nba-playoff Page 64 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Thunder-Heat Series Isn't About The Noise; It's About The Beauty
Before turning on the television to watch Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night, I made the mistake of going to ESPN.com to read about the game, and then I compounded that mistake by clicking on this link, which led me to a video clip of Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless screaming about how terrible ...

Yes, LeBron James Fouled Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant's shot with 10 seconds left to tie last night's NBA Finals Game 2 didn't drop, and now the series is tied 1-1. Arguing over whether a foul should have been called on LeBron James is silly; Durant just as easily could have been called for a charge moments before, and there's no guaran...

Dear ESPN: Your Movie-Tie-In Promos Suck
I was watching the NBA Finals last night. Or, at least, I was attempting to watch them. ESPN was unconcerned with my ability to watch the fucking game and much more interested in running 17 different introductory segments to the game. This is what ESPN always does. They run a dramatic intro to the g...

LeBron James Cuddled The Larry O'Brien Trophy Like It Was One Of His Children
I had a conversation about LeBron James with my grandmother at a cousin's wedding in Colorado this weekend. My Баба lives outside of Cleveland, and like all awesome old ladies she has strong opinions about sports. Our discussion turned to basketball and LeBron James's psyche....

The Thunder Are A Matchup Nightmare For Copy Editors. So Is The Heat.
Tonight's tipoff between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat is a milestone for American pro sports. For the first time, a major championship is pitting two teams whose names are mass nouns rather than ordinary plurals. The naming fad that gave us the Heat and the Orlando Magic at the end o...

Bristolmetrics: The Miami Heat Got 120 Minutes Of <i>SportsCenter</i> Coverage Last Week; Every Other Sport Shared 130
When last we met, the Heat got more coverage than the Western Conference, Stephen A. Smith was inexplicably promoting a sci-fi blockbuster, and the NHL was discussed less than the Indy 500. What would this week bring? ...

LeBron James Is Finally Good At Basketball
Now that LeBron has finally won a game people think is important, maybe we can talk about how good the guy has been. We've talked some in these parts about Rajon Rondo and his Fuck You brand of basketball. LeBron James, with that one three point shot late in the game and follow through pose, ushere...

Here Are All Of LeBron's Unspectacular 45 Points
Watching a supercut of LeBron James's scores in last night's parquet floorwiping of the Celtics, you're struck at how rote it seems. A cold, clinical series of possessions that resembled nothing so much as a practice drill that just happened to have five green-and-white clad obstacles on the court...

LeBron James Destroyed The Celtics To Force A Game 7 (And Got A Beer Dumped On Him)
Oh, this wasn't how it was supposed to be? LeBron James wasn't theoretically capable of delivering a devastatingly effective performance in Game 6 at the TD Garden? Fuck all that. James finished with 45 points, 15, rebounds, and five assists, and the Heat won by 19 points. (The last player with such...

"Good Job, Good Effort" Kid Has Two Nicknames For Kevin Garnett, And One Of Them Is Unprintable
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Young Jack has opinions....

There Is No Best Player In The NBA: The Problem With The Basketball Hero Industry
The most unstoppable player on the winning team in the last Heat-Celtics game wasn't any one player at all. Here's an edited play-by-play:...

Mayor Of Boston Credits "KJ" And "Hondo" For Team's Heart, Success
Mayor Thomas Menino has presided over Boston, city of champions, since 1993. He knows his sports. For instance, he once talked about the time "Varitek split the uprights." Now he's talking about "KJ" and "Hondo," the two Celtics with a lot of heart. He probably means to discuss Kevin "KG" Garnett ...

"Good Job, Good Effort" Kid Identified As World's Best Miami Heat Fan
Nine-year-old Jack Meyer of Coral Gables, Florida, is not, to some's chagrin, the world's trolliest troll of a Celts fan. He's actually an insanely upbeat Heat fan, and that's kind of awesome. NBC Miami interviewed the youngster earlier today to try and get a sense of what it was like to become the...

Even Keyon Dooling Is Talking Smack About The Heat Complaining To Refs
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Everybody's doing it....

The Miami Heat's "Good Job, Good Effort" Kid As Heard Throughout History
He was there to tell Napoleon "Good job!" when the Little Emperor invaded Russia. He called the 1962 Mets season a "good effort." The young Heat fan who so enthusiastically endorsed his team's performance after last night's loss to the Celtics is no stranger to momentous occasions—in sports or oth...

Why Do Players Choke? Oddly Enough, Because They Hate Losing.
The New Yorker poached science writer Jonah Lehrer from Wired, and what do you know? His second piece is sports, and it is timely. Lehrer seeks to explain the plague of every duffer and NBA superstar since the beginning of time: Why do we choke? Why do we freeze up under pressure? Why do things that...

Bristolmetrics: The Miami Heat Got More <em>SportsCenter</em> Coverage Than The Spurs And Thunder Combined
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute by minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....

A Masseuse Died In Chris Bosh's House Yesterday
The unnamed woman arrived at the Bosh home around 10:30 a.m. on Monday, "suddenly passed out" in the early afternoon, and died just shy of midnight....

Math! Says Hero Ball Doesn't Work
Some interesting research from the TrueHoop gang today, meant to address the non-flop-related issue of the 2012 playoffs: Who should be taking those crucial last shots? If the choice is between a covered superstar and an open non-superstar, the numbers say: give it to the open man....

Unstoppable Spurs Juggernaut Only Two Wins Away From NBA Finals
The Spurs—can they be beaten? In the past week (well, the past week plus a little), they've been called "unstoppable", "unstoppable and utterly dominant", "unstoppable" again, and "unstoppable" a few more times. Clearly, the stoppability of the Spurs is not at issue. They are unstoppable. They've wo...