unc Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Will Nikola Jokić lead Denver to its first title or will Jimmy Butler fulfill his playoff prophecy?
One of the least anticipated matchups in recent memory is upon us. The Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat. Let’s be real here. No LeBron, no Jayson Tatum, and no Boston Celtics legends in the stands. Media members have been openly grousing all week about having to cover the Nuggets. That’s a cornball pos...
Is Doc Rivers about to squeeze his way into another primo job with the Phoenix Suns?
Anytime an upper-echelon NBA team is in need of fixing, you can always bet there will be a basketball exec standing over their roster bellowing for a Doc in the house. He’ll give your team a tracheotomy when you were just choking on a bone, but for the umpteenth time, Doc Rivers is in a position to ...
Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics have Boston on the edge of misery
Joe Mazzulla versus Erik Spoelstra has been a lopsided showdown between two coaches with a devotion to film study. Spoelstra famously began his brilliant coaching career as a video coordinator with the Miami Heat in 1995. Joe Mazzulla is more of a pure cinephile. One of the more interesting peeks in...
The Miami Heat kicked the Celtics in the head, teeth, calf, and everyone else in Game 3
I have seen some ass-whuppings administered in my lifetime. I remember in the fifth-grade baseball playoffs beating the top overall seed by about 20 runs. To put a championship cap on Alabama’s 2012 football season the Tide ran through Notre Dame so viciously, that their opponents lost the desire to...
The Denver Nuggets are no longer the playoff wallflower
Before this series, if you’d asked most people who would advance to the NBA Finals between the Lakers and their nameless opponents, they would have responded with a rhetorical question. “Do you know who they’re playing?” Not literally. The Denver Nuggets aren’t in witness protection, but just a few ...
After winning the Victor Wembanyama lottery, San Antonio’s work is only just beginning
The conventional thinking is that Victor Wembanyama will be in safe hands with Gregg Popovich in San Antonio. But there’s no guarantee that the Wembanyama era will be anywhere as fruitful as Pop’s last dynasty or that he’ll have the best career out of any prospect in this draft, but I wouldn’t bet a...
Is Victor Wembanyama’s size a gift or a curse? Let's debate
The following conversation is based on real-life arguments and was conducted by two professionals. Please, don’t attempt to replicate any discussion as takes of these temperatures should be handled with gloves and safety glasses and under the care and supervision of adults. Today’s social experiment...
The NBA Playoffs are Anthony Davis’ world and Golden State is just living in it
On an early defensive possession in the Los Angeles Lakers’ Game 3 victory, Steph Curry turned on the jets along the baseline and left Jarred Vanderbilt eating dust on a drive to the rim. The only deterrent between Curry and two points was Anthony Davis stepping up to contest. Curry attempted to lof...
It’s never enough for Rob Manfred and his greedy pig bosses
You’d think after negotiating a CBA, before which Rob Manfred got to live out his lifelong dream of canceling baseball games, where the owners got a new level of luxury tax penalties, didn’t really have to pay younger players all that much more than the pennies they already were, and certainly didn’...
Here's which NBA playoff teams will boom or bust
NBA fans are preparing for one of the most equitable and competitive playoffs in recent memory. The lack of an active dynasty or superteam has the door open for nearly any team to make a Finals run. We’ve highlighted five teams headed toward playoff glory and five teams destined for despair. We cons...
The Sports Emmys are lacking, so Deadspin is here to pick up the slack
A problem with the Sports Emmys is there simply aren’t enough categories for individuals. Most awards are for shows, segments, reports, documentaries, etc. Only a handful acknowledge the on-air personalities, so those who care about bringing home some hardware are in for an uphill battle....
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...
The players aren’t allowed to hit mouthy fans, but somebody should
It has long been time to put fans in their place. An average human being would not normally scream “you fuck!” at a 6-foot-4, 200-plus-pound man. Make that person Bradley Beal, and all of a sudden the probability of that happening increases. ...
The Golden State Warriors core is discovering its first gray hairs
The Golden State Warriors have been hovering at or around .500 all season long. In 2020 and 2021 you could chalk it up to injuries and the reloading process. That championship hill their overwhelming talent allowed them to ascend is starting to appear too steep for their core to climb on its own. A ...
The men's NCAA Sweet 16 storylines to watch
The Sweet 16 is when the NCAA Tournament starts to feel less like an ear-splitting house party and more like an interpersonal kickback in the penthouse suite. The setting is more personal, the opponents are scouted more thoroughly and the quality of basketball gets upgraded significantly. The CBS an...
The big man is dead in basketball until further notice
I have a question for both college and NBA basketball fans: When was the last time a team won anything with a low-post big man as their No. 1 option? Purdue’s Zach Edey is going to take home a treasure trove of hardware, and lucky for him, he’ll be at his place of residence to make sure no one poach...
Ask Becky Hammon about an NBA coaching gig again, I dare you
Becky Hammon to the NBA feels like a tired story, one that gets revived on occasions like International Women’s Day to remind sports fans that she’s more than capable of leading a basketball team in any league. However, I’m not going to do that because I want to highlight just how exhausting this na...
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...