Tag: nytimes.com

SAN ANTONIO — Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards is planning to play in Game 1 of their second-round series against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night, team and league sources tell The Athletic, a stunningly quick return to action after he hyperextended his left knee in Game 4 of the team’s first-round matchup with…

The first round of the NBA playoffs featured three Game 7s and three upsets, according to what the odds had laid out before the round started. Will the second round live up to that excitement? The two series in the Eastern Conference appear relatively wide open, with the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers series lined…

Major upsets for the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets significantly altered the championship picture after the first round of the NBA playoffs. Two of the last three NBA champions unexpectedly falling in the opening series created an even larger gap from the top two favorites, the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, to the…

The Dallas Mavericks have hired Masai Ujiri as their team president and alternate governor. He will succeed Nico Harrison, who was fired as general manager in November, as the franchise’s lead basketball executive. Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi had served as co-interim general managers after Harrison’s firing, which came nine months after the blockbuster trade…

The Orlando Magic entered the 2025-26 season as a clear favorite to finish near the top of the Eastern Conference standings. A comprehensive preseason survey of NBA general managers even ranked the Magic as a top-four team in the East. Yet the Magic barely qualified for the playoffs and, once they reached the first round,…

CLEVELAND — It’s in there. We’ve seen it in brief stretches. The defensive tenacity, the crisp ball movement, the aggression from the bigs. Whether the Cavs can sustain a championship level of intensity for 12 more victories has always been the biggest question. For now? For now, they’re moving on. They weren’t great in Sunday’s…

The Minnesota Timberwolves, battle-tested and tough as nails, pursue their third straight conference finals berth. The San Antonio Spurs, futuristic drum pounders, try to win a second playoff series for the first time since 2017. It’s an intriguing pairing that’s anchored by two French 7-footers. Victor Wembanyama is the NBA’s first unanimous Defensive Player of…

DETROIT — All season, J.B. Bickerstaff has harped on one thing being paramount to the Detroit Pistons’ long-term success: peaking at the perfect time. He’s reiterated it from the Pistons’ 13-game win streak in November to their four-game losing streak in March. As Bickerstaff subbed out his starters Sunday to a standing ovation from the…

MINNEAPOLIS — Eyes darting around the room, Rudy Gobert is racking his brain for a message for his protege. Gobert and his Minnesota Timberwolves had just defeated the San Antonio Spurs and his mentee, Victor Wembanyama, in January. Gobert could have talked trash about the game. He also could have imparted some wisdom on getting…

Two longstanding franchises with rabid, bellowing fanbases. A host of NBA All-Stars with narrative arcs to close. Home arenas separated by just 100 miles of interstate highway and a few Amtrak stops. It’s the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers. It’s always personal. The Knicks haven’t won a championship since 1973, and they haven’t…