Category: Sports News

James Harden wasn’t concerned about the turnover issues when asked about the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 19 giveaways that led to their 111-110 Game 1 loss to the Detroit Pistons.

“You look at my turnovers, a lot of them were just on me and nothing they did,” Harden said afterward. “That’s the game right there. … I gotta be better and will be better turning the basketball over.”

Harden is partially right. Several of those turnovers were sloppy. There’s a backcourt violation that shouldn’t have happened, once he correctly tried to take Duncan Robinson off the dribble but bounced it off his foot, and there were a couple he simply lost control. Things like that are just part of the game.

But there’s a bigger issue at play here. Turnovers have been a problem for the Cavs — particularly for Harden — during the postseason. This was the third time in eight playoff games that he’s had more giveaways (7) than made field goals (6). How often it’s happened shows that this is more than just a lack of focus.

Throughout his career, Harden has often operated in lineups that try to create perfect spacing. Ideally, all of his teammates are shooters so that the defense is forced to make a difficult decision. Do you try to send extra bodies to the basket to help on a Harden drive, or do you stay on the perimeter to prevent three-point shots?

That was a tough call when you were going up against the 2018 Houston Rockets. It isn’t going against Cleveland’s current starting lineup.

Neither Detroit nor the Toronto Raptors have respected three of the four Cavaliers starting alongside Harden. Teams are daring Dean Wade and Evan Mobley to shoot from the outside, and are willing to take their chances with Jarrett Allen inside.

Throw in Donovan Mitchell, who doesn’t move much off-ball, and you have a stagnant offense that is cheating into the lane to both cut off drives and lobs to the bigs. And if you try to force it inside, there’s a good chance that it’s going to wind up in a turnover.

There’s a downstream effect to not having good spacing. Now, defenders can be physical and tight at the point of attack because they know that there’s more than enough help behind them if they get beat off the dribble.

That leads to more turnovers like this, where Cade Cunningham is giving Harden no room to breathe.

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The additional help inside also bleeds into the shot diet. Harden took seven threes and just two shots at the rim. If the defense is crowding the paint, your only choice left is to shoot over the top.

After Game 7 against Toronto, multiple players mentioned that winning that series was a big step because this group was so new together. That newness is seen in how they’re still figuring out how to space the floor.

Harden only played with Allen and Mobley together in nine regular-season games. That number drops to four if you throw Wade into that grouping. By contrast, they’ve played twice as many playoff games together, and it’s only eight. That simply isn’t a lot of experience for a player who’s spent the better part of a decade playing in a completely different environment.

Unfortunately for Cleveland, there isn’t an easy solution for this. They simply need at least two bigs on the court at all times, and matchups like this call for extended Wade minutes even when he isn’t providing much offensively.

Max Strus had an incredible game. His shooting got the Cavs back into this one as he poured in 19 points on 13 shots. But even with that, the Cavs lost the minutes he played by nine. Single-game plus/minus isn’t always the most useful stat, but it does point to him not being asked to play an ideal role on this team.

The Cavs don’t have enough defensively in lineups where Strus is asked to defend bigger threes and fours as he’s had to do in both playoff series. In Game 1, Cleveland had a dreadful 124.5 defensive rating with Strus on the court.

This has been a common occurrence. Coming into Game 1, the Cavs have had a 117.1 defensive rating with Strus on in the postseason and a 104 without him. Wade has been nearly the exact opposite.

This isn’t a criticism of Strus. He holds up as well as you can expect in these situations. Instead, it’s a shortcoming in the roster’s construction that he’s continually being asked to guard out of position.

This forces the Cavs to make a decision. Do you believe an undersized defense can work so you can have better spacing? Or, do you trust Harden and Mitchell to figure things out with a cramped half-court offense? Choosing that second option makes sense. You’re just putting a lot on a point guard who’s being asked to play in a completely different context.

Mitchell’s scoring struggles compound these issues.

Mitchell once again wasn’t able to get to the rim. Only one of his 19 shots came in the restricted area. And while he did a good job of finishing the midrange floater (5-7), not driving completely to the hoop limits his ability to get to the line.

Mitchell took just two free-throw attempts in Game 1. This has been a recent trend throughout the postseason. He’s only attempted over that many twice in eight playoff games. By contrast, he only registered two or fewer free-throw shots 16 times in his 70 regular-season games.

Afterward, Mitchell blamed the lack of free throws on the officiating, but made sure not to go over the line to get fined. And while there’s some reason for frustration on his part, if he’s not getting to the rim, he’s simply not going to get calls.

Mitchell has been forced to play in tight spaces before in the playoffs with the Cavs. However, Toronto and Detroit are easily the two best defenses he’s faced in that time — at least they are in terms of locking down the paint.

