On this week’s episode of Hot Takedown, we evaluate the NBA and NHL conference finals. Despite the celebration of Kawhi Leonard’s historic buzzer-beater to put the Raptors into the Eastern Conference finals, Toronto head coach Nick Nurse thinks the Raptors need to get better before facing the Milwaukee Bucks. We look at how our projections […]
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): The NBA is now two games in to every second-round series, and each matchup is currently tied at 1-1 … except Warriors-Rockets, which was the series most people had circled as the most competitive (and compelling) of Round 2. So what better place to start our chat than that matchup, […]
There were several big storylines in the NBA this past weekend as the second round of the playoffs commenced. But all things considered, only one outcome was truly surprising: The Boston Celtics, who have struggled to find consistency, pieced together a dominant showing on the road against the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks. Even more impressive than […]
gfoster (Geoff Foster, senior sports editor): The first-round of these NBA playoffs was widely viewed as a small appetizer (an amuse-bouche?) before the real meal begins in the conference semifinals. That has largely held true, particularly in the East, where the four teams that won — the Bucks, Celtics, Sixers and Raptors — lost a […]
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): Now that every NBA team has played Game 82 of the regular season, we can finally get to the real business at hand: The playoffs. Let’s start with the Eastern Conference, where the Milwaukee Bucks earned the franchise’s first top seed since the league adopted the 16-team playoff format in […]