Chris Paul and Michael Malone shared a big embrace after the series between their teams ended on Sunday night.
Paul’s Phoenix Suns beat Malone’s Denver Nuggets 125-118 in Game 4 to sweep their Western Conference semifinals series. Even though his team just got swept, Malone gave much love to Paul, his former player.
Take a look at this close embrace between the men:
That was great sportsmanship from Malone, who probably was disappointed over his team being swept.
Malone also praised Paul postgame as one of the great players all-time.
Malone served as an assistant coach on the New Orleans Hornets from 2010-2011 when CP3 was on the team. Paul said the feelings between them were mutual. He said Malone was one of his favorite coaches.
Even though both teams were trying hard to win, it’s cool to see the nice sportsmanship after the competition ends.
The Suns are now in the Western Conference finals and await the winners of the Jazz-Clippers series. The Nuggets go home but got a consolation with their first ever MVP award.
Some NBA players took issue with the ejection of Nikola Jokic during Game 4 of the Denver Nuggets-Phoenix Suns series.
Jokic was tossed for a hard foul he committed on Cameron Payne late in the third quarter. Jokic was given a flagrant 2 foul, which triggered the automatic ejection.
Stars like Ja Morant and Trae Young couldn’t believe the ejection. Morant called the league “soft” over the call.
Young couldn’t believe they called Jokic’s foul a flagrant 2.
The league deemed Jokic’s contact with Payne to be excessive and above the shoulders.
“We saw wind-up, impact and follow through, which led to unnecessary and excessive contact above the shoulders and also into the face.”
This is not the first time a top player called the league “soft” recently. It seems to be a common complaint.
Nikola Jokic was ejected in the third quarter of Game 4 between his Denver Nuggets and the Phoenix Suns on Sunday. Right after committing the foul that led to his ejection, Jokic was swarmed by Suns guard Devin Booker.
The way that Booker ran up to Jokic and got in his face led to all sorts of jokes about retribution heading the guard’s way. Several of the jokes specifically referenced Jokic’s two large, older brothers, who go everywhere with the reigning MVP. They looked like they wanted a piece of Booker as the drama was unfolding:
Maybe there is an intimidation factor when it comes to Jokic and his crew. Or maybe Booker doesn’t even care. His Suns won the game 125-118 and got the series sweep. Denver has a lot of work to do.
Devin Booker did not hesitate to stand up for his teammate after an incident during Game 4 of his Phoenix Suns’ playoff series with the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night.
Nikola Jokic handed Cameron Payne a hard foul in the third quarter and ended up ejected with a flagrant 2 foul. Immediately after the foul, Booker got right in Jokic’s face.
Jokic has a good five inches and 80 pounds on Booker. None of that mattered to the Suns guard in that moment.
Booker received a technical foul but remained in the game. He likely earned respect from his teammates for not hesitating to stand up for them.
Kyler Murray had an honest explanation for why he did not grow up as a Dallas Cowboys fan.
Murray is from Bedford, Texas and played high school ball at Allen, Texas. Allen is north of Dallas and very close to where the Cowboys’ practice facility is located in Frisco.
The Arizona Cardinals quarterback was mixing with some fans at an event. One person figured that Murray grew up a Cowboys fan and said so to the quarterback.
Murray replied, “f— no. They were always a–.”
The video is here but contains profanity.
Murray probably started becoming a football fan around the time Bill Parcells was still the Cowboys’ coach. Tony Romo was the team’s starting quarterback almost the entire time Murray was growing up, and the Cowboys were not as bad as he suggests. They went 13-3 in 2007 and 11-5 in 2009, winning the division both years. They won double-digit games and the division in 2014, 2016 and 2018. Maybe that wasn’t good enough if Murray was a frontrunner. Or maybe the three 8-8 seasons in a row under Jason Garrett did him in.
Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic was ejected from Sunday’s Game 4 of the Western Conference quarterfinals for a hard foul on Suns guard Cameron Payne.
With just under four minutes left in the third quarter, Jokic went for a steal on Payne. Jokic wound up and his arm struck Payne in the face on the follow-through, sending the Phoenix guard to the floor. The foul also sparked a heated confrontation between Jokic and Suns guard Devin Booker, who intervened on Payne’s behalf.
Here’s another look showing Jokic’s arm striking Payne’s face.
