NBA

Trae Young went scorched earth on the Miami Heat for 50-points and eight assists in a surprising 129-124 Hawks’ victory. Young is the only reason anybody needs to watch the Atlanta Hawks. Collectively, they aren’t great. They’re 16-41 on the season, and have been incredibly hard to watch at points. …

There’s an easy case to be made for Kevin Durant as the second-best basketball player of his generation. At his peak in Golden State, it felt like there was no one better. Durant is an unstoppable scorer with a tight handle, deft finishing touch, and unprecedented outside shooting ability for …

The first half of the NBA season has seen LeBron James’ Lakers and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks take off as the best two teams in the league, with sizable leads for the No. 1 seed in each conference. Can anyone stop them? The rest of the league will be playing catchup …

There’s never a bad time to hear another story about the mindset that drove Michael Jordan to become recognized as the greatest basketball player in the history of the game. Books like Sam Smith’s “The Jordan Rules” and David Halberstam’s “Playing For Keeps” chronicled Jordan’s pathological competitive drive during his …

Five years ago, Kawhi Leonard’s defensive impact was explicit. As the first non-center to win consecutive Defensive Player of the Year awards since Sidney Moncrief in 1983 and 1984, Leonard was a human fog machine Gregg Popovich would unleash on whoever the San Antonio Spurs wanted to fluster. Leonard didn’t …

Hiring 67-year-old John Beilein with no NBA coaching experience to rebuild the Cleveland Cavaliers was always a bizarre choice. But few head coaching experiences in league history have ever gone this poorly, this quickly. Beilein is out after 54 total games in which he won only 14. That’s fewer than …

On the surface, the 2020 NBA title chase is three teams deep. The two Los Angeles teams are there as expected, and the Milwaukee Bucks’ obscene regular season means they cannot be ignored in any serious discussion trying to project the champion. The next tier, by this theory, includes half …

John Beilein is suddenly out as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers just 54 games into a five-year contract. Beilein is one of the older rookie NBA head coaches we’ve seen in the modern era, having spent 40 years coaching college hoops. Why Beilein decided to take the plunge into …

The Houston Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal has taken on a life of its own, with palpable anger throughout baseball, both at the lack of contrition out of Houston and at MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s light punishment. This was mostly confined within baseball until Tuesday, when Lakers star LeBron James chimed …

It’s totally understandable that NBA fans and analysts get concerned about gaps in stardom eras and how that affects the league overall. The gap problem is absolutely real: once Michael Jordan retired for the second time, there was a huge gap in the NBA stardom. Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady …