Elgin Baylor’s gotta be the most underappreciated superstar of all time, in basketball or any major sport. The guy was NCAA Final Four MVP and NBA Rookie of the Year. He was First-Team All-NBA 10 times and an NBA All-Star 11 times. Baylor led his team, the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers, in the trifecta of big…
It took Andre Ingram 10 years and 384 games in the minors and overseas—in Orem, Utah; El Segundo, California; Perth, Australia; back to El Segundo—never making more than $30,000 a year, and working as a math tutor to make ends meet. Last night, finally, after all of that, in a game that didn’t matter yet ended up…
When the Los Angeles Lakers signed career minor leaguer Andre Ingram to his first NBA contract today, it felt mostly inconsequential to all but Ingram himself—or at most, a sort of cute story. Sure, the 32-year-old had grinded for a decade in the NBA’s developmental league, and playing for the Lakers is a great dream…
In an NBA season defined by incredibly tight playoff seeding races and an apocalyptic tanking campaign featuring a solid third of the league, only three teams were caught in the middle. The Pistons made a futile push for the eight seed, but they quickly joined the Hornets and Lakers as the only teams neither seriously…
I guess I don’t see any particular reason to disbelieve them, but the following postgame quotes, about the shouting match Los Angeles Lakers teammates Isaiah Thomas and Julius Randle had on the sideline during last night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors, are still cracking me up.
Last night’s game between the Nuggets and Lakers came with no shortage of subplots, thanks in large part to Nuggets guard Jamal Murray’s history of trolling and shit-talking in previous matchups. In December, he riled up Lonzo Ball and his teammates by rudely dribbling around Ball as the clock ran out. Last Friday, he…
Paul Millsap stands 6-foot-8 and weighs 246 pounds. He looks like he could easily lift me off the ground while palming my skull. He’s strong, is what I’m saying. But he doesn’t look so strong here, does he?
Back in December, at the end of a Nuggets home win over the Lakers, Jamal Murray engaged in some extremely rude dribbling, to the great irritation of several Lakers players:
The Magic lost a weird one to the Lakers last night. After Aaron Gordon drove through four defenders to put his team up one with five seconds left, Nikola Vucevic fouled Brook Lopez with 0.6 seconds left. Lopez nailed both free throws to give the Lakers a 108-107 lead, so the Magic’s only real chance of winning was…
Really, the only disorienting part of it is the uniforms. A team lately composed mainly of weird misshapen basketball nobodies scrounged from the sport’s couch cushions—a team that on any given night gets but more importantly needs and maybe even cannot survive without meaningful contributions from persons named Bryn…
The Lakers, stuck in the somewhat rare position of being a definite non-playoff team that also has no incentive whatsoever to lose, have, instead, been winning: they’ve now won five in a row, and seven of ten, and nine of 12, and 13 of 18, and 17 of 24. Barring a downturn over their final 20 games—a stretch that…
Nick Young did not come close to making this shot. Not remotely. But he played it off as if he did, and sometimes that’s all you need. Announcer Bob Fitzgerald fell for it, hard.
Aww hell, here’s a pass Isaiah Thomas made last night.
If you are a professional basketball player there is one thing you have to understand: Even though losing a casual shooting contest to a non-professional basketball player is not an objectively big deal, it is something you absolutely cannot allow to happen. Why? Because when it does happen, you have to deal with shit…
A reader who recently stayed at a rental cabin high in California’s Sierra Nevada discovered a note during his stay, lodged in a book called Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere. The message appears to be former Lakers head coach Phil Jackson suggesting, in his own way, that some unknown person might…
The trade deadline has come and gone, and to the surprise of no one, the Lakers did not manage to clear any additional cap space by finding someone to take on Luol Deng and the rest of the four-year, $72 million contract that he signed in 2016.
After just 15 games as an active member of the Cavaliers, Isaiah Thomas is on his way out of Cleveland. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported this morning that the Cavs were acquiring Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance from the Lakers, with the Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor first reporting that Isaiah Thomas and Channing Frye…
What makes these videos of native Philadelphians Kobe Bryant and Dion Waiters going nuts the moment the Eagles officially defeated the Patriots to win their first Super Bowl is how relatable they are. Trust me.
The List of Future LaVar Ball Headlines did not predict this one: per an appearance during his father’s bit in a Lithuanian awards ceremony, Lonzo Ball will perform his first ever rap concert in Lithuania during the summer of 2018. Soon they are going to just rename Lithuania “Balluania” and get it over with.
