6:33 PM ET Eric WoodyardESPN Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo is questionable for Sunday’s game against the Miami Heat with a right ankle sprain. The reigning MVP rolled the ankle during the first half of Game 3, but continued to push through it despite grimacing on some plays throughout the contest. Antetokounmpo refused to make
NBA
6:46 AM ET NBA Insiders The NBA playoffs move in cycles. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. And sometimes it’s tough to tell what’s real and what’s not. On Friday night, the Houston Rockets walloped the Los Angeles Lakers, and might have exposed a bigger issue for LeBron James‘ team. And the Miami Heat continued
2:19 AM ET To those who have done battle with the Houston Rockets the past few seasons as they morphed into the purest form of positionless, small-ball basketball the NBA has ever seen, Friday’s 112-97 dismantling of the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinals series does not come as a
5:02 PM ET LA Clippers power forward Montrezl Harrell has won the 2019-20 Sixth Man of the Year award, a source confirmed to ESPN. For the third consecutive year, the Clippers have the league’s top sixth man after Lou Williams won the award the previous two seasons. The Clippers now have had the Sixth Man
6:00 AM ET Eric WoodyardESPN Eric Bledsoe has heard the talk. How he was outplayed by fill-in starter Terry Rozier, who rankled Bledsoe on and off the court, causing him to average just 13.6 points per game on 44% shooting in the Milwaukee Bucks‘ seven-game loss to the Boston Celtics in 2018. How a year
1:37 AM ET It’s difficult to doubt the LA Clippers‘ personnel and its potential. Yet coming into this conference semifinals series against the Denver Nuggets, we still hadn’t seen the fully-intact, healthy Clippers play championship-quality basketball for a sustained stretch of time longer than 10 days after the All-Star break and before the March suspension.
6:48 PM ET The Grizzlies‘ Ja Morant has been named the NBA Rookie of the Year. The league announced Morant as the winner Thursday night, saying he received 99 first-place votes and 498 total points in polling of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters. Heat guard Kendrick Nunn finished second with 204 points. The Pelicans’ Zion Williamson,
2:20 AM ET After two thrilling first-round Game 7s, the NBA’s conference semifinals are finally set. The Houston Rockets edged the Oklahoma City Thunder to set up a meeting with the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, while the Denver Nuggets outdueled the Utah Jazz to clinch a matchup with the LA Clippers. The Eastern Conference semis
12:41 AM ET FOR A MOMENT, there was a question if Chris Paul would ever play a game in an Oklahoma City Thunder uniform. He arrived last summer after two franchise-altering trades, one sending out All-Star Paul George for young prospects and long-term assets and the other acquiring Paul (and more picks) for team icon
6:18 PM ET Michael Porter Jr. said the LA Clippers passed on him twice in the 2018 NBA draft because their team doctor “thought that I would never play basketball again.” The Clippers had back-to-back first-round picks at 12 and 13 and traded the 12th pick for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander before selecting shooting guard Jerome Robinson.
6:42 AM ET ERIK SPOELSTRA COULD have winged it. If anyone was qualified to give a talk on how to deal with a case of imposter syndrome, it was the former video coordinator who worked his way up to become head coach of the Miami Heat. But Spoelstra had come to know his young sharpshooter,
12:50 AM ET Tim BontempsESPN LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Only minutes after Donovan Mitchell was lying face down on the court inside AdventHealth Arena, he plopped himself down in front of a video camera, his eyes still red from tears he shed after his Utah Jazz saw their season end with a heartbreaking 80-78
5:24 PM ET Eric WoodyardESPN Disappointment has begun to mount among Milwaukee Bucks players inside the NBA bubble and it doesn’t have anything to do with basketball or falling behind 1-0 to the Miami Heat. The Bucks suffered a 115-104 loss to the Heat on Monday, but on the same day in Wisconsin, there was
7:12 AM ET Through six volcanic NBA playoff games against the Utah Jazz, Jamal Murray has: Averaged 34 points. Put up 50, 42, then 50 again — the last two in season-saving wins, as the Denver Nuggets look to become the first team since the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers to rally from a 3-1 deficit. (Do
11:41 PM ET In his first moment in the spotlight as a member of the Miami Heat last fall, Jimmy Butler failed. It was the rigorous conditioning test the Heat put players through before training camp that is legend within the league. Some athletic trainers claim it’s the most demanding such test in all of
7:03 PM ET New Orleans Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award on Monday. Ingram, 22, received 42 first-place votes from a panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters and earned 326 total points. He beat out Miami Heat big Bam Adebayo, who finished in second place with 38 first-place votes (295
8:00 AM ET With six first-round series done in the 2020 NBA playoffs, let’s bounce around some positives and negatives we haven’t covered in other places (i.e., enough about The Process). We’ll have more on the Jamal Murray–Donovan Mitchell firestorm before Tuesday’s Game 7. The Mavs are here … right? Through four games against perhaps
2:04 AM ET The Western Conference quarterfinals matchup between the No. 3 Denver Nuggets and No. 6 Utah Jazz is going to a Game 7. After the Nuggets swept the regular-season series against their Northwest Division rivals 3-0, the Jazz took a 3-1 series lead — only for the Nuggets to tie the series. While