouldn’t come as a surprise
The Dallas Mavericks theme song should be Drake’s “In My Feelings” for the remainder of the playoffs. That is, because head coach Jason Kidd is all in his feelings over the team being (repeatedly) fined for bench violations. Kidd’s team has been hit three times by league authorities during this post...

Winning fourth ring and first finals MVP would quiet critics and crush many narratives surrounding Stephen Curry’s legacy
On the cusp of returning to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2019, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors find themselves in prime position to silence critics. With a 3-0 lead, the Warriors are all but guaranteed to have a spot saved for them on June 2 when the Finals begin. Winning a four...

College football teams have always bought players
The Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud is a microcosm of the two schools of thought in college football right now. Texas A&M beat Alabama for the top recruiting class in the nation this year and one coach, Saban, was none too pleased, saying, “A&M bought every player on their team.”...

True Basketball Crime: Andrew Wiggins delivered the coup de grace to Luka and the Mavericks’ season
Entering this series, Luka Dončić’s heft, weight and skill were expected to overwhelm Andrew Wiggins. Instead, Wiggins’ capstone moment in his jewel of a playoff series came during Golden State’s 109-100 victory at the expense of the 23-year-old Dončić....

Whose personality is more irritating: Current Jimmy Butler or prime Dwight Howard?
Everyone has had that coworker who kind of sucks but is really good at his job so the manager looks the other way when Glen takes 20 minute out of the weekly staff meeting to brag about his weekend jet skiing. Yeah, he’s annoying, but holy shit can he sell the hell out of reasonably priced Kias. Dwi...