NBA – The News Desk

2024 NBA playoffs preview: Play-in predictions, first-round series guide

16Apr

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Sports

2024 NBA playoffs preview: Play-in predictions, first-round series guide

Are you ready for some NBA postseason? We got a little taster on the season’s final weekend, with a few teams playing high-stakes games that resembled playoff environments. That was particularly true in the jumbled Western Conference standings, where the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings were locked in a series of huge games that determined spots six through 10 in the West hierarchy.And now, we exhale. There are no games Monday, but we get two big play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday before the final play-in for each conference on Friday; that sets the bracket for the main event to start this weekend with four games on both Saturday and Sunday. The first round runs two weeks, with potential seventh games on the weekend of ...

Boban Marjanović intentionally misses free throw to give Clippers fans free chicken

15Apr

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Sports

Boban Marjanović intentionally misses free throw to give Clippers fans free chicken

The final day of the 2023-24 regular season saw several playoff teams jockeying for seeding, other teams trying to improve draft lottery odds and a few just hoping to end the campaign on a high note.The Houston Rockets, who had made an unsuccessful late charge for the Play-In Tournament, fell into the latter category, looking for their first non-losing record since the 2019-20 season.As it turned out Sunday, the Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers fans both took home a win.With 4 minutes, 44 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Houston’s eventual 116-105 victory over the Clippers, center Boban Marjanović missed his first free throw. Marjanović — a career 76.4 percent free-throw shooter — then purposefully missed the second to win fans in attendance free chicken.The Clippers organizatio...

NBA Pre-Postseason Player Tiers 1 and 2: Wembanyama quickly rising; Giannis, Jokić steady at top

13Apr

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Sports

NBA Pre-Postseason Player Tiers 1 and 2: Wembanyama quickly rising; Giannis, Jokić steady at top

Yesterday, I largely focused on setting the table for the updated NBA Pre-Postseason Players Tiers before revealing Tier 3 (players between the 24th and 42nd spot) and Tier 4 (Nos. 43-80).Today, I’m going to get a little more into some of the more interesting and/or challenging placements, as well as note a few overall trends.For starters, a consistent bit of feedback — and one I’ve gotten from multiple sources since the release of Tiers 3 and 4 — is the always difficult evaluation of which player is more valuable between an elite role player and a good-but-not-great primary or secondary creator. A senior analytics staffer within the league went so far as to argue they would prefer essentially the entirety of Tier 4A, largely made up of elite role players or connectors, over Tier 3B, whic...

The ‘humbling experience’ of trying to shoot over Victor Wembanyama

11Apr

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Sports

The ‘humbling experience’ of trying to shoot over Victor Wembanyama

Pat Connaughton knows what an open shot feels like. As a nine-year veteran of the league, he’s taken hundreds of them, developing a sense for space and when there’s enough of it.In early January, when Connaughton’s Milwaukee Bucks played the San Antonio Spurs, Connaughton got that familiar feeling again. With about eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Giannis Antetokounmpo drew a double team and found Brook Lopez alone on the right wing. San Antonio’s Julian Champagnie, Connaughton’s defender, scrambled to cover him.As Lopez caught Antetokounmpo’s pass, the Spurs player responsible for covering Champagnie’s rotation was 27 feet away, one foot in the paint and the other on the floor’s other side. Connaughton knew the swing-swing pass from Lopez would come and he usually only need...

New scene at NBA games: Fans screaming at players about their losing bets

4Apr

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Sports

New scene at NBA games: Fans screaming at players about their losing bets

NBA players have always gotten an earful from fans, whether at home or on the road. It comes with the job.But this season, it’s getting darker.The recent surge in legalized gambling in every pro league, and throughout college athletics, has impacted American sports in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. But along with the potential good that hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues bring to the NBA and other leagues, something new and ominous has arrived: verbal abuse directed at players and coaches based solely on fans’ wagers.GO DEEPERTrotter: With legalized betting, could society be the big loser?Fans can now bet in real-time on their smartphones, on all aspects of the game, including minutiae such as how many rebounds one player might get in the first half, and how ...

