Kamis, 30 Mei 2019

A Ranking of the Golden State Warriors’ Randos - The Ringer

There’s a reason we don’t play video games on Rookie mode: Winning a rigged game can get boring. This is a problem for the Golden State Warriors, winners of three of the past four NBA championships. Perhaps the greatest assemblage of talent in NBA history, the Warriors need ways to spice up victory to keep it entertaining, and sometimes that involves heightening the difficulty of their task. Draymond Green has taken this to heart, adding hurdles to the track with fun diversions like calling his teammate who won two Finals MVP trophies a “bitch” or waiting until three-quarters of the season was already over to get in playing shape.

Perhaps this explains why head coach Steve Kerr, almost 100 games into the season with a preposterously talented roster that makes lineup decisions simple, has begun tinkering with the starting lineup. In 16 playoff games, the Warriors have started 11 different players, including six lineup combinations that never started a game together during the regular season.

The shake-up has occurred in part by necessity: Injuries to Kevin Durant (five games missed), DeMarcus Cousins (14), and Andre Iguodala (one) have forced Golden State to dip into its reserves. With Durant and Cousins out, Kevon Looney ranks fourth in regular-season minutes per game among healthy Warriors. Kevon Looney! For the past three years, he’d been the Warriors’ Yung Jud Buechler. Now he’s good.

But Kerr hasn’t filled his starting lineup just by slotting in his next-best players. No, this postseason, he’s started the players who ranked ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 16th this season in total minutes for the Warriors. Part of the explanation for starting randos seems to be that Kerr wants to keep his units consistent. Looney, for example, hasn’t started a game yet because Kerr likes the energy he brings off the bench. In Game 6 of the first-round series against the Clippers, Kerr chose to start Shaun Livingston, who didn’t start a game all year, to ensure Iguodala would come in fresh to guard two-time Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams.

I like to think Kerr is also fidgeting around to make things more interesting. He’s playing a game, trying to seek out the least relevant player he can start and still win a critical playoff game. The injuries necessitate digging into the bench; they don’t necessitate starting Jordan Bell and Alfonzo McKinnie alongside each other in a closeout game in the Western Conference finals. (He did this. They won.) Let’s look at some players the Warriors have started this postseason, and what it means about how seriously Golden State is taking games:

6.3 Fucks Given: Alfonzo McKinnie

McKinnie has actually been a surprisingly good role player for the Warriors this season, appearing in 72 games while proving to be a capable defender and aggressive rebounder. So from a basketball perspective, it isn’t too ridiculous that he started Game 4 against the Trail Blazers—or that it paid off, as McKinnie had 12 points and snagged two critical offensive rebounds in overtime.

But we should note McKinnie’s road to becoming a part of the Warriors rotation. After he graduated from Wisconsin–Green Bay in 2015, no NBA teams were interested in McKinnie, and so he accepted an offer to play for a semi-pro team in Luxembourg’s second division. To clarify: not the best league in Luxembourg, a country of 600,000 that has produced only one NBA player and whose national basketball team is 1-53 in qualification games for EuroBasket since 2005. And it wasn’t even a good team in the second league in Luxembourg—the East Side Pirates (which sounds like a generic team from a video game that didn’t secure NBPA rights) finished 2-26, good for last place. You can watch video of him dominating in gyms with handball lines on the court and, for some reason, green floors.

McKinnie’s rise to the NBA is truly incredible. He went from Luxembourg to the second division in Mexico, to the G League, to a two-way contract with the Raptors last season. (This isn’t just any NBA Finals, it’s an Alfonzo McKinnie–Patrick McCaw Revenge Series.) It’s perhaps the best story of the Warriors’ season. And while I get the basketball explanation, I like to believe the Warriors are playing McKinnie just to prove they can be the best team in the world while playing a guy from the worst team in the second division in Luxembourg.

2.8 F’s Given: Andrew Bogut

It feels weird to include Bogut here—while McKinnie was playing in the Luxembourgian minor leagues, Bogut was starting for the Warriors in a different NBA Finals. He’s a former no. 1 overall pick who was once named to the All-NBA third team. He’s formerly famous!

