toronto Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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....
Marc Gasol Can Run With The Warriors, And Get Buckets Too
Marc Gasol has been a prime component of the Raptors’ asphyxiating defense—one of the most switchable, responsive, obnoxiously needling teams in recent memory. His post D has been stout enough to knock Joel Embiid a notch down from series-defining to merely good. By Giannis Antetokounmpo’s own admi...
Draymond Green Wants It Known That He Did <i>Not</i> Scuffle With Drake
Raptors super fan and legendary cornball Drake was an unusually subdued presence during Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Toronto, perhaps because he got a stern talking-to from the league. But, with an assist from a salty Draymond Green, Drake still managed to deliver another meme-able moment after the f...
Pascal Siakam Fought A Bear And Won
For as much as the Raptors’ run to the finals was about Kawhi Leonard’s ascension to godhood, it was also about the circumstances that made that ascension necessary. Think of all the playoff possessions in which Leonard was forced to pull a heroic shot out of his ass because his other four teammates...
Fred VanVleet Can Do No Wrong
How big a lead does a team have to have on the Warriors before its fans can feel comfortable? Twenty points with two minutes left? Fifteen points with 30 seconds to go? To me, it didn’t feel like the Raptors had Game 1 locked up until they were actually dribbling out the final ticks, up nine with th...
Raptors Fight Off Every Warriors Push To Grab A Comfortable Game 1 Victory
In retrospect, we had a pretty solid indication that things were turning Toronto’s way in the build up to their Game 1 victory over the Warriors:...
Drake Tries Very Hard To Pretend He Doesn't Have Steph Curry And Kevin Durant's Jersey Numbers Tattooed On His Body
The world was very nearly spared a couple week’s worth of energetic Drake sightings Thursday night, when Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors went careening into the sidelines late in the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Iguodala missed hurling the bulk of his giant NBA frame into the ...
A Thorough And Informative 2019 NBA Finals Preview For Basketball Idiots
Hello, casual basketball viewer! At long last, the NBA Finals are here, and you know what that means: It’s time once again for you to crib a pitiful smattering of hoops knowledge from this extremely half-assed blog and carry it forth to the sports bar like the torch that lights your path....
Let's Talk Ourselves Into This NBA Finals Matchup
The NBA Finals would seem great to someone who only recently decided to care about NBA basketball. You’ve got your dynastic bulletproof Golden State Warriors, currently minus injured cornball virtuoso Kevin Durant but otherwise as monstrously dominant as ever. You’ve also got the Toronto Raptors, a ...
Drake And The Raptors Both Got A Talking-To From The NBA
The Toronto Raptors will host Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, and there’s no doubt Drake will be sitting on the sideline. He’s behaved like an unruly dingus courtside in Toronto, blurring the lines between participant and bystander in ways that would make Spike Lee blush. Bucks coach Mike Budenhol...
Now Here Is A Preposterous Catch From Jonathan Davis
Sure, this insane highlight stab from Blue Jays outfielder Jonathan Davis came in the first inning of Wednesday night’s game at Tampa, but there were some stakes: the out kept two runs off the board after Toronto’s offense gave starter Trent Thornton a 2–0 lead, and got Thornton out of a tight spot....
Avisaíl García Had Just The Absolute Dumbest Inside-The-Park Dinger
Avisaíl García, the disorienting ceiling at the Trop, and the atrocious eyesight of Randal Grichuk all combined to give the Rays’ DH an atypical, embarrassing, inside-the-park dong during the Toronto-Tampa game on Tuesday night. In the third inning, facing Clayton Richard, García hit a high fly int...
Most Of These Team Names Would've Been Way Better Than "Raptors"
The second-most ’90s thing in professional sports is the Hornets still using teal as a primary color. (And, considering it’s the second edition of that franchise, it can be viewed in a more forgiving throwback/nostalgic light.) The single most ’90s thing in professional sports is, obviously, that th...
Cavan Biggio Proves There's Enough Room In Toronto For Two Dinger-Mashing Sons Of Cooperstown Greats
The Toronto Blue Jays made history on Friday when they called up Cavan Biggio to the Majors. If Cavan’s last name sounds familiar to you, it’s because Cavan is the son of Astros legend Craig Biggio. As a result of that connection, the Blue Jays became the first team in Major League history to have t...
What Can The Raptors Possibly Do To Make People Believe The Lie?
The Raptors took down the Bucks on Saturday, 100-94, to clinch an NBA Finals berth for the first time in franchise history. With that series victory, Toronto seemingly vanquished the infamous Drake curse, exorcised the demons of past postseason failures and even vindicated Kawhi Leonard’s place as ...
This Kawhi Leonard Ball Fake Is Hypnotic
Kawhi Leonard has been doing a lot that’s reminiscent of Michael Jordan. The raw scoring—Leonard is up to 31.4 points per game this postseason—the shimmying midrange work, the perimeter defense. Add a new entry to the list: ball fakes only possible with enormous mitts. Check out this possession in G...