Head coach Kenny Atkinson made some head-scratching decisions.

Here’s a quick rundown of things you usually don’t see in a second-round playoff game:

• No Cavalier played 36 minutes or more, including the star guards.
• Allen saw just 18 minutes after picking up three fouls in the first quarter. He finished with four personals.
• The third center, Thomas Bryant, played 10 minutes, including at the start of the fourth.
• Atkinson went with a group that included Keon Ellis, Dennis Schroder, and Bryant a minute into the fourth quarter of a six-point game. All three have already spent time this postseason out of the rotation.
• Cleveland played exaggerated drop coverage, making it easier for Detroit’s guards to attack.

I know this was a short turnaround, and we’re expecting this to be a long series, but this game was managed like it was a regular-season game, not a playoff series opener.

The Cavs didn’t let Cunningham beat them as a scorer. He had 23 points on 6-19 shooting in 42 minutes after racking up 32, 32, and 45 points to close out the Orlando Magic in the first round.

Cleveland was able to contain him by showing multiple bodies when he tried to finish at the rim. He went just 2-7 on shots in the restricted area and 3-11 on looks in the paint overall.

This was one of the few things the Cavs did well in Game 1.

Despite the many areas the Cavs need to clean up, they still had a chance of winning this game.

This one was there for the taking. If the Cavs committed a few less turnovers and grabbed a couple more defensive rebounds, they probably would’ve come away from Game 1 a winner.

On one hand, that’s encouraging. It shows that the Cavs still have a good chance of taking this series. However, it’s never ideal to lose a winnable away game, especially for a team that is now 4-12 on the road in the postseason since trading for Mitchell.

We’ll see if the Cavs can make the necessary adjustments and split the two road games before the series shifts to Cleveland.

I think many Rockets fans were happy when the Rockets decided to convert JD Davison’s two-way contract to a regular NBA contract. As much as I enjoy Aaron Holiday and his minutes, it was time for Davison to get a standard NBA contract.

Davison saw relatively limited action during his first season with Houston. He averaged 2.5 points, 1.3 assists, and 1.2 rebounds in 28 regular-season games, playing an average of 7.8 minutes per game. These stats, however, aren’t Davison’s fault, as he was on a two-way contract until April 7. For context, NBA two-way players are only able to play a maximum of 50 regular NBA games and are ineligible for the playoffs. Davison also had a 8-point and 4-assist game versus the Thunder on February 7.

Davison’s influence was even more obvious in the G League, as he continued to exhibit his scoring and playmaking prowess. He put up good numbers in limited opportunities, helping to reinforce the idea that he may develop into a reliable NBA contributor with more opportunities.

However, what worries me the most with Davison is his three-point shot. Davison shot just above 30% from three in college before shooting 29% in his rookie year, 40% in his sophomore year, 33% his third year, and just 27.3% this past year. Houston already has so many players who can’t shoot from three (Amen Thompson, Alperen Sengun, etc). Thankfully, with Reed Sheppard’s emergence, Davison should only be needed in spot minutes, and since he is still younger, he has time to develop a three-point shot.

All in all, it was hard to evaluate Davison’s Rockets season since he did not play much real NBA basketball due to being on a two-way, and also due to Ime Udoka favoring Aaron Holiday, but hopefully next season we will get to see him get more opprotunites and continue to grow. We will be doing player season reviews all month long here at The Dream Shake, so make sure to check back every day for new season reviews.

Walt ‘Clyde' Frazier thinks Knicks could win first title since his 1973 team originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Winning and grinning?

The New York Knicks have been doing a lot of that lately, much to the delight of franchise icon Walt “Clyde” Frazier.

The longtime player and broadcaster, 81, was the last man to lead the franchise to a championship way back in 1973. Now, 53 years later, he thinks he’s starting to see some parallels between his dominant team and the current-day Knicks, who currently lead the Philadelphia 76ers 1-0 in the second round of the playoffs.

“I’m mesmerized by the way the team is playing,” Frazier told Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s episode of “The Tonight Show.” “Actually, I’m living vicariously through them. They remind me of my team. My team personified team, you couldn’t mention Frazier without (Bill) Bradley, without (Dave) DeBusschere, without (Willis) Reed, without (Dick) Barnett.

“I see similarities to this team, so they’re starting to do that. Their camaraderie, their teamwork, they like each other, it’s manifested on the court.

There’s still a long way to go in the NBA playoffs, but Frazier added that “hopefully we’ll see another championship.”

The Knicks defeated the Atlanta Hawks 4-2 in the first round after falling behind 2-1. They closed that series with runaway wins by 16, 29 and 51 points, then followed that up with a 39-point blowout over Philly to begin the second round.

