Eastern Conference Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Jack Hughes is quietly having a historic season
The buzz over the 2019 draft seems quaint now. Or it did. Back then, especially because it involved the rivals Devils and Rangers trying to race to the bottom to get one of the top two picks, it picked up more buzz than hockey lotteries normally do. No, it wasn’t the McDavid-Eichel draft (and the Ei...
The return of the Celtics
It wasn’t long ago that the Boston Celtics were viewed as one of the more underachieving teams in the NBA this season. ...
Kyrie Irving has his way with Orlando, scoring 60 points one game after Durant drops 53
If I told you Kyrie Irving was cooking on the court last night, you’d probably say, “OK, what’s new,” right? But Kyrie was on an entirely different level in Tuesday night’s 150-108 win against the Orlando Magic, going for 60 points in only 35 minutes of game action. Irving had 41 in the first half, ...
Chris Finch is the NBA’s Coach of the Year
The Minnesota Timberwolves’ surge up the NBA standings has been a warm fire during another frigid winter. For the past decade, this has been an utterly moribund franchise. The time was nearing for Karl-Anthony Towns to begin asking for an escape hatch as his super-max contract approached its expirat...
Joel Embiid is deserving of the MVP, but the award should go to Nikola Jokić
Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid showed on Monday night why they are the two front runners for MVP in the NBA. Embiid scored 43 points and tallied 14 rebounds and three blocks while leading the Philadelphia 76ers to an important 121-106 victory over the Chicago Bulls that vaulted them past the Milwaukee...
Bulls get 'revenge' on Grayson Allen, but lose fourth straight
Whether it was on purpose or, as Derrick Jones Jr. insists, by accident, the Bulls have finally (sort of) gotten their payback on Grayson Allen. In a late January matchup between the Bucks and the Bulls, Allen had a flagrant 2 foul that put Bulls point guard Alex Caruso out of commission for months ...
Zion might want to leave the Pelicans, but he really shouldn’t
Zion Williamson’s absence from the New Orleans Pelicans has of late led to tons of speculation about his future. Former teammate JJ Redick made the rounds on ESPN shows to talk about Zion’s lack of professionalism, even saying on First Take that he had even addressed it with Zion in front of the tea...
Keep an eye on the Heat, NBA fans
Jimmy Butler has missed 19 games, Kyle Lowry has missed 15, and Bam Adebayo has missed 25. Yet, as the NBA regular season resumes tonight after the All-Star Break, the Miami Heat are in first place in the Eastern Conference. The Heat have the same winning percentage as the second-place Chicago Bulls...
Mayor Eric Adams just threw a lob to the Nets
Kyrie Irving took a gamble on his health when he began his crusade against New York City’s vaccine mandate. The mandate states that residents cannot enter indoor spaces, such as gyms, if they have not received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. His stance a...
So the Phoenix Suns are really good in clutch situations
The ability to come away victorious in close games is a great way to determine a team’s championship viability. The final five minutes of a close is when we get to see each team’s talent and coaching at the forefront. It’s when we get our best approximation of a team’s ceiling, and by golly, the Pho...
The Knicks are living a regression to the mean nightmare
I know I spend way too much of my time mocking the plight of New York Knick fans and their undeserved cockiness, but Thursday night’s fiasco felt like a turning point. They may finally be devoid of hope. For the third time in their last seven games, the Knicks squandered a lead of 20-points or mor...
An old beef classic has returned: Stephen A. Smith versus Kevin Durant
It all started with Stephen A. Smith’s Thursday appearance on NBA Today, which included a searing hot take about Kevin Durant. The Brooklyn Nets at the time were on a six-game losing streak that on Friday extended to seven. They are currently on a five-game Western Conference road trip that ends fol...
Guess what Ben Simmons? You proved Shaq’s point
Philadelphia 76ers’ guard Ben Simmons has not played a single game all season. Why? He wants to be traded. Why? Because after an abysmal 2021 postseason that saw Simmons shoot 34.2 percent from the free throw line before getting bounced by the Atlanta Hawks in the second round, Simmons rightfully re...
Why this Chicago Bulls moment matters
It wasn’t supposed to last this long. When Michael Jordan slightly pushed off Bryon Russell to square up for a 17-foot jump shot with 5.2 seconds left in 1998, the future was a giant question mark. The moment the shot clock expired, the rebuild began. Bulls fans knew the band was broken up. This wou...
Now Daryl Morey thinks he can land Harden in the offseason? Just make a trade already, man!
Daryl Morey is really trying to apply that “shoot for the moon, if you miss you’ll land among the stars,” saying to his attempts at a Ben Simmons trade. Actually, knowing what we know about Morey he would probably debunk that saying with the explanation, “the stars are actually light years farther a...
A rough stretch for the Bulls doesn’t look like it’s going to get better soon
The clock has struck midnight and the Chicago Bulls 2021-22 Cinderella season has turned into a pumpkin at the halfway point. It started with their big Wednesday night matchup last week against the Brooklyn Nets who, at the time, had all three of their stars on the court. After a competitive first h...
This is what happens when you get the aristocracy’s attention
A good portion of fans, most I would say, fail to recognize just how long the NBA season is. Goes for the NHL and MLB ones, too. It’s always hard to explain to a lot of them that there are nights in the middle, or maybe on the second of a back-to-back or the last of a four games in six nights, when ...
The Wizards of odd
It feels like such a long time ago that the Washington Wizards were in first place in the Eastern Conference, winning 13 of their first 20 games. Since Nov. 29, however, Washington has gone 8-13, dropping it all the way down to ninth place in the East at 21-20. Talk about a fall from grace....
Give DeMar DeRozan his flowers for putting the Bulls in first place
What a three-game stretch for the fifth-leading scorer in the NBA, DeMar DeRozan. Mr. Anti-analytics has been letting his mid-range shot fly all season, propelling him to a scoring average of 26.9 points per game. With 28 points and six assists on Monday DeRozan was the Chicago Bulls’ leader in poin...
Out of shape? James Harden says absolutely not after returning home for Christmas to pound on the Lakers and Clippers
Christmas at home might be the turning point in James Harden’s 2021-22 season. The Brooklyn Nets played at Crypto.com arena against the Los Angeles Lakers on Christmas Day, against the Los Angeles Clippers on Dec. 27, and in between those two games, Harden’s high school in Lakewood, Calif., retired ...