8:48 PM ET PORTLAND, Ore. — Some 50 minutes before tipoff, Paul George walked onto the floor at the Moda Center on Sunday with black tape canvasing both shoulders and picked up two basketballs. As is his pregame routine, standing on the baseline, he pounded both balls into the floor, shifting them between hands. He
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8:27 PM ET PORTLAND, Ore. — When TNT’s cameras caught Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan apparently saying “can’t play Kanter” about then-Thunder center Enes Kanter during Game 1 of the Thunder’s 2017 first-round series loss to the Houston Rockets, it captured popular sentiment about Kanter’s defensive limitations in the playoffs. In another Game 1
7:11 PM ET CAMDEN, N.J. — With the Philadelphia 76ers regrouping Sunday with what coach Brett Brown called “classroom-type stuff” to counter the Brooklyn Nets in their first-round series, guard Jimmy Butler did some philosophizing of his own. “We’re fortunate,” Butler said, even though his No. 3-seeded Sixers dropped the series opener to the No.
7:32 PM ET Last summer — during the down days of the NBA offseason, when fans were looking for anything to talk about — an old quote from CJ McCollum about NBA superteams resurfaced, in the aftermath of Kevin Durant‘s appearance on McCollum’s podcast. McCollum responded to the criticism, with one response in particular capturing
6:17 PM ET Tim BontempsESPN BOSTON — Unlike the two higher-seeded Eastern Conference teams who began their playoff campaigns Saturday, the Boston Celtics started theirs with a victory Sunday afternoon. But after an up-and-down regular season that often felt like an underwhelming extended prelude to the playoffs, things didn’t feel much different in the postseason.
5:57 PM ET Malika AndrewsESPN Blake Griffin will not play in the Detroit Pistons‘ opening playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday, coach Dwane Casey said. Griffin is still day-to-day with left knee soreness but he is “too sore to play” in Sunday’s game, according to Casey. Griffin did not play in the regular-season
11:16 PM ET TORONTO — For a fleeting few moments on Saturday, Kawhi Leonard looked like the exorcist the Toronto Raptors brought in to help them cast off years of postseason torment. But a frenzied fourth quarter which featured some vintage Leonard, timely shotmaking from a feisty young Orlando Magic squad and a couple of
3:52 PM ET Adrian WojnarowskiESPN The Los Angeles Lakers‘ senior management has plans to travel East to meet with Philadelphia 76ers assistant Monty Williams between Games 2 and 3 of the Sixers’ playoff series, league sources told ESPN. General manager Rob Pelinka is spearheading the Lakers’ search, which includes Williams and former Cleveland Cavaliers coach
2:00 PM ET Adrian WojnarowskiESPN The Cleveland Cavaliers will begin conducting interviews in their coaching search this week, including meetings with Miami assistant Juwan Howard and Dallas assistant Jamahl Mosley, league sources told ESPN. The Cavaliers are expected to meet with assistants on teams involved in the playoffs later, sources said. Cleveland general manager Koby
Apr 11, 2019 THE NBA REGULAR season is finally over, and if the signals emanating from locker rooms over the past six months offer any indication, the end couldn’t come soon enough. The league wasn’t without its feel-good stories — the ascendant Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets, Luka ‘n’ Trae — but 2018-19 might be