hoot Page 12 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
DeMar DeRozan’s daughter drop-kicked basketball analytics
Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill said in Goodfellas that your killers “come with smiles.” The Toronto Raptors’ killer was a nine-year-old girl who surely arrived at Scotiabank Arena with a smile on her face, because her father allowed her to miss school. Once the game began though, Diar DeRozan was more rele...
Might be time for the Hawks, Mavericks to pull the plug on the stars they traded for in 2018
Zoom out on the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks 2018 draft-day trade and the results appear positive. Both franchises made a trip to the conference finals and were competitive against the eventual NBA Champion. Trae Young is a two-time NBA All-Star and was named third-team All-NBA last season. Lu...
Battle of the bottom of the Eastern Conference barrel
The Eastern Conference hasn’t been as wide open as the West this season, so their play-in race wasn’t nearly as exciting. There isn’t much expected from the play-in participants in the east, even though the Miami Heat were in the Eastern Conference Finals last postseason. In the east, the Milwaukee ...
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....
If the NBA had a Dunk of the Year award, Ja Morant would be the winner
As we enter the final weekend of the NBA season, there are only a few regular season awards yet to be wrapped up. The most notable is the MVP race, but you’re delusional if you think I’m going to write about that. What I’m here to talk about today is the Dunk of the Year. It’s not an official award ...
LeBron leading Lakers' late playoff surge — with a first-round exit likely
The Los Angeles Lakers are riding high late in the season as they attempt to sneak into the top six of the Western Conference avoiding the play-in tournament. After beating Utah Tuesday night, L.A. sits a half-game back of the fifth-place Golden State Warriors and tied with the Clippers (both 41-38)...
Sacramento’s Mike Brown is NBA Coach of the Year — and it shouldn’t be close
The NBA regular season is rolling toward its end, which means award talk is heating up. You’ll hear about the MVP race primarily, but a few other awards are handed out each year that matter. Coach of the Year is one of them, and no one is more deserving in 2023 than Sacramento Kings head coach, Mike...
The Great Debates tournament: Elite 8
We have arrived at the Elite 8, and this round is going to be a good old-fashioned slobber knocker....
What in the hell were the Mavs thinking on this play?
The Dallas Mavericks have seemingly spent this season in a state of perpetual confusion. Things started alright but have worsened as the 2022-23 campaign nears a close. Trading for Kyrie Irving only complicated matters by doing the opposite of what team governor Mark Cuban had hoped. Wednesday night...
Austin Reaves has been the biggest beneficiary of the Lakers’ Russell Westbrook trade
It’s a new age in L.A. Move out of the way, LeBron James. Make way for… Austin Reaves. OK, chew on that for a minute, swallow the thought, and breathe. There’s obviously room besides Reaves in the Los Angeles Lakers’ lineup for the scoring king when he’s healthy enough to return to action. LeBron is...
The Golden State Warriors core is discovering its first gray hairs
The Golden State Warriors have been hovering at or around .500 all season long. In 2020 and 2021 you could chalk it up to injuries and the reloading process. That championship hill their overwhelming talent allowed them to ascend is starting to appear too steep for their core to climb on its own. A ...
These NBA playoff performers have the most to prove
Every year a group of players enters the NBA playoffs with the weight of their legacy on their shoulders. And every year, all but one player exits bearing even more weight than they went in with. This season is no different, despite the unprecedented parity in the league. So we’ve pinpointed the pla...
Jimmy Butler blasted this horrible band in the locker room to punish his Heat teammates
I get it. I totally get why Jimmy Butler reportedly gets under the skin of his teammates. He had a point when he was with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Those young players needed to have enough energy to not get mauled by him at practice. But what happened recently is worthy of the NBA bringing the am...
Are Jason Kidd’s new glasses a sign that he’s quiet quit?
There’s a phenomenon, a quirk, a thing that happens every so often with coaches, a subtle or sometimes overt change, that I believe tips their hand to whether they’ve quiet quit on the job. When a skipper knows his time at a stop is coming to an end, he’ll change his attire. It can be as obvious as ...
When keepin’ it real goes wrong: Dillon Brooks awoke a sleeping Draymond
Dillon Brooks must not have seen or fully absorbed peak Chappelle’s Show-era “When Keepin’ It Real Goes Wrong” sketches. This week, Memphis Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks tried being his authentic, obnoxious self in an ESPN profile that featured quotes that drew the ire of equally cranky Golden Sta...
It’d take the lengthiest of zone defenses to cover Jim Boeheim’s career
Jim Boeheim’s tenure reflects a coach whose career almost spanned half a century at Syracuse. From bringing his alma mater a national championship in 2003, to winning the second most games of any college basketball coach, to ushering in and out the Big East Conference (as we knew and loved it) to hi...
JJ Redick and Kendrick Perkins are becoming ESPN’s new debate-show circus
JJ Redick looks like he’d rather be receiving a colonoscopy than embracing the debate on First Take. Redick joined ESPN after retirement, riding the success of his podcast The Old Man and the Three, and initially seemed like an odd fit for First Take. However, the more he strikes a nerve with his co...
Jalen Williams is becoming the jewel of this NBA rookie class
For much of the past year, Jalen Williams has been an underground jewel for NBA mole people. He won’t be discussed on First Take because he came from a mid-major and got jammed into one of the NBA’s smallest media markets. ...
Nobody in the NBA ever told Giannis about Ricky Davis?
Giannis Antetokounmpo was nine years old in Greece in March 2003, so it’s likely that he didn’t watch too many Cleveland Cavaliers games before the Franchise selected LeBron James with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft that June. Still, a veteran should have told him the story about Ricky Davi...