layoffs Page 84 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
One Of These James Harden Step-Backs Is Unlike The Others
James Harden was comically unguardable in Sunday night’s 104-101 win over the T-Wolves, certainly if your name was Andrew Wiggins, and even if your name was Jimmy Butler. Houston must have been relieved to see it. The Rockets’ offense relies on the three-ball more than any other team’s, with fully 5...
The Golden Knights Won't Be Pushed Around
Game 3 was going to be nasty, and the Golden Knights knew it. With the Kings down 2-0 and the series leaving Vegas, where the Knights have been so good at home (the “Vegas Flu” is real, but so is their home-crowd advantage), Los Angeles was going to come out pesty and physical, finishing their check...
Uhh, The Pacers Beat The Living Shit Out Of The Cavaliers
Apart from a furious run spanning the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth, the Cavs were soundly whupped on their home floor by the Pacers Sunday afternoon, and lost 98-80. Possibly these are the end times. Up...is it down?...
Penguins Score Twice In 5 Seconds
The Penguins and Flyers came into today’s game in Philadelphia tied at 1 in their opening-round series. Pittsburgh destroyed the Flyers in the opener, 7-0; Philadelphia came back with a 5-1 win in Game 2....
The End Of Bucks-Celtics Featured A Ridiculous Sequence Of Clutch Buckets
Game 1 of Bucks-Celtics was choppy and hectic and low-scoring, but man was it tense, and the last 10 minutes or so were breathless, hilarious fun. Let’s just sit here and enjoy some highlights for a few minutes, yeah?...
Joel Embiid Moves One Big Step Closer To Returning To Action
For a while during the first half of Saturday’s Game 1 it looked like the Miami Heat might be able to capitalize on the absence of Joel Embiid, who has been in the NBA’s concussion protocol since March 28. Miami had a six-point lead after the first quarter; their lead in the first half grew to as la...
Jrue Holiday And Anthony Davis Overwhelmed The Trail Blazers
Saturday’s slate of NBA playoff games—Game 1s? Games 1?—mostly went as expected: the Warriors made lunchmeat out of the Spurs; the Raptors almost Raptored against the Wizards, but pulled away in the fourth quarter; the Sixers just ran away from the Heat in the second half. Home teams went 3-0 throug...
Serge Ibaka Got Hit In The Dick And Balls
Through three quarters, Kelly Oubre had no points in today’s NBA playoff opener for the Washington Wizards. What he did have was an amazing pass right into Serge Ibaka’s dick and balls....
A Timely And Exhaustive Preview Of The 2018 NBA Playoffs
Ah, casual sports fan: We meet again. The 2018 NBA playoffs begin this afternoon! How the hell will you know what is going on in the games, other than like a bunch of sweaty dudes bouncing a ball and throwing it through a pair of rings, if you don’t have some 10,000 words of preview and analysis to ...
Unleash Playoff LeBron
Fifteen years on, you could hardly be blamed for being desensitized to LeBron James. You and me and everyone else that plays with real and fake MVP votes at the end of every NBA season know how boring monotony can get, and so we stitch together some selective, season-specific argument sort-of-provi...
Okay, Confirmed, Evander Kane Is A "Playoff Player"
In his ninth season, in his fourth city, Evander Kane had played 574 games without ever making the playoffs. (That was just five games shy of Carolina’s Jeff Skinner, who now has no real challengers.) So when Kane earlier this week called himself a “playoff player,” he was talking style, not experi...
Good Lord, Filip Forsberg, This Is Sorcery
Filip Forsberg scored twice in the third period of the Predators’ 5-2 win over the Avalanche in Game 1 of their first-round series tonight, but forget about that first goal for now, because his second one was truly gorgeous. It’s unclear how exactly he managed to keep track of the puck here in order...
Capitals Collapse, In What Is Surely Not An Omen Of Things To Come
Maybe it’s just me, but it felt easier to talk myself into the Capitals this playoffs. They’re still a very good team, the thinking went, but without the pressure of the Presidents’ Trophy—which they won the past two years—maybe they could learn from experience and surprise people by avoiding the in...
The Bruins Whupped The Leafs, But The Ugliness Is Just Beginning
Despite one truly beautiful goal from Toronto’s Zach Hyman, the Bruins easily dispatched the Maple Leafs at home in the first game of their opening-round series tonight, winning 5-1. Boston looked good doing it, too—they closed the night with four straight goals, including this third-period highligh...
Winnipeg's Been Waiting A Long Time For This
It had been 22 years since a Winnipeg Jets team won a playoff game, and that wasn’t even these Winnipeg Jets. That was a different franchise altogether; it’s in Arizona now. This Jets franchise, including its time in Atlanta, had never won a playoff game. But before a crazy, popcorn-erupting, whited...
This Is What Playoff Hockey In Vegas Looks Like
The Vegas Golden Knights, the expansion NHL team that somehow won its division, were the best story in hockey this year. ...
Timberwolves Survive Nikola Jokic To Earn First Playoff Bid In 13 Years
The NBA’s unofficial play-in game lived up to its importance tonight, as the Minnesota Timberwolves needed overtime to outlast the Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference eighth seed. Minnesota earned its playoff appearance with a 112-106 win, overcoming stellar play from Nikola Jokic—who scored 3...
Here's Everything At Stake On The Last Night Of The NBA Regular Season
Tonight, anyone watching the NBA will get to see the closest possible regular-season equivalent of a play-in game when the Denver Nuggets travel to Minnesota to play the T-Wolves for the last playoff spot. Both clubs are 46-35, and Minnesota leads the season series 2-1, though a 100-96 win last week...
As Bad News Goes, Steph Curry's Injury Update Is Good News
The alternate headline for this blog is “As Good News Goes, Steph Curry’s Injury Update Is Bad News”—you can choose for yourself whether to be a glass-is-half-full sort on this. At any rate, the update on Steph’s busted knee is in:...
This Ridiculous NBA Season Can At Least Serve Up A Lot Of Hilariously Unwanted Final Scores
A fun thing to track, this time of year, is NBA games that produce outcomes that, purely from a standings perspective, are catastrophic for both teams. This season offers plenty of potential on this front: 18 of the NBA’s 30 teams are firmly in the playoff picture; all but the top two of each confer...