Bruce Brown Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Don’t be so quick to count out the Western Conference's top-seeded teams
A large swath of NBA media is out on the top seeds in the Western Conference — and it makes sense, because, for the first time since the 1996-97 season, the East is far and away superior....

2023 NBA Anti-All-Stars: The dregs of the West
The NBA All-Star Game is an honor bestowed upon the most distinguished hoopers every season. Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re doing here. Their time will come. However, the NBA’s worst rotation players deserve to receive their dead flowers too. Stare into this dark void with me and commemorate t...

Durant to Phoenix, Lake Show reboot: Recapping the NBA Trade Deadline’s biggest deals
The 2023 NBA Trade Deadline was one last chance for intrepid NBA contenders to separate themselves from the pack and for a select group of sluggish teams to stow a stimulant onto their rosters. Unless you’re John Collins still stuck on the runway in Atlanta, it didn’t disappoint. The relative parity...

The best games on the NBA schedule this week — only one back-to-back
Don’t let anyone tell you the NBA schedule during the regular season is a poor entertainment product. Of course, a single game does not impact a team’s overall record the same way that it does an NFL team. In the NBA teams play multiple games per week. That is not changing anytime soon, especially w...

Nic Claxton is a major reason why the Brooklyn Nets have played so well lately
Thursday night’s playoff rematch between the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets will be like many big-time NBA regular-season matchups — incomplete....

It appears Kevin Durant has made peace with treading water in a sea of Nets chaos
Kevin Durant most definitely wanted to be traded this past summer....

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....

The Nets might get swept, but don’t put any of that blame on the supporting cast
“If Kyrie and KD average 30 and 35 points per game, that’s only 65 points. Where are the rest of the points going to come from?” ...

Leave Bruce Brown alone — it was a foul, not a flop, that injured Kevin Durant’s knee
It has been an up-and-down, one-step-forward one-step-back kind of a season for the Brooklyn Nets. Their next 4-6 weeks might go down, back, and off to the side as resident MVP candidate Kevin Durant will be sidelined for that span. The Nets today announced the results of an MRI, which showed that D...
![[UPDATE] This is fine: Kyrie Irving already in COVID protocols](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/0124ba961e791e1e056e5b9b9ac99d38.jpg)
[UPDATE] This is fine: Kyrie Irving already in COVID protocols
Less than two hours after this piece was published, the Nets announced that Kyrie Irving has entered the NBA’s health and safety protocols, because of course he did....

The NBA once led sports in defending COVID — now it’s getting dunked on and crossed over by the virus
Last year, between the Bubble and a season full of mandates that included no fans, or only the vaccinated ones, the NBA did a pretty good job at protecting their league against COVID-19. ...

The Nets are even more stacked now
Yes, they’re old. Yes, we should have concerns about injuries. Sure, we don’t even know if all the players are vaccinated yet, which will matter because they’ll have to be. ...

Deadspin fixes NBA free agency, Part VI: The Sleepers
This isn’t a best of, and it can’t be; we don’t even know who will be available by the time this goes up. ...

LaMarcus Aldridge joins loaded Nets, but we found the team they should STILL fear the most
Just because LaMarcus Aldridge has his lowest scoring average since he was a rookie, his lowest true shooting in five years, and his lowest rebounding average ever this season doesn’t mean he’s cooked at 35....

Nets will be ultimate test of ‘defense wins championships’ theory
At some point, the Brooklyn Nets will need to get stops. Simultaneously, when it matters, they’ll need to prove they’re healthy. But even without Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, James Harden was able to turnaround what would’ve been a dispiriting loss to the Phoenix Suns — who led by as many as 24 po...