of Page 259 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
There's A Difference Between Luck That's Received And Luck That's Found
Other franchises will want to make a replicable plan out of the Toronto Raptors’ journey to one of the truly amazing championships in NBA history. That’s how it goes. There has to be some parable in what everybody just watched, even if it’s the dullest kind, the kind about the friggin’ salary cap. ...
Fuck Your Asterisk
I heard someone on sports talk radio the other day say that if the Raptors pulled out a win in these NBA Finals, fans would forget about what exactly happened to Golden State during the series—he made this supposition after Kevin Durant’s calf rolled up but before Klay Thompson’s knee buckled like a...
Kyle Lowry Kept The Raptors Alive
It was an up-and-down postseason in what’s been an up-and-down career for Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry, but on Thursday night, when all of his teammates struggled to score out of the gate in Game 6, it was Lowry who helped give them the jumpstart they needed to eventually cross the finish line. As...
Kawhi Leonard, Whenever You Get A Minute, This Extremely Drunk Raptors Fan Has A Plant For You
Kawhi Leonard had one of the great NBA postseasons, dismantling the Process, outplaying the MVP, and being the single best player in a Finals that brought down a dynasty. He was near-unanimous Finals MVP, and is now the first player in the history of the league to earn that honor in both conferences...
Oakland's Past Is Brighter Than The Warriors' Future
OAKLAND — The nostalgia in the building was thick enough to cut with DeMarcus Cousins, so much so that many of the last 19,596 humans shoved into what has always been known by the locals as “The Coliseum” almost forgot that there was a championship to defend, a season to prolong and a summer to defe...
Report: Klay Thompson Tore His ACL
Klay Thompson taking a nasty fall in Game 6, limping into the tunnel, then turning around to get back on the floor and drain his free throws was about as heroic as basketball gets. The Warriors guard even told head coach Steve Kerr he’d be back after a two-minute rest, only to leave the arena on cru...
![Shohei Ohtani's Superpowers Are Slowly But Surely Returning [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/glimirjxlxsei4gpdlsg.jpg)
Shohei Ohtani's Superpowers Are Slowly But Surely Returning [Update]
Shohei Ohtani has been having a ho-hum season as a hitter, entering Thursday batting .256 with a mediocre .775 OPS in 133 plate appearances, with seven home runs and just eight total extra base hits. The good news is, his power seems to be picking up. Ohtani has now socked five homers in his last ni...
We Must Remove Mark Jackson From NBA Broadcasts Post-Haste
There is the constant travel and the dreary tape-eating research and the broader long-season ennui and the oppressive non-negotiable formalwear, and all of that is unpleasant. All the bleak hotel club sandwiches and the time away from family and periodically having to go to literally Phoenix and the...
Go Ahead And Get Upset About Kevin Durant's Injury
After a rapid and opaque rehabilitation from a strained calf, Kevin Durant’s return to Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday was cut short by a devastating injury. Everyone on the Warriors seems both stricken and kind of confused about who to blame; journalists like The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami who wrot...
One Sequence Choked The Life Out Of The Bruins
Game 7 and thus the Stanley Cup Final ended in a 2:34 stretch in the third, and, on one level, Brayden Schenn’s goal to put the Blues up 3-0 was anticlimactic. Yes, it put the game functionally out of reach for the Bruins. But what it really meant was a stoppage in play, and so was the first time w...
Lift Stanley And Play "Gloria"
The St. Louis Blues are Stanley Cup champions. Say it to yourself, because no one’s ever been able to say it before. Swish it around in your mouth like a sommelier, picking out notes of gratification, bliss, and disbelief. Do not spit it out, because when you win the Stanley Cup, you keep drinking. ...
Rick Reilly, Samosa Combine For Powerfully Dull Lede
There’s nothing egregious in this Washington Post profile of Rick Reilly, but anyone who wants to find out what’s happened to the hacky-sportswriter-turned-hacky-Trump-writer needs to get past this first sentence:...
Nick Van Exel Discovers, Is Enraptured By Iced Coffee
It started out so simple....
Kyle Lowry Deserves No Slander This Time
Just to get this out of the way: Draymond Green got his fingers on the ball. The one body who guards two bodies like perhaps no other player in NBA history did it all over again. Green denied Marc Gasol the ball by fronting, then scooted out to poke Lowry’s potential game-winner behind the backboard...
There's Nothing Quite Like Draymond Green At Full Speed
Draymond Green’s curse (well, other than the invisible backpack) is that no matter how good he gets at basketball, the most immediately and undeniably impressive basketball feats, the truly unmistakable displays of superhuman ability, will never be available to him. He will never pour on the hailsto...
Who The Hell Knows How This Ends, But At Least It's Not Without A Fight
Nope, I have nothing for you. I cannot explain how the Golden State Warriors won Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and neither can any of you. A team in tatters refused to shred, and it remains obstinate in the face of a hockey team’s list of injuries. This is almost not at all about the Toronto Raptors any...
The Raptors Blew It
Coming close hurts all the more when you can quantify just how close you came. One shot, or one missed shot, or one call the other way, or ... one timeout? The Raptors came oh so close to winning a championship Monday night, and it’s not the one-point final margin that’ll stick in craws and steal sl...
Which Of These Two Battered Pitchers Suffered The More Humiliating Sequence?
Phillies pitcher Jerad Eickhoff got the rudest of welcomes in his start Monday night in Philadelphia, against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A first-pitch leadoff home run is deflating; allowing back-to-back leadoff dingers is downright demoralizing; serving up back-to-back-to-back taters to open up a st...
Success Spoiled Golden State Warriors Fans
A year ago, Steph Curry told SLAM how grateful he was that Oakland had embraced him “as one of their own.” He’s done his part, there: tons of local charity work, putting Oakland on a shoe and then giving 30 of them away. All of which is to say that he could likely tell you more about the town other ...
Report: Kevin Durant's "Expected" To Play Game 5
The Golden State Warriors are facing elimination, but Kevin Durant, who hurt his leg a month ago, isn’t a sure thing for tonight’s game against the Raptors. At today’s practice, head coach Steve Kerr wouldn’t say anything beyond calling his player a “game-time decision” for Game 5 of the NBA Finals....