nba Page 214 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Fred VanVleet Can Do No Wrong
How big a lead does a team have to have on the Warriors before its fans can feel comfortable? Twenty points with two minutes left? Fifteen points with 30 seconds to go? To me, it didn’t feel like the Raptors had Game 1 locked up until they were actually dribbling out the final ticks, up nine with th...

Raptors Fight Off Every Warriors Push To Grab A Comfortable Game 1 Victory
In retrospect, we had a pretty solid indication that things were turning Toronto’s way in the build up to their Game 1 victory over the Warriors:...

Drake Tries Very Hard To Pretend He Doesn't Have Steph Curry And Kevin Durant's Jersey Numbers Tattooed On His Body
The world was very nearly spared a couple week’s worth of energetic Drake sightings Thursday night, when Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors went careening into the sidelines late in the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Iguodala missed hurling the bulk of his giant NBA frame into the ...

What Happened To All The Interesting Refs?
One of the nerdier things a basketball fan can do at 9 a.m. Eastern Weirdo Time is to go to the NBA website and glom onto the identities of the officials who will work whatever game interests you True, NBA ref nerddom is an exceedingly small subset of Nerdvania, but let a thousand sets of hipster gl...

Rick Pitino Has Had It With These Greek Fans Smoking During His Basketball Games
Disgraced former Louisville Cardinals basketball coach Rick Pitino has spent the past six months or so coaching in Greece, where he’s finding success leading Panathinaikos in the Greek League. It’s a madcap new life filled with unfamiliar new experiences, as detailed in this article from The Ringer ...

A Thorough And Informative 2019 NBA Finals Preview For Basketball Idiots
Hello, casual basketball viewer! At long last, the NBA Finals are here, and you know what that means: It’s time once again for you to crib a pitiful smattering of hoops knowledge from this extremely half-assed blog and carry it forth to the sports bar like the torch that lights your path....

Let's Talk Ourselves Into This NBA Finals Matchup
The NBA Finals would seem great to someone who only recently decided to care about NBA basketball. You’ve got your dynastic bulletproof Golden State Warriors, currently minus injured cornball virtuoso Kevin Durant but otherwise as monstrously dominant as ever. You’ve also got the Toronto Raptors, a ...

Drake And The Raptors Both Got A Talking-To From The NBA
The Toronto Raptors will host Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, and there’s no doubt Drake will be sitting on the sideline. He’s behaved like an unruly dingus courtside in Toronto, blurring the lines between participant and bystander in ways that would make Spike Lee blush. Bucks coach Mike Budenhol...

A Calm But Occasionally Perplexing Interview With The Ex-NBA Scout Who Beefed With All His Critics On Twitter
Bryan Oringher, a former video coordinator for the Wizards as well as a former scout for the Raptors and Hawks, has since left the NBA to make a career in public-facing basketball commentary. The one hitch in that plan is that he has struggled to peacefully interface with the public....

Even If The Warriors Win, Oakland Loses
This is the real NBA Finals, the one that transcends Larry O’Brien, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Doris Burke, Woj, Adam Silver, dynasties, the next Why-The-Lakers-Are-On-Fire tell-all, the works. This is Oakland’s last stand with the team it raised from a pup, its last healthy bite of an apple that ...


What Can The Raptors Possibly Do To Make People Believe The Lie?
The Raptors took down the Bucks on Saturday, 100-94, to clinch an NBA Finals berth for the first time in franchise history. With that series victory, Toronto seemingly vanquished the infamous Drake curse, exorcised the demons of past postseason failures and even vindicated Kawhi Leonard’s place as ...

This Kawhi Leonard Ball Fake Is Hypnotic
Kawhi Leonard has been doing a lot that’s reminiscent of Michael Jordan. The raw scoring—Leonard is up to 31.4 points per game this postseason—the shimmying midrange work, the perimeter defense. Add a new entry to the list: ball fakes only possible with enormous mitts. Check out this possession in G...

Aaron Rodgers Loses Chugging Contest Among Milwaukee-Area Sportsmen
Since the Toronto Raptors have Drake cheering them on, the Milwaukee Bucks need their own celebrity row. Green Bay lineman David Bakhtiari has filled a spot more than once, and he’s excelled at acting as a Rally Packer for the crowd. All he has to do is chug beers, and the crowd gets fired up....

A Good And Smart Preview Of A Wide-Open 2019 WNBA Season
Hockey is almost over, and the NBA is basically done, so now all we have to look forward to over these impending hot summer months is a World Cup, the ability to blast Bad Girls out of our apartment windows, and some goddamn WNBA basketball. That last thing starts tonight, folks! Let’s get to the pr...

Drake Cuts Sweaty Promo About How Raptors Fans Are Really Good At Following The Rules
The Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night, and Drake, the Raptors’ rowdy uncle/human mascot, was not in the building. He was back home in Toronto, watching the game with thousands of Raptors fans in an outdoor square. He was so excited after the win t...

Raptors Defense Pushes Bucks To The Toilet's Edge In Game 5 Upset
The Milwaukee Bucks, the best team of the 2018–19 regular season and by far the best team through the first two rounds of the playoffs, find themselves in the deepest of caca following a 105–99 loss to the Toronto Raptors in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Bucks will have to stave off e...

Klay Thompson Remains Remarkably Calm Upon Learning He Lost A Chance At Another $30 Million
The All-NBA teams came out today, and Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson isn’t on any of them. While teammates Steph Curry and Kevin Durant made the first and second teams, respectively, Thompson couldn’t even sneak onto the third team. Those honors went to Russell Westbrook and Kemba Walker....

Kevin Durant Probably Won't Be Ready For Start Of NBA Finals, Will Have Time To Continue Posting
Here’s some news that, perhaps perversely, should increase interest in the upcoming NBA Finals:...

Let's Remember Some Guys: The Large Men Of Fleer
There are ways in which the basketball currently being played in the NBA is an evolved version of the basketball played there a decade or so ago. It really is more open in a bunch of ways, for instance, and as a result there are new possibilities in each game that simply would not have fit in the NB...