NBA playoffs Page 13 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
If This Is Rockets-Warriors, Let's Just Get It Over With As Soon As Possible
In case you ever decide to hate sports without the crutch of a rooting interest, financial, familial, or simply laundry-based, here’s your ticket. The pre–NBA Finals NBA Finals are already a drunken bar argument, and they’re only going to get worse. The Houston Rockets ... the Golden State Warriors ...
The Warriors Shouldn't Need To Get Shocked Out Of Complacency
It’s not too difficult to figure out what’s plaguing the Golden State Warriors as their first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers drags on to surprising lengths. According to Klay Thompson, the champs were already looking forward to the Rockets, assuming a tidy Game 5 win. According to Kev...
Jusuf Nurkic Hobbled Over To The Blazers' Game To Rally His Team And Roast Russell Westbrook
Portland Trail Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic suffered a horror injury less than a month ago, and even though he remains pretty immobile with a super busted leg, he still showed up to support his teammates Tuesday night. Nurkic wasn’t part of the dogpile after Damian Lillard’s heroic game-winner, but h...
Steve Kerr Thinks Russell Westbrook's Media Grudge Is "Dangerous" For The NBA
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is among the most eager and verbose figures in the NBA, which makes him the opposite of Thunder guard Russell Westbrook. Whereas Kerr will take the time to give his thoughts on gun control or own up to his own mistakes, Westbrook has pretty much always been antagonist...
The Blazers Really Want Russell Westbrook To Keep Shooting
Russell Westbrook’s jumper has never been his best friend, but the relationship between the two has become particularly standoffish in the Thunder’s first-round playoff series against the Blazers. Westbrook keeps asking his jumper if he wouldn’t mind pitching in this time around, maybe help him adva...
Let Us Hope Jayson Tatum Has Won His Long Battle Against Kobe Brain
Celtics star Jayson Tatum scored 26 points on 11-of-20 shooting during last night’s Game 2 victory over the Pacers. He was very good, but the best play he made, and the one that should have Celtics fans most encouraged moving forward, involved him passing on what could have been a game-deciding dagg...
Russell Westbrook Is Struggling
The sixth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder were such a popular pick to upset the third-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs that it’s hardly fair to even call them the underdogs. Only one of ESPN’s panel of 20 analysts picked the Blazers to take the series, and the thinki...
Nothing Could Have Shaken Mike Malone's Faith In Jamal Murray
It’s hard to overstate just how bad Jamal Murray was through the first three quarters of Game 2 against the Spurs. The numbers are as plain and grim as numbers get: 0-of-8 from the field, two assists, and a plus-minus of -18 in 24 minutes. But even those numbers don’t quite capture the depths to whi...
Goddammit, DeMarcus Cousins Is Probably Done For The Playoffs With A Torn Quad
DeMarcus Cousins might be the unluckiest player in the NBA. After eight seasons on two of the NBA’s most cursed franchises, Boogie’s first-ever playoff run is almost certainly over after 25 minutes and 11 points, as the Warriors announced Tuesday that Cousins has a torn left quadriceps. ...
The Warriors Deserved That
Tiger Woods sat back and said, “Well, what I did was pretty damned impressive, but that? Did you see THAT?” “That,” of course, was the most spectacular pipe job in NBA postseason history....
It's Now Or Never For LeBron And The Lakers
The day before the Lakers returned to action after the all-star break, LeBron James told reporters, “My playoff intensity level has been activated.” Let’s check in now on that playoff intensity level....
Warriors Heroically Overcome Jeff Green, George Hill, & Rodney Hood To Claim NBA Title
Despite facing a Cavaliers superteam of NBA legends like José Calderón, Cedi Osman, and George Hill, the Golden State Warriors fought their way past the odds to claim their third league title in the past four years and their sixth overall with a 108-85 win. ...
Kendrick Perkins Somehow Becomes The Central Part Of An NBA Finals Controversy
At the end of the third quarter of Game 2, Steph Curry missed a three and sauntered back towards his bench in front of the Cavaliers. Most of the Cavs let him walk freely, but not Kendrick Perkins, who refused to close his widespread legs and knocked knees with Curry....
Don't Let J.R. Smith Distract You From JaVale McGee's Own Incredibly Funny Failure
An NBA Finals game featuring Nick Young, J.R. Smith, and JaVale McGee was always bound to be full of goofs and gaffes, and while everyone is justifiably mocking Smith for forgetting how time and numbers work, let us not forget that McGee had perhaps an even funnier botched play in the third quarter....
So, Can LeBron Do That Four More Times?
J.R. Smith’s inexplicable game-ending dribbling demo is and should be the thing fans remember about Game 1 of these short-looking 2018 NBA Finals, but lost in all the hubbub around Smith’s all-time brain fart is that the Cavs absolutely should have won a road game against a Warriors team that really...
LeBron James Leaves In A Huff After Reporter Asks Him About What J.R. Smith Was Thinking
LeBron James abruptly exited his postgame press conference last night after ESPN’s Mark Schwarz asked repeatedly about J.R. Smith’s fascinatingly awful play at the end of regulation in Game 1 of the Finals. It’s hard to look appropriately mad in suit shorts....
J.R. Smith Claims He Knew The Score
I can’t know this, but I know it: LeBron James would’ve hit the buzzer-beater. ...
J.R. Smith's Enormous Boner, As Called By Eight Different Announcers In Three Different Languages
J.R. Smith’s end-of-regulation blunder sparked a meme-worthy reaction from LeBron James, a harsh rebuke from the Cavaliers’ Spanish-language radio announcers, and left several other broadcasters baffled or even, themselves, believing Cleveland had won the game (that’s ESPN Radio’s Marc Kestecher wit...