
Low Down Dirty Shame
Rough up Steph Curry? It's good strategy in the NBA, but shouldn't the league be protecting players?
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@truehoop "just to confirm guys, we're going with Kevin. I know you know, just wanted to emphasise. So, yeah... ' - Scott Brooks.
— Anton Trees (@as_trees) April 30, 2013
thing. But the energy that went through the Spurs was deeper than this. When Parker wasn’t spinning toward the basket, DeJuan Blair was moving his feet and muscling the Lakers’ big men. Afterward, a reporter reminded Tim Duncan of his long history with the Lakers. Without Bryant in uniform, did this feel like a chapter in that book? “You know what,” Duncan began, “it’s hard to answer that question.” Then, he answered it. Firmly. “I’m playing here and now to get to the next round. I’m not worried about the history of whatever, and the series of whatever. We were here to beat the team that was in front of us to move on. And however you want to put it in the book and put it in whatever chapter, we won this series, and we’re moving on, and we’re happy about that.” They should be beyond happy. The Spurs turned this series into an extended practice. They found rhythm they had lost at the end of the regular season, giving Tiago Splitter and Boris Diaw maybe a week to get healthy, and this will help everyone from Mr. Pop to Baynes. For when the real playoffs begin.

A young fan in Brooklyn might peruse the same sheet and, much more simply, scream, "Man, the Nets stink!" The truth, at least on Thursday night at the United Center, existed in both schools of thought. The present reality — for fans of both teams everywhere — is the Bulls grabbed a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series after a shockingly inept first-half stretch from the Nets that negated their late rally and the Bulls' almost equally shocking collapse. After a strong start, the Nets somehow missed 25 of 26 first-half shots and scored four points in 13 minutes, 45 seconds bridging the first and second quarters. Still, the Nets whittled a 17-point, fourth-quarter deficit to a one-possession game and lost only when C.J. Watson's open look at a tying 3-pointer at the buzzer missed everything under a late contest by Joakim Noah. "We did what we had to do," Carlos Boozer said. "In the playoffs, you have to win in different ways. Nothing is perfect."
would miss Harden most. But not tonight it didn’t. OKC went 4-for-7 in the final five minutes. All four buckets were assisted. The Thunder was 4-for-6 from the foul line. Five different players scored. That’s about as good as it gets down the stretch. “I think all season long we’ve been doing a great job of closing out big games and trying to prepare ourselves for moments like this,” said Russell Westbrook. “And I thought tonight we all stuck together.” Only part of what Westbrook said is true. The Thunder has been preparing for these moments all season. But OKC technically hasn’t been doing a great job of closing out big games as Westbrook suggests. The Thunder had just eight games decided by three points or less in the regular season. OKC went 3-5 in those games. Each passing loss triggered questions and sometimes doubt about how the Thunder would perform this postseason without Harden.
Airplanes aren’t supposed to be so small. How can I tell you what it was like, standing there under the trillion-mile blue of the Alaska sky, ringed in by white mountains, resolving to take to the air in one of these winged lozenges? Each cockpit was exactly the size of a coffin. A desk fan could have blown the things off course.
I mean, the density stats are a joke. The U.S. average is 87.4 inhabitants per square mile. The 45th-most-dense state, New Mexico, thins that down to 17. Alaska has 1.28. And more than 40 percent of Alaskans live in one city! Factor out metropolitan Anchorage and you’re looking at about three quarters of one person per square mile, in a land area 10 times the size of Wisconsin.
I don’t know how you roll, emotionally, with respect to population-density tables. Personally I find this haunting.
I’ve always been fascinated by the cold places at the end of the world. Back when I used to spend a lot of time in libraries, I wasted stacks of hours going through polar-exploration narratives, tracking the adventurers who froze to death, the expeditions that vanished.
After the honorary musher, the starting order is determined by an elaborate NBA-draft-lottery-style number draw at a pre-race banquet. The numbers are drawn from a sealskin Eskimo mukluk, which is something the NBA should maybe look into. I was at this banquet; it ran for five hours. Every single musher made a speech (that’s more than 60 speeches). It was brutal. The only speech I liked was the one by Scott Janssen, a funeral-home director by trade who’s known as the “Mushin’ Mortician.” He introduced himself by saying, “Hi! I’m Scott Janssen, the Mushin’ Mortician.”
