national-basketball-association Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Jokić bros are back and trolled Jack Nicholson out of Crypto.com Arena
The Los Angeles Lakers have been eliminated after falling to the Denver Nuggets in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals, 113-111, despite LeBron James playing all 48 minutes, and scoring 40 points. LA was swept out of the postseason after overachieving to make it this far, but none of that matter...

The Kyrie Irving to LA, Damian Lillard to Boston rumors will dominate the NBA offseason
At the risk of being a hypocrite and drowning Denver in a flood of Los Angeles Lakers’ developments, the departure from the postseason has stirred up the underbelly of latent Kyrie Irving free agency rumor-mongering. Even in defeat, the superstar carousel never ends in Los Angeles — or Boston for th...

Don't tune out the rest of the NBA playoffs just because the Lakers lost
Some of you American sports fans might be done with the NBA for the 2022-23 season. With the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, and Golden State Warriors all eliminated, some may feel that it’s time to prepare NFL fantasy draft strategies. Feel free, but with the Denver Nuggets playing the Los Ang...

Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars haven’t thrown in the towel yet, unlike their NBA counterparts
We could be breaking out the brooms for all four NHL and NBA conference finals. The Denver Nuggets finished off the LeBron-LeLakers and the Miami Heat will eventually put the Celtics out of their misery on the hardcourt side of things....

Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics have Boston on the edge of misery
Joe Mazzulla versus Erik Spoelstra has been a lopsided showdown between two coaches with a devotion to film study. Spoelstra famously began his brilliant coaching career as a video coordinator with the Miami Heat in 1995. Joe Mazzulla is more of a pure cinephile. One of the more interesting peeks in...

The NBA won't have Carmelo Anthony to kick around any more
Carmelo Anthony is calling it a career after 20 years in the NBA. Anthony says his official goodbye to the game ninth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, and 11th when including the ABA. On Monday morning, he posted a farewell/tribute video reflecting on his career on Twitter, where he spoke of his ...

You gotta wonder how Ime Udoka feels about the Boston Celtics being down 3-0
Losing to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals is one thing. But, being down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals to a Miami Heat team that needed the play-in to make the playoffs is another. It’s also the barometer that Joe Mazzulla has to deal with in a post-Ime Udoka world....

The Miami Heat kicked the Celtics in the head, teeth, calf, and everyone else in Game 3
I have seen some ass-whuppings administered in my lifetime. I remember in the fifth-grade baseball playoffs beating the top overall seed by about 20 runs. To put a championship cap on Alabama’s 2012 football season the Tide ran through Notre Dame so viciously, that their opponents lost the desire to...

The Denver Nuggets are no longer the playoff wallflower
Before this series, if you’d asked most people who would advance to the NBA Finals between the Lakers and their nameless opponents, they would have responded with a rhetorical question. “Do you know who they’re playing?” Not literally. The Denver Nuggets aren’t in witness protection, but just a few ...

No more encores for LeBron James and the Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers and their fan base have been hit with a heavy dose of reality in the Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets. They’ve been a nice “redemption” story after bouncing back from a horrible start to the season, but it’s all over. On Saturday night, the Lakers fell into...

The NBA All-Star game will never again be as competitive as we’d like
So, the NBA is considering changing the All-Star game format yet again. According to a report by Shams Charania and Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, this has been a topic discussed recently among the Board of Governors (team owners) and general managers. The Association wants to increase the competiti...

These 10 NBA teams have the brightest futures
There are many elements to consider when predicting who will succeed in the future of the NBA. To tank the 10 teams with the brightest futures, we focused on three to five years in the future while thinking about each team’s draft capital, promising young players, cap flexibility, and free agent des...

LeBron James flat-out fumbled his way through Game 2 in Denver
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James is a rare breed, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It is unreal how well he continues to play at age 38, having logged 20 seasons in the NBA. He’s one of the greatest hoopers of all time, but in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets, w...

The 2023 WNBA season's juiciest stories to follow
Superteams, and new-look squads. Scandal-riven defending champs. A former political prisoner returns. Rule changes, a pressing need for league expansion, and more. The 2023 WNBA season is here, and these are some of the most riveting storylines to follow all season long....

James Harden wants to escape the NBA title rat race
In his prime, James Harden was the star of the show. His ball dominance was unparalleled. Harden’s expression of basketball is a sublime experience. His ball handling and passing artistry are one of a kind. During his penultimate season in Houston, Harden’s 40.3 usage rate in 2018-19 nearly set an N...

Jamal Murray’s excellence forces Lakers into a must-win Game 3
In an NBA playoff series, Game 2 is usually the forgotten game. A series usually needs a location change before bold predictions are made. After dominating the Los Angeles Lakers for most of Game 1, the Denver Nuggets’ fourth-quarter performance left much to be desired in a victory that they almost ...

Playoff Jimmy Butler is Miami's most important player, but Kyle Lowry is proving to be the Heat’s X factor
Heat culture is a thing and something we’ve heard about for years. Despite Jimmy Butler’s denial, “Playoff Jimmy” is also a thing we’ve witnessed over the past few years in May and June. Another phenomenon that’s becoming clear is the resurgence of Kyle Lowry. Lowry, 37, had to put forth the effort ...

After winning the Victor Wembanyama lottery, San Antonio’s work is only just beginning
The conventional thinking is that Victor Wembanyama will be in safe hands with Gregg Popovich in San Antonio. But there’s no guarantee that the Wembanyama era will be anywhere as fruitful as Pop’s last dynasty or that he’ll have the best career out of any prospect in this draft, but I wouldn’t bet a...

Boston Celtics are consistently inconsistent
The Boston Celtics are going to Celtic from time to time. The problem has reared its ugly head for a third consecutive series, and there appears to be no stopping it. After about 77 minutes of well-played basketball, they were due for a head-scratcher. It arrived in the second half of Game 1 of the ...

Good effort JJ, but invoking America’s gun problem is not the way to defend Ja Morant
JJ Redick is correct that there is a macro issue in this country with politicians using firearms as campaign posters. A majority of Americans would agree with him on that. In one space of that mass of plutocracy, policy, and posturing is Ja Morant posing with one of this country’s most polarizing an...