But after the Warriors traded Bogut to open up cap space in 2016, his career fizzled. He averaged 3.0 points per game for the Mavericks, who traded him to the Sixers, who cut him; he then signed with the Cavs (primarily to provide Warriors intel) but broke his leg in his first minute on the court with Cleveland. He played sparingly with the tanking Lakers last season, and then signed with the Sydney Kings of Australia’s NBL.

The NBL isn’t the second division in Luxembourg—Torrey Craig, who has turned into a legitimate rotation player for the Nuggets, had played most of his pro career in the NBL before making the jump to the NBA in 2017; five-star recruit R.J. Hampton just announced that he will skip college to play in the NBL next season. But if it was possible for NBA teams to improve their rosters midseason by signing players from the Australian leagues, I’m sure we’d see it happen sometimes. As is, there is no precedent for a player who was in the NBL in March appearing in playoff games in April, but that’s what the Warriors did with Bogut.

Kerr has put Bogut in the starting lineup at least once in every playoff series thus far, and it’s not really clear why. After some decent contributions against the Clippers, Bogut scored a total of two points in his three starts against the Rockets and Trail Blazers, playing a total of 23 minutes before Kerr bumped him for players who were actually in the NBA all season. I suspect Bogut won’t see any more starts, especially with the pending return of DeMarcus Cousins from injury. If we do see Bogut, it will be an attempt by Golden State to prove it can win the championship when one of its starters literally doesn’t belong in the NBA anymore.

0.3 F’s Given: Damian Jones

For all the random players given opportunities in the playoffs, nothing approaches Golden State’s decision to start Jones in Game 3 against Portland. To be fair, Jones was a regular starter for the Warriors in October and November, opening 22 of the team’s first 24 games. The 2016 first-round draft pick didn’t play a huge role, but he was a gifted finisher, shooting 71.6 percent from the field. If he’d kept it up all season, that would’ve led the league.

But Jones tore his pectoral muscle in December, requiring surgery that kept him out until May. Jones was medically cleared ahead of the Western Conference finals, and Kerr patiently reinserted him into low-leverage situations. He got a minute and 42 seconds of playing time in garbage time Game 1, scoring three points. He got a minute and 30 seconds in the third quarter of Game 2, grabbing a rebound before returning to the bench.

And then, BAM! With almost three minutes under his belt, Jones was in the starting lineup for Game 3. Some players demand immediate reinsertion into the lineup when they come back from injury; Damian Jones probably isn’t one of them. Jones immediately picked up three personal fouls (including one on a 3-pointer) in just three minutes, heading to the bench with Golden State down 9-5. He didn’t play the rest of the game or in the series-ending Game 4.

Kerr made the decision to spot his opponents a small lead in one of the most important games of the year by starting a guy who hadn’t played long enough to work up a sweat since December. The Warriors still won by 11. Hopefully, the NBA Finals deliver, as the Raptors seem to be a great team and the Warriors aren’t at full strength. If not, Kerr will need to break up the boredom of a fourth NBA championship by starting Jones and randos like him.

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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/30/18644955/golden-state-warriors-rando-rankings-nba-finals

2019-05-30 12:34:54Z
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The superstar-size shadow lingering over these Finals - ESPN

8:14 AM ET

  • Tim BontempsESPN

TORONTO -- The 2019 NBA Finals, which have the makings of a potential all-time classic on the court, will be played amid a sea of speculation from across the league over the futures of Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard.

And, as the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors face off over the next four to seven games, several other teams will be paying attention not to the outcome, but to the future of the two stars, hoping to lure them away next season.

In the midst of this age of player empowerment in the NBA, it is fitting that the league's championship series will serve as the backdrop to an ongoing discussion -- one both teams have weathered all season long -- over what decisions Durant and Leonard will make a month from now.

Both the Warriors and Raptors deserve credit for how they have managed to come so far this season with the cloud of Durant and Leonard's respective free agencies hanging over their heads. Both teams have had low points, from the infamous blowup between Durant and Draymond Green on the court in Los Angeles against the Clippers in November to the Raptors being annihilated in Leonard's return to San Antonio in early January.

