nba-playoffs Page 19 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Mike Francesa Might, <i>Might </i>Be Able To Name Four Players In The Nuggets-Trail Blazers Series
The Western Conference semifinal series between the Denver Nuggets and the Portland Trail Blazers has been very good. It was hectic and tight through the first four games, then Denver landed a heavy blow with a Game 5 wipeout. Thursday night the Blazers responded, surging ahead in the second quarter...
Joel Embiid Emerges From Fog Of Illness, Leads 76ers To Game 6 Win
Joel Embiid didn’t put up the hugest numbers in Thursday night’s Game 6, but if anything his pedestrian production underscores just how dominant Embiid can be when he’s not pooping out and coughing up various vital internal organs. Thursday night he was feeling good, and as a consequence the 76ers ...
Kevin Durant's Achilles Seems To Be Intact, But The Warriors Have To Beat The Rockets Without Him
The good news for Warriors fans: An MRI this afternoon confirmed that Kevin Durant’s scary-looking non-contact injury Wednesday night was actually a right calf strain. The last time Durant strained his calf, he was only out for a week, which means he could return in the playoffs and should be health...
Don't Worry About The Warriors, But Worry A Little
There are worse problems to have as a basketball team than the lingering hangover and lousy vibes that come with a half-decade of all-devouring dominance. In the abstract, that doesn’t really sound like a problem at all—being slowly spoiled by overwhelming success is, on balance, a much better way t...
The Vile Celtics Are Dead And I'm So Happy
It was going to be so bad, man....
Paul Pierce Has Spent The Last Day Rotating Over The Flame Like A Rotisserie Chicken
Paul Pierce played his last NBA minute over two years ago. His absence made no hearts grow fonder. Last night, while the Bucks drained the last drops of blood out of the Celtics’ season, Milwaukee’s arena lit up with a “Paul Pierce sucks” chant....
Warriors Dodge A Whole Hailstorm Of Bullets, Hold Off Rockets In Game 5
The Warriors found themselves in a real hairy spot Wednesday night, in the second half of Game 5 of their conference semifinal series against the Houston Rockets. The Rockets were surging even before Kevin Durant went down with a lower leg injury, erasing Golden State’s early lead and drawing to wit...
![Kevin Durant Leaves Game After Suffering Alarming Non-Contact Leg Injury [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/rbmkyyzfpjakryfypnh6.gif)
Kevin Durant Leaves Game After Suffering Alarming Non-Contact Leg Injury [Update]
Late in the third quarter of Wednesday night’s Game 5 of Rockets-Warriors, Kevin Durant pulled up with a sudden non-contact lower leg injury, and had to leave the game. Reggie Miller, working the TNT broadcast, observed that the sequence of Durant’s injury looked strikingly similar to the Achilles t...
The Bucks Humanely Sent The Celtics To The Rainbow Bridge
In the third quarter of Wednesday night’s Celtics-Bucks game, the Celtics half-heartedly swarmed a Giannis Antetokounmpo-Eric Bledsoe pick and roll at the top of the key, and Giannis smartly dumped a little bounce pass to Bledsoe on the short roll, where he could attack a scrambled Celtics defense. ...
Jamal Murray Has A Great Deal Of Sauce
Jamal Murray in his zone has become appointment viewing. The appointment is at an ENT’s office, and the doctor’s trying to determine why steam is billowing out of your nose and the nose of Jamal Murray....
Nuggets Finally Shake Loose, Put A Whupping On Trail Blazers
Some of what has made Nuggets-Trail Blazers such a fun playoff series is how evenly matched the teams appear to be. Headed into Game 5 with the series tied, neither team had won a game by more than eight points, and the last two games, a split, were decided by a grand total of seven points. One of t...
An Ailing Joel Embiid Isn't All That Ails The 76ers
The 76ers were blown out in Game 5 Tuesday night, 125–89, by Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. Nothing much worked for Philadelphia—the closest they came to a functional offense was Jimmy Butler willing his way to the line for 11 free throws. By the midpoint of the fourth quarter, the game had ...
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...