There’s such goodwill at the press conference. Mitch and Aliy eat cheeseburgers and crack jokes. There’s no sense that one of them just suffered an agonizing defeat; instead, there’s an air of conspiratorial wonder, like, Oh wow, can you believe we made it? As the sporting event that most closely mimics the experience of sustained brutal catastrophe, the Iditarod is maybe uniquely designed to amplify sport’s natural euphoria-making power with basic human relief. Which is one of the most thrilling things there is, if you think about it. Imagine if Game 7 were played on inflatable rafts in a shark tank; afterward LeBron would be all, That happened! I survived!
Everyone in the room gets this: fans, volunteers, media. It’s a close-knit world; people know each other. So when Mitch says —
“The brain kind of stops working somewhere along the Yukon. I offered Aliy a cough drop this morning and she decided it was too complicated to unwrap it.”
— the laugh that rolls through the room is not the brittle pre-deadline laugh of reporters being fed good copy but a delighted and leisurely laugh of people who’ve been there, or know someone who’s been there, and who just want to share in the moment.
Our players are extremely competitive, but they're not malicious.
No guy in here wants to see another player injured. In the heat of the moment you may over react. In the heat of the battle you may put a little extra force to it.
But when that adrenaline rush is gone guys are extremely sincere in their regard for our health. Because we're a select few. Less than 500 of the world's best basketball players.
We're a brotherhood and we care for each other. And we care for the game. And we know injured players, it doesn't help our game, it only hurts it.
There was this one particular little snapshot a bit later in this second first-round NBA playoff game: Wade, taking a pass near the free-throw line, one big stride and a leap finished by a one-handed dunk. Vintage stuff. If you froze the picture, his flight would have reminded you of the famous Michael Jordan silhouette. Later, Wade followed a miss with a dunk and then did that thing he does when he’s alone in a zone, lowering himself and spreading his arms as if about to take flight, fans roaring. Miami beat the Milwaukee Bucks 98-86 to take a commanding 2-0 series lead. No surprise there. The defending champions not dispatching an eighth-seeded foe would only rank among the biggest shocks in sports history. … No, the expected result was not the story Tuesday. For me, the story of the night was a gentle reminder that should nourish Heat fans: D-Wade can still bring it. Even still battling a sore right knee, he can still bring it. All things considered, he’s still pretty good for an old guy, isn’t he?
dunk for Griffin to find his groove. And the Clippers needed their leading scorer and dunk machine to find his rhythm early. Griffin scored 21 points, and added eight rebounds, four assists and one block as the Clippers edged Memphis 93-91 to take a 2-0 lead in the series. "Blake was aggressive early and set the tone for us," Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said. "Chris (Paul) made the plays down the stretch." Paul made the play down the stretch. With the ball in his hands, Paul made a move on Tony Allen and made the winner, an off-balance shot that went off the glass and in with 0.1 seconds left. Griffin set the tone, and Paul finished it, by adding 24 points and huge shots down the stretch when Griffin was double-teamed. "I just thought (Griffin) came out aggressive," Del Negro said. "He made a couple of tough shots. Just trying to attack as much as possible."
contracted, and at some point Manu Ginobili began to grow wistful. “It used to be my moment,” the Spurs’ guard said. Sunday at the AT&T Center, with Game 1 of the Spurs’ Western Conference playoff series against a familiar rival still in the balance, it was Ginobili’s moment again. With a flurry of eight points in 85 seconds to end the third quarter, Ginobili set the Spurs’ course toward 91-79 victory that served as the series’ opening salvo. By the time Ginobili’s three-shot flourish was complete — a layup and two 3-pointers — the Spurs had their largest lead (13 points) to take into the fourth. “You always want to create some separation,” Ginobili said. “Sometimes it doesn’t happen. I just took a couple risks. The ball went in, and it helped us.” Playing just his second game since straining his right hamstring March 29, the 35-year-old Ginobili led an energized and defensively refocused Spurs team with 18 points.