In case you were skeptical about Russell Westbrook’s MVP bona fides, consider tonight’s one-man destruction of the Orlando Magic.
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Category: nba
Oakland Taxpayers Will Still Be On The Hook For $163 Million After The Raiders And Warriors Leave
When the city of Oakland brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995, then-mayor Elihu Harris enticed Al Davis with $200 million in improvements to the Oakland Coliseum. The city paid for the construction with taxpayer-backed bonds, and their initial plan was to pay off the bond by selling personal seat licenses…
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The NBA's Eastern Conference Is Closing In On A Record For Futility
The NBA’s Eastern Conference is in very real danger of finishing the season with only four teams having won at least half their games. This would be embarrassing, and stupid, and also very good and cool.
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James Harden Should Probably Take Some Time Off
James Harden did not have a very good game against the Warriors last night, despite finishing with 24 points, 13 assists, and 11 rebounds. Move down the box score a bit, and you’ll see that he was 5-of-20 from the field and 1-of-9 from three-point range. What was to blame for the rough shooting night? Probably his…
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James Johnson Did A Dunk Murder
The Miami Heat’s James Johnson dunked on Marcus Morris so hard in Tuesday’s game against the Pistons that Morris’s twin brother Markieff probably felt it, too.
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Maybe Don't Trade Players To Your Closest Conference Rival
Former Nugget and current Blazer Jusuf Nurkic smacked around his former team with 33 points and 16 rebounds last night. It was a career night for the 22-year-old big man, and one that all but assured his team will be going to the playoffs while the Nuggets sit at home and smart. But to say Nurkic killed the Nuggets’…
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Warriors' Draymond Green encourages Raiders fans to boycott games in Oakland
‘You just don’t do that.’
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Jusuf Nurkic Shattered The Nuggets' Playoff Hopes And Roasted Them Afterwards
Before the Nuggets flipped him to Portland for one of the Plumlee twins, Bosnian big man Jusuf Nurkic was averaging 17 disgruntled minutes and eight points a game. Since the trade, he’s started almost all of Portland’s games and has nearly doubled his stats across the board as the Blazers have steadily drawn closer to…
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Adam Silver Wants To Ensure A Woman Becomes An NBA Head Coach "Sooner Rather Than Later"
This afternoon, the NBA launched its annual gender equality campaign with Lean In. They released several videos promoting the organization, and commissioner Adam Silver spoke with ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk, Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg, and Kathleen Behrens, NBA president of social responsibility and player programs.…
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Joakim Noah Is Refreshingly Honest About His PED Suspension
Here’s something different: A professional athlete refusing to participate in the usual post-PED bust ritual self-mortification that only serves to prevent us from grappling with any meaningful questions about drugs and sports.
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Suddenly, The Cavs Are Trash
For the first time in over a year, the Cleveland Cavaliers are no longer the top seed in the Eastern Conference. That honor belongs to the Celtics for the moment, after the Cavs got rocked by the Spurs in San Antonio tonight. Cleveland has looked like ass from the ass factory since the All Star break, and tonight’s L…
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Russell Westbrook Did It All In Thunder's Fourth-Quarter Comeback Win
The Oklahoma City Thunder went on a 14-0 fourth-quarter run to beat the Dallas Mavericks on Monday night, 92-91. Human lightning bolt Russell Westbrook scored 12 of those 14 points—including the game-winner with seven seconds left.
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It's Getting Worse For The Clippers
When we last checked in on the Los Angeles Clippers, they had just dropped a game to the Denver Nuggets and were settling into their usual pre-playoff slump. They followed that loss with three straight wins, albeit against a Big Three-less Cleveland Cavs, the tanking Los Angeles Lakers, and the dysfunctional New York…
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Devin Booker's 70-Point Game Was Kind Of A Gimmick
Devin Booker’s 70-point game last night was special, insofar as it was rare. Booker is now one of just six players in NBA history to hit the 70-point mark, joining one-name legends like Wilt and Kobe, and any club that exclusive is inarguably something pretty cool. But the fact that it was rare doesn’t necessarily…
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Joakim Noah Suspended 20 Games For Violating Anti-Drug Policy
Joakim Noah will be suspended 20 games for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy—reportedly for taking an over-the-counter supplement that is currently banned by the league but will no longer be prohibited under the next season’s new collective bargaining agreement.