But in the end, those were simply signpost moments along the way in seasons that will end, as both teams had hoped and expected, in the Finals. At media day, Raptors president Masai Ujiri, who made the daring trade to bring Leonard to Toronto last summer, addressed the media before either team, and was asked directly about Leonard's future in Toronto.

"I think when [Leonard] came here he made it clear he wanted to be healthy," Ujiri said Wednesday morning at a news conference ahead of Game 1 Thursday night. "He wants to play on a good team that would compete, and I think kudos to [director of sports science] Alex McKechnie and Kawhi's team that I think they have worked together to get him slowly back to playing at this level after missing, playing only nine games last year.

"I think when he sees with the city, the fan base, basketball, I think coaching, everything almost has to come together. I think that was an incredible moment in Game 7 with that shot. All these things I think naturally they have to come together, and I think we're blessed here in Toronto that it's slowly coming together for us. But the trust, you hope to build that trust where at the end of the day we know that there are two tough moments in sports, in the job that we do that make it very, very difficult, and that's trading a player and when a player leaves in free agency. We all have to prepare ourselves for everything, and I think we have built this trust in a way that whatever it is, I think we would have prepared ourselves."

The Warriors have faced similar questions about Durant all season. From the moment Golden State landed the former MVP three years ago, teams around the league waited for the time this dynastic run for Golden State would begin to fade -- either because of injury, or because of a defection via free agency or trade.

Durant -- who will miss at least Game 1 because of his lingering calf injury -- could bring that potential fade to fruition by deciding to leave when he becomes an unrestricted free agent after the season.

In doing so, he would not only turn a Warriors team that has looked unstoppable for three seasons into a simply great team, but he'd also give hope to several teams -- most notably the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers -- that one of the greatest players of this (or any) generation will choose to join them come July.

The same could be said for Leonard, who seemed destined to wind up in Los Angeles even before the Raptors acquired him in a trade with the San Antonio Spurs. But while the Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers would still hope to land Leonard this summer, his magical playoff run in Toronto -- including an all-time great buzzer-beater in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers -- and the way the Raptors have successfully managed his health have given rise to a belief that he could, in fact, remain north of the border beyond this season.

The endless speculation around his future could have easily unsettled, and ultimately doomed, the Raptors. Instead, they -- and the Warriors -- managed to rise above the noise.

Instead, they allowed themselves to emerge from hellacious fights during these playoffs -- the Warriors winning the final two games of the Western Conference semifinals against the Houston Rockets with Durant out injured, and the Raptors surviving slugfests against first the Sixers and then the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference finals -- unscathed.

"As each series goes [by], you get more media, or asked more questions about what's going on," Leonard said. "But I think once this is over, it's still between the lines. You're playing five-on-five. We're still playing basketball. We have a scheme. [So] just focus on that, and don't focus on the outside attention.

"We know what we need to do here inside this locker room every day, so don't pay attention to people who are not in your locker room."

That is a formula both teams have found solace -- and success -- in this season. But it hasn't erased the speculation from their lives. And, as this series continues to progress, the noise may only grow louder.

Every Toronto victory or defeat during this postseason has become a mini-referendum on Ujiri's franchise-changing experiment to bring Leonard to Toronto last summer. That no one has any idea whether this run is having any impact on Leonard's thinking is beside the point; it hasn't stopped anyone from constantly wondering whether it has.

Meanwhile, Durant exiting the stage in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals with a calf injury has added a new dynamic to the ongoing drama over his future. With the Warriors rattling off six straight wins (including Game 5) without him, the question of whether Golden State is better without him has, again, become a talking point.

So, too, has whether the Warriors should even bring back Durant before they lose a game, no matter when he's ready to play, or what it would mean if Golden State brings him back and the team's strong play without him fades away.

All year long, these two teams have been working toward this final goal, building toward the crescendo of arriving here at the NBA Finals hoping to make history. Now, that goal is within their reach, and both sides are fully capable of achieving it.

