nba Page 129 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Los Angeles Clippers are the red circle of death of the NBA
Man, Steve Ballmer had to be feeling really good when he first got Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. I mean like “Steve Ballmer hyping up a pep rally” good or “Christmas morning presents as a child” good. He felt “Just bought a brand new XBox and am barely able to drive home below the speed limit” good...
Joe Maddon out-galaxy brains himself, manages to win anyway
There are a couple of key questions in baseball over the past several years that regularly intersect: “Why can’t the Angels win anything when they have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two unique talents among the greatest the game has ever seen?” and “How did Joe Maddon ever win a World Series with th...
Civil servant Kyrie Irving probably shouldn’t Google ‘Nets owner-China ties’
Two of the people not quoted in ESPN’s nearly flawless piece about Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai’s problematic ties to China — including a business under the umbrella of his company developing facial recognition software that may or may not have been equipped with an “Uyghur alarm” to alert police of...
Only the NBA has teams in all three of Atlanta, New Orleans and Memphis and the league is much better for it
At Smoothie King Center in New Orleans they serve frozen daiquiris, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta there is a barbershop, at FedExForum in Memphis they regularly play, from the Oscar winning film Hustle and Flow, “Whoop that Trick.” ...
Zion Williamson got to show off his dunking ability, too bad he’s not playing
The fans who tuned into ESPN’s pregame coverage of San Antonio and New Orleans Wednesday night got a little extra treat. There was a Zion Williamson sighting on the court. Before the game, Williamson did some on-court work and put on a show for those in attendance, mostly team staff....
It’s math time with Chris Pronger boys and girls!
As one of my editors pointed out yesterday, maybe we should just be relieved that Chris Pronger can type at all given how his career was ended. That’s generally the hope for any hockey player, as forlorn as it may be. And perhaps Pronger was trying to do the right thing and illustrate how so many fo...
Staying quiet about Brittney Griner hasn’t worked
For the past two months, people around Brittney Griner and the WNBA have been low-key. The idea was that any loud calls to have the basketball star released from her Russian prison as Vladimir Putin launched an assault against Ukraine would only upset the authoritarian, and so the wise course was to...
Obnoxious loudmouth Patrick Beverley showed us why he’s been a staple in the NBA for more than a decade
Patrick Beverley showed out on Tuesday night against the LA Clippers. He may have shown his whole ass after the Timberwolves’ 109-105 play-in game win. But Beverley also showed us how players like himself hang around the NBA for a decade....
Women tries, fails to glue herself to NBA floor
The animal rights protestors never fail to keep us entertained (remember when they wanted to rename the bullpen in baseball?), and Glue Lady is no different. Late in the second quarter of the play-in game between the Timberwolves and the Clippers last night, the cameras cut away from a Minnesota fre...
Here’s hoping Lillard is a better GM than LeBron
“You’re really going to do this?” is a question one canceled ABC drama character asks another right before they pack up their sedan and move across the country by themselves. It’s something my family not-so-subtly asked me when I told them I was moving to Chicago after more than a decade in the moun...
Here’s hoping Lillard is a better GM than LeBron
“You’re really going to do this?” is a question one canceled ABC drama character asks another right before they pack up their sedan and move across the country by themselves. It’s something my family not-so-subtly asked me when I told them I was moving to Chicago after more than a decade in the moun...
It’s not looking good for Steph Curry, or the Warriors’ playoff hopes
Unfortunately for the NBA, this playoff run may be without the Golden State Warriors very quickly. They have been battling injuries all season, and the most recent one might stretch into their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets. While the Nuggets are an interesting story for NBA-heads, th...
It’s 2022, we don’t need positions on the All-NBA ballots anymore
Positions in basketball are entirely different than almost every sport. In baseball a pitcher is required to stand at the mound until he decides to throw a pitch, make a pick-off attempt, or step off to take a break. In football, a play cannot be called for an offensive lineman to receive the ball u...
A WNBA draft unlike any other
The first HBCU player selected in two decades, first round picks from Northwestern and Florida Gulf Coast, UConn and South Carolina waiting until the second round to hear names from their rosters called — yesterday’s WNBA draft showed us just how shaken up the college basketball world has become. ...
NBA play-in tournament day 2: Wednesday’s games highlight some of the league’s burgeoning young stars
Day two of the play-in tournament features the 9 and 10 seeds from each conference. These games haven’t been talked about as much as the day one games, but could be even more exciting. One of them will be a showdown between two of the hottest young guards in the league, and the other features a play...
So what will MLS do about its TV ratings?
When setting up for the current MLS season, which started the last weekend of February, one of the major themes was the league locking in its new TV deal sometime in March. MLS’s TV deal has been paltry when compared to the other sports leagues ($90m a year), and there was a feeling that while the n...
The Mavericks had better pack some vaseline and boots if Luka isn’t full strength for their first round series against the Jazz
Bless the Dallas Mavericks’ hearts, they went for it on Sunday. They were one game behind the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference standings. If the Warriors — sans Stephen Curry — had lost to the New Orleans Pelicans and the Mavericks defeated the San Antonio Spurs, the Mavs would have j...
NBA play-in tournament: Tuesday’s matchup preview
It’s play-in tournament time, and now that we know all the participants, let’s look at Day One, which will be the seven vs. eight seed in each conference. We have intriguing matchups here and two teams that weren’t expected to be dealing with the play-in when the season started back in October....
NBA playoff matchups we’d love to see (and one we wouldn’t)
The 2022 NBA playoffs is an annual garden of forking paths. Teams don’t know who to expect awaiting them in the next round or when their season will end. One injury can swing momentum in the other direction. What we do know is that there are particular matchups that are more palatable than others. C...
The Rockets didn’t win much, but they were a blast to watch towards the end of the season
Once the NCAA Basketball Tournaments come around, the rest of the NBA season can feel like a slog. If you were already upset about players missing games, the volume gets ratcheted up on that, and at that point it’s fairly clear which teams are the best in the league. It’s also hard to muster excitem...