playoffs Page 68 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Backstrom To Ovechkin Has Never Been Bigger Or Prettier
It’s 2-1 Washington as I write this, but the goals are coming fast and furious so let’s not spend too much time on this before the score changes. (No shit, Vegas made it 2-2 before I finished writing that sentence.) But the Caps have been scoring some of the prettiest goals of the playoffs—especiall...
Ovechkin And Fleury Say Hello, With Sticks
Alexander Ovechkin’s and Marc-Andre Fleury’s playoff familiarity goes all the way back to 2009. Fleury’s side has won every single one of their series (even if he happened to be on the bench for some of that). That could change tonight, obviously. Even before puck drop, they were sending each other ...
D.C.'s Chinatown Is Sinking Under A Sea Of Red
It has been a long, long while since the last time D.C. had any reason to throw a public sports watch party. With the Caps on a run through the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the weather around town holding up beautifully, Caps watch parties, taking place inside and around the Caps’ Chinatown arena, hav...
Just How Extremely Over Are The NBA Finals?
Let me take you inside the game for a moment: we record the Deadcast a little while before you actually hear the Deadcast. It is not, despite the seamlessly integrated ads and effortlessly fluid riffage, a live show. When we recorded this one on Wednesday morning, the NBA Finals were not quite as ex...
Kevin Durant Lightly Restrained After Hearing Very Funny Or Very Boring Heckle<em></em>
Last night, it was not “KD you suck” that got Kevin Durant’s attention and made him walk slowly in the direction of the heckler, but rather that classic barb that gets under everyone’s skin: “KD! You cheesebutt!”...
Kevin Durant Is A Recurring Nightmare
The bad dream that’s afflicting LeBron James is a long one, replete with horrors. J.R. Smith is there, wandering around with a lit M-80 in his hand. Jordan Clarkson is somehow lurking around every corner, wearing Kobe Bryant’s face as a mask. Kevin Love’s drowning in a glass water tank and LeBron ca...
Kevin Durant Won The NBA Finals Tonight
Even if everyone already knew the Warriors were eventually going to win the NBA Finals regardless of what happened tonight, Game 3 was actually pretty fun. The Cavs gave the Dubs their best shot on the way to a respectable 110-102 defeat. Kevin Love came to play, Rodney Hood reminded us that he was ...
LeBron James Has Always Had To Carry Useless Weaklings
As we wait out the formality that these lopsided, nightmarish NBA Finals have become, it’s still worth acknowledging just how impressive it is that LeBron James has carried such a messed up, broken Cavs team through the Eastern Conference. With a supporting cast of old three-point specialists, activ...
This Is Evgeny Kuznetsov's Time
Before Game 4, a reporter spotted in Evgeny Kuznetsov’s locker a bottle of Fuck Off pills. It’s a gag gift—you know the sort of thing—even if I’m not sure exactly what the gag is supposed to be. But, uh, it might’ve worked. Because Kuznetsov went the fuck off, racking up four assists in the Capitals...
The Golden Knights Have Lost Their Mojo
There is no secret to what is happening to the Golden Knights, now down 3-1 in the Stanley Cup final after playing nigh-unbeatable throughout the playoffs. The zamboni has transformed back into a pumpkin, and not just a regular pumpkin, but a gross smelly rotted one. ...
The Capitals Finally Made Vegas Look Like An Expansion Team<em></em>
In the follow-up performance to a Game 3 loss marked by defensive miscommunications and mishaps, the Vegas Golden Knights looked even worse for most of Game 4, falling to the Capitals 6-2 to go down 3-1 in the Stanley Cup Finals. On the whole, Vegas actually did a better job of creating dangerous ch...
Kendrick Perkins Somehow Becomes The Central Part Of An NBA Finals Controversy
At the end of the third quarter of Game 2, Steph Curry missed a three and sauntered back towards his bench in front of the Cavaliers. Most of the Cavs let him walk freely, but not Kendrick Perkins, who refused to close his widespread legs and knocked knees with Curry....
Here's Four Minutes Of Footage From Game 1 Of LeBron James Not Murdering J.R. Smith
Yes, Game 2 already happened, and it went just about as everyone expected after the Cavaliers blew their chance last week. It’s still worth going back to look to Game 1 and the exact moment this Finals series ended....
What Are You Supposed To Do About Steph Curry?
Steph Curry makes you want to ragequit. Throw up your hands; throw the controller across the room; swear, loudly, to an empty apartment. It’s a videogame term, but he’s a videogame talent: hitting low-percentage (for anyone else) shots at a rate that should be beyond human capabilities, and when the...
Watching The NBA Finals At Oracle Arena With The Overlords And Oligarchs In Club Prick
I watched Game 1 of the NBA Finals from extremely expensive seats in Oracle Arena, but I didn’t see J.R. Smith’s towering goof....
J.R. Smith Is No Longer So Certain He Knew The Score
J.R. Smith was pretty clear after Game 1 that he knew the score and situation at the end of regulation, and that what appeared to be an all-time blunder was, in fact, a combination of team-wide confusion and a running clock. The play sure didn’t look that way, but that was his story and, honestly, i...
Maybe It Actually Is Okay For Caps Fans To Believe?
The Caps were still up by a goal after Braden Holtby’s incredible blunder in the third period of Saturday’s Game 3, but when it happened—the very instant Tomáš Nosek guided Holtby’s blind, panicked, incomprehensibly ill-advised give-away into the empty net—a vision of the next great gut-wrenching Ca...
NBA L2M Report: The Refs Made A Big Dumb Mess Of The End Of Game 1
It would be hard to overstate just how badly the Cavs were screwed by the universe at the end of Game 1 Thursday night. A rare reversed judgment call, an unexpected missed free throw, an uncalled lane violation, an apparent uncalled loose-ball foul, and an all-time blunder by one of their own, all i...
Tristan Thompson Avoids Suspension For Game 1 Tussle
The NBA announced Friday that Tristan Thompson has been fined $25,000 for cramming a basketball in the face of Draymond Green during the dismal final moments of Game 1. Thompson was issued a Flagrant 2 and ejected by referee Tony Brothers—who, along with his fellow Game 1 referees, will never again ...
Don't Let J.R. Smith Distract You From JaVale McGee's Own Incredibly Funny Failure
An NBA Finals game featuring Nick Young, J.R. Smith, and JaVale McGee was always bound to be full of goofs and gaffes, and while everyone is justifiably mocking Smith for forgetting how time and numbers work, let us not forget that McGee had perhaps an even funnier botched play in the third quarter....