But rather than the focus solely being on that, and how this series plays out, the fight over the futures of Durant and Leonard rages on. From here to Oakland, from New York to Los Angeles, the chase is on to secure the services of two of the game's premier talents.

Even the league's showcase event -- the one everyone in the league wants to be in -- isn't big enough to make us forget that.

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http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26850312/the-superstar-size-shadow-lingering-finals

2019-05-30 11:56:23Z
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Arsenal news: Granit Xhaka reveals dressing room reaction to Chelsea disaster in Europa League final - Goal.com

Granit Xhaka has revealed that Arsenal’s mauling by Chelsea in the Europa League final was met by a stony silence in the dressing room.

The Gunners went into Wednesday night’s game knowing it was win or bust in terms of the Champions League having thrown away their chance of a top-four finish when they ended their Premier League campaign with just one win in their last six games.

But again they came up short, with Eden Hazard inspiring Chelsea to victory in Baku - as the Blues ran riot in the second half to seal a crushing 4-1 victory.

Article continues below

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It was a defeat which reduced Lucas Torreira and Petr Cech to tears, with Arsenal now having to face up to the realisation that they will be playing Europa League football for a third successive season.

But there was no immediate post-mortem after the game or any harsh words from Unai Emery. In fact, there was ‘nothing’ said at all, according to Xhaka.

“Him (Emery), the players, nobody speaks in the dressing room,” revealed the Switzerland international midfielder.

When asked why Emery had remained silent, Xhaka added: “I don’t know. He was disappointed of course.

“I think we know what we played. We know we lost the game. It is not about shouting. It is not about shouting everything if we lose.

“You can say a lot now but it is not the time to explain why and what happens. I think it was a big chance for us and we don’t take it.”

Unai Emery Arsenal Chelsea Europa League 2019

The manner of the defeat, following on from the disastrous end to the season in the Premier League which saw defeats against Everton, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Leicester in the final seven games, has raised familiar questions about the mentality that runs through the Arsenal squad.

Fingers have once again been pointed at Mesut Ozil following another anonymous display, while Emery himself has come in for criticism due to the end-of-season collapse.

Xhaka - who said he was ‘not the right person’ to ask about whether the club had moved forward under Emery - insists, however, that Arsenal’s abject end to the campaign was not down to mentality issues.

“It happened because we lost the games,” he said. “It is not about physical or mental. I think we were ready. We trained every day and if you are not ready if you train every day you have to change your sport.

“I think we had a good season, if you take off the five last games in the Premier League. We have a second chance [against Chelsea] to come back and go to the Champions League but if you don’t take your chances, you will stay in the Europa League.

“We opened the game too fast in the second half. At 1-0, you still have 45 minutes to come back. We had chances as well but we made too many mistakes.

“After, with the individual class from Chelsea, they can change the game.”

Mesut Ozil Arsenal Chelsea Europa League final 2019

Calls for a major rebuild at the Emirates have already started following the defeat in Baku.

Arsenal legend Martin Keown took aim at Ozil once again after the game, saying ‘something’s got to give’ in terms of the German playmaker.

“Ozil is your biggest player, and he cannot play away from home,” Keown said.

“They have Hazard, we had Ozil. He couldn't get Aubameyang or Lacazette in the game.

 “[It was] a system failure for Arsenal. It really magnifies the decline of Arsenal Football Club. It's nowhere near the club it once was.”

Emery did hint after the game that changes would be made in the summer and that some players would be moved on as part of the reshuffle.

When asked whether he wanted the club to now show some ambition in the transfer market to help close the gap on those above them, Xhaka said: “I don’t know what happens, what is the plan of the club.

“It is not my decision to sign big players or small players. I don’t know what the plan is now.”

Quizzed on his own future and a possible move away, Xhaka added: “Me? I have a contract here.”

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https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/it-is-not-about-shouting-xhaka-reveals-arsenal-dressing-room/tsn5egmw6diu16vnlpm7yo1qb

2019-05-30 11:00:00Z
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Stanley Cup Playoffs Daily - Blues cap wild Game 2 with OT win - ESPN

6:51 AM ET

  • Emily KaplanESPN

It was a win more than a half century in the making. The St. Louis Blues defeated the Boston Bruins 3-2 in overtime to take Game 2, but most importantly, win the franchise's first-ever Stanley Cup Final game.

