nba-playoffs Page 53 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Mike Tirico Raps About Drake, Achieves Supreme Dadness
It's not the rapping that makes Mike Tirico the biggest dad to have ever dadded in this clip, it's the ensuing faux-embarrassment, the point-by-point explanation of his joke, and the gleeful mention of his son and whatever extracurricular activity that son is currently engaged in. That's what we ca...

How Rick Carlisle Turned The Misfit, Mismatched Mavs Into Contenders
The Mavericks got clobbered in yesterday's Game 7 against San Antonio, but just being there was a minor miracle in itself. Here's Brett Koremenos's breakdown on how this mismatched Mavs roster took the invincible Spurs to 7. ...

Paul Pierce And Kevin Garnett Couldn't Stop Gushing About Toronto Fans
The real star of the thrilling first-round series between the Nets and Raptors turned out to be Toronto itself. The success-starved sports town brought its A-game, even as Brooklyn prevailed in seven, to the point where the Nets' biggest stars had nothing but love for the opposing fans....

Raptors' Final Shot At Series Win Denied By Paul Pierce
The Raptors were doing everything right in the final minutes of Game 7. They were quickly scoring and fouling right after. With a sloppy inbounds pass, Terrence Ross was smart enough to bounce the ball off of the Nets' Paul Pierce before he went out of bounds, giving Toronto a chance to win their fi...

How Rick Carlisle Turns The Misfit, Mismatched Mavs Into Contenders
Every team loves rooting around for under-appreciated, undervalued, post-Moneyball players; the Mavericks have simply taken it to an extreme. Under Rick Carlisle, Dallas has thrown out conventional fit in order to focus strictly on value, the way you might in baseball, but which has failed again and...

Meet Kyle Lowry. He's Very Good (And Probably Not A Giant Asshole).
NBA fans have known for a while that Kyle Lowry is pretty damn good. But that respect was an abstract one: Lowry's value was an acknowledged fact, if not one with specific dimensions. He's good, but why? He plays in a far away land, is never on national TV and has made more headlines for the trade ...

I Can't Stop Looking At This Washington Wizards Hustle Chart
The Washington Wizards are relatively dope this year, and are currently resting their legs after laying that five-game smackage on the Sad Chicago Bulls. What's changed this year, besides a great offseason (Otto Porter notwithstanding) and a great Marcin Gortat trade and the steady progression of a ...

Raptors Fan Goes For Kiss During Game, Gets Rejected
Daaaamn. That girl was just not feeling a kiss from her friend near the end of a tense Nets-Raps game. Either she was very focused on the Raptors, or that's the worst abrupt end to a date....

New Footage Shows The Based God's Curse On Kevin Durant Is Real
I don't know what kind of hidden frequencies or imperceptible light waves this Vine can pick up on, but we now have the best evidence yet for why Kevin "The Servant" Durant's shot wasn't hitting like it usually does last night....

Joey Crawford Is Still A Shit
Well, this was inevitable. We all knew that, at some point during these playoffs, Joey Goddamn Crawford was going to find away to thrust himself into the spotlight and whip up some controversy, because Joey Crawford is the worst....

Russell Westbrook's Steal And Dunk Puts Grizzlies-Thunder Into OT
The Grizzlies had the ball and a chance to ice the game for a 3-2 series lead over the Thunder. But Russell Westbrook hassled Memphis point guard Mike Conley, Jr. enough to jar the ball loose and tie the game up at 90 with a dunk....

Big Al And The Bobcats Deserved More Than What They Got
For a few short minutes during the Bobcats' Game 3 loss to the Miami Heat, Al Jefferson did his thing. Which is to say he stuck his ass into whatever helpless defender got himself dragged onto the left block, took a brief moment to size up the situation, and then bullied his way to the rim on the st...

The NBA Player No One Would Pass To
Early this season, we ran an item called "The NBA Players No One Will Pass To." It used newly accessible SportVU motion-tracking data to determine who among all the NBA players receives the ball the least. It was based on just a few weeks' worth of data, but ended up being representative. In short: ...

Angry Pacers Heckler Just Says What We're All Thinking
The Pacers, they suck. They suck so bad that they are now one loss away from being bounced out of the first round by the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks. They suck so bad that during last night's loss in Indiana, they drove one Pacers fan to his breaking point....

Kyle Korver Shows Off His In-The-Building Range
Kyle Korver draws all net from about 30 feet out and he's not even curling off a screen or walking into the shot; he's completely flat-footed. ...

For Real Though, We Need To Talk About Thomas Robinson's Block
I, like most basketball fans, have been thinking about last night's game between the Rockets and Blazers pretty much all day. But out of all the amazing shit that happened in that game—Wes Matthews torpedoing the ball and the win out of Patrick Beverley's hands; that brief stretch when Nic Batum, D...

Behold, The Most Useless Graphic Of The NBA Playoffs
The map above—from TNT last night—is one of those "who's getting the most buzz" graphics that are as ubiquitous as they are useless. Unfortunately, Houston and Portland both wear red, a nuance lost on whatever computer program generated this image. Better luck next time, computer program!...