0 comments by John Cannon on 5/16/2015
Two teams playing Game 6s on the road, one trying to extend its season, one trying to close out a series. Two men who just a month ago were the subjects of the NBA’s heated MVP debate, facing the challenge of leading their teams to victory. Two third quarters that went in opposite directions. Steph […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
You very likely recall the Steve Bartman Game, and how a Chicago Cubs team felt the weight of a curse that was nearly 60 years old in 2003 and is 70 years old today. You probably also recall the Curse of the Bambino, the hex which dogged the Boston Red Sox for over 85 years. […]
0 comments by Bryan Gibberman on 5/15/2015
What makes watching sports fun is getting to see something unique. If the expected always happened there would be no reason to waste time viewing. Whether it be a singular miraculous play, an amazing sequence of events, or a contextually historic moment, that’s why you spend so much time endeared to what’s nothing more than […]
0 comments by Sean Woodley on 5/13/2015
In the opening half of the NBA season, we got a glimpse of something rare in a league typically ruled by transcendent stars and teams. As preseason favorites such as the Spurs, Thunder, Clippers, Bulls, and Cavaliers battled early issues with injuries and unbalanced chemistry, a handful of unusual suspects brought a scarcely-observed air of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/10/2015
The 2015 NBA Playoffs are becoming a blur, in which one game feels strangely like another. They’re also becoming a volatile postseason journey unlike anything since the late 1970s. There are so many things to say about these playoffs, now that four lower seeds have gained 2-1 leads over higher seeds in the second round. […]
0 comments by Kevin Causey on 5/9/2015
The Los Angeles Clippers rolled over the Houston Rockets in game three of their series to take a 2-1 lead. Take a look at this masterful pick and roll between Chris Paul and Blake Griffin that led to a monster dunk by Griffin. There were no defenders for the Rockets that were willing to get […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Professional sports is a bottom-line business: You either win or you lose. True enough. However, the complexities of competition and the plot twists provided by all sorts of events — especially injuries — rightly alter the ways in which we assess coaches and players. There can certainly be honor in losing — you just have […]
0 comments by Bryan Gibberman on 5/7/2015
The second round of the NBA playoffs is giving us quite a bit of symmetry. All four series are tied at one as we head into today’s rare day off. Since the 1979-’80 season, all four conference semifinal series have been tied at one on only two occasions (2012-’13 was the other). It seems like […]
Photo by Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports
0 comments by Joseph Nardone
Doc Rivers is a rather well-regarded designer of sets. You can see the evidence of his brilliance after each timeout. His teams have wonderfully constructed spacing, a pass or two is made, all of which usually results in some easy points for his Los Angeles Clippers. He is so good at doing that, in fact, […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 5/5/2015
There’s conversation going on in NBA circles regarding the intentional fouling of poor free-throw shooters in playoff games. Some of that conversation is going on right here at this site. My colleague Matt Zemek makes the case that allowing “Hack-A-Player” strategies rewards the breaking of the rules and should be eliminated. I disagree on two […]
0 comments by Joseph Nardone
You clicked me? Don’t duck out yet. This is a (kind of) serious column about Austin Rivers possibly going from being just above bad to possibly good. It isn’t clickbait, I promise. Austin Rivers is only 22 years old. I think we forget that. There was a time when being so young meant we would […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Yes, it’s convenient that we’re writing about Hack-A-Player at this specific point in time. Yet, the argument against allowing the practice existed far before the 2015 NBA Playoffs. Even before the Hack-A-(DeAndre) Jordan employed by the San Antonio Spurs over the past two weeks; even before Monday night’s sorry spectacle of the Hack-A-Jordan dueling with […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/2/2015
It is a sportswriter’s dream to be able to write about radiant, transcendent sports spectacles such as Game 7 of the Western Conference first-round series between the Los Angeles Clippers and the San Antonio Spurs. Yet, the marvelousness and the magnitude of what we saw on Saturday night in Los Angeles were so overwhelmingly powerful […]
0 comments by Kevin Causey
After Tim Duncan hit two free throws to tie the game up, Chris Paul was given the opportunity to win the game. With time running out, Paul drove the lane and banked in a really tough runner off the glass to give the Clippers the series win over the Spurs.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Life is full of surprises. As the NBA playoffs move into the second round (with Game 7 between the Spurs and Clippers about to tip off at press time), we are confronted with a situation that is not necessarily an unassailable, airtight fact, but certainly hard to refute on a few basic levels: The Eastern […]
