nba-finals Page 33 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

What Happened To All The Interesting Refs?
One of the nerdier things a basketball fan can do at 9 a.m. Eastern Weirdo Time is to go to the NBA website and glom onto the identities of the officials who will work whatever game interests you True, NBA ref nerddom is an exceedingly small subset of Nerdvania, but let a thousand sets of hipster gl...

A Thorough And Informative 2019 NBA Finals Preview For Basketball Idiots
Hello, casual basketball viewer! At long last, the NBA Finals are here, and you know what that means: It’s time once again for you to crib a pitiful smattering of hoops knowledge from this extremely half-assed blog and carry it forth to the sports bar like the torch that lights your path....

Drake And The Raptors Both Got A Talking-To From The NBA
The Toronto Raptors will host Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, and there’s no doubt Drake will be sitting on the sideline. He’s behaved like an unruly dingus courtside in Toronto, blurring the lines between participant and bystander in ways that would make Spike Lee blush. Bucks coach Mike Budenhol...

Even If The Warriors Win, Oakland Loses
This is the real NBA Finals, the one that transcends Larry O’Brien, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Doris Burke, Woj, Adam Silver, dynasties, the next Why-The-Lakers-Are-On-Fire tell-all, the works. This is Oakland’s last stand with the team it raised from a pup, its last healthy bite of an apple that ...

What Can The Raptors Possibly Do To Make People Believe The Lie?
The Raptors took down the Bucks on Saturday, 100-94, to clinch an NBA Finals berth for the first time in franchise history. With that series victory, Toronto seemingly vanquished the infamous Drake curse, exorcised the demons of past postseason failures and even vindicated Kawhi Leonard’s place as ...

Kevin Durant Probably Won't Be Ready For Start Of NBA Finals, Will Have Time To Continue Posting
Here’s some news that, perhaps perversely, should increase interest in the upcoming NBA Finals:...

Dirk Nowitzki's Championship Stands Alone
Dirk Nowitzki is finally retiring after two decades with the Dallas Mavericks, and is secure in his legacy as the greatest-ever player from outside the United States thanks to 31,540 points scored, the iconic fadeaway jumper, his 14 all-star teams, and the 2007 MVP award. His once-reviled, or at lea...

Draymond Green Issues Non-Denial Denial Of Tristan Thompson Fight, Drags Cleveland
Draymond Green, a living, breathing personification of a train horn—who can also effectively play all five positions on the basketball court—has come out with his first public statement since reports surfaced that he and Tristan Thompson got into a little bit of a scuffle at a party hosted by LeBro...

LeBronWatch: LeBron Hunkers Down In "Decision Cave" In The Caribbean
LeBron James deposited the Cavaliers (and probably the Rockets) in the trash can this morning and will become an unrestricted free agent, so expect LeBronWatch comes to a frenzied, frothy climax over the next few days. Leave it to the very frothiest, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, to report that LeBron Ja...

NBA Auctions Off What J.R. Smith Wore When He Lost What Was Left Of His Dignity
A token of J.R. Smith’s eternal shame is up for sale on the NBA’s auction site. “He played 38 minutes and registered 10 points with 2 assists and 6 rebounds,” reads the very charitable caption. In some sense, this is the greatest piece of LeBron James memorabilia that money could buy....

Beer For Herbs Calls Itself "Lebron Tears"
An undeniable spoil of victory is the unassailable right to talk mad shit about your vanquished foes, forever, no matter their prominence nor how splendidly they performed. The Warriors are very good at this, as in the case of Draymond Green using t-shirts to mock LeBron James after each of the last...

Jordan Bell Might Be The Drunkest Golden State Warrior
In the immediate aftermath of Game 4, Warriors rookie Jordan Bell wielded two bottles of celebratory champagne. These were the results:...

Draymond Green Has Once Again Mocked LeBron James With His Championship Parade T-Shirt
When the Warriors took to the streets of Oakland a year ago to celebrate their championship, Draymond Green marked the occasion by donning a “Quickie” t-shirt featuring the logo from the Cavs arena. There’s a long history of sartorial beef between the Warriors and the Cavs, and highlights from the o...

We Now Live In A World Where Nick Young Is An NBA Champion
It was otherwise a shitty, forgettable NBA Finals series, but at least it produced this fascinating outcome: Nick Young (!) joins fellow Cinnamon Challenge hero and former Wizards knucklehead JaVale McGee (!!) as an NBA champion. The sheer improbability of Nick Young finding a role on a championship...

LeBron Busted His Hand In A Rage After That Game 1 Meltdown
I am certainly not going to pretend to believe this might’ve significantly changed the trajectory of the series, but it’s also not nothing: LeBron James reportedly played the last three games of the Finals with a busted-up hand after he punched a black board following Cleveland’s world-historic bone...

Thank God That's Over
Man, Game 4 sucked. Just as a basketball exhibition, it sucked, in exactly the way that all blowouts suck, before we even get to the part where it was an elimination game in the NBA Finals. However valiantly the Cavs fought earlier in the series, Game 4 made clear just what a ghastly, hilariously lo...

The Cavs Made The Right Adjustment
It was the third quarter, and the Warriors, already ahead on the scoreboard and up 3-0 in the series, were doing their third-quarter thing. That is to say, they’d decided to apply the 12 minutes of focused full-bore effort it takes to render them effectively invincible. A game they’d led steadily pr...

Warriors Heroically Overcome Jeff Green, George Hill, & Rodney Hood To Claim NBA Title
Despite facing a Cavaliers superteam of NBA legends like José Calderón, Cedi Osman, and George Hill, the Golden State Warriors fought their way past the odds to claim their third league title in the past four years and their sixth overall with a 108-85 win. ...

They Already Said They Weren't Going To Go, Man
Even though LeBron James and Steph Curry had already said that neither of their teams would visit the White House if they won the NBA Finals, today Donald Trump tried to pretend like he wouldn’t have invited them anyway. Surely the basketball players will regret the opportunity to watch a septuagena...

Kendrick Perkins And Kevin Durant Have A Friendly, Obscene Moment Together
Kendrick Perkins, nominally on the Cavs roster, is just there to wear a suit and start shit. He’s a large, rude chaperone who escorts the team from Cleveland to the Bay and back, occasionally stepping up to yell at or near Drake or knock knees with Steph Curry. Last night he fully embraced his role ...