nbafinals Page 31 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This Is Why Kyle Lowry Was So Pissed
Early in the fourth quarter of Toronto’s Game 3 road victory over the Warriors, play was held up for a minute while Kyle Lowry appeared to scold either a Warriors fan or multiple Warriors fans or the referees or arena security, or all of the above. Upon review, it appeared that Lowry was pissed beca...
Raptors Snatch Back Home-Court Advantage With Game 3 Beatdown Of Gutted Warriors
There may be no satisfying takeaway from Toronto’s Game 3 123–109 victory over the Warriors in Oakland, beyond the completely obvious reminder that however great Steph Curry is, he cannot beat an NBA Finals team completely by himself. Steve Kerr held Klay Thompson out of the action, and so the Warri...
What If The Raptors Had To Choose Between Kawhi And Drake?
There are rules to the Deadcast, although we don’t generally pay that much attention to them. For the most part, as you might have noticed, it goes like this: Bullshit/sports, sports, sports/Funbag, Funbag. It’s not a lot of structure, but it keeps us honest. This week, though, we faced a Funbag que...
The Golden State Warriors Will Be Pretty Crabbed For Game 3
A seminal description of Steph Curry’s 2012 ankle surgery inspired “crab meat” as in-house shorthand for serious sports injuries. But right now, with the NBA Finals tied 1-1, Curry might be the only Golden State Warrior who could not be consumed with melted butter and lemon. Nearly everyone else in ...
![Kevon Looney's Cartilage Injury Makes Warriors' Title Hunt That Much More Absurd [CORRECTED]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ohv8odkahs0c10gz2ai6.png)
Kevon Looney's Cartilage Injury Makes Warriors' Title Hunt That Much More Absurd [CORRECTED]
What was initially described somewhat confusingly as a “sprained collarbone” for Warriors center Kevon Looney has, upon further inspection, been revealed as a fracture. Looney, an underrated non-star contributor for the Golden State Warriors, seems unlikely to return for the rest of the NBA Finals....
The Layup Faces Of Game 2
For Sunday’s Game 2 in Toronto, a pair of remote cameras were set up at one end of the court. One (the angle you see above) appears to have been in the stanchion itself, and was operated by Getty Images’ Gregory Shamus, and captures the action just below the basket. The other (the first photo below)...
The Weirder The Finals Get, The Better
The news from the NBA Finals is all good, kids, and it is this: Nobody has any narratives left to invent. The events of Games 1 and 2 have savaged all the preconceptions, conceptions, and the way it’s looking, the post-conceptions of this series. Nobody has any idea what’s coming next, and nobody wi...
The Warriors Should Have Been Fucked
There’s no such thing as an NBA Finals loss that doesn’t sting, but some of them hurt more than others. The J.R. Smith Disaster was so demoralizing that you knew, even though it happened in Game 1, that the Cavs would never recover. Last night’s Game 2, which the Raptors lost 109-104, was not nearly...
Warriors Come Alive In Third Quarter, Even NBA Finals
For one and a half games of the 2019 NBA Finals, it looked like the Toronto Raptors were the better team. Then the first six minutes of Game 2’s third quarter happened....
Marc Gasol Can Run With The Warriors, And Get Buckets Too
Marc Gasol has been a prime component of the Raptors’ asphyxiating defense—one of the most switchable, responsive, obnoxiously needling teams in recent memory. His post D has been stout enough to knock Joel Embiid a notch down from series-defining to merely good. By Giannis Antetokounmpo’s own admi...
Draymond Green Wants It Known That He Did <i>Not</i> Scuffle With Drake
Raptors super fan and legendary cornball Drake was an unusually subdued presence during Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Toronto, perhaps because he got a stern talking-to from the league. But, with an assist from a salty Draymond Green, Drake still managed to deliver another meme-able moment after the f...
Pascal Siakam Fought A Bear And Won
For as much as the Raptors’ run to the finals was about Kawhi Leonard’s ascension to godhood, it was also about the circumstances that made that ascension necessary. Think of all the playoff possessions in which Leonard was forced to pull a heroic shot out of his ass because his other four teammates...
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...
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....
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...
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 ...