Here's everything you need to know about how Game 2 played out in this edition of ESPN Stanley Cup Playoffs Daily.

Jump ahead: Last night's game | Three stars
Play of the night | Social post of the day

About last night ...

Game 2: St. Louis Blues 3, Boston Bruins 2 (OT) (Series tied, 1-1)

The first period was a little nutty. Hometown favorite Charlie Coyle scored first -- on the power play -- before Robert Bortuzzo tied it. Fourth-liner Joakim Nordstrom gave Boston another lead before Vladimir Tarasenko evened things up again. Things calmed down offensively in the second and third (especially for the Bruins, who had a hard time sustaining any offensive zone pressure) but the tone was set. This was a heavy game. This was a physical game. This is likely how the series is going to be won.

The Bruins played most of the game with five defensemen after Matt Grzelcyk was sent to the hospital after hitting his head into the boards on a check by Oskar Sundqvist. That likely led to fatigue. In the end, Carl Gunnarsson won it in overtime for the Blues, becoming the 19th St. Louis player to score this postseason. But what will make Gunnarsson the stuff of legend is how he did it. After clanging one off of the post late in the third period, Gunnarsson took a bathroom break during intermission. That's when he stood next to his coach at the urinal and declared: "I just need one more chance."

Three Stars

1. Carl Gunnarsson, D, St. Louis Blues. Gunnarsson became only the third player in NHL history to score his first playoff goal in a Stanley Cup Final overtime game. It was also his first multi-point game since October 18, 2015 -- a string of 253 games.

play

0:27

Carl Gunnarsson one-times Ryan O'Reilly's pass into the back of the net in overtime, giving the Blues a 3-2 win to even the Stanley Cup Final at 1-1.

2. Joakim Nordstrom, C, Boston Bruins. The fourth-liner and defensive specialist was exceptional on Wednesday night, but will need some significant time in the ice bath to recover. Besides his one goal, Nordstrom blocked five shots, including three in a 50-second span on the penalty kill, which roused the Bruins faithful at TD Garden.

3. Vladimir Tarasenko, RW, St. Louis Blues. With another goal on Wednesday, the Russian winger became the fourth player in franchise history to record an eight-game point streak in the postseason. He sits one game shy of the all-time mark held by Tony Currie from 1981.

Play of the night

The shot off the post that laid the groundwork for overtime dramatics.

Dud of the night

It's not all positive for St. Louis in analyzing Game 2. The Blues vowed to be more disciplined after uncharacteristically taking five penalties in Game 1. Well, they ended up shorthanded five times again, including becoming the first team with multiple goalie interference penalties in a Stanley Cup Final game since 2008.

Social post of the day

We have a lot of questions, unknown fans.

Quotable

"[Craig Berube] just came in and said, 'Good job,' and told the story ... you don't hear that story very often. That's not a place to have a conversation, but I guess it works. It's a good story. I don't know if he's making it up, because that's a great story." -- Alex Pietrangelo on how the team learned of the stream of consciousness bathroom convo between Berube and Gunnarsson.

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http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26853623/stanley-cup-playoffs-daily-blues-cap-wild-game-2-ot-win

2019-05-30 10:50:41Z
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Kawhi Leonard Delivers His Message During Raptors’ Run to NBA Finals - The Ringer

With a little under seven minutes left in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Toronto Raptors and the Milwaukee Bucks, a play took place that seemed to symbolize not only the Raptors’ delirious, improbable victory in the game, and not only their delirious, improbable victory in the series, but also their delirious, improbable run through the 2019 playoffs. In the moment, I would have sworn it symbolized even more than that—something like hope, and the possibility of justice, and maybe life itself—but we will see about that as we go along.

