playoffs Page 75 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Report: The NHL Tries, Once Again, To Talk Brad Marchand Out Of Licking People
Bruins dingus Brad Marchand was reportedly asked by the NHL to stop licking opposing players on April 26. The licking did not stop: Friday night, during his team’s eventual overtime loss to the Lightning, Marchand was spotted licking the face of Tampa winger Ryan Callahan. Hard as it may be to belie...

God Bless Playoff Rondo
The Pelicans grabbed a vital and unexpected win in their second-round series against the Warriors Friday night, in a game that was never close after the Pelicans ripped off a 10-1 run near the start of the second half. Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday were fabulous; Nikola Mirotic got loose for a doub...

Kevin Love Finally Woke Up
In every playoff series, LeBron James is going to have a handful of games where he’s utterly unstoppable and goes for some ridiculous stat line like 45-12-14 just because he can and because his team needs him to be everywhere all the time. The Cavs found out how far LeBron alone can take them in the...

The Celtics Are In Control
In the most basic sense, there’s the 22-point comeback. There’s also the complete disassembling of Ben Simmons and Terry Rozier’s fearlessness and Al Horford’s craft and a whole host of other things that explain how a Boston Celtics team missing both its two best players and a full-strength Jaylen B...

Pekka Rinne And His Knob Kept The Predators Alive
In the highest leverage game of their playoffs so far—don’t you hate the term “must-win” in non-elimination games?—Predators goalie Pekka Rinne turned in his best performance of the postseason yet, anchoring Nashville as they beat Winnipeg 2-1 on the road in Game 4 to tie their second-round series a...

Sidney Crosby Makes Everyone Better
Here’s a stat—a quirk?—that has very little to do with anything else in this blog but is too amazing not to lead with: In this series, Sidney Crosby has been on the ice for all 10 of Pittsburgh’s goals....

The Sixers Blew It
With a little more than five minutes remaining in the first half tonight, Robert Covington drained a three, stretching the 76ers’ lead over the Celtics to 21 points. Philadelphia was in control here, with no signs of loosening their grip. And then they sent all of that to hell. Over the next quarter...

LeBron James Remains A Damn Miracle
The No. 1 seed Raptors, again, built a first-half lead tonight only to squander it, losing 128-110 to fall behind 2-0 in their second-round series against the Cavaliers. And while it may be tempting to file this one away as yet another classically Raptorsian playoff performance, there’s only so much...

Report: NBA Tells Drake To Stop Cussing At The Game
Drake spent time during the Raptors’ spectacular Game 1 choke getting into it with Kendrick Perkins, a man much larger than him, and at one point even called him a “fucking pussy” while the two were surrounded by approximately 500 security guards. It was one of those fake NBA fights where both guys ...

Dante Exum Is Now Doing Things
With Ricky Rubio out, Utah’s long, long specimen Dante Exum was stuck with one of the most frustrating defensive assignments in basketball: James Harden and the 1,001 dribbles. The stringy Australian has spent just over half of his NBA career injured, but in those healthy stretches has shown serious...

Heckling Weenie Gets His Phone Smacked By James Harden
Russell Westbrook has a theory that Utah Jazz fans are particularly mouthy toward players, and it’s one that was supported by a fan at last night’s game between the Rockets and Jazz....

NHL Suspends Tom Wilson Three Games For Jaw-Breaking Hit
Less than 24 hours before Game 4 of the Capitals and Penguins’ second-round series—which Washington leads 2-1—the NHL announced that it has suspended Capitals enforcer Tom Wilson three games for his hit on Penguins forward Zach Aston-Reese in Game 3, which broke the Pittsburgh player’s jaw and gave ...

The Most You Can Do Is Keep LeBron From Feasting
There is no such thing as a LeBron Stopper. There are LeBron Inconveniencers, and if you are one of them, and have eaten a well-balanced meal and hydrated deeply and prayed to all the relevant deities, you might “hold” LeBron to a triple-double and 26 points on 40-percent shooting, as the Raptors di...

The Capitals-Penguins Blood Feud Now Maybe Has Some Spit In It
Familiarity breeds contempt, yes, but also, contempt breeds contempt. The Capitals and Penguins would dislike each other even if they didn’t meet four times a season and then again seemingly every spring, but the prolificity of the rivalry gives the bad blood the time and exposure it needs to ripen ...

Rajon Rondo's Really Trying To Bug Draymond Green
The Warriors facing the Pelicans in the second round means that two notorious shit-stirrers will be on the court together, and even if the series result is lopsided, the antics of Rajon Rondo and Draymond Green will compensate for it in entertainment....

Draymond Green Dares Charles Barkley To Punch Him In The Face
As he often does during Inside the NBA, a show designed to bait its hosts into late-night ramblings, Charles Barkley got to talking shit last night. Specifically about Warriors forward Draymond Green:...

Steph Curry Makes The Warriors Invincible
The version of the Golden State Warriors that dispatched the Spurs in five games and cruised to a blowout Game 1 win against the Pelicans is a fine NBA team. One that, if not destined to, certainly looked capable of winning the title while being led by top-five NBA player Kevin Durant. The version o...

Nobody Pukes Up A Game Quite Like The Raptors
I’m not here to argue that the Raptors’ collapse in Game 1 of their second-round series against the Cavaliers is proof that their 59-win season was totally hollow and that they are in fact fraudulent pretenders unworthy of the No. 1 seed and should be expelled from the NBA so that no one ever again ...