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Devin Booker Scores 70
Michael Jordan never scored 70 in a game. Indeed, only four players in NBA history have: Wilt, Kobe, Elgin, and David Thompson. We can add Devin Booker to that list after the 20-year-old scored that number in a loss to the Celtics tonight in Boston. That puts him past the aforementioned Jordan (whose best night was…
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Lil' J.J. Barea Got Ejected For Taking Down Blake Griffin
In the Mavericks’ 97-95 win over the Los Angeles Clippers tonight, Mavs point guard J.J. Barea, listed at 6-foot-nothing, 185 pounds, tussled briefly with the Clippers’ Blake Griffin, a hefty 6-foot-10, 251 pounds. Despite the mismatch, Barea got his hands in Griffin’s face, pushed him to the ground, and was ejected…
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The Suns Started A Historically Young Lineup Tonight
The Phoenix Suns lost a tank battle to the Nets tonight out in Brooklyn and set an NBA record in the process. They started rookies Tyler Ulis, Marquese Chriss, and Derrick Jones Jr., as well as young second-year players Alex Len and Devin Booker. Len is the elder statesman of the bunch at 23, while Chriss and Jones…
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The Wizards Need Rest More Than Anybody But Might Be Too Dumb To Take It
Here is how long the NBA season is: Long enough for the Washington Wizards to have gone from a bad team with a good starting five and an atrocious bench, to a good team with a great starting five and an atrocious bench, to a dark-horse Finals pick with a great starting five and a good bench, to a struggling team with…
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Jeff Hornacek: We're Going To Keep Doing This Stupid Thing That Makes No Sense
Anything good that is ever created inside Madison Square Garden will eventually be dragged down 34th Street and dumped into the Hudson River, where it will somehow catch on fire. Remember when the Knicks were feisty and it was fun to sit around talking about how great Kristaps Porzingis was? That feels like 100 years…
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Giannis Antetokounmpo Makes Plays Nobody Else Can
Tonight, the Bucks traveled to Sacramento where they defeated a limp Kings team happy to roll over in hopes of a few more ping pong balls. Unlike Sacramento, Milwaukee still has a playoff spot to play for, and their super-duper-megastar Giannis Antetokounmpo clearly came to play and make heaps of the…
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Russell Westbrook Just Had The Most Efficient Triple-Double In NBA History
At this point, Russell Westbrook notching a triple-double is hardly newsworthy. The turbo charged OKC guard gets them almost every night, and he does so with a world-historic usage rate. The only intriguing triple-double-related milestone left in Westbrook’s season will be whether or not he can keep up his stats for…
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Joel Embiid Is Probably Headed For Another Surgery
According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid is “very likely” to have surgery to repair a partially torn meniscus in his left knee.
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Raptors Finally Defeat Bulls, Ending One Of The NBA's Weirdest Streaks
After overcoming a 16-point lead, four threes from career 30 percent three-point shooter Rajon Rondo, and 37 points from Jimmy Butler, the Toronto Raptors beat the Chicago Bulls tonight. It took them 122 points and five minutes of overtime to do so, but for the first time in 12 matchups, the Raptors won.
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Brook Lopez Punctures Pistons' Playoff Chances With Graceful Buzzer-Beater
The Brooklyn Nets are in a weird place. They aren’t in a position to go for wins, since they are the worst team in the NBA, but they also don’t have an incentive to tank, since they owe their pick to the Celtics. All they have to play for is the development of their young players.
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Serge Ibaka And Robin Lopez Throw Actual Punches At Each Other
A chest-to-chest staring match in the NBA actually popped off into a real actual fight tonight. The Raptors and Bulls don’t like each other, and in the third quarter with the Bulls up big, Serge Ibaka and Robin Lopez got into it after Jimmy Butler nailed a jumper. Unlike most other incidents where players “get into…
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The Latest Evidence That Vince Carter Is An Ageless Wonder
Vince Carter just turned 40, yet he’s still playing 24 minutes per game for the Grizzlies and has recently joined the starting lineup as Memphis lurches down the stretch. His 18th season hasn’t been short of cool highlights, and this evening, he drained a half-court shot before casually dunking it between the legs.
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Dwight Howard ate an alarming amount of junk food before joining Lakers
Howard consumed as much as 24 candy bars’ worth of sugar a day.
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Dwight Howard Used To Consume A Truly Shocking Amount Of Candy
There are plenty of amusing details in Baxter Holmes’s ESPN piece about the NBA’s love of PB&Js, but one anecdote about Dwight Howard’s health in 2013 overhauled my understanding of what the human body can do.
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Steph Curry's Got His Swagger Back
Whatever you make of the dumb beef going on between the Warriors and the Thunder over how the team has yet to pay tribute to Kevin Durant, it’s clear that the two teams don’t like one another. They spent their first three meetings of the season growling at each other and passive-aggressively pushing each other around,…
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