In Game 3 of the 2020 NBA Finals, with the Miami Heat down 0-2 and their championship hopes crumbling, Jimmy Butler turned in the most impressive performance of his career: a 40-point, 11-rebound, 13-assist triple-double in which he made 70 percent of his shots and defended LeBron James on more plays than any other player […]
It would have been very easy to write off the Miami Heat at different points on Sunday. Some likely counted them out as soon as the Heat announced that injured star forward Bam Adebayo and guard Goran Dragić, their second-leading scorer, would be forced to miss Game 3. Others likely thought they were done when […]
For the first time in NBA history, the league’s championship series is being contested between two teams that did not make the playoffs the previous season. The 2018-19 Lakers sputtered to a 37-45 finish amid various ailments, including the first long-term injury of LeBron James’s career and Brandon Ingram’s bout with deep vein thrombosis. The […]
chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): Well, this NBA season that went inside a bubble and is on the cusp of lasting an entire calendar year officially begins its Finals round tonight. Lakers-Heat is almost certainly not the matchup any of us thought we would get. But it’s one full of storylines for any number of […]
Jeff Pearlman is a New York Times bestselling author who has written for Sports Illustrated, ESPN and The Athletic, among other outlets. His books include “Football for a Buck,” “Gunslinger” and “The Bad Guys Won!” This excerpt is from his latest book, “Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty,” […]