jayson Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ranking the NBA’s first round matchups by how likely we are to see an upset
The NBA’s playoffs are easily the most predictable of the major American sports leagues. Without the variability of baseball or the single playoff game format like football, it’s pretty rare that there are any true upsets in the first round of the NBA playoffs. In most years you look at the bracket ...
Boston vs. Kyrie, can everyone lose?
The NBA playoffs have tossed up enough good matchups to keep the first round interesting, even though the NBA usually leans chalky around this time. There weren’t a lot of great games this weekend. The first two on Saturday weren’t bad as the Jazz and Timberwolves got road wins. The Bulls kept thing...
NBA playoff matchups we’d love to see (and one we wouldn’t)
The 2022 NBA playoffs is an annual garden of forking paths. Teams don’t know who to expect awaiting them in the next round or when their season will end. One injury can swing momentum in the other direction. What we do know is that there are particular matchups that are more palatable than others. C...
We forgot about Trae
Led by Trae Young, the Atlanta Hawks began this season with more buzz than the city’s best lemon pepper wings. They were a quality young League Pass team who’d matured into an Eastern Conference heavyweight overnight. The 2021 postseason served as the setting for Young’s glow-up from empty calorie s...
Breaking down the logjam for the No. 2 seed in the East
With three games remaining for Boston, Philly, and Milwaukee, and the three teams all squared up at 49-30 for the two through four seeds, The Race Not to Finish Fourth in the East has massive implications on who plays Phoenix in the Finals, who wins the MVP, and who likely faces Toronto in round one...
Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell need to head for Splitsville soon
It’s time to face the music. Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert are a more discordant duo than Salt Lake City and jazz. Always have been and always will be. Their partnership has been filled with more personal drama than team success. The oversized egos don’t match the playoff wins. Great partnerships...
The NBA MVP race is headlined by three international players, but we should’ve seen this coming
This year’s NBA Most Valuable Player award race is coming down to the regular season’s final days. We’re almost a week into April with a handful of games remaining, and the pack leader seems to change by the day. There is no clear-cut leader, but one thing we do know is the winner is almost assured ...
Kyrie Irving’s return to full-time has seen his numbers come back to earth
Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving had the sweetest deal of any player in recent memory for most of the season, where he only had to play half the games on the schedule due to his vaccination status....
The top 10 clutch scorers in the upcoming NBA Playoffs
The NBA playoffs are just around the corner, and we’ve got tight races in each conference heading down the stretch. Most top teams are usually led by players who can take a game over, especially in the fourth quarter/crunch time. Some players have been left off the list for various reasons like inju...
Caleb Love was the villain Coach K and Duke deserved
A scythe has stalked Coach K’s career since he announced his plan to retire last July. On Saturday night, Duke’s final Final Four of the Mike Krzyzewski era came to a grisly end. UNC’s 81-77 victory over their arch-rival also featured a familiar slayer in Caleb Love....
IDIOT OF THE MONTH: Cleveland Browns stand out among crowded March pack
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, where we laugh at people and organizations around the sports world because otherwise we would cry. An honorable mention for March goes out to none other than You, the reader! That’s right — You, most dearest sports media consumer, honestly believed your Marc...
MLB ventures further into the Why Not?
It has become tiring to describe baseball and those in it and just outside of it, as crusty. But it also hasn’t stopped me from being crusty on certain subjects that MLB has discussed to try and liven the game up. I hate the expanded playoffs. I don’t mind the DH in the NL anymore, though I used to ...
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. ...
Urban Meyer didn’t know who Aaron Donald was
The dedicated, diligent, maniac of a competitor known as former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer, had some basic problems when putting together an NFL deadline. According to a report from The Athletic’s Jayson Jenks and Mike Sando, Meyer was not familiar with the best players in the NFL — you ...
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...
The most dazzling tournament runs (by players who didn’t win it all)
One byproduct of college basketball’s March Madness’ 68-team, single-elimination format is it provides an avenue for players from programs major and mid-major to upgrade their stature. When certain players get their opportunity, they unlock a level few mortals can reach and sustain for multiple week...
Still waiting for Kyrie Irving’s post-All Star Break warning to come to pass
“Just watch how our squad comes out of this All-Star Break,” - Kyrie Irving...
Jaylen Brown injury speaks to the fragility of Boston’s makeup
I almost wrote about the Celtics on Tuesday because I heard about these projections that had them with heavy title odds, but when I went to FiveThirtyEight to try to find them, it felt like I was trying to decipher binary code. So I held off to wait to see if anything came of the research I loosely ...
The Celtics need to wake up and move on from either Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown
The Boston Celtics have one of the richest legacies in North American sports, but as of late, they have not been able to get over that hump to capture another NBA championship. In recent years, their two young stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have led them to multiple Eastern Conference Finals a...
MLB lockout: So what?
There are plenty of reasons to ignore Buster Olney, not only for the duration of the lockout, but beyond. ESPN’s baseball version of Adam Schefter is routinely a water carrier for some of the worst the sport has to offer, from caping for Zack Scott, to floating “ideas” that he then accidentally reve...