james-harden Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Which state can field the best starting 5?
Now that the Warriors have returned to glory post-Durant, NBA fans just survived one of the most unbearable periods of the NBA. One filled with superteams and razor-thin parity between the three to four coastal teams with stacked talent (Warriors, Lakers, Nets), and the rest of the small-market team...

NBA player movement junkies stuck smoking roaches this offseason
Rudy Gobert being the biggest name to change teams during free agency made this iteration feel like an overhyped, under-delivered trade deadline. While there’s still quite a bit of time left in the offseason, all but a star is running it back with last year’s team. Unless the Brooklyn Nets find a tr...

Steve Nash was a lame duck head coach from the start in Brooklyn but now it’s time to put him out of his misery
The Brooklyn Nets might as well hand head coach Steve Nash his walking papers now. The level of respect the locker room has for coach Nash feels at an all-time low, which says a lot. Nash never had control of the team, which was highlighted over the weekend following an NBA summer league game. ...

Don’t blame the Brooklyn Nets
Faulting the Nets would be too easy. Worse, it would be unjust....

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...

Kevin Durant’s destiny is to complete 2010 Point Guard Bingo with Dame Lillard
Kevin Durant is under contract for one more year with the Brooklyn Nets, but based on the bevy of reports and leaks on the extremely fluid Kyrie melodrama and its potential fallout, his employment is volatile. That uncertainty has spawned a multitude of options for Durant, but only the Portland Trai...

The death of the superteam (for now)
The Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors Finals was one of the more engaging championship fights of recent memory. The Celtics were on a Cinderella tear on their way to facing a retooled, post-Kevin Durant Warriors. Both teams had organically built the backbone of their roster through adept draf...

Bradley Beal seems shocked: 'Wait, huh? Lol'
Bradley Beal was expected to be the crown jewel of free agency this offseason. It was beginning to feel like things were falling into place for that to happen on Tuesday when it was reported by Michael Scotto of Hoopshype that Beal would be declining his $36.4 million player option for the 2022-23 s...

How the 2022 NBA Draft will go — Lottery Edition
Last year’s draft is already looking like an all-time great. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t gems to be had in the 2022 NBA Draft. Analysts have said this is a four-person draft. But with the league experiencing greater parity than it has in the last two decades, the need for high-impact rol...

The most exhausted pro athletes are…
The funny thing about sportswriters complaining about how a professional season is too long is if you ask a person if they’re overworked, how many are going to say no? Any amount of work is too much. Interview me after a long shift or following a session with a therapist, and I’m ready to chase get ...

Mavs just picked the Rockets’ pocket
Late last night, after Dallas citizens had finished dinner and stretched out on the couch, ready to watch reruns of Cheaters, the Mavericks front office and The Athletic’s Shams Charania dropped a bomb out of nowhere. The Mavericks would be trading the No. 26 overall pick of the 2022 draft, Boban Ma...

Steph Curry really wants that Finals MVP trophy
Game 4 of the Finals felt a lot like Game 1 with the road team quieting a hyped home crowd via a fourth quarter run that flipped the game and sent stunned fans for the exit before the final buzzer. Steph Curry needed to be brilliant and he was, hitting the biggest shot of a series that has seen few ...

The Trail Blazers' offseason is a high-wire balancing act
This is the most important summer of Damian Lillard’s reign in Portland. For the past decade, the Portland Trail Blazers have been the Warriors’ little brother. Think Seth Curry and Steph Curry, but in franchise terms....

2022 NBA Draft Profile: Chet Holmgren
It almost feels too perfect. The scrawny, 7-foot, 195-pound sopping wet Chet Holmgren from Gonzaga playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s easy to imagine him sharing the court with Josh Giddey and Aleksej Pokusevski. Three caucasian dudes, all above 6-foot-8, and all with diverse skill sets and...

Landry Shamet hath brought a plague upon every house he’s entered
Athletes and fans are a very superstitious lot, and if rituals and patterns are to be taken seriously, Suns’ guard Landry Shamet should be forced to play for lottery teams for the rest of his career. If your team is contending for a championship, needs a piece in the offseason, and picks up or trade...

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....

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...

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...

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...

Timberwolves huffing fumes of playoff berth instead of coasting off them
The Minnesota Timberwolves were eliminated from the playoffs on April 29, and with that 114-106 loss to Memphis, we thought all aspects of the T-Wolves franchise would be gone until next season. For those of us who enjoy Anthony Edwards putting guys on posters and stupid fouls from Karl Anthony-Town...