playoffs Page 109 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Cavaliers Are Back In The Finals
Cleveland beat Toronto 113-87 tonight. James Jones will make his sixth straight Finals, a momentous achievement. Good for him. ...

Russell Westbrook Tells Us How He Really Feels About Steph Curry's Defense
After last night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant were asked if they think Steph Curry is an underrated defender. Westbrook reacted like he’d just been asked if he likes to shop at T.J. Maxx....

The New-Look Penguins Roll Deeper Than Ever
The Penguins are back in the Finals after their 2-1 Game 7 win over Tampa, but they are not the same old Penguins you love to hate. (But you can hate ‘em anyway.)...

The Warriors Aren't Dead Yet
It was simple enough to write the Warriors off when they were down 3-1, on the brink of elimination (only nine teams have ever come back from such a deficit), but they are not dead yet. The Thunder effectively blitzed them into submission in both games in Oklahoma City, and while Russell Westbrook a...

The NHL Threatened To Fine The Lightning If They Didn't Shut Down Their Watch Party
The Tampa Bay Lighting hosted a very well-attended viewing party on Sunday for Game 5 of their Eastern Conference Finals series with Pittsburgh. Thousands went to the public showing (around 8,000 attended an analogous event last year), and the team had planned another official party for tonight’s Ga...

The Thunder Are What's Wrong With The Warriors
So every frontrunner’s favorite twee basketball unicorns, the Golden State Warriors, the best regular-season NBA team of all time, got duffed by a combined 52 points in two blowout losses in Oklahoma City by the Thunder, previously every frontrunner’s favorite twee basketball unicorns. This was the ...

The Sharks Are In The Finals, Finally
Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were the first two picks in the 1997 draft. They’ve played a couple thousand games in teal. They’ve both been captains, and both stripped of the “C” for perceived leadership failures and criticisms that for however good their Sharks were, they were never quite good e...

Even Cavs Fans Are Owning The Raptors
The Cleveland Cavaliers took a 100-60 lead into the fourth quarter of tonight’s Eastern Conference finals game, and that’s all you need to know and all I’ll say about what’s happening on the court. Or at least with the basketball players on the court, because this bald-headed Cavs fan got into a fun...

A Rowdy Warriors Fan Tried To Fight Charles Barkley Because He Picked The Thunder
Warriors fans got to enjoy their team winning a championship last year then 73 regular season games this year, so they’re understandably shaken up by their team’s unfolding capitulation to the mighty Oklahoma City Thunder. When fans become Mad Online, they tend to threaten violence upon haters, doub...

The Thunder Discovered Their Own Lineup Of Death
The Golden State Warriors have spent two seasons terrorizing opponents with what has become known as the Lineup of Death. It’s a small-ball lineup featuring Draymond Green at the five and Harrison Barnes at the four, and it works for a few simple reasons: There are shooters all over the floor, they ...

It's Matt Murray Or Bust
On his very last day as a 21-year-old, on the very first shot he saw, Matt Murray allowed a goal. Then he got an early birthday present: a coach’s challenge showed Jonathan Drouin had been offside by the merest fraction of a second. It was back to 0-0, and Murray got down to business....

The Thunder Are Just Too Goddamn Much
Over the course of their past two years spent dominating the NBA, the Warriors have excelled at avoiding consecutive losses and rapidly turning around playoff series in which they’ve trailed. Tonight, they had an opportunity to keep both trends alive after the Oklahoma City Thunder firebombed them o...

Evgeni Malkin Slashed Ryan Callahan In His Penis And Balls
Ryan Callahan slashed Evgeni Malkin’s hands with his stick in the first period of Game 6, so the Pittsburgh center responded by taking a two-handed whack at Callahan’s down-belows. As Callahan’s reactions shows, he connected....

Kevin Durant On Draymond Green's Non-Suspension: "The League Is Pro-Business"
By anything resembling an objective standard—and that’s certainly tough to pin down—if the NBA suspended Dahntay Jones for one game for attacking Bismack Biyombo’s crotch, Draymond Green’s multiple assaults on Steven Adams’s fellas deserved the same punishment. ...

How Joe Pavelski Became A Tip Machine
It was, is, and will be for at least the next 36 hours the most important goal in Sharks history. Joe Pavelski’s redirection of a Brent Burns shot broke a third-period tie and stood up the rest of the way, the winner in a 6-3 victory that brings San Jose to within one game of the Stanley Cup Finals,...

The Raptors Don't Quit
The Raptors’ two most important players right now are a probably-hurt tiny point guard who, until recently, was having a historically-bad playoffs and an offensively inept center who played 22 minutes per game this regular season. That doesn’t sound like a formula for defeating a team led by LeBron ...

Draymond Green Will Not Be Suspended For Game 4
The Golden State Warriors are down 2-1 to the Oklahoma City Thunder and it looked for a while like they would have to try to claw their way back to even without their second-most important player after Draymond Green kneed Steven Adams in his dick and balls again. According to Woj, nah, he’ll play i...

Why Dahntay Jones's Unpaid Suspension Is Only Worth $80
The NBA suspended Dahntay Jones one game “without pay” for whacking Bismack Biyombo in the groin late in Game 3, and while the Cavs might miss the 1.9 minutes per game they’ve gotten from Jones (unlikely), Jones won’t actually miss his game check all that much....

Draymond Green And Russell Westbrook Are Beefin' Now
It’s fallout day from the nutkicking heard ‘round the world, Draymond Green’s second such assault on Steven Adams’s dick and balls in as many games. And as everyone patiently awaits word on potential discipline—a one-game suspension seems certain, unless the NBA cares more about protecting its stars...

Russ And KD Are Running Things Now
Yes, for sure, the Oklahoma City Thunder made tactical adjustments that helped them in Game 3. They went small early, with Andre Roberson at power forward, rather than going huge, as they had in the first two games; they used Roberson as a screener instead of parking him in the corner where the Warr...