rnc Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Can we just skip the Eastern Conference play-in tournament this year?
As the NBA regular season nears its end, teams continue to jockey for playoff and play-in tournament positions producing some wild races heading toward the finish line. The race in the West is setting up for a photo finish over the last few days, with both playoff and play-in implications on the lin...

LeBron leading Lakers' late playoff surge — with a first-round exit likely
The Los Angeles Lakers are riding high late in the season as they attempt to sneak into the top six of the Western Conference avoiding the play-in tournament. After beating Utah Tuesday night, L.A. sits a half-game back of the fifth-place Golden State Warriors and tied with the Clippers (both 41-38)...

The new-look Los Angeles Lakers are peaking at just the right time
What appeared to be a lost Los Angeles Lakers season six weeks ago has sprouted wings in the final home stretch before the postseason. After missing countless weeks mending injuries in 2023, Anthony Davis and LeBron James returned to a lineup terraformed on the go....

The best games of the final week of the 2022-23 NBA regular-season Schedule
It’s the final week of the NBA regular season. Usually I would advise sports fans to get one last glimpse at a young team like the Orlando Magic before their season comes to an end. This season, my viewing recommendation is to wait until next season to watch the youngsters. They likely will have imp...

The Hornets have replaced the Kings as the NBA’s most beleaguered franchise
The Sacramento Kings Beam season isn’t over yet, but success is relative. The Kings finally ended the NBA’s longest playoff drought. All it took was De’Aaron Fox straightening out his jumper, an offseason for Domantas Sabonis to get fully integrated into the offense, trading for Kevin Huerter and Mi...

Who the fuck are St. Louis City SC and who the fuck do they think they are?
The pattern of a first-year MLS club is pretty well set by now. Team gets announced, we all joke about the league being a Ponzi scheme (still might be!), they begin play in a stadium that looks fun as hell in front of raucous crowds, and then kind of eat it for most of the season. Maybe they pick it...

The best NBA games on this week’s schedule
Focus, people. There are only two weeks remaining in the NBA season....

Florida Atlantic proves just how quickly its tenacity can make opponents unravel
NEW YORK — Don’t let Florida Atlantic hang around. Memphis messed around and found out. Fairleigh Dickinson truly never had the legs to keep up with the Owls, but also felt the result of letting the grittiest team in the nation have time to respond. Surely a Rick Barnes-coached team from a battle-te...

Fred VanVleet has shown Chris Paul the way to an NBA Championship
A precedent has been set. It is time for Chris Paul to take action. The Phoenix Suns are gearing up for a playoff run in the most wide-open Western Conference since Dennis Rodman and David Robinson were sharing the screen in stuffed-crust pizza commercials. With Kevin Durant likely to be available f...

The Kawhi Leonard-Paul George Clippers are proving load management doesn’t work
Very few games offer as clear a view of colliding worlds as the Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder did at the Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, Paul George’s hyperextended knee put a damper on the evening. Midway through the third quarter, we witnessed the brilliance of G...

The best NBA games on this week’s schedule
This is the time of year in which sports fans should be primarily focused on the Men’s and Women’s college basketball postseason tournaments. The “amateurs” have put on quite a show that deserves attention this week....

These NBA playoff performers have the most to prove
Every year a group of players enters the NBA playoffs with the weight of their legacy on their shoulders. And every year, all but one player exits bearing even more weight than they went in with. This season is no different, despite the unprecedented parity in the league. So we’ve pinpointed the pla...

Is Shaq gonna get served on TV?
It’s not too shocking that athletes or celebrities in general don’t know much about whatever they’re getting paid to promote. If the check clears is about as much thought as they have to put into it. No one thinks Steve Martin drinks Pepsi in his free time. Or that Brie Larson is tooling around in a...

All the NBA action you'll want to catch this week
This week is the first of the NCAA basketball tournaments, and freak injuries have befallen both Kevin Durant and Luka Dončić. Some sports fans might believe this is a good week to step away from the NBA....

The top 18 NBA Draft prospects to watch in the NCAA tournament
We’re less than a week away from the start of the NCAA Tournament and several of the stars that will shine during March Madness will end their college careers during the showcase. While the lose-o-rama for Victor Wembanyama, the projected No. 1 overall pick, has been underway for several months now,...

Ranking all 64 NCAA Tournament teams
No more bubbles. No more first four in or out. No more teams wondering if they made the most exclusive group in college basketball. Only 68 teams of the 350+ Division-I squads have a chance to become national champions now. Before the First Four begins on Tuesday, we’ve ranked every team that hopes ...

The best NBA action you missed last night
Mavs v. Pelicans: The Mavericks mounted a furious comeback against the Pelicans, to try and overcome a 25-point fourth-quarter comeback but fell just short. They went 10-18 from the 3-point line but still ended up losing the game 113-106. The Mavericks’ performance behind the arc explains how they g...

The four most exciting games in the NBA last night
We here at Deadspin understand that you need to get those REM cycles in, in addition to catching up on The Mandalorian, The Last Of Us, the Great British Bakeoff, or whatever else the kids are watching these days. For those of you who cashed it in early, here are the four most exciting NBA games tha...

NBA Disarray Rankings: Ja Morant and Russell Westbrook are the captains of their teams’ demises
This is the juncture in the seesawing NBA season when champions begin raising their games and pretenders plummet into sinkholes. Disarray isn’t a permanent status. Over the course of an 82-game season, lulls, injuries, suspensions and a lack of focus can derail even the steadiest contenders. However...