Frazier has been watching it all happen from his seats at Madison Square Garden, where he still works for the Knicks’ MSG Network. Wearing his iconic suits, you can’t miss the Hall of Famer on TV or in person.

“It’s genetic,” Frazier said of his fashion sense. “My dad was a guy who was into clothes. Then, I came to the mecca for fashion.

“I wasn’t playing good as a rookie, so in order to pacify myself I went shopping.”

Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

How exactly does Frazier pick out his looks? As he told Fallon, there’s one line that gets him the outfit he wants.

“When I go to a suit place, I just say ‘Show me something you think no one will wear.'”

With the Knicks set to host the Sixers in Game 2 on Wednesday night, keep an eye out for Frazier in the crowd.

“In the morning, there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”

The words are Hemingway’s.

I was woken up, as I usually am, by Clara the cat, whose business is to inform me when the rest of the cats are ready for breakfast. The time, 5:30, was not particularly unusual either.

I woke up with a sense of something lost, something gone irretrievably, and I knew immediately what it was. I was not awake a long time before I remembered that the Celtics’ season had ended on Saturday night.

I used to live in the middle of Sioux Falls, where I could hear the old courthouse clock toll the hours, and there was no silence quite like the silence that came after the final bell tolled—it was not the silence of silence, it was the silence of absence, something missing that had been there a moment ago.

 And so it goes with the Celtics. The 2025/2026 Celtics are gone. There may be small roster changes over the summer or there may be major ones.

But one thing is certain: the team that was is gone.

This happens to every team, and of the sixteen teams that make the playoffs, only one will end the season a champion. For every other team, there comes a moment like the one on Saturday night where it all ends, and where it leaves a hole.

As fans, we kind of get used to this, to a certain extent. We know there’s always a next year—but when the end comes the way it came to this year’s Celtics, it’s hard.

It’s hard not just because Boston put up a 3-1 lead, it’s because of the way they put together that 3-1 lead. They blew out the Sixers twice and won a third time in a closely matched game. There was no reason to expect that the Sixers could win three straight against a team that had blown them out twice, and yet…

Much as we would like them to be, games are not stories. The narratives that fit best are fitted in hindsight. No team in the NCAA tournament is a Cinderella until they’ve won a game they shouldn’t have.

The danger of making narratives in advance was apparent by December, when the Celtics were demonstrating that, at least as far as the regular season went, this was not going to be a gap year.

When Tatum came back, there seemed to be even more validity to the idea that this was a storybook season.

And what we got was a version of Cinderella that went like this: “Cinderella lost her shoe on the way out of the ball. The Prince, although stricken by her beauty, figured that he had no chance of finding her by searching the kingdom, so he got on with his life. Eventually he forgot all about her.”

In other words, the end of the season felt premature, abrupt, and cruel.

But that’s how it feels to us as Celtics fans. On the other side of the court, there’s a different storybook unfolding. Sixers fans who could claim that legitimately, with Embiid’s limited availability and Paul George’s league mandated vacation, they had not been at full strength during the regular season either, now get to savor their own Cinderella story. Perhaps their story will end as abruptly as Boston’s did, perhaps it will linger on as far as the Eastern Conference Finals; it seems unlikely to last much farther.

Trying to tell stories before they unfold, setting expectations that are not matched, is dangerous unless you’re prepared to accept not only the hollow pit of losing, but the added chagrin of having ‘gotten it wrong.’

Were we fooled into expecting more from the Celtics than they were capable of delivering?

I mean, the results are the results, and the reality is that you are what your record says you are, but it feels like Boston left behind unfinished business this season.

Predictably, there have been calls for drastic changes—the notion that Jaylen Brown should be traded has once again surfaced, and there have been calls for a review of Joe Mazzulla’s chops as a coach.

This is not unexpected. And it strikes me as a bit of an overreaction.

It’s tempting to focus on the fact that the C’s lost three straight against Philly, without remembering that Boston finished the series +19 in points scored.

Is this evidence of bad coaching and bad play on the part of the Celtics, over the last three games?

You better believe it is. It’s the fault of the Celtics coaching staff and players that they couldn’t adapt to the return of Embiid.

Does this mean that the only sensible, sane, and reasonable reaction is to make major personnel changes and fire the coach?

No. Not even remotely.

In 1978, Dennis Johnson had a terrible Finals performance. In Game 7, he went 0-14, as the Sonics lost to the Bullets.

The following year, in a Finals rematch, DJ redeemed himself; his shooting percentage jumped from .382 in 1978 to .459 in 1979, and he won the Finals MVP in a series that was over in just five games.