The play, like the rest of the Raptors’ season, was first and foremost a message from Kawhi Leonard. The Bucks’ Khris Middleton had taken the ball inside Milwaukee’s 3-point line. To get around his defender, Toronto’s Fred VanVleet, Middleton tried to dribble behind his back, a perfectly normal move under most circumstances, but one that becomes a risky circus stunt against a defense as pitilessly well-honed as the Raptors’. Middleton bobbled the ball, just slightly, but enough to give Toronto’s Kyle Lowry an opening. Lowry snatched the ball away from Middleton and flew down the court. He was chased, and almost caught, by the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, the freakishly talented 24-year-old Greek superstar who led Milwaukee to the best record in the NBA this year and whom many people think is the league’s best player. Sensing Giannis’s fluorescent-orange shoes closing in on him, Lowry pulled up in the paint to protect the ball, then laid it off to the trailing Kawhi, who now had a clear path to the basket—clear, that is, except that Giannis, the probable league MVP, a player four inches taller and who had recently blocked the 7-foot Joel Embiid four times in one game, was standing directly in his path.

Kawhi didn’t hesitate. In one smooth motion, he scooped the ball up and leapt toward Giannis and the rim. He had already done so many unlikely things in these playoffs, including sinking the first series-clinching Game 7 buzzer-beater in NBA history—against the 76ers in the previous round, on a shot that bounced four times on the rim before falling through—that dunking on Giannis might have seemed like a matter of course. Toronto had trailed by 15 in the game and had come back to lead by six; Toronto had trailed by two games in the series and had come back to lead 3-2. Kawhi had been putting up Jordanesque numbers for weeks, scattering 30-point games in his wake like Gretel tossing bread crumbs in the forest. The Raptors had acquired the aura of a team for which nothing is impossible, and Leonard’s surreally great playoff performances were the major reason why.

Still, for the fraction of a second that the two stars rose toward each other in the air, it was hard to feel that Kawhi had the advantage, either in this exchange or in the flash-vision of the NBA’s future that hung on the outcome of the play. Giannis was a natural face for the league: telegenic, charismatic, at ease in his own skin, a player people loved to talk about. He had done everything the right way, embracing the city of Milwaukee after the Bucks drafted him in 2013, projecting an image fully in keeping with the NBA’s social media-era PR model—approachable but larger than life, awe-inspiring yet fun. It was easy to imagine him sliding into the kind of lovable, lucrative fame-space that Steph Curry so easily occupies and from which Kevin Durant seems determined to eject himself. A Warriors-Bucks Finals made a certain aesthetic sense: With LeBron James temporarily lost to the nihilistic chaos-rodeo he dreamed up for himself in Los Angeles, it would pit the league’s most dominant current icons with its most obvious future one.

Kawhi, by contrast, was … what’s the word? Enigmatic? There was nothing obvious about him. Where Giannis had stage presence, Kawhi had a kind of unreadable contrariness, a quality of being somewhere else even when he was standing right in front of you. From a marketing standpoint, he was a nightmare. He did his own thing without seeming to care whether it rubbed anyone, or everyone, the wrong way. He had no evident interest in crafting a narrative or explaining himself. He wasn’t provocative in a flashy, audience-focused way, as, say, Dennis Rodman was; what made him difficult was his indifference to being watched. Coming off a season-ruining injury, he’d walked out on San Antonio, an old-school franchise where stars are expected to sip Château d’Yquem with Gregg Popovich until death swallows time, and been traded to the Raptors to spend one mildly baffling season until his likely free agency this summer. Fans didn’t hate him, exactly; you have to understand someone, or think you do, to hate them, and Kawhi was too elusive to be understood. There was something about him that couldn’t be easily incorporated within the image of an elite NBA star in 2019—something that not only didn’t fit the image but that invisibly seemed to repel it, as if Kawhi and fame were magnets turned the wrong way around.

The leaning one-handed dunk that Kawhi Leonard threw down over Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t the prettiest or the most acrobatic dunk I have ever seen. But it had the same quality of shocking, off-kilter inevitability that many of Kawhi’s best moments share, that strange grace of retroactive fatedness: A split second before they happen, you could not imagine them happening; a split second afterward, you cannot imagine how anything else ever could have. Four bounces on the rim? Of course!

