toronto Page 14 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Several Minutes Of Horrendous Basketball Result In Warriors Surviving Game 5

Game 5 was anything but pretty. The first half was defined by Kevin Durant’s triumphant return, and then Kevin Durant’s disastrous re-injury. The second half was defined by one transcendent three-minute stretch from Kawhi Leonard, and then three minutes of ridiculous, frantic, slapstick mutual failu...

Kevin Durant Re-Crabs His Crabbed Leg, Dammit [Update]

Kevin Durant ripped off 11 points in an impressive first quarter of Monday night’s Game 5 in Toronto, burying three three-pointers and switching capably on defense and looking maybe a little bit stiff but otherwise really goddamn impressive. Then, in the second quarter, with the Warriors up five poi...

Kawhi Said "Fuck" [Update]

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse told a story ahead of Monday night’s potential series-clincher Game 5, one that demonstrates the confidence and competitive spirit of basketball robot and Finals MVP frontrunner Kawhi Leonard. Shockingly, it has to do with Kawhi Leonard saying something aloud. E...

Kevin Durant Practiced, But Maybe Not That Much, And Nobody Knows What The Hell Is Going On

Kevin Durant’s month-long absence from the Golden State Warriors while he tries to recover from a calf injury has thrown the NBA Finals totally out of whack. Now, with the Warriors down 3-1 to the Raptors and facing a potential dynasty-ending Game 5 on Monday, Durant’s return seems like the only thi...

The Raptors Are The Warriors Now

Recency bias is a hateful but dominant force in the best-of-seven world, so the clear assumption to be made from Game 4 of the NBA Finals is that Game 6 seems unlikely. The Toronto Raptors are the new Golden State Warriors, and the Golden State Warriors are finally all about the trailing step, the a...

Kawhi Leonard Took Over And The Warriors Couldn't Do A Thing About It

The Warriors as currently constituted are “merely” a great NBA team. In just about any other context, it’s peak roster construction. A couple of all-world shooters, a couple of bangers down low with shots of their own, a scattering of role players each with their own specific skills, and an overall ...

Fred VanVleet: My Power Is Not Derived From My Son

One fun subplot of these NBA playoffs has been the resurgence of Raptors backup point guard Fred VanVleet. Through the first 15 games of the postseason, VanVleet was just one of the many Raptors role players struggling to find his shot while Kawhi Leonard dragged the team forward. He finally emerged...

The Warriors Aren't Just Going To Be Able To Wait For This Mess To Go Away [Update]

A lot has happened since Raptors guard Kyle Lowry was shoved by a Warriors fan after falling into the seats during Game 3: Lowry was understandably angry; the fan got ejected; after the game Lowry said the fan had made “vulgar” comments to him; this morning, the fan was identified as Mark Stevens, a...

Kevin Durant Is Fucking Up The Finals

In an ordinary Finals, the team in Golden State’s position, down 2-1 after dropping Game 3 at home, would be in real trouble, needing to win three out of four and at least once on the road to avoid elimination. Hell, the Warriors might even be in real trouble! Or maybe they aren’t the Warriors, but ...

Vlad Guerrero Jr.'s Righteous Dong Sent The Yankees To Hell Where They Belong

The vile and hideous New York Yankees were, inexplicably, somehow on the verge of maybe winning a game on Wednesday night, until a legend in the making shut them down. The Yanks have rightfully tasted victory only once in the month of June, and to prevent that disaster from happening again, the Toro...

Solo Steph Curry Is The Best Steph Curry

A thing that I will never stop inserting into conversations for the rest of my life is that I got to watch Steph Curry play (twice) while at Davidson—both of the Wildcats’ games at the Detroit Lions’ stadium when they made the Elite Eight during Curry’s sophomore season. Steph had 33 of his team’s 7...

The Raptors Won But Finals Chaos Still Reigns

It’s cheap to say that the Raptors beat the Gldn Stae Warors (which is to say, 63 percent of the Golden State Warriors) in Game 3 of the NBA Finals; in fact, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that the Raptors might have won the game anyway....

This Is Why Kyle Lowry Was So Pissed

Early in the fourth quarter of Toronto’s Game 3 road victory over the Warriors, play was held up for a minute while Kyle Lowry appeared to scold either a Warriors fan or multiple Warriors fans or the referees or arena security, or all of the above. Upon review, it appeared that Lowry was pissed beca...

Raptors Snatch Back Home-Court Advantage With Game 3 Beatdown Of Gutted Warriors

There may be no satisfying takeaway from Toronto’s Game 3 123–109 victory over the Warriors in Oakland, beyond the completely obvious reminder that however great Steph Curry is, he cannot beat an NBA Finals team completely by himself. Steve Kerr held Klay Thompson out of the action, and so the Warri...

Lost Canadian Tourists-Ass Basketball Team Needs Urgent Lift From Marin County To Oakland

What If The Raptors Had To Choose Between Kawhi And Drake?

There are rules to the Deadcast, although we don’t generally pay that much attention to them. For the most part, as you might have noticed, it goes like this: Bullshit/sports, sports, sports/Funbag, Funbag. It’s not a lot of structure, but it keeps us honest. This week, though, we faced a Funbag que...

The Layup Faces Of Game 2

For Sunday’s Game 2 in Toronto, a pair of remote cameras were set up at one end of the court. One (the angle you see above) appears to have been in the stanchion itself, and was operated by Getty Images’ Gregory Shamus, and captures the action just below the basket. The other (the first photo below)...

The Weirder The Finals Get, The Better

The news from the NBA Finals is all good, kids, and it is this: Nobody has any narratives left to invent. The events of Games 1 and 2 have savaged all the preconceptions, conceptions, and the way it’s looking, the post-conceptions of this series. Nobody has any idea what’s coming next, and nobody wi...

The Warriors Should Have Been Fucked

There’s no such thing as an NBA Finals loss that doesn’t sting, but some of them hurt more than others. The J.R. Smith Disaster was so demoralizing that you knew, even though it happened in Game 1, that the Cavs would never recover. Last night’s Game 2, which the Raptors lost 109-104, was not nearly...

Warriors Come Alive In Third Quarter, Even NBA Finals

For one and a half games of the 2019 NBA Finals, it looked like the Toronto Raptors were the better team. Then the first six minutes of Game 2’s third quarter happened....