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

The Pelicans Are Finally Doing It Alvin Gentry's Way
The New Orleans Pelicans have a chance to sweep the Portland Trail Blazers out of the playoffs when the teams meet Saturday evening. It’s fair to say not many saw this coming, although the result will uphold at least one generally held maxim—that the team with the best player on it has the inside tr...

Bojan Bogdanovic Went Nuts And Buried The Cavs
LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers put their stamp on Game 3 early. The Cavs established a comfortable 57-40 halftime lead and looked more like the team that many expected to coast into a second-round series with the Raptors than the stuttering bunch that nearly lost both home games at the sta...

Bradley Beal Says Scott Brooks Apologized To Him For His Role In Beal's Dreadful Playoffs
Bradley Beal, like his team in general, is not having a good playoff series against the Toronto Raptors. Beal shot just 3-for-11 in Game 2, scoring just nine points and picking up four fouls en route to an atrocious plus-minus of -34 in 25 minutes. Overall, Beal is scoring 14 points per game and has...

Goran Dragic Won't Let You Ignore Him
That’s my guy. Looking like Crossfit Benedict Cumberbatch. Love to see this type of vigor....

Steven Adams Will Respect Your Anime Shoes
There’s probably nobody in the NBA more fun to interview than Steven Adams, who manages to be charming even when he’s quite pissed off, or being outright evasive. He always manages to shine brightest when the conversation turns to one of his favorite topics: anime....

Hassan Whiteside Needs To Get His Shit Together
Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside entered the NBA playoffs grumbling about his diminished role on the team, and the proceeded to give his squad absolutely nothing of value while playing limited minutes in the first two games of their series against the Sixers. But last night offered a chance for re...

Is Joel Embiid's Mask More Superhero Or Supervillain?
After missing a few weeks with a concussion and an orbital fracture, Joel Embiid is finally back on the floor for tonight’s Game 3 against the Heat—with a pretty sick mask, goggles included. Constructing the thing was apparently quite the project......

The Thunder Are Being Shady About Steven Adams's Possibly Injured Arm
To refresh your memory, Steven Adams rammed in an alley-oop in Game 1 of the Thunder’s playoff series against the Jazz that made a satisfying thunk, but also rendered his right arm unusable. It just sort of hung there for awhile....

Someone Else On The Cavaliers Needs To Score, Too
If you caught LeBron James in just the right light during that first quarter, you could have seen the steam wisping off his damn bald spot. Playoff LeBron is here but probably much, much earlier than he’d intended on arriving, and as cranky as those circumstances would suggest....

Even A Hobbled Donovan Mitchell Won't Go Down Easily
After bruising his foot in Game 1, Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell insisted that he’d suit up for Game 2, despite having to play through a personally unprecedented amount of pain to do so. He didn’t seem very limited in his second-ever playoff game when he got a steal and scored on the first possession ...

Gregg Popovich Won't Coach Spurs In Game 3 Following Death Of His Wife
The San Antonio Spurs have announced that head coach Gregg Popovich will not be with the team for tonight’s playoff game against the Warriors. Last night, the team announced that Popovich’s wife, Erin, had died at the age of 67 after battling an illness....

Seriously, What The Hell Are The Minnesota Timberwolves Doing?
In Game 1 of the Rockets-Timberwolves series, the eighth-seeded Wolves lost in no small part because they inexplicably froze their two best players, Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns, out of the offense. Game 2 was last night, and the Rockets won, 102-82. Here are some stats from that, courtesy of...

I’m Getting Pretty Fed The Fuck Up With James Comey<em></em>
Former FBI director and self-appointed beacon of rectitude James Comey is currently in the midst of barnstorming the country’s numerous morning show sets to plug his new tell-all. And while I will gladly side with Comey in any tiff with the President or with Meghan McCain, I think I’ve had just abou...

LeBron James Says He Wasn't Blindsided By TNT Reporter Asking Him About Erin Popovich
After the Cleveland Cavaliers won last night to level their series against the Pacers at one game apiece, TNT reporter Allie LaForce asked LeBron James about the death of Gregg Popovich’s wife, Erin Popovich, which had been reported earlier in the night. From James’s reaction, it seemed that it was ...

The Time Has Come For Carmelo Anthony To Hit Some Damn Shots
For all the handwringing over Russell Westbrook’s stat-chasing and shot selection, and over Paul George’s occasional listlessness, an even bigger problem has spent the season lurking in Oklahoma City. A Melo problem....

Larry Nance Jr. Spikes Trevor Booker's Weak Shot Attempt Directly Into Hell
The Pacers are grinding their way back from Playoff LeBron’s personal game-opening 16-1 run, with no help from this sorry Antawn Jamison-ass quasi-hook flip shot by Indiana’s Trevor Booker, which Larry Nance Jr., acting as the living incarnation of righteous justice, pounded into the parquet so hard...

Playoff LeBron Goes On 16-1 Run To Start Game 2
After getting smoked in Game 1 of their first-round series against the Pacers, the Cavaliers came out for tonight’s Game 2 with zero interest in fucking around. Or, to be more specific, LeBron came out with zero interest in fucking around—which he demonstrated very clearly by building a 16-1 Clevela...

Playoff Rondo Is Truly Back
For essentially the duration of Anthony Davis’s career, the Pelicans have been knocked for being a one-man team with precious little depth, no wing players, and little dynamism to their offense that doesn’t start and finish with Davis. The addition of DeMarcus Cousins helped allay the severity of th...

The Raptors Put The Wizards In The Trash, Where They Belong
The competitive part of last night’s Game 2 between the Toronto Raptors and Washington Wizards was over, long over, by the time some combination of shame and embarrassment sparked a smidgen of detectable pride or competitive intensity in any Washington player. The result was a laughably misleading ...

Eric Bledsoe On The Guy Currently Beating His Ass: "I Don't Even Know Who The Fuck That Is"
Bucks point guard Eric Bledsoe has not played very well in his team’s first two playoff games against the Boston Celtics, and his squad is now down 0-2 in the series. Bledsoe is shooting just 36 percent from the field in the series, and has been thoroughly outplayed by Boston’s backup-turned-startin...