Now I’m not saying that there are guys who came up small in this series who are as good as DJ was. I’m saying that DJ, in just his second year in the league, caught a serious case of the yips, but the Sonics stuck with him, and he redeemed himself—against the same basic team that he choked against the year before.

I think there are young guys on the Celtics who, given a second chance, will surprise us.

Yes, you only get so many bites at the apple—playing careers do not last forever, and finishing a season this way basically wastes a year of Jaylen’s prime, but that year is gone now. No amount of rash actions over the summer will get that year back.

My response to the season is that patience should carry the day. There will probably need to be some personnel tweaks over the summer, but nothing major is warranted, in my opinion. I think this is a time to trust the coaching staff and players to respond the right way to what went wrong against Philadelphia.

There will be better times to come.

After scoring 33 points in the Celtics’ Game 7 loss at home to the 76ers, Jaylen Brown took to Twitch to get everything off his chest before heading into the offseason. Much of it was positive after his MVP-level performance this year. Despite the early exit, he called the 56-win season the most fun he’s had in his career in what should be a First or Second Team All-NBA season.

However, he did have some choice words regarding the officiating of not just the series-clinching loss at TD Garden, but on the state of the league and how flopping has become so prevalent with the game’s best players.

The NBA’s iconoclast has been on this crusade all year, most vocally after he was ejected from a much anticipated game against the San Antonio Spurs in March. CelticsBlog’s Gio Rivera has this from Brown’s stream:

Brown said Embiid routinely exaggerated contact, insisting it’s an epidemic affecting the NBA.

“It’s like when someone barely touched you, and you selling the call to make it seem like you just got shot by two police officers. Big difference. Whether you like it, don’t like it, your grandma like it, your grandma don’t like it. I don’t really care. That’s just my personal opinion on basketball. Some of y’all might disagree. Argue with your grandma. Flopping has ruined our game. Joel Embiid is a great player, one of the best bigs in f**king basketball history. He flops. He knows it. This ain’t breaking news.”

Yesterday, the league fined Brown $50,000 for “public criticism of the officiating” and hours after a Game 1 loss to the Detroit Pistons, the Cavaliers Donovan Mitchell had his back.

“A friend of mine got fined for talking about flopping,” Mitchell said of Brown’s comments. “I’m not trying to double down, but I feel like that’s what I got to do at this point. I’m trying to get downhill, trying to get to the bucket, sometimes people are in my way and I’m trying to fight through contact and I’m not getting these calls…I don’t know why. I don’t flop, maybe that’s why. This isn’t just a tonight thing. This has been the entire season. It’s frustrating —I’m such a dynamic driver — but I can’t control that.”

During the regular season, Brown was second in the league in drives at 9.1 per game with Mitchell trailing behind at 14.1. However, Brown was just ninth in free throw attempts and Mitchell was further down the list at 22nd.

You can bet that with Brown as one of the vice presidents of the NBPA and Mitchell serving as the player rep in Cleveland, the state of officiating will be a topic of discussion the next time the league’s competition committee meets this summer.

Steve Kerr among ‘least impressive' coaches in anonymous NBA players poll originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Despite Steve Kerr’s impressive NBA resume, it appears the Warriors coach has lost some respect from players around the association.

In The Athletic’s 2026 Anonymous NBA Player Poll, players were asked which current coach, aside from their own, they find the least impressive.

To little surprise, Washington Wizards coach Brian Kiefe topped the list at 22 percent after his team had the worst record in the league during the 2025-26 season with just 17 wins.

Coming in just under Kiefe was Kerr, ranked fourth with 6 percent of players’ votes.

As the article notes, Kerr, whose future with the franchise is unknown after 12 seasons as Golden State’s coach, always has been one of the more praised coaches in The Athletic’s past player polls. But with the Warriors missing the playoffs in two of the last three seasons, there appears to be a different perspective, even when things have been out of Kerr’s control, such as injuries.

One thing not out of Kerr’s control, however, was singled out by one anonymous player: the Jonathan Kuminga situation.

“I think he’s a great coach,” one of the players who voted for Kerr said. “I just thought the way he handled the Kuminga situation wasn’t very smart.”

Aside from a little recency bias, the former NBA Coach of the Year boasts a 604-353 regular-season record and 104-48 playoff record as coach of the Warriors — all while at the helm of the team that won four NBA titles.

Speaking of recency bias, Kings first-year coach Doug Christie seemed to have bitten the bullet for Sacramento’s disappointing 22-win season. Christie was voted one spot above Kerr at third overall with 10 percent of the votes.

Despite the lackluster season, Christie will return as coach next season in hopes that a top-draft pick and some roster reconstruction can lead to a change during the 2026-27 campaign.

Here are the full results of the poll:

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