nba-playoff Page 18 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Raptors Blew It
Coming close hurts all the more when you can quantify just how close you came. One shot, or one missed shot, or one call the other way, or ... one timeout? The Raptors came oh so close to winning a championship Monday night, and it’s not the one-point final margin that’ll stick in craws and steal sl...
Success Spoiled Golden State Warriors Fans
A year ago, Steph Curry told SLAM how grateful he was that Oakland had embraced him “as one of their own.” He’s done his part, there: tons of local charity work, putting Oakland on a shoe and then giving 30 of them away. All of which is to say that he could likely tell you more about the town other ...
Report: Kevin Durant's "Expected" To Play Game 5
The Golden State Warriors are facing elimination, but Kevin Durant, who hurt his leg a month ago, isn’t a sure thing for tonight’s game against the Raptors. At today’s practice, head coach Steve Kerr wouldn’t say anything beyond calling his player a “game-time decision” for Game 5 of the NBA Finals....
The Raptors Are The Warriors Now
Recency bias is a hateful but dominant force in the best-of-seven world, so the clear assumption to be made from Game 4 of the NBA Finals is that Game 6 seems unlikely. The Toronto Raptors are the new Golden State Warriors, and the Golden State Warriors are finally all about the trailing step, the a...
Kawhi Leonard Took Over And The Warriors Couldn't Do A Thing About It
The Warriors as currently constituted are “merely” a great NBA team. In just about any other context, it’s peak roster construction. A couple of all-world shooters, a couple of bangers down low with shots of their own, a scattering of role players each with their own specific skills, and an overall ...
Kevin Durant Is Fucking Up The Finals
In an ordinary Finals, the team in Golden State’s position, down 2-1 after dropping Game 3 at home, would be in real trouble, needing to win three out of four and at least once on the road to avoid elimination. Hell, the Warriors might even be in real trouble! Or maybe they aren’t the Warriors, but ...
Solo Steph Curry Is The Best Steph Curry
A thing that I will never stop inserting into conversations for the rest of my life is that I got to watch Steph Curry play (twice) while at Davidson—both of the Wildcats’ games at the Detroit Lions’ stadium when they made the Elite Eight during Curry’s sophomore season. Steph had 33 of his team’s 7...
The Raptors Won But Finals Chaos Still Reigns
It’s cheap to say that the Raptors beat the Gldn Stae Warors (which is to say, 63 percent of the Golden State Warriors) in Game 3 of the NBA Finals; in fact, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that the Raptors might have won the game anyway....
What If The Raptors Had To Choose Between Kawhi And Drake?
There are rules to the Deadcast, although we don’t generally pay that much attention to them. For the most part, as you might have noticed, it goes like this: Bullshit/sports, sports, sports/Funbag, Funbag. It’s not a lot of structure, but it keeps us honest. This week, though, we faced a Funbag que...
The Golden State Warriors Will Be Pretty Crabbed For Game 3
A seminal description of Steph Curry’s 2012 ankle surgery inspired “crab meat” as in-house shorthand for serious sports injuries. But right now, with the NBA Finals tied 1-1, Curry might be the only Golden State Warrior who could not be consumed with melted butter and lemon. Nearly everyone else in ...
The Weirder The Finals Get, The Better
The news from the NBA Finals is all good, kids, and it is this: Nobody has any narratives left to invent. The events of Games 1 and 2 have savaged all the preconceptions, conceptions, and the way it’s looking, the post-conceptions of this series. Nobody has any idea what’s coming next, and nobody wi...
The Warriors Should Have Been Fucked
There’s no such thing as an NBA Finals loss that doesn’t sting, but some of them hurt more than others. The J.R. Smith Disaster was so demoralizing that you knew, even though it happened in Game 1, that the Cavs would never recover. Last night’s Game 2, which the Raptors lost 109-104, was not nearly...
Marc Gasol Can Run With The Warriors, And Get Buckets Too
Marc Gasol has been a prime component of the Raptors’ asphyxiating defense—one of the most switchable, responsive, obnoxiously needling teams in recent memory. His post D has been stout enough to knock Joel Embiid a notch down from series-defining to merely good. By Giannis Antetokounmpo’s own admi...
Fred VanVleet Can Do No Wrong
How big a lead does a team have to have on the Warriors before its fans can feel comfortable? Twenty points with two minutes left? Fifteen points with 30 seconds to go? To me, it didn’t feel like the Raptors had Game 1 locked up until they were actually dribbling out the final ticks, up nine with th...
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....
Let's Talk Ourselves Into This NBA Finals Matchup
The NBA Finals would seem great to someone who only recently decided to care about NBA basketball. You’ve got your dynastic bulletproof Golden State Warriors, currently minus injured cornball virtuoso Kevin Durant but otherwise as monstrously dominant as ever. You’ve also got the Toronto Raptors, a ...
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 ...
This Kawhi Leonard Ball Fake Is Hypnotic
Kawhi Leonard has been doing a lot that’s reminiscent of Michael Jordan. The raw scoring—Leonard is up to 31.4 points per game this postseason—the shimmying midrange work, the perimeter defense. Add a new entry to the list: ball fakes only possible with enormous mitts. Check out this possession in G...