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On Tuesday, Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon refused to back down from her previous doubts about Jalen Brunson’s ability to lead a team to an NBA title due to his diminutive stature. Brunson, who is listed at 6-foot-2, led the New York Knicks to a 130-93 Game 4 win to complete an Eastern…

BOSTON — Despite what Joe Mazzulla thinks of the Coach of the Year award, it now belongs to him. Mazzulla, who has called the award “stupid,” won it Tuesday after leading the Boston Celtics to a 56-26 season and the Eastern Conference’s second seed. The NBA announced that Mazzulla beat out the other finalists for…

CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers plan to retain coach Kenny Atkinson even after the team was swept Monday night by the New York Knicks, two league sources told The Athletic. Atkinson guided the franchise to its first appearance in the conference finals since 2018 and first without LeBron James on the roster since 1992, but there…

The NBA will announce the 2025-26 Coach of the Year winner Tuesday night ahead of Game 5 of the Western Conference finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Detroit Pistons’ J.B. Bickerstaff, the Boston Celtics’ Joe Mazzulla and the Spurs’ Mitch Johnson are finalists for the award. Advertisement Bickerstaff led…

Jeff Van Gundy still recalls one unmistakable sound from the Knicks’ last journey to the NBA Finals. Twenty-seven years later, he can hear the Madison Square Garden crowd chanting his name, and he can feel the goosebumps and the emotion that made his hand holding that Diet Coke tremble near the home bench. Advertisement Garden…

The Bounce Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox. We took the three-day weekend, came back and the Knicks were Eastern Conference champions. They await the winner of the Spurs-Thunder series, which is tied 2-2 in the West. The Thunder took back…

CLEVELAND — Players and coaches were still dressing and lingering around the arena Monday night when the owner sent the first tremor shivering across the court and into the streets of downtown. “We’re nowhere near where we need to be,” Dan Gilbert wrote on X, and suddenly, anything seems possible. The Cavaliers have another summer of…

A Victor Wembanyama rookie card that was previously the subject of some controversy sold in a private deal for $5.11 million, making it the most expensive known sale of a non-autographed NBA card. The sale of the San Antonio Spurs center’s 2023-24 Panini Prizm one-of-one Black parallel rookie card, which has a Gem-Mint PSA 10…

CLEVELAND — The smoke was only beginning to clear after arguably the worst, and certainly the most inexplicable, loss in Cavaliers’ history. National media outlets and the New York tabloids alike were pinning blame for the Cavs’ 22-point collapse in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on James Harden, who…

CLEVELAND — If the pressure wasn’t pulsating enough, if the expectations couldn’t be any more blatant, New York Knicks owner James Dolan made it clear — very clear — back in January what had to happen for his franchise to avoid a major overhaul. “Yeah, we want to get to the finals and we should…