Jokic was assessed a flagrant 2, as officials ruled that there was a windup and a follow-through with violent contact to Payne’s face. That meant Jokic was automatically ejected from the game. Booker was assessed a technical foul for his role in the ensuing confrontation.
Jokic looked genuinely shocked at the call and his ejection.
The Nuggets are facing elimination down 3-0, and the Suns had spent the third quarter slowly extending their lead over Denver. Jokic was almost certainly frustrated, and the moment seemed to get away from him. Still, the flagrant 2 call was a bit of a surprise, but clearly the officials felt that the contact qualified as excessive in addition to simply unnecessary.
In the past, Nuggets coach Michael Malone has said that there are times Jokic can let his frustrations have a detrimental impact on his play. This counts as a perfect example of that.
The Dallas Mavericks apparently came close to getting the infinity gauntlet.
ESPN’s Zach Lowe reported this week that rival executives were fearful that Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo would team up with Luka Doncic in Dallas. But Antetokounmpo ended up signing a supermax extension with Milwaukee, effectively putting those fears to rest.
Antetokounmpo and Doncic are arguably the two top NBA stars of their generation. Not much is known about their relationship with each other. But the Mavs did previously have Antetokounmpo’s younger brother Kostas on their team in what many saw as a play for Giannis.
The two-time MVP Antetokounmpo is now committed to the Bucks through 2025 per his new supermax contract. As for Doncic, he is currently set to become a restricted free agent next offseason. But Doncic is eligible for a big extension this offseason. In the meantime, Doncic may be looking for another co-star.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is already looking like a superstar in the making, and it’s becoming difficult to convey how dominant he has already become.
Guerrero Jr. hit his 21st home run of the season on Sunday against the Boston Red Sox, one of eight Toronto Blue Jays home runs on the day. The performance lifted Guerrero’s slugging percentage to .688, the highest mark in the league.
Fans may be familiar with OPS, which is simply on base percentage and slugging percentage added together and is meant as a full assessment of a player’s offensive production. As of Sunday, Guerrero’s slugging percentage alone is higher than the OPS of nine teams.
We’re getting to the point where Guerrero isn’t going to need any advice from his Hall of Fame father anymore. He’s right up there with Fernando Tatis Jr. as one of the best young hitters in the sport. He is on his way to winning AL MVP if his current pace keeps up.
The San Francisco 49ers successfully ran one of the most tight-lipped pre-draft processes in recent memory leading up to the 2021 NFL Draft. That led to a lot of misinformation filling the void, some of which coach Kyle Shanahan himself found funny.
The most notable of the prevailing wisdom was that Shanahan’s preferred quarterback was Mac Jones due to Jones’ pocket passing ability. As it turned out, the Niners chose Trey Lance, and had made up their mind well in advance of the draft.
Shanahan told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami on “The TK Show” podcast that he found the constant speculation linking Jones to the 49ers funny, and that many people misread his quarterback preferences.
“I do laugh at … that everyone thinks that they know exactly what I want at quarterback because I thought we had a chance to get the number one free agent quarterback who was going to be on the market in our second year,” Shanahan said, via Alex Didion of NBC Sports Bay Area. “And since we did, people just assume that’s how I would draw it up, which if you draw it up, obviously you’re going to give the guy everything. I do believe that you have to be able to win from the pocket in this league as a quarterback or it will catch up to you. But holy cow, if you can run, it makes playing from the pocket a lot easier because those defenses are going to change and stuff.”
At some point, the prevailing narrative was that Shanahan wanted an elite pocket passer first and foremost. That may have led to the leaguewide consensus that Jones was going to go No. 3. Many were left surprised when the 49ers selected Lance instead.
If you look back at the process, Shanahan had quietly delivered a quote earlier in the process that should have been seen as more of a hint than it really was at the time. No wonder he was laughing at the Jones consensus.
Paul George was not having it with a reporter who tried to “Jingle” him.
The LA Clippers forward dropped a playoff-high 31 points on six threes in a crucial win over the Utah Jazz in Saturday’s Game 3. After the game, George received a question about his relationship with Jazz forward Joe Ingles.
“I don’t care about him,” George replied bluntly, per Farbod Esnaashari of Sports Illustrated. “Next question.”
George vs. Ingles is a storyline that many have been watching during the second-round playoff series. The two have a history of beef dating back to 2018 when George was still with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But Ingles recently sounded uninterested in rekindling the feud. The same seems doubly true for George, whose Clippers are focused on trying to climb out of a second consecutive 0-2 hole this postseason.
