nba-playoffs Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

LeBron In Full Must-Win Mode Is An Unsolvable Problem
The Cavs opened Game 3 with a huge 22-6 run, and that was more or less that. This was not a case of the winning team grabbing an early lead behind a fluky start and nursing it cautiously until the final buzzer—the Cavs were forceful and decisive early, and did some cool and different things to chall...

In The Future, We Will All Gamble Constantly
The NBA Playoffs should be at something like their apex right now, and in the least entertaining possible sense they may well be. There are four notionally entertaining teams left, and they have combined through four games for maybe three entertaining quarters. The league’s biggest and most brillian...

Chris Paul's Yo-Yo Dribble Never Gets Old
Last night, the Houston Rockets blew past the Golden State Warriors in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals by getting a little more lively on offense and moving the ball. That is cool and good for them, but let’s be honest: the best thing about the game was Chris Paul’s dribbling....

Steph Curry Will Have To Take Over At Some Point
It’s been over two weeks since Steph Curry returned from his knee injury to make the Warriors fully operational for the latter stages of the playoffs, and his results have been mixed. He made the Warriors look invincible once again in his first game back against the Pelicans, but he’s been up and do...

The Desperate Rockets Beat The Warriors, And It Was Actually Fun To Watch
The Rockets can pass! That’s the most stunning takeaway from their 127-105 win against the Warriors tonight, which evened the Western Conference Finals at one game apiece and introduced a prettier, more kinetic version of the Rockets than the team that won 65 games in the regular season. Game 2 saw ...

How Are The Cavs Like This?
The Cleveland Cavaliers, lifted by a huge first half from LeBron James, began the second half of Game 2 against the Celtics with a seven-point lead. This was a vast improvement over the circumstances they found themselves in during Game 1, when the Celtics had put the result out of reach by the end ...

Uh Oh, The Cavs Might Actually Be In Trouble<em></em>
An all-timer of a first quarter from LeBron James, in which he scored 21 of his team’s 27 points, and a 42-point triple-double for the entire game all went to waste in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, as the Boston Celtics took down the Cleveland LeBrons, 107-94....

The Rockets Have Nothing For Kevin Durant
The Rockets had a plan. They were going to force Steph Curry to defend James Harden one-on-one, stick longer defenders on Curry to harass him on the perimeter, use Clint Capela’s length to disrupt Draymond Green’s pick-and-roll maneuvers, and pounce on any defensive lapses by kicking it out to their...

The Warriors Are Better Than The Rockets
Look. If we are being honest with each other, here, let’s acknowledge what we all know: The Rockets are 100 percent dead in this series, have virtually no chance whatsoever even to push it to a seventh game, and could spend Game 2 jump-kicking each other in the face for all the good they can do by e...

Warriors Edge Out The Rockets In The Game 1 Everybody Expected
In a game that saw the two best teams in basketball each play exactly how you’d expect them to, the Golden State Warriors beat the Rockets in Houston, 119-106, to take a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference Finals. Despite the best efforts of James Harden and his 41 points, the Warriors managed to exp...

Let The Cool Players Try To Trash Each Other
Here is a thing that happens way too often in the NBA: Two teams with stars at the same position face each other and, instead of the cool stars checking each other, so that they are competing directly at both ends of the floor, the coaches assign various other designated defenders to do the job of g...

LeBron James Held To 15 Points In Game 1 Loss, Still Finds A Way To Remind Us He's The GOAT
There aren’t many players in the world that can hijack a Game 1 blowout loss simply by flexing their steel trap of a memory. Then again, there aren’t many folks out there like LeBron James....

Cavs Comprehensively Wrecked By Scrappy Celtics
Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was never close. The Celtics went on a 17-0 run in the first quarter, and that was that. The central question of this series is whether Boston’s impressive team defense will be able to slow down a Cavs offense that ranked number one in the NBA in offensive eff...

Dwane Casey Paid For All The Mistakes The Raptors Never Made
They did everything right....

Sprout God, Porcelain Mamba, And Six-Step LeBron: The Stories Behind China's Best NBA Nicknames
It’s no secret that American sports nicknames are not as good as they used to be. Seemingly half the time, present-day nicknames are just the player’s initials and a number (CP3, RG3, TB12, etc.). This is what happens when the brevity of hashtags and social media combines with wealthy player-entrepr...

Jayson Tatum Gave The Celtics Everything They Needed
As the Celtics dispatched the Sixers with shocking ease, observers were quick to point to Al Horford’s defensive heroics and Terry Rozier’s sudden emergence as instrumental in Boston’s unexpected conference finals appearance. After all, Boston needed to stymie Joel Embiid (which the supposedly stout...

Some Pretty Funny Things That Happened In The Sixers-Celtics Series
Here’s a list:...

The Rockets Aren't Fun To Watch
Spend a few days away from the drumbeat of dipshittery and various dreary outrages of Online and something happens to your brain. A bunch of things, actually, but I am thinking of one particular one—the mind, even the most web-damaged mind, returns to something like a normal state. This is not to sa...

Potential 2018 NBA Finals Outcomes, Ranked
1. Cavaliers def. Warriors...

The Philadelphia 76ers Should Blow Up The Team And Not Worry About The Short-Term Consequences
After half a decade under head coach Brett Brown and four years and two contracts into the career of star center Joel Embiid—the team’s only All-Star—the Philadelphia 76ers and their fans face a moment of reckoning. It’s a painful one, but it won’t get any less painful if we ignore it. The facts are...