2:43 AM ET LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — With 46 seconds left in Friday night’s Game 5 of the NBA Finals, arena staffers lugged bags of white and gold confetti onto the carpeted floor and set them by the baseline of the court. The celebration accessories turned out to be premature, however, largely because of
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11:59 PM ET Shedding bubble wrap is a process, Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse has discovered. You try to unpack everything that transpired, and efficiently dispose of what you no longer need, but similar to when you receive a package in the mail and all those little Styrofoam peanuts disperse, some time later a couple
5:43 PM ET Kristaps Porzingis underwent surgery to address the lateral meniscus injury in his right knee suffered during the playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks announced Friday. According to the team’s statement, Porzingis will begin rehabilitation immediately with no set timetable to be cleared for basketball activities. Sources have told ESPN that the Mavs are optimistic
6:24 PM ET Donovan Mitchell and the Utah Jazz aren’t the only team experiencing regret from how their tenure in the NBA bubble ended. Some, though, will be content for the offseason time off to disconnect and regroup before the start of another season. Not Mitchell. “We’re ready for the season to start, next month
7:10 AM ET Almost every competitive playoff series reaches a point of strategic equilibrium. All the big adjustments have been made. All that is left is to rearrange the fringes: making tiny rotation tweaks; layering counter atop counter to sets the opponent has smothered in their basic forms; varying the location of those sets. It
10:21 AM ET China’s CCTV announced it plans to televise Game 5 of the NBA Finals live, the first NBA game on broadcast television there in more than a year. The state-run network, which started carrying NBA games in the early 1990s, pulled all such games from its programming in the wake of Houston Rockets
12:42 PM ET Marc J. Spears The National Basketball Players Association and Major League Soccer’s Black Players for Change released a joint video Friday calling for change and civic engagement in November by addressing systemic racism and police brutality. The one-minute video includes players from the NBA and MLS talking about the joint commitment to
7:20 AM ET INSIDE THE NBA’S BUBBLE, there is a pathway around the residences — a nearly mile-long loop and a longer, 1.6-mile loop that encompasses the Coronado Springs resort, one of the Disney properties that has become a home away from home for the league. During the NBA Finals, it hasn’t been unusual to
10:28 AM ET Jeremy Willis Kelly Cohen Where is Halsey? More specifically, where is Lakers Twitter’s leader — the @Halseyandone account? The 26-year-old singer, songwriter and activist is a big Los Angeles Lakers fan and was part of a virtual crowd during the playoffs. Halsey started her basketball-only Twitter account on Sept. 8, and it
3:46 PM ET The Miami Heat are one game away from elimination in the NBA Finals, but they remain as confident as ever about their chances to get back into the series against the Los Angeles Lakers and climb out of a 3-1 series hole in Game 5 on Friday night. “We think it’s a