A fun artifact of the past sports year—in which the Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead with home-court advantage in the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Indians blew a 3-1 lead with home-field advantage in the World Series, and the Atlanta Falcons blew a 25-point second-half lead in the Super Bowl—is that years and years…
After charring the bones of the Cavaliers during the first three games of the NBA Finals and every other playoff opponent before them, the Golden State Warriors finally lost. The dream of 4-4-4-4 is dead and the Warriors now hold the most dangerous lead in sports.
Barring a monumental collapse so great that it blots out all rational sports discourse for a decade, the Golden State Warriors are going to win the NBA Finals running away. For most of the group, this will be their second title, a slice of redemption after last season’s fabled 3-1 chokejob.
With under a minute to play in last night’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals and the Cleveland Cavaliers leading 113-111, Golden State’s Kevin Durant calmly stepped into and nailed a long three-pointer right over LeBron James’s outstretched hand. It gave the Warriors a one-point lead, and left the Cavaliers 45 seconds to take…
The Golden State Warriors just spent the first two games of the NBA Finals dominating the Cleveland Cavaliers in humiliating fashion. After sweeping through the preliminary rounds of the playoffs, and with a Finals sweep very much on the table, the Warriors have a real chance to go 4-4-4-4.
The old-timey wisdom goes: Basketball is a matchup sport. I think I’ve heard Kenny Smith or various other Kenny Smiths say some version of this more than 200 times in my life. That is, basketball outcomes are not determined neatly along gradients of pure talent and/or skill, but rather by how varying skill-sets fit…
Close one eye and squint with the other, and last night’s Game 1 box score starts to look like a positive one for the Cavaliers: The Warriors only had two players score in double figures; Klay Thompson and Draymond Green combined to shoot 6-of-28; LeBron James and Kyrie Irving did their thing. Open your eyes all the…
For the better part of a quarter, the Cavaliers and Warriors gave us the gloriously competitive game these playoffs have so been lacking. Then Cleveland suddenly became unable to defend Kevin Durant in any capacity, Golden State looked every bit as unstoppable as they’re supposed to be, and it all went to hell.Â
It’s that time of year again: 364 days and 23 hours since the end of the conference finals, the NBA Finals are here! The brave Cleveland Cavaliers will seek to defend their championship from the vile and heavily favored Golden State Warriors, whom they vanquished in last season’s Finals by coming back from a…
I think we can all agree that last year’s NBA Finals was one of the best sports things to ever happen, and that it would be maximally good if the same thing—by “same thing” I mean LeBron and the Cavs banishing the Warriors to hell—happened again this year. If you disagree with this, then you are probably a scumbag…
Here is a lovely bucket from Deron Williams, in last night’s Eastern Conference clincher between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics:
I guess if you want to pin the outcome of last night’s Game 7 on somebody—somebody other than repulsive unconscious three-bombing Canuck gorilla Kelly Olynyk—you can pin it on Scott Brooks and Ernie Grunfeld.
Here is some bullshit:
Down two, five seconds left, season in the balance, the charred end of a night when his team hit 20 percent of its three-point attempts, a postseason in which home teams facing elimination were 0-10, the best defender on the East’s top seed staring him in the face, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Johnathan Hildred…
What’s that, you say? After two consecutive dominant performances at home, the Wizards showed up flat and dazed-looking for a hugely important road game and got their asses kicked through the roofs of their mouths? Why in that case, it must have been literally any time the Wizards have played an important road game…
In his “Coach’s Corner” bit after the first quarter of last night’s Game 4 between the Celtics and the Wizards, Boston coach Brad Stevens explained to TNT’s David Aldridge how his team had shrugged off an early Washington run to end the period leading 24-20. “Even when it was 8-0 them,” he said, “we were playing way…
First of all, as a basketball euphemism, physical play is bullshit. Everything that happens on a basketball court is physical play. A bounce-pass is a physical play. When broadcast crews and halftime pundits and bloggers say that one team is playing more physical than the other, particularly in the playoffs, what they…
The Wizards dominated in the first quarter of tonight’s Game 3, going on a 20-0 run and heading to the second with a 39-17 lead over the Celtics. But you’ve heard that one before, and it hasn’t ended well for Washington lately. Tonight was different.
The Boston Celtics won a game in which they trailed for pretty much all but a few moments of regulation, to take a 2-0 lead in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Washington Wizards. Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas was unstoppable in the fourth quarter and overtime, scoring 29 of his 53…