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OAKLAND, CA – MAY 03: Klay Thompson #11 and Draymond Green #23 of the Golden State Warriors celebrate in the final minute of their victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in Game Two of the Western Conference Semifinals during the 2016 NBA Playoffs on May 3, 2016 at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Stepping up without Steph: The Curry-less Warriors become stronger

0 comments by on 5/5/2016

People are starting to notice that the Golden State Warriors are pretty good, even without Steph Curry. This takes a little getting used to, the notion that a team can lose a transcendent player and still look at times like it doesn’t even miss him. In their second-round NBA Playoffs series, the Warriors outscored Portland […]

Kyle Lowry’s shooting is not his foremost problem, believe it or not

0 comments by on 5/4/2016

Kyle Lowry’s shooting stroke is a huge problem for the Toronto Raptors… well, unless we’re talking about halfcourt shots: Despite any public claims — from Lowry or anyone else — that his elbow injury is not affecting his shooting stroke, the numbers don’t lie in this instance. An established pattern is too entrenched to ignore […]

Rules are meant to be enforced: The real lesson of Thunder-Spurs endgame

0 comments by on 5/3/2016

The Oklahoma City Thunder found themselves at the center of a storm Monday night in San Antonio, one they barely managed to survive. Most of America might hate the San Antonio Spurs, or at the very least, it might resent the Spurs’ longstanding excellence as the NBA’s closest approximation of a 21st-century empire. Yet, even […]

Miami-Toronto: Goran Dragic needs to bring the Heat

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In basketball, college or pro, we’ve all hear the saying good guard play wins games in the postseason. Sunday afternoon, in a win-or-go-home situation, that saying held true as the Miami Heat took the sting out of the Charlotte Hornets, 106-73. Miami point guard Goran Dragic left his mark on the game by playing with […]

Photo by Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA needs to drop the retroactive missed call reports

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If the NBA was a senator, “game fixing” would be the equivalent of saying, “Remember that time he voted for THAT bill everyone hates.” It’s a charge the league cannot completely outrun, no matter what it tries. Tim Donaghy outing the league on shifty practices with officials merely confirmed what most people assumed went on […]

The Blazers showed grit in Game 1, but they must win Game 2

0 comments by on 5/2/2016

The Golden State Warriors’ 118-106 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals could easily be placed in the “Really Not That Close” catagory. After all, the Dubs took a 20-point lead into the second quarter and never led by fewer than nine points the rest of the way. […]

First round in review: injuries got in the way on many levels

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The first round of the 2016 NBA Playoffs suffered from an abundance of games in which two teams couldn’t play well at the same time, but if you’re going to knock the level of play from the past fortnight, you have to factor injuries into the equation. Yes, few series displayed the best the NBA […]

First round in review: the players

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The play’s the thing, as Shakespeare taught us, and without players, we don’t have much of a drama — not in the NBA playoffs or in any other competition under the sun. The first round of the postseason presented, on many levels, the kind of portraits we expected to see. Paul George and — more […]

First round in review: the coaches

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The first round of the 2016 NBA Playoffs was a most peculiar fortnight filled with a number of upside-down occurrences. The central counterintuitive reality of the first round is that the losing coaches in many of the eight series were better than the winning coaches… certainly in a 4-1 series, and possibly even in a […]

Toronto avoided losing; now the Raptors can focus on winning

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The city of Toronto is psychologically accustomed to losing in the playoffs. The hockey mecca doesn’t have any Canadian team to root for in the quest for the Stanley Cup, so the Raptors are the only show in town as the North American spring unfolds. Sunday night in the Air Canada Centre, as one predictably […]

The Heat keep their cool and finish off the Hornets

0 comments by on 5/1/2016

The Heat was on… and the Hornets were turned off. The Miami Heat profoundly struggled with the Charlotte Hornets over the past four games of their Eastern Conference first-round series, but when Dwyane Wade saved them in Game 6 on Friday night, a week of frustration gave way to a different mood and attitude. This […]

Crossover Chronicles Podcast: Tim Roye

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https://soundcloud.com/crossover-chronicles/tim-roye-4-30-16 Tim Roye is in his 21st season as the Golden State Warriors’ radio play-by-play voice. For nearly two full decades, he witnessed some of the worst basketball imaginable. In his first 16 years, the Warriors were over .500 just twice, and he had to wait 11 years for the first such instance. In one […]

Alamo immolation: The Spurs torch OKC, which needs Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

0 comments by on 4/30/2016

Hey, wait a minute — why did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar make his way into the headline for an article about Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference semifinal series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder? Shouldn’t we be talking about the Spurs shooting 69 percent in the first half of Game 1 […]

In defeat, Austin Rivers wins more than a moment can measure

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When Austin Rivers came to the Los Angeles Clippers, it was impossible to ignore — whether founded or not — the idea that coach and general manager Doc Rivers was trying to advance his son’s career. The inclination to think that favoritism was at the root of Doc’s decision was understandable. Moreover, Doc certainly does […]

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