Lakers’ LeBron James on his NBA future after win over Nets: ‘I don’t have much time left’

2Apr

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Sports

Lakers’ LeBron James on his NBA future after win over Nets: ‘I don’t have much time left’

NEW YORK — LeBron James isn’t sure when he’s retiring — but he knows it’s approaching soon.After scoring 40 points and tying his career high with nine 3-pointers in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 116-104 win over the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on Sunday, James was asked how long he plans to continue playing in the NBA.“Not very long,” James said. “Not very long. I’m on the other side, obviously, of the hill. I’m not gonna play another 21 years, that’s for damn sure. But not very long. I don’t know when that door will close as far as when I’ll retire. But I don’t have much time left.” LeBron James on how long he expects to continue playing in the NBA: “Not very long. … I’m not gonna play another 21 years, that’s for damn sure. But not very long. I don’t know when that door will close as far...

Spurs’ Jeremy Sochan finds success with quirky one-handed free-throw style

29Dec

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Sports

Spurs’ Jeremy Sochan finds success with quirky one-handed free-throw style

SAN ANTONIO — It has been difficult for San Antonio Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan to find much to laugh about in a season that on Tuesday night produced yet another double-digit loss for his team.Somehow, it seems that everyone finds something funny whenever Sochan steps to the foul line for a free throw.The 130-118 defeat the Utah Jazz gave the Spurs at Frost Bank Center left them at 4-25 with too many of those losses linked to the team’s experiment with the 6-foot-8 Sochan as starting point guard.That exercise has been deemed a failure and scrapped with Sochan back at forward in a starting lineup that puts rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama at center and second-year guard Malaki Branham at the point.However, a prior experiment with Sochan continues to be a rousing success: His quirky one-...

NBA approves sale of Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson, casino company Las Vegas Sands

28Dec

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Money

NBA approves sale of Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson, casino company Las Vegas Sands

Dallas Mavericks sale pending Dallas Mavericks sale pending 01:45 DALLAS — The NBA on Wednesday approved the sale of controlling interest of the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban to the families that run the Las Vegas Sands casino company.The deal was approved just shy of a month since the families of Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont announced their intention to buy the club. The purchase is in the valuation range of $3.5 billion.Patrick Dumont, Adelson's son-in-law and presi...

Longest losing streaks in sports history: What pantheon of ineptitude could Pistons be joining?

27Dec

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Sports

Longest losing streaks in sports history: What pantheon of ineptitude could Pistons be joining?

The Detroit Pistons will knock on the door of historic ineptitude Tuesday night. Losers of 26 straight games, the Pistons are one loss away from having their name etched in record books as the sole owners of the longest single-season losing streak in NBA history.Detroit will take its last swing at preventing infamy as it hosts the Brooklyn Nets at Little Caesars Arena, mere miles from where the franchise hoisted Larry O’Brien trophies in three straight decades. While those tough-nosed teams earned the right to be circled on opponents’ calendars, the 2023-24 Pistons’ calendar has looked far different — the team hasn’t won a game since Oct. 28.But Detroit hasn’t been an innovator of incredible incompetence. With tonight’s loss, they would join a pantheon of legendary losers from around the ...

Dunking hurts: Why players hate — and love — the NBA’s greatest feat

23Dec

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Sports

Dunking hurts: Why players hate — and love — the NBA’s greatest feat

The dunk is basketball’s most lionized play. The most iconic ones are canonized, referenced fondly and often, debated for their merits and significance. The sport’s language has created so many names for it: jam, yam, slam, poster, stuff, hammer. It’s a unique club that only few on this world can join. It’s marvelous.And it hurts like hell.“Can you think of any other concept where your hand swings at something metal?” 11-year NBA veteran Austin Rivers asks. “It’ll probably hurt, yeah?”When asked, players catalog the pain dunking has caused: broken nails; bent fingers; recent bruises; lasting scars; midair collisions; twisted necks; dangerous landings. Injuries that cost them games or even seasons.Derrick Jones Jr., a former NBA All-Star Weekend dunk contest winner now with the Dallas Mave...