nba – Page 286

The Phoenix Suns Are Here For The Tank Party

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.

Kawhi Leonard Argues With Gregg Popovich, Redeems Himself With Bigass Dunk

The Spurs and Blazers are locked in a tight one, and Kawhi Leonard is leading the way for San Antonio. He got into a bit of an argument in the third quarter with Gregg Popovich, who’s never one to shy away from letting his stars have it.

Draymond Green Remains The Beating Heart Of The Warriors

The malaise gripping the Warriors lately is a bit strange. It is understandable if they’re playing worse without the injured Kevin Durant—any team would play worse without Kevin Durant—and some sloppiness during a long road trip makes sense too. But there is no good explanation for why a team that has a healthy Steph…

Satan Scourges Us With It: A Brief History Of Carpeted Mormon Basketball

American Mormons have a longstanding and well-documented relationship with basketball. Aside from a few outliers like Steve Young and Bryce Harper, our most famous athletes are all basketball players—Jabari Parker, Jimmer Fredette, Shawn Bradley, Danny Ainge, and those two missionaries who went viral for balling out…

Enjoy This Cousins-To-Davis Alley-Oop, Because The Pelicans Probably Won't Make The Playoffs

The Pelicans may have traded for the best player at the trade deadline, but they remain an outside shot to make the playoffs. That said, both DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis have been, statistically speaking, “pretty good” since the trade.

The Lakers' Blatant Tanking Is A Marvel To Behold

About one quarter of the way through this NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers shockingly appeared to be a somewhat competent basketball team. They began the season by winning 10 of their first 20 games, beating the Rockets and blowing the doors off of the Golden State Warriors in the process. D’Angelo Russell was…

Should The Warriors And Cavs Be Getting Worried?

Here is a fun stat, courtesy of ESPN’s Marc Stein: In March the Warriors are 28th in the NBA offensive efficiency, and the Cavaliers are 29th in defensive efficiency.

Ricky Rubio Is Rolling

It’s hard to believe that Ricky Rubio is still just 26 years old. Maybe that’s because, by virtue of the fact that he and Nikola Pekovic are the only two players on the Timberwolves’ roster that were there in 2011, he qualifies as something of a grizzled veteran on this team. Insomuch as NBA teams have talismans, he’s…

Nikola Jokic Blindly Pulls Off Stylish Assist

The Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic is known for his smooth passes, but did you know he can do it without looking? With the Nuggets up 45-31 in the first half, Jokic corralled a missed three-pointer and then, triple-teamed in the paint, tossed a pass backwards over his head to a streaking Will Barton who finished the…

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Root For The Following NBA Teams

Many NBA teams are good, or are crummy but feature some fun young Turks who can provide some reason for optimism, or are not good and do not have fun young Turks but are taking it to the limit one more time with ol’ Dirk Nowitzki, and therefore are good to root for. In almost every NBA city, there’s some reason to…

Congratulations To The Bulls For This Truly Awful First Quarter

The Bulls managed to encapsulate their messy season rather beautifully in just 12 minutes of play today. Some illustrative figures on their first quarter against the Celtics, during which they scored just nine points:

Wizards Come Back From 21-Point Deficit, Win On Out-Of-Bounds Last-Second Shot

Up by 21 at halftime, the Trail Blazers had just about everything going for them against the Wizards last night. But they then collapsed in the second half and ultimately went down in overtime, falling victim to a game-winning shot from a seemingly out-of-bounds Markieff Morris with 0.4 seconds remaining that was not…

Tonight's Nationally Televised Spurs-Warriors Match-Up Might Be The Worst NBA Game Of The Season

The 52-13 Golden State Warriors, who have struggled lately, but nonetheless have the best record in the NBA and are favored to win the title! The San Antonio Spurs, just 1.5 games back in the standings, and the team mostly likely to prevent the Warriors from returning to the Finals! Tonight on ABC, a marquee NBA…

This Was Jusuf Nurkic's Night

Jusuf Nurkic has been thriving since being traded a month ago, and tonight he was at his absolute best. With five blocked shots in the first quarter against the 76ers, he’d tied his career high for blocks after just twelve minutes of play—and he was just getting started.

LeBron Creates Murderous Art With Thundering One-Handed Dunk

The Cavs had their hands surprisingly full with the Pistons tonight and ultimately lost, but who cares for the details there when you can bask in the glory of this gorgeous LeBron dunk instead?

