embiid Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
For NBA MVP, the value bet is Zion, but who will actually win is obvious
It’s easily forgotten that NBA is actually an acronym that stands for National Basketball Association. For a casual observer that follows the league’s personalities and news breakers on social media, the league can be viewed as a multiplatform action/drama that sparks the audience’s adrenaline with ...
Catching up with the soap opera drama of the NBA
The NBA is one of the longest-running unscripted nighttime soaps on television. Even outside of tip-offs and the final buzzer, its headliners are some of the most accessible figures in professional sports. The rosters are smaller, their faces aren’t obstructed, their games air nightly for at least h...
And the nominees for this NBA season’s only-great-in-video-games teams are …
There’s a rage-inducing aspect of NBA 2K every year that makes me feel like I need to take those seminars to avoid turning into my dad. A few crazy-talented teams become fan favorites and get overused to the point of exhaustion due to sheer star power despite being middling to garbage in real life. ...
Victor Wembanyama is the NBA’s basketball comeuppance
Victor Wembanyama is the evolution of basketball personified. But evolution requires a catalyst. Sure Wembanyama’s genes play a significant part, but decades earlier he could have been Frédéric Weis. Weis was the first French center whose name was seared into the memories of American basketball fans...
The NBA is still trying to polish turds
The NBA is trying its best, guys, give them a break. Schedule releases are only a big deal in the NFL, where teams have to play their best players every week, save for a possible late-season rest. So even though Roger Goodell and his cronies show up every year with pictures of presents like a twiste...
How bloated are the preseason win totals for the NBA teams fans love to hate?
When oddsmakers release NBA win-total futures, most casual fans scan right to their teams’ over/under and say, “My team’s better than that.” After a prolonged and misguided rant about sharps who do this for a living doing their job, the next move is to find the franchises they hate and bitch about t...
Where will Kevin Durant go?
Just when you thought the 2022 free agency period was going to be an Ambien pill, the Brooklyn Nets soap opera returned to inject an adrenaline needle to the vein....
It’s time to stop kicking the word ‘superstar’ around the NBA like it’s a game of hacky sack
Some words in the English lexicon get tossed around like loose change on a rollercoaster. Professional sports take it to another level when players, coaches, and pundits feel the need to hand out compliments. The word “superstar” has become as commonly attached to guys as the word “player.” Yes, the...
If I’m Victor Wembanyama, I’m all good on being called a unicorn
Now that Aleksej Pokuševski and Franz Wagner have understudies and Jabari Smith Jr. has a couple more guards who won’t pass him the ball, it’s time to peek inside the 2023 NBA Draft. And if you’ve done that, you’ve no doubt come across the name Victor Wembanyama. The French big man has a frame simil...
It’s all smiles with the Pelicans and Zion Williamson these days, or so they tell us
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, such as another Zion Williamson injury, in the 2022-23 season expect to see the full New Orleans Pelicans team that basketball fans wish had taken on the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. The Pelicans can offer Williamson a max contract extens...
C’mon give Jayson Tatum a break
The internet strikes again. Well, Twitter, to be exact....
Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?
Rudy Gobert is this offseason’s CJ McCollum in that every GM is going to call about the star player and get counteroffered with the secondary player. Yes, we know you called about Donovan, but for the low price of a couple draft picks and a salary dump, you can have Rudy at $38 million to $46 millio...
Reformatting the NBA Playoffs could solve the league’s injury issue
The NBA Playoffs are gradually winding down, and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag where quality is concerned. Despite the rating increase early in the postseason, some of these games have been hard to watch. Injuries to stars and the lack of downtime between games have some thinking it m...
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....
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...
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...
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?...
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...
Philly embarrasses Joel Embiid by making up an award so he can win something
Winning the MVP award isn’t about taking home a chunk of metal sponsored by Kia. It’s about being able to hold the distinction of “Best Player in the World” over the competition’s heads. Nobody cares about winning something, they care about the distinction that comes with winning that thing. They ca...