Nick Kyrgios is no longer playing well or amusingly enough to justify the usual apologist disclaimer, so let’s just get to the point. On Monday at the Shanghai Masters, where he has tanked for two years running, he once again flirted with nihilism as he lost to world No. 104 Bradley Klahn, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.
After what feels like an eternity of emotionally disintegrating in public, Bernard Tomic is somehow only 25 years old, with plenty of talent to spare, and was as recently as last season a top-30 player on tour. This season he’s been fighting to qualify for the majors, though the tortured former No. 17 player still…
ESPN basketball reporter Adrian Wojnarowski dropped an enticing little anecdote on his most recent podcast, which was noticed today by an astute Reddit sleuth. Woj was talking to Bobby Marks about the NBA season’s hotly contested tank-off and said an owner recently yelled at his coach for winning a game. “I know of an…
The 2018 NBA Draft Lottery, held just over a month from today, will be the last before the NBA institutes the new odds formula cooked up last September, designed to reduce or eliminate tanking. Spoiler alert! The new formula will not solve tanking, an inevitability that Adam Silver recently acknowledged. Per ESPN:
DALLAS — If the Mavericks were going to do what needed to be done on Tuesday night in the finale of their 2018 season, it would take an almost herculean effort. A guaranteed share of the NBA’s third-worst record and the attendant lottery-odds boost was on the line, but they would have to lock in, focus up, and play…
The Dallas Mavericks, who have spent most of the season doing everything they can to lose games on purpose, fucked up big time on Tuesday night when they beat a very good, playoff-bound Blazers team. This gave them 24 victories on the season, and put them in danger of being passed in The Great Tank Race Of 2018 by the…
A fun thing to track, this time of year, is NBA games that produce outcomes that, purely from a standings perspective, are catastrophic for both teams. This season offers plenty of potential on this front: 18 of the NBA’s 30 teams are firmly in the playoff picture; all but the top two of each conference are engaged in…
The Memphis Grizzlies came into last night’s slate of NBA action riding an 18-game losing streak and with firm command of the NBA’s tanking crown. Surely no team can match the raw, losing prowess of a Grizzlies squad that routinely and intentionally plays JaMychal Green and Jarell Martin next to a traditional center.…
The Grizzlies have had an absolute nightmare of a season. Because they came into the season with Marc Gasol and Mike Conley and Tyreke Evans and [gulp] Chandler Parsons on the team, they started with the goal of making the playoffs. But Conley played just 12 games this season; Gasol’s efficiency and defensive prowess…
USA Today’s Sam Amick obtained a memo that Adam Silver sent to all 30 NBA teams a week ago, warning them that they faced the “swiftest and harshest response possible” from the league office if they get caught outwardly trying to lose games. The memo was sent on Feb. 21, the same day that Silver fined Mavericks owner…
By the time the NBA’s All-Star break usually rolls around, the standings are more or less set. It’s typically obvious which four or so teams will be contending for a championship, and it’s also apparent who will be spending the rest of the year in the toilet, tanking for superior lottery odds and draft positioning. As…
Thursday will mark an important anniversary in Nick Kyrgios’s life: Last year in Shanghai he openly threw a match, abused fans in the stands, and earned eight weeks of suspension plus $41,500 in fines (later softened to three weeks after he agreed to meet with a tour-appointed sports psychologist). Today in Shanghai,…
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that a new NBA draft lottery system is one step closer to becoming a reality. According to Woj, the league’s competition committee has recommended a reform proposal that was created by the NBA, and the league’s board of governors will now vote on the proposal on Sept. 28.
With Quincy Enunwa now out for the season with a neck injury, the Jets’ wide receiving corps will be led by ... well, um, let me know whether you’ve heard of any of these jamokes:
NBA commissioner Adam Silver spoke to reporters in Las Vegas yesterday, and fielded questions on topics ranging from playoff re-seeding to the NBA’s age limit. One topic he did not seem too interested in talking about was tanking.
The Dallas Mavericks started out this season as a very bad team gnashing around in a garbage heap and losing oodles of games. They enjoyed a brief period of relevance and even fought for a playoff spot after trading for Nerlens Noel, but they eventually settled back towards the bottom of the standings and finished…
Despite their best efforts, the Los Angeles Lakers can’t stop winning games. They entered tonight’s game against the Pelicans on a four-game winning streak, and they extended it to five with a 108-96 victory. They absolutely did not want to beat the Pelicans, as the win put them out of reach of the Suns, but even a…
The Lakers have won four games in a row, which is good news if you are a Lakers fan that derives some happiness from each individual win, and very bad news if you are a Lakers fan who would prefer that the team have its best chance at keeping a lottery pick this year.
In April of last year, Philadelphia right-wing talk radio host and Daily News columnist Dom Giordano cooked up a hot take comparing now former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie to Bernie Sanders. It ended with an almost Breitbartian non sequitur: “Hinkie robbed area basketball fans of three years of…
After getting a look at the, uh, effort the Lakers are putting into making sure they hang onto their first-round pick in the upcoming NBA draft, the Phoenix Suns have decided to get in on that action.