The dunk turned a six-point lead into an eight-point lead and contributed mightily to Toronto reaching its first-ever NBA Finals. It turned Twitter, and Drake’s brain, inside out. It set up a tactically fascinating Warriors-Raptors matchup that tips off tonight in Toronto. I’m not dwelling on it for any of those reasons, though. I’m dwelling on it because it was the moment when I first consciously recognized how utterly satisfying I find it to watch Kawhi Leonard, the ultimate basketball plot twist, laying waste to the orderly NBA. And it was the first moment when I consciously realized why.

Kawhi is a misfit, like most of us in this mad and maddening world. When life is easy—when you get the big tax refund you weren’t expecting, when your car arrives just as the rain starts, when the cool kids mysteriously want to be your friend—then maybe you can identify with Steph Curry. When your boss praises your potential, when you feel you have the respect and admiration you know in your heart you have earned, then maybe Giannis is your natural avatar. But when you feel misunderstood, you want someone like Kawhi to show you that it’s possible to win even when you’re odd and out of place. He’s the basketball star for everyone who missed out on an invitation to life’s red carpet. He’s the player for the artist who didn’t get the grant, the photographer who doesn’t get likes on Instagram, the singleton whose crushes don’t swipe right. He’s the player for the parent whose kid didn’t make honor roll and the worker who got out-talked and out-smiled for the promotion. His game is a reminder that the universe’s golden children don’t have a monopoly on brilliance—that you can be outside the circle of prestige and still be great, and maybe, eventually, be vindicated.

Do the Raptors have a chance in the Finals? It’s a long shot. But then, it’s supposed to be. If there was ever a sports team of, by, and for the universe’s golden children, it’s the Warriors, and when you are favored by definition you are likely also to be favored on the court. Kawhi will have to sustain what might be an impossible level of brilliance just to keep it close. To my mind, this is the most fascinating story the NBA has to offer this year, precisely because it seems less prepackaged and TV-sculpted than the other, more obvious stories we could have gotten in its place. Whatever happens, Kawhi has made basketball more exciting, and in a strange way more accessible, by being, inaccessibly, himself.

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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/30/18645329/kawhi-leonard-nba-plot-twist-toronto-raptors-nba-finals

2019-05-30 10:20:00Z
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Sarri's agent to meet Chelsea today to free the manager: the scenario - Calciomercato.com english news

30 May at 11:45

Yesterday's Europa League final against Arsenal might have been Maurizio Sarri's final match as Chelsea's coach, only one year after arriving at the Stamford Bridge to replace Antonio Conte.

As reported by Gazzetta dello Sport, Sarri's agent Fali Ramadani will likely meet Marina Granovskaia today to try and free the manager from his Chelsea commitments.

The English club continues to demand a compensation of about 5.5 million euros to free Sarri for a potential move to Juventus, even though there are reports of AC Milan's interest in the manager as well.

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2019-05-30 09:45:00Z
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Van Dijk 'wouldn't make much difference' to Arsenal - Football365.com

Date published: Thursday 30th May 2019 10:04

Lee Dixon claims that even Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk couldn’t “make much difference” to the current Arsenal defence.

The Gunners conceded 12 more than any other top five Premier League side this season with 51 goals against to their 73 scored.

Former Arsenal defender Dixon was far from impressed with what he saw from Unai Emery’s men as they shipped four goals in their Europa League final defeat to Chelsea.

And Dixon reckons it is about a change in “mentality” at the club rather than a change in personnel that will ultimately improve their leaky rearguard.

“One player, I’m telling you, you put [Virgil] van Dijk in that back four at the moment, the way that the team is set up without the ball it wouldn’t make much difference,” Dixon told BBC Radio Five Live.

“It’s about the mentality of changing that around, they’ve not been good without the ball for years now and that takes more than one player, it takes more than five minutes. It takes a lot of work and effort on the training pitch.”

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https://www.football365.com/news/van-dijk-wouldnt-make-much-difference-to-arsenal

2019-05-30 09:04:52Z
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