If you take a gander at the past few decades of NBA champions, you’ll see a lot of familiar names. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers traded titles for most of the 1980s, while the Chicago Bulls hardly turned it off for the next decade. And from 1999 through 2010, nine out of 12 […]
If they could, most NBA coaches would simply play their best players for 48 minutes a game, every game. After all, it’s the stars who largely drive team performance, and most teams are at their best when their best guys are on the floor. Of course, we know that can’t happen. The science of minutes […]
The list of NBA MVPs over the past five years is a mishmash of guys with superhero-level talents. Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter on the planet and someone who’s comfortable gunning from nearby ZIP codes. Russell Westbrook, the terrifyingly athletic stat-stuffer who seems to hurt innocent rims for no apparent reason. James Harden, the efficiency […]
chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): Game 4 of the Celtics-Heat Eastern Conference finals went pretty much as we expected it to: With Boston’s Jayson Tatum going scoreless for an entire half, Miami rookie Tyler Herro dropping 37 points, and the Heat — a team that wasn’t even on a 50-win pace during the regular season […]
Earlier this month, before the Nuggets pulled off another improbable series comeback, I asked 7-footer Nikola Jokić about the patient, glacially paced style he uses on offense. In a hyper-athletic NBA, in which the speed limit is 70, the Denver star operates at … something much, much less. “I’m patient because I cannot really run […]