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Tag Archives: Basketball

Josh Hart: “I Was Trying To Order Some Uber Eats”

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May 8, 2025
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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Different, but exactly the same. In a strain of cowardice that echoes fouling Mitchell Robinson for the sake of it when you know he’s burning you, I’m abandoning (most of) what I said after Game 1 except for how that game made me feel, fuck it all: the New York Knicks can do this. Whether I actually believe that…[REDACTED]

The hedges, the ankles, the stomachaches you wait until 3 pm local time to hear about on either team’s injury list; the weirdo, questionable inability to hit open shots at home, as defending champions; and here we are: the New York freaking Knickerbockers lead the aforementioned champion Boston Celtics, having now beaten them twice at home after twice being down by 20 points following Wednesday’s 91-90 win.

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Field-Reversed Configurations

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March 31, 2025
Sports
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In the middle of the third quarter of what would end up being a 39-point loss to the ascendent Houston Rockets, Kevin Durant, for all intents and purposes the only Phoenix Sun at this point as well as the guy who’d gotten Dillon Brooks ejected earlier in the game, collided with Jabari Smith and crumpled to the floor. He exited the game, a microcosm of how this Suns season has gone.

Reports suggest he’ll be out at least a week. With the Suns five games below .500, sitting eleventh in the Western Conference and with only seven games remaining, the slow burn of this disastrous year is reaching its flameout point. Trade rumors evoking Phoenix’s, ahem, Big Three of Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have been circulating for months.

At this point, if not much sooner, we can take some stock of what this era of Phoenix Suns basketball has meant as the team confronts the questions that will decide what the next era might look like. Namely: what does the team do with its stars, and with Booker in particular?

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You Know You Sometimes Lie

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February 3, 2025
America, Basketball, NBA, Olympics
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“I don’t do anything that’s scary.” – Nico Harrison, Dallas Mavericks general manager, February 2nd, 2025, right after taking one of the wildest, most inexplicable swings in NBA history.

Firstly, no: I have no idea why the Dallas Mavericks would do this, “this” being trading Luka Dončić for Anthony Davis, which is exactly what they did late Saturday night. Secondly, yes: I do think LeBron and Luka can work it out as an oversized Tatum-Brown spanning generations and leading a dynamite offense, if only anybody on the Lakers could defend anymore. 

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A Well-Trained Crew

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November 15, 2024
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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While we aren’t yet twenty games into the NBA season, the generally-accepted sample size for knowing what a team looks like and, more importantly, what it’s about, some useful-enough things have happened that we can start to posit theories: the post-championship Celtics remain dominant; neither of the Knicks nor Timberwolves is necessarily better nor worse than before That KAT Trade; the Phoenix Suns maybe, possibly have it figured out; and, perhaps most noticeably to the average viewer, everybody just wants to jack threes.

In the age of players like Kevin Durant and Victor Wembanyama, arborescent men who can reliably shoot threes, spacing has become even more paramount than when Steph Curry initially began running rampant from 22+ feet. Even a player like Brook Lopez, who didn’t hit a three until his seventh season in the NBA, has been crucial for keeping defenders honest, allowing Bucks teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo to take advantage of the space Lopez’s outward movement affords him.

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Freedom Ain’t [Phee]

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October 21, 2024
Sports
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They did it. They actually did it. After 28 seasons of existence, and in the final WNBA Finals of the best-of-five format before moving to best-of-seven next year, the New York Liberty finally won their first championship in the full five games featuring two overtimes it took to undo the Minnesota Lynx, featuring Defensive Player Of The Year and MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier (awesome playoff run, and thanks for the headline, but: we will not be hearing about her for the remainder of this post). Behind Finals MVP Jonquel Jones and Nyara Sabally, the latter of whom put up a much-needed thirteen points and six rebounds in seventeen minutes off the bench Sunday night, the Liberty won 67-62.

Despite Sabrina Ionescu’s (1-19; alt text: ONE FOR NINETEEN FROM THE FIELD) and Breanna Stewart’s (4-15; alt text, but slightly – only slightly – more cordial this time: FOUR FOR FIFTEEN FROM THE FIELD) worst efforts on offense of their respective playoffs, the Liberty’s defense carried them through. The New York Liberty are the WNBA champions.

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BREAKING: ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski To Sleep, Finally

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September 19, 2024
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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Adrian Wojnarowski’s tweets were the only ones I ever received directly to my phone. I cut that off right around when his relationship with agents would upend the NBA Draft broadcast in a way that made Woj himself start using verbs like “tantalized” with regard to Robert Williams III, or “zeroing in on” Kevin Huerter, but for a few years, I would open my phone and, usually, nod my head in agreement with “sources say” reports from the same man a few hours earlier.

As the chief news-breaking person of the NBA since his days at Yahoo! Sports, Woj barnstormed Twitter basically from its inception, giving the real heads credence and giving credence to the fringe candidates, letting them know and postulate about trades and draft picks hours before anyone would get back to a computer and realize that Carmelo Anthony didn’t play for the Nuggets anymore.

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Hit Cruise Control; Rubbed My Eyes

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May 20, 2024
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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As diabolical as Google searches have so quickly become recently, I’ll take a chance on the Industrial Metal and Supply Co. of California and concur that iron has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. At some point, then, with enough energy driving it on either side, iron begins melting against iron.

The point is, it’s not a toughness thing: iron wears down either way. Having sharpened themselves against an MVP-level Joel Embiid and a noticeably heightened Tyrese Maxey, the New York Knicks pulled out an improbable six-game victory in the first round.

Against exact counterpoints in the Indiana Pacers – the fastest team in the NBA, whenever Tyrese Haliburton was in the lineup – the Knicks tried to grind the opponent again, only to now find themselves, “Metamorphasis”-like, ground. A parsimonious Knicks offense just kept losing options. In the spirit of the ’90s series preceding this one, the Pacers are more survivors than winners.

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Tomorrow: The Future

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May 19, 2024
Basketball, NBA
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Today: the now. The Dallas Mavericks closed out the Oklahoma City Thunder, everybody’s favorite “look at this team!” team for the second decade in a row, in a sixth game on Saturday night to advance to the Western Conference Finals, where they’ll meet the winner of the ridiculous Denver Nuggets-Minnesota Timberwolves series, those teams entering a Game 7. 

With MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the now-underrated 2024 rookie do-everything big Chet Holmgren in tow and singing Aguilera to their hearts’[1] content, OKC dropped a 17-point lead. Melding at just the right time, Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Mavs had come into the series operating an offense which countered Harden-era Rockets isolations with Curry-led dictation in Golden State circa-2017 to great success.

Against a calling-all-cars Thunder defense, the Mavericks offensive plan fell apart, but Dallas kept pushing. Its stars shining, and role players inhabiting exactly their spaces, they put a mirror to the slightly younger, slightly-brighter Thunder. In so doing, they put away a new-era league darling, one that calls to the past while looking toward a different future.

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