Domantas Sabonis Dunks On Dewayne Dedmon, Yells In His Face

Oklahoma City Thunder youngin’ Domantas Sabonis is doing big boy stuff now. With the Thunder leading the San Antonio Spurs 33-30 in the first half, Doug McDermott found Sabonis on the baseline. The rookie took one step and rose up for a monster one-handed slam over Dewayne Dedmon. More like DEAD-mon, am I right? Heh.

Hey, Everybody, Let Kawhi Leonard Talk To You About The Virtues Of Alkaline Water

Kawhi Leonard offered up some good tidbits in a GQ interview about his diet published today. No, he’ll never be caught eating at Subway. Yes, his mom moved to San Antonio during his rookie year and cooked most of his meals for him. No, he is not going to take any advice about drinking water at face value, because he…

Steph Curry Spoke Too Soon

At the end of the third quarter of last night’s Celtics-Warriors game, Steph Curry did some very rude things to Celtics rookie Jaylen Brown. After shaking and faking Brown out of his airspace, Curry rose up for a buzzer-beating three that put the Warriors up 74-71. And then he got sassy, turning toward Brown,…

Report: Ty Lawson's Probation Could Get Revoked Over Alleged Alcohol Violations

Last year, a Denver court sentenced Ty Lawson to a year of probation after he picked up two DUIs in six months in 2015. Prosecutors pushed for jail time, but he avoided hard time in exchange for a year of probation and 48 hours of community service. During the hearing in Denver County Court last March, the judge…

Oh, Will You Shut Up About Defense Already?

So, we’ve been bickering about the NBA’s MVP award the past couple days; it’s March, the sports calendar is dead, people get bored, you start fighting over this sort of thing to pass the time. I blogged about it on Tuesday; Tom Scocca blogged about it yesterday. Both times, the crux of the argument has been Holy shit,…

The Buss Brothers Sure Don't Seem Very Competent Or Well-Liked

Five days ago Los Angeles Lakers president and part-owner Jeanie Buss went to court to prevent her older brothers, Jim and Johnny, from removing her as the team’s controlling owner. They claim the entire thing is a misunderstanding and that they were calling for the annual meeting to vote on the team’s board of…

Are You Sure Russell Westbrook Should Be MVP? Consider These Stats

An NBA season is not a triple-double-getting contest. Yesterday, Albert Burneko argued that the discussion about who deserves the NBA Most Valuable Player award has lately gone off track—that Russell Westbrook, averaging a triple-double for the Oklahoma City Thunder, has been so thoroughly and overwhelmingly…

Phoenix Suns' Gorilla Mascot Dives Onto The Court, Recovers Item, Scampers Off

At first glance, it looked like the Phoenix Suns’ gorilla mascot had gone rogue when he slid headfirst into the paint during the fourth quarter of the Suns game against the Washington Wizards.

Russell Westbrook, Oh My God

Russell Westbrook’s season-long mania reached a furious, wailing-electric-guitar pitch in Tuesday night’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers. He scored a career-high 58 points, but it wasn’t enough to get Oklahoma City Thunder the win, an apt metaphor for their season.

Dirk Nowitzki Forever

Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki came into tonight’s game against the Lakers just 20 points short of 30,000 career points. Only five other players have ever scored 30,000 (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Wilt Chamberlain), and Dirk went and joined them as soon as he possibly could.

What's Eating Isaiah Thomas?

The Celtics lost 116-102 to the Clippers last night, and after the game Celtics star point guard Isaiah Thomas was spotted doing that thing no team ever wants to see their star player doing: refusing to take off his uniform and staring into space.

DeMarcus Cousins To Rude Heckler: "Suck A Dick, Bitch"

DeMarcus Cousins’s tenure with the Pelicans hasn’t started off so well, as the birds have struggled against a tough schedule despite solid play from Boogie. Last night, they beat the Lakers in L.A., and a pair of hecklers parked their asses courtside, laid into Boogie, and got video of themselves doing so.

Get A Load Of This Incredible Game-Winning Sequence From Kawhi Leonard

The Rockets went to San Antonio tonight to play the Spurs and give us all a preview of what the Western Conference semifinals will be like. For most of the game, Houston was in control. James Harden scored 18 points in the first quarter and the Rockets led by double digits from early in the first quarter to halfway…

Bring On The Ben Simmons Point Guard Experiment

The Philadelphia 76ers are wrapping up another losing season, one in which prized rookie Joel Embiid played just 31 games and number one overall draft pick Ben Simmons never even hit the floor. All that’s left to determine is whether Embiid will win rookie of the year on the back of just 40 percent of a season (in…

Andrew Bogut Makes Cavs Debut, Immediately Breaks His Tibia

Have you heard the news? The news is that Andrew Bogut signed with the Cavs.