nba-playoff Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Kawhi Leonard Just Dunks The Absolute Hell Out Of The 76ers
Kawhi Leonard is doing it again. He put up a 13-and-10 double-double before halftime of Game 5 of the 76ers-Raptors conference semifinal series, with three assists and a pair of steals. It’s not clear tonight that the Raptors even require all these damn heroics—they’re up 21 at the half and the Sixe...
Joel Embiid Has Diarrhea
In the spring of 2019, writer Giri Nathan asked an editor if he could write a blog about Joel Embiid in the style of writer Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold.” The Sixers player was irritable and dealing with various ailments as his team fought a tight playoff series against the Raptors. “Why t...
Milwaukee's Bench Broke Boston's Will
By the latter part of the fourth quarter of last night’s home game against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Boston Celtics had all but disbanded on the court. Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo was rampaging to the rim on virtually every possession; the Celtics had given up on helping each other defensively,...
Giannis Antetokounmpo Is The Most Demoralizing Man In The NBA
These here Boston Celtics seem dead, filleted and breaded and fully cooked, and their feeble attempts to bridge a series of late deficits last night strongly suggested that, one recent example of a blown 3-1 lead notwithstanding, this is a mentally broken basketball team with one single game betwee...
The Unflappable Warriors Are Being Flapped By The Feisty Rockets
It wasn’t pretty—it hasn’t been pretty, no two-minute stretch of this series has been the least bit aesthetically pleasant—but the Houston Rockets outlasted the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 to knot their conference semifinal series at two games apiece....
The Celtics Appear To Be In The Deepest Of Doo Doo
The Celtics are left with a couple bad omens from Game 4, which ended Monday night with Boston fans booing their team off the court at the end of a pivotal 113–101 loss. Apart, that is, from the fact that the Bucks are now in a commanding 3–1 series lead, with Game 5 back in Milwaukee, where the Buc...
Kawhi Leonard Is Just Very Frickin' Good
Look, man. I think the Toronto Raptors are still outright failing at lots of fairly basic manufacturing-a-series-win-type shit. They still have no plan, for example, for creating a steady diet of reasonably high-percentage shots. Or for attacking J.J. Redick, Philadelphia’s best shooter and most vul...
The Nuggets And Blazers Are Exactly What The NBA Playoffs Needed
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers had every right to give us a sloppy, disappointing Game 4. On Friday night, they played a four-overtime thriller that left both teams exhausted, one team utterly heartbroken, and one superstar out on his feet. All of this could have easily added up to an...
Boban Marjanovic Uses His Large Frame To Obscure Kyle Lowry's Line Of Sight
Boban Marjanovic provided excellent towering defense against Kyle Lowry as the Raptor tried to inbound the ball for the final possession of the half that Toronto got as a result of Lowry selling a foul well....
Steph Curry Blows Wide-Open Dunk In OT, Warriors Immediately Wave White Flag And Give Up On Comeback
The Golden State Warriors needed to score a whole bunch of points real quick at the end of overtime to keep pace in Game 3 tonight in Houston, and instead of doing so, they ended the game in one of the weirder ways you’ll see all postseason....
The Raptors Are Doing Whatever The Hell This Is Again
Well, shit....
Nikola Jokic Explains His Body
There’s a charming feature on Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic, who’s been thriving in his first postseason, over at ESPN today. It addresses many questions that may have been lingering in viewers’ minds. To take just a few:...
Ben Simmons Gets Away With Elbowing Kyle Lowry In The Dick And Balls
This is some dirty stuff right here. In the second quarter of Thursday night’s Game 3 in the 76ers-Raptors series, Kyle Lowry boxed out Ben Simmons on the defensive glass, and Simmons toppled to the floor along the baseline. With Lowry teetering over him, Simmons threw an angry elbow directly to Low...
ESPN's Tim Legler Loses It After His Phone Stops Working During Stephen A. Smith's Show
ESPN NBA analyst Tim Legler had a bit of trouble delivering his takes about the remaining playoff series when he joined Stephen A. Smith’s show this afternoon. Legler was in the middle of praising Khris Middleton when Smith cut him off to tell him he couldn’t hear him. Unbeknownst to Legler, viewers...
It Sucks That One Of These Teams Must Be Served Up To The Warriors Like Ann Darrow To King Kong
The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers played a choppy and bloody and occasionally stupid but highly entertaining Game 2 Wednesday night, with the Blazers prevailing on the road, 97–90, to tie up the series headed back to Portland. The winner of this series should get a trophy and a parade an...
![Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/m3lwkjhcyhb8zvevmpzj.png)
Torrey Craig's Face Smashed Up And Bloodied By Opponent's Arm And Teammate's Leg [Update]
Second-year forward Torrey Craig has been surprisingly huge for the Nuggets this postseason, playing about 20 minutes a night and posting a blistering 71 percent true shooting mark through eight games. The Nuggets benefit tremendously from his scrappy, versatile defense and respectable perimeter sho...
Draymond Green Got In Shape And Turned Back Into A Defensive Menace
After he spent the regular season fighting his teammates, averaging 7.4 points per game, and getting ignored by defenses, Draymond Green has taken a few old textbooks out of his hefty backpack and showed up to the playoffs with an intensity and focus unseen for almost a year. The Golden State Warrio...
The NBA Got Out Of Basketball's Way
When Allie LaForce was dispatched to get a postgame interview from Tuesday’s Rockets-Warriors game, she or maybe her producer chose the sport’s third eye, Klay Thompson. Not bad, as these things go. Thompson is always a better choice than nearly anyone else for these say-little-and-then-go-inside se...
The Warriors' Death Lineup Is, Well, Death
The Warriors took Game 2 of their second-round series with the Houston Rockets, 115–109. Golden State didn’t play especially well, and the Rockets were able to hang around and give the impression of putting up a fight, but only in the way that a small child can be said to put up a fight while you pu...
Steph Curry's Finger Mangled And James Harden's Eye Gouged In Opening Minutes Of Game 2
Basketball fans had every reason to expect Game 2 of the Rockets-Warriors Western Conference semifinal series to be ugly, with the Rockets working the officials in embarrassing fashion and franchise enemy Scott Foster assigned to the refereeing crew. But this was not the start that anyone imagined!...