nba Page 278 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Lakers May Yet Screw This Up
This was the season that the Los Angeles Lakers, coming off four consecutive seasons with less than 30 wins, were supposed to finally show signs of becoming something other than a tanking waste biding time for young players to develop and star free agents to become available. The plan was supposed t...

Mavericks Decide "Little Cows" Is No Longer A Good Chinese Translation Of Their Name, Switch To "Lone Ranger Heroes"
A maverick is, literally, a little cow. An unbranded calf, so named for nineteenth-century Texas cattle farmer Samuel Maverick, who did not brand his cattle. For nearly two decades now, the Dallas Mavericks have been known in China by a translation that works out roughly to “little cows.” Accurate! ...

Yeah, Kyrie Was Ready To Get Away From LeBron<em></em>
Tonight the Celtics and Cavaliers will meet for the second time this season, and ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan marked the rematch of the East’s two best teams with a feature on Kyrie Irving. Irving’s first half-season out from under LeBron James has been an unquestioned success, an especially impressive f...

Marquese Chriss Had A Heroic Game-Saving Block
The Phoenix Suns are basically toast in the Western Conference playoff race, and they were going up against the lowly Hawks at home last night. But that lack of high stakes doesn’t mean there can’t be any thrilling late-game drama....

Manu Ginobili Accidentally Passes Ball Straight Through The Hoop, Referees Don't Notice
In the closing seconds of tonight’s third quarter against the Knicks, Manu Ginobili tried lobbing a pass to LaMarcus Aldridge. But instead of getting the ball to Aldridge for the alley-oop, he put a little too much cheese on it and did something way cooler—he tossed it straight into the net. ...

Isaiah Thomas Back?
Isaiah Thomas back! After missing the first 36 games of the season recovering from a hip injury, the wee scoring machine will make his Cleveland Cavaliers debut tonight, against the Portland Trail Blazers*. To be honest, I’d nearly forgotten him. ...

Oh Shit, DeMar DeRozan Might Be Able To Shoot Threes Now<em></em>
Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan has always been able to score—he’s averaged more than 20 points a night in each of the past four seasons, with his 2016-17 points per game average of 27.3 putting him fifth among all NBA players. One way he was never able to do it, however, was from long range. Since his ...

Report: Packers Strip Ted Thompson Of GM Duties, Fire A Few Coaches
One day after falling to the Lions and locking up their first losing season since 2008, the Green Bay Packers will make several changes. Ted Thompson has been with the team since 1992—save for a four-year spell in Seattle—and he served as the team’s general manager from 2005 until today, when he was...

Anthony Davis Turned Ron Baker Into Flying Shrapnel
The Knicks narrowly prevailed over the Pelicans last night in New Orleans, but not without great sacrifice. Ron Baker, blue-collar reserve guard, fell in the line of duty attempting a foolhardy contest of a driving Anthony Davis dunk:...

NBA Competition Committee Will Try To Solve Dumb Late-Game Out-Of-Bounds Replay Problem
At least twice in 2017 game-winning buckets have been scored by players who appeared to have stepped out of bounds immediately prior to sinking their shots. The NBA’s replay rules have a big dumb hole that makes these kinds of plays unreviewable, and therefore uncorrectable, but that may not be the ...

LeBron's Birthday Is An Awkwardly Sentimental Occasion In Shanghai
If you read this Dave McMenamin story about LeBron James reflecting upon his life and career on his 33rd birthday, which is today, first of all you will learn that LeBron has lost his last six games in Utah. Far stranger than that bit of trivia, you will come across a link that will direct you to th...

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope Wildly Overestimates His Improvisational Skills
Here is Lakers guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, boldly and tragically attempting the old off-the-backboard self-assist during last night’s loss to the Clippers:...

Chicago's Young Big Men Rule So Hard Right Now
Break up the damn Bulls! Three NBA teams have won eight of their last 10 games, and two of those teams are the Golden State Warriors and the Oklahoma City Thunder, a couple of superstar-laden superteams. The Bulls are the third team, and the Bulls are led in total minutes by Justin friggin’ Holiday....

NBA Refs Continue String Of Clutch Fuck-Ups With Game-Deciding No-Call In OKC
Tied with the Thunder in the closing seconds Friday night, the Bucks ran a simple out-of-bounds play to get superhuman monster Giannis Antetokounmpo isolated on the baseline against regular human Josh Huestis. Giannis is an insanely tough cover for anyone, and he found a way past Huestis, driving ba...

Report: Avery Bradley Paid Settlement To Woman Who Accused Him Of Sexual Assault
TMZ reported today that Detroit Pistons guard Avery Bradley “entered into a confidentiality agreement” with a woman who said he sexually assaulted her while she was “passed out drunk” on May 23 in Cleveland. The agreement with the woman was reached earlier this year, according to TMZ. ...

Shabazz Napier Had One Of The Sickest Assists Of The Year
The Trail Blazers made a very impressive comeback against the 76ers tonight, starting the fourth quarter down 13 and finishing it as the victors, 114-110. In that final quarter, no one in Portland made a more amazing play than Shabazz Napier. With his team up four, Napier drove, drew two defenders, ...

Holy Shit, The Celtics Came Back From Down 26
Earlier tonight, in a quick blog about James Harden’s layup off the shot clock, I wrote the following:...

James Harden Puts It In Off The Shot Clock
OK, so it didn’t count. But the way the Rockets are beating up the Celtics tonight, two points won’t matter.* In that case, here’s a layup off the shot clock by James Harden that’s much, much cooler than any normal field goal that would actually show up on the scoreboard....

The Ice Bowl, The Sneak, And The Family Who Shot The Packers For 70 Years
It wasn’t just cold at Lambeau Field. With the temperature at 13 below zero at kickoff, and the wind chill at 36 below, Dec. 31, 1967, ranked as the coldest New Year’s Eve day that Green Bay, Wisconsin, had ever witnessed....
