playoffs Page 80 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Joel Embiid Is Not Happy After Tonight's Sixers Loss
Joel Embiid cleared concussion protocol yesterday—nearly three weeks after he initially landed in said protocol by smacking heads with teammate Markelle Fultz and fracturing his orbital bone—but the Sixers center was still on the bench for tonight’s Game 2 against the Heat. He’s apparently not too t...

It's 2018, My God, And Dwyane Wade Just Won A Playoff Game Through The Force Of His Own Will
Dwyane Wade established tonight’s Game 2 against the 76ers as a Dwyane Wade Night, a performance bound to get the word “vintage” repeatedly attached to it, pretty early on: certainly before the end of the first half, by which point he’d scored 21 on 8-for-9 shooting off the bench. In the second quar...
![Let's Spend Way Too Much Time Breaking Down An Adorable Little Girl's Quest For A Puck [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/a3zmbun0k7rt8ehrsaxu.png)
Let's Spend Way Too Much Time Breaking Down An Adorable Little Girl's Quest For A Puck [UPDATE]
On Sunday, a cute little girl sitting in the money seats at the Caps playoff game banged on the glass as Brett Connolly skated by. He noticed her and tried to flip her a puck over the glass, but a dad-person behind her caught it and handed it to the young fan beside her. She was sad. The same thing ...

Donovan Mitchell Isn't Wasting Any Time
The Thunder won the first game in their series against the Jazz on Sunday, thanks in large part to the dominance of Paul George. But if you’re looking for someone in Utah with the ability to rise to George and Russell Westbrook’s level and keep this series competitive, look no further than rookie gu...

NHL Linesman Can't Stop Getting Gruesomely Injured
Capitals winger Andre Burakovsky suffered an “upper-body injury” on a big check in Sunday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Blue Jackets, and will not travel to Columbus for the series’ next two games. He got off easy compared to linesman Steve Barton....

Steven Adams's Arm Seems To Have Survived This Dunk
Please turn up the volume on your computing device, and listen to the goddamn sound this Steven Adams alley-oop made. ...

One Of These James Harden Step-Backs Is Unlike The Others
James Harden was comically unguardable in Sunday night’s 104-101 win over the T-Wolves, certainly if your name was Andrew Wiggins, and even if your name was Jimmy Butler. Houston must have been relieved to see it. The Rockets’ offense relies on the three-ball more than any other team’s, with fully 5...

The Golden Knights Won't Be Pushed Around
Game 3 was going to be nasty, and the Golden Knights knew it. With the Kings down 2-0 and the series leaving Vegas, where the Knights have been so good at home (the “Vegas Flu” is real, but so is their home-crowd advantage), Los Angeles was going to come out pesty and physical, finishing their check...

Uhh, The Pacers Beat The Living Shit Out Of The Cavaliers
Apart from a furious run spanning the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth, the Cavs were soundly whupped on their home floor by the Pacers Sunday afternoon, and lost 98-80. Possibly these are the end times. Up...is it down?...

Penguins Score Twice In 5 Seconds
The Penguins and Flyers came into today’s game in Philadelphia tied at 1 in their opening-round series. Pittsburgh destroyed the Flyers in the opener, 7-0; Philadelphia came back with a 5-1 win in Game 2....

The End Of Bucks-Celtics Featured A Ridiculous Sequence Of Clutch Buckets
Game 1 of Bucks-Celtics was choppy and hectic and low-scoring, but man was it tense, and the last 10 minutes or so were breathless, hilarious fun. Let’s just sit here and enjoy some highlights for a few minutes, yeah?...

Joel Embiid Moves One Big Step Closer To Returning To Action
For a while during the first half of Saturday’s Game 1 it looked like the Miami Heat might be able to capitalize on the absence of Joel Embiid, who has been in the NBA’s concussion protocol since March 28. Miami had a six-point lead after the first quarter; their lead in the first half grew to as la...

Jrue Holiday And Anthony Davis Overwhelmed The Trail Blazers
Saturday’s slate of NBA playoff games—Game 1s? Games 1?—mostly went as expected: the Warriors made lunchmeat out of the Spurs; the Raptors almost Raptored against the Wizards, but pulled away in the fourth quarter; the Sixers just ran away from the Heat in the second half. Home teams went 3-0 throug...

Serge Ibaka Got Hit In The Dick And Balls
Through three quarters, Kelly Oubre had no points in today’s NBA playoff opener for the Washington Wizards. What he did have was an amazing pass right into Serge Ibaka’s dick and balls....

A Timely And Exhaustive Preview Of The 2018 NBA Playoffs
Ah, casual sports fan: We meet again. The 2018 NBA playoffs begin this afternoon! How the hell will you know what is going on in the games, other than like a bunch of sweaty dudes bouncing a ball and throwing it through a pair of rings, if you don’t have some 10,000 words of preview and analysis to ...

Unleash Playoff LeBron
Fifteen years on, you could hardly be blamed for being desensitized to LeBron James. You and me and everyone else that plays with real and fake MVP votes at the end of every NBA season know how boring monotony can get, and so we stitch together some selective, season-specific argument sort-of-provi...

Okay, Confirmed, Evander Kane Is A "Playoff Player"
In his ninth season, in his fourth city, Evander Kane had played 574 games without ever making the playoffs. (That was just five games shy of Carolina’s Jeff Skinner, who now has no real challengers.) So when Kane earlier this week called himself a “playoff player,” he was talking style, not experi...

Good Lord, Filip Forsberg, This Is Sorcery
Filip Forsberg scored twice in the third period of the Predators’ 5-2 win over the Avalanche in Game 1 of their first-round series tonight, but forget about that first goal for now, because his second one was truly gorgeous. It’s unclear how exactly he managed to keep track of the puck here in order...

Capitals Collapse, In What Is Surely Not An Omen Of Things To Come
Maybe it’s just me, but it felt easier to talk myself into the Capitals this playoffs. They’re still a very good team, the thinking went, but without the pressure of the Presidents’ Trophy—which they won the past two years—maybe they could learn from experience and surprise people by avoiding the in...
