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
NBA
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,
9:49 AM ET Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash has signed a four-year contract to become the next coach of the Brooklyn Nets, sources told ESPN. The Nets announced the hiring Thursday afternoon. In recent weeks, Nets owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks have been aggressive in recruiting Nash to make the leap
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
7:00 AM ET The conference semifinals are underway — in the East, at least. While the West waits on the results of two first-round series, the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat tip off their second-round series on Monday night, and the Boston Celtics already took Game 1 from the defending champion Toronto Raptors. Who will
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
9:24 PM ET As the LA Clippers watched a 23-point lead shrink to six with just over nine minutes left in Game 6, Kawhi Leonard didn’t need to say much. The reigning NBA Finals MVP closed out the Dallas Mavericks by making four consecutive shots to fuel a series-clinching 17-7 run and propel the Clippers
4:46 PM ET LA Clippers forward Marcus Morris Sr. was ejected late in the first quarter of Game 6 due to a flagrant 2 foul committed against Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic, a continuation of the heated rivalry that has developed between the two players in the first-round series. As Doncic drove to the basket,
3:38 AM ET LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — As Jacob Blake Sr. remembers it, barely any time had passed from the time the Milwaukee Bucks decided not to play their game Wednesday in protest of the shooting of his son by the police to when his phone rang and the Bucks were on the line.
9:13 PM ET Eric WoodyardESPN News of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday didn’t reach reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo until days later with the Milwaukee Bucks star, who is on a social media blackout for the postseason. Once he became informed that Blake, who is Black, was shot seven times
3:37 PM ET Eric WoodyardESPN Milwaukee Bucks wing Wesley Matthews said the team is not “apologetic” for boycotting Game 5 of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic Wednesday, a decision he said the team made organically. “I feel like we did what any team would’ve done in that situation. And we’re not apologetic for