nba-playoffs Page 22 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Damian Lillard Eliminates Thunder In Completely Psychotic Fashion
Damian Lillard opened Tuesday night’s Game 5 with a 19-point first quarter, keeping the Blazers close while Oklahoma City made everything thrown even vaguely in the direction of the basket. Lillard finished the first half with 34 points. He opened the second half with an utterly preposterous 30-foo...
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...
There Should Be More Sweeps
At halftime of Game 4 in the Bucks-Pistons first-round series, Milwaukee found itself down six and on the verge of squandering the chance to match their potential second-round opponents (the Celtics) in sweeping away an inconsequential foe. Giannis and co. had taken not just a 3-0 lead in the series...
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...
Nobody Is Getting Suspended For Leaving The Bench Under This Bucks Assistant's Watch
By now, everyone in the NBA is aware that one of the worst infractions you can commit in a playoff game as a player is leaving the bench during a fight that’s happening on the court. One step in the wrong direction, and a player risks getting suspended for key playoff games. The NBA’s habit of bring...
Not Even A Historically Bad Shooting Night From James Harden Could Stop The Rockets From Crushing The Jazz's Spirits
Given how badly the Rockets had crushed the Jazz in Games 1 and 2, if news were to come out of James Harden breaking some sort of postseason record during Game 3, the underlying assumption would be that it was related to scoring. That was half-true on Saturday in Utah when Harden set the NBA postsea...
![Jared Dudley And Jimmy Butler Were Ejected After A Scrum They Started Got Out Of Hand [Updates]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/uxqqt0eruasj2mlbuxr1.png)
Jared Dudley And Jimmy Butler Were Ejected After A Scrum They Started Got Out Of Hand [Updates]
What started out as some beef between Ben Simmons and Jared Dudley has now escalated into Jared Dudley trying to beef with the other stars of the 76ers roster. In the third quarter, Joel Embiid tried to get a block on Nets big man Jarrett Allen—a player Embiid elbowed in the face and then laughed ab...
The Thunder Really Enjoyed Their Flukey Shooting Night Against The Blazers
There’s no secret as to why Damian Lillard was a little bothered on Friday following his game against Oklahoma City. After winning the first two games at home, the Blazers dropped Game 3 against the Thunder 120-108. But though his team still lead the series 2-1, and he was coming off a solid statis...
The Nets Didn't Have A Plan For J.J. Redick, So He Ripped Them Apart
Only a few NBA players qualify as “unguardable.” It’s a weird category: Being unguardable isn’t the same thing as being quantitatively better than everybody else. James Harden, the best scorer in the NBA, almost certainly will bust your ass no matter how you play him, but there’s at least a theory f...
Ben Simmons Definitely Has The Energy For Jared Dudley
Shockingly, the return of Jared Dudley did not tip the scales of the Nets-Sixers series. In Thursday’s Game 3, the Nets were lit up at home, 131-115, even with Joel Embiid in street clothes. Ben Simmons led Philly with 31 points on 11-of-13 shooting, and well-rounded box score aside, he also kept hi...
Derrick White Is Clobbering The Nuggets
Through three playoff games, the San Antonio Spurs have done what they do better than anyone: suffocate the life out of opponents by playing fundamentally sound basketball. On Thursday, with their series tied at 1-1 with the Denver Nuggets, the Spurs shot the lights out, finishing with 52 percent sh...
The Good Part Of The NBA Season Has Started
It is a curious folkway here at Deadspin that NBA-related previews cannot be published before the start of whatever it is they’re previewing. It’s not covered during the onboarding process, and is more just one of those things that you learn over the course of time as a member of the staff, like the...
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...
Jared Dudley Versus Ben Simmons Should Turn Into Some Prime NBA Playoff Beef
In Game 1 against the Sixers, fleshy Nets vet Jared Dudley shone. He finished with two points, but made several nice reads after lumbering into traffic, snagged a steal which led to a charming slow-break before Mike Scott broke it up on aesthetic principle, and, most importantly, played some stout d...
Giannis Shamed Former Buck Thon Maker Into Submission, Twice
There’s no real drama left in the ass-whooping better known as the Bucks-Pistons first-round series. Milwaukee is the best team in the East, featuring the likely MVP and a top five offense and defense. Detroit is...not that, plus they’re missing their best player, Blake Griffin, due to injury....
The Pacers Kept Handing Bojan Bogdanovic The Ball Until It Killed Them
It looked like the Pacers got some much-needed redemption on Wednesday. After putting up a measly eight points in the third quarter against the Celtics in Game 1—Indiana would go on to lose 84-74—the Pacers had a strong third quarter of their own in Game 2, outscoring Boston 29-16. But that momentum...
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...
The Damian Lillard Experience Is The Sweetest Show In Basketball
Tell yourself you love basketball as a beautiful game, to watch the ball ping around the court as a team’s collective hive-mind hunts the best available shot. Then watch the last week of the NBA playoffs and see if you can stick to that conviction. Between Lou Williams’s rash of perverse leaners on ...
Nikola Jokic Showed Gary Harris How To Soothe His Bashed Testicles
While Jamal Murray was catching fire late in the fourth quarter and leading the Nuggets to a dramatic playoff win over the Spurs, his teammates, Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris, were dealing with a separate problem....
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...