the-nba Page 96 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Step aside Lakers, L.A. is Clippers Country now
The worm has turned in L.A....

Road warrior Kawhi Leonard joins NBA elite with season-saver in Dallas
If you were watching Game 6 of Clippers-Mavericks on Friday night, you heard about a hundred times how there’s never been a series in the NBA where the road team won the first six games — until now, since Los Angeles notched a 104-97 victory behind 45 points from Kawhi Leonard....

Daryl Morey tried to recruit Steph Curry and then lied about it...poorly
Even with a banged-up Joel Embiid, the Sixers took care of Russ, Beal, and the Wizards in Game 5 of their first-round series. The team was looking forward to their first game against the Atlanta Hawks. Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey, however, was looking forward to the offseas...

Devin Booker goes off, joins rarified NBA royalty in slaying L.A.
The NBA has a superstar that not enough people talk about as being in the top tier of league talents, but last night he showcased that he belongs. On the road, to close out the defending champions, Devin Booker went ballistic — he dropped 47 points (a playoff career-high), 11 rebounds, eight three-p...

LeBron’s gone, and the NBA did him no favors with short offseason
I grew up in Chicago, which means I grew up in a basketball atmosphere that was convinced the league was always rigging things for the Knicks. Even though the Bulls would go on to win six titles — beating the Knicks along the way for most of them — Bulls fans were always insistent that they had to o...

Will we actually see an NBA Finals without LeBron?
We might be in store for something very rare in the NBA — a Finals that doesn’t include LeBron James. With the Lakers down 3-2 to the Phoenix Suns, the possibility is becoming more and more likely that the defending champs won’t make it out of the first round. Not seeing Lebron making a deep playoff...

Grizzlies are closer than you think to being a part of the NBA’s upper echelon
The Grizzlies are a front office move away from wrecking the entire NBA....

Donovan Mitchell is one playoff run away from being the best player on the planet
Donovan Mitchell really could be the NBA’s finest one day. ...

Hey, Knicks fans: At least you’re not the Maple Leafs
How bad was the Toronto Maple Leafs’ collapse? It’s better to be a Knicks fan right now....

Does MLB even have a marketing department?
Last weekend, when writing about José Godoy becoming the 20,000th player in Major League Baseball history, I brought up the story of Bob Watson being the man who scored MLB’s one-millionth run, and all the hoopla around that in 1975....

Last night was an anomaly, but it still shows Nets need more than their big three
If you told me that the James Harden-Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving trio would combine for 96 points, opposite 50 from Jayson Tatum and only 6 from Kemba Walker, I would’ve thought the Nets won that game by double figures. ...

Deadspin’s Jesse Spector goes full Abe Simpson
Having turned 40, I’m aware that I have lots of OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD potential, but the NBA really needs to cool it with the constant uniform switching. Most of the time, whatever, we’ve all accepted that an NBA player’s job expectations in 2021 include modeling various styles of Nike activewear. ...

This is the Jimmy Butler I remember
The Bucks-Heat series was supposed to be one of the most intriguing of the first round. Last year’s Eastern Conference champ, going up against a Bucks team that, if they were to spit it early for the second straight year, could be facing some kind of organizational overhaul. There was the added spic...

Nuggets/Blazers is so much more than just Jokić vs. Lillard
Nikola Jokić and Damian Lillard are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do....
![NBA needs to put unruly fans in check before we have another Malice at the Palace [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/a452f5098bb6085125104d937a9a8d4f.jpg)
NBA needs to put unruly fans in check before we have another Malice at the Palace [Updated]
What happened last night to Russell Westbrook was unacceptable....

The Clippers can’t afford to do this, and yet, they’re doing it
Are the Clippers really going to do this?...

It’s been a tale of two brows lately, and that’s not good enough for Showtime
If the Los Angeles Lakers are going to have any chance at repeating as NBA Champions, they can’t have Anthony Davis finishing games with Andrea Bargnani stat lines....

Run the NBA play-in tournament as a series of high-stakes gauntlet matches
The NBA wants to have an in-season tournament, and a lot of the reaction to this idea is that it’s terrible, that it’s basketball trying to be soccer, that it’s a huge waste of time....

NBA, WNBA, MLS players urge Senate to pass George Floyd Justice in Policing Act
Here’s another way to take a stand one year after George Floyd’s killing, NFL....