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All-Star guard Damian Lillard may have played his last game of the 2022-23 NBA season. With the Portland Trail Blazers sitting 3.5 games out of the race for the play-in tournament as of Saturday, the team is leaning toward shutting down Lillard for the remaining nine games of the regular season, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic. Lillard, who is averaging a career-high 32.2 points per Game this season , missed Portland's 124-96 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Friday due to a calf issue. According to Charania, the Blazers simply don't want to risk subjecting Lillard to further injury with the team unlikely to reach the post season for the second consecutive year. ...

Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic has been fined $35,000 for making an inappropriate gesture towards an official during Wednesday's loss to the Golden State Warriors, the NBA announced Friday. The moment came with mere seconds remaining in the game. Doncic attempted a layup that could have cut the Dallas deficit down to a single point. He missed, and he didn't get a foul call as Golden State recovered the ball and secured the 127-125 victory. As Doncic ran back up the court, he rubbed his fingers together toward an official, making the unofficial cash gesture. Luka Doncic makes the money motion at the referee after a no-call late vs. the Warriors 😳💰 pic.twitter.com/MJnjIvdyO1 — ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) March 23, 2023 This was far from the only controversial moment in the game involving officiating. In the third quarter, the Mavericks were awarded the ball after it we...

The Atlanta Hawks and Bogdan Bogdanovic have agreed to a four -year , $68 million contract extension , per Adrian Wojnarowski. Bogdanovic had an $18 million player option for the 2023-24 season, which he is declining, meaning this new contract will kick in at the start of next season.  In his third season with the Hawks, Bogdanovic is averaging 14.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and nearly three assists while primarily coming off the bench. Bogdanovic provides the Hawks with high-level 3-point shooting, where he's making over 40% of his attempts.  Despite missing the first month of the regular season due to a knee injury, Bogdanovic has steadily improved over the course of the season, which included shooting over 50% from beyond the arc in February.  From a financial standpoint, this new deal saves the Hawks a tiny bit of money for next year, and it's a palatable deal in the event that Atlanta wants to trade Bo...

Suns coach Monty Williams wasn't happy with the officiating during Phoenix's 116-104 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night, and he let his feelings be known after the Game .  "It's just not fair," Williams told reporters. "[Devin Booker] has three free throws, and Jrue Holiday is one of the most physical defenders in the game and he has three. Giannis [Antetokounmpo] has 24 free throws. It is ridiculous. There is no other way to put it. ...That's hard to swallow when one guy [has so many free throws]. And this has happened a number of times when we play them. So for me it's hard to tell our guys to keep their level of poise, because that's frustrating. They beat us, make no mistake about it, but that is a hard one to swallow. It's happened too many times."   You can see Williams' full comments on the matter below:  "Hard to swallow....

Memphis Grizzlies star guard Ja Morant recently vowed to get help when it comes to his off-court decision-making, and it appears as though he's done just that. Morant has entered a counseling program in Florida, and there is no timetable for his return to the Grizzlies, according to ESPN.  Morant has missed Memphis' last five games and counting after he flashed a gun at a club in a social media video. The event was the culmination of a troubling string of events in recent months for Morant, who was named the NBA's Most Improved Player last season.  The NBA is currently investigating the situation regarding the gun at the club, and Morant could ultimately face a lengthy suspension if it turns out that he brought the gun on team premises -- which includes Memphis' plane, bus or locker room -- as that would be a violation of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.  The CBA states explicitly that ...

Five teams have traded for All-Stars since the beginning of the 2022 offseason: the Atlanta Hawks (Dejounte Murray), Minnesota Timberwolves (Rudy Gobert), Cleveland Cavaliers (Donovan Mitchell), Dallas Mavericks (Kyrie Irving) and Phoenix Suns (Kevin Durant). What do those five teams have in common? Since Dec. 4, all of them have been worse than the New York Knicks. OK, that might be a bit unfair. Durant has only played three Game s in Phoenix, after all. But since that mythical date when the Knicks shortened their rotation to nine and committed to their young players, New York has been among the best teams in the NBA . Only the Nuggets, Bucks and 76ers have won more Game s. Only Denver has a better net rating. The Knicks have the NBA 's third-best offense and eighth-best defense since that date. You've surely heard this story before. After all, weren't we here just two years ago, when a surprising Kni...

The Boston Celtics fell another game back of the No. 1 seed on Monday with their third straight defeat, this time to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Celtics now trail the top-seeded Bucks by three in the loss column with one head-to-head-matchup remaining.  With the playoff and play-in races heating up, below is a comprehensive snapshot of where things stand in the Eastern Conference entering play on Tuesday, March 7. This post will update daily throughout the remainder of the regular season, or until all seeds are clinched.  Reminder on how the play-in tournament works: No. 7 plays No. 8 and No. 9 plays No. 10. The winner of the 7-8 Game gets the No. 7 seed, while the loser plays the winner of the 9-10 Game for the  No. 8 seed.  READ: Western Conference playoff picture NOTE:  Our Sports Line model, developed by predictive data engineer Stephen Oh, simulates the entire season 10,000 times to produce the most unbi...

You likely know by now that Damian Lillard dropped 71 points on the Houston Rockets on Sunday night. He did it in just 39 minutes with a total shot distance of 420 feet, both unparalleled feats in NBA history -- or in the case of the latter, since the start of the shot-location tracking era (1996-97).  If you're interested in more of the crazy numbers to come out of Lillard's performance, check out our Sam Quinn's piece , which notes, among other statistical items, that Lillard is just the second player in History , joining Kobe Bryant, to put up two 60-point Game s in two separate seasons (2022-23, 2019-20), which I can't totally wrap my head around.  Have you any idea how hard it is to score 60 points in an NBA game? LeBron James, now officially the single greatest scorer in history, has only done it one time in his career. Lillard has done it twice just this season and five times total.  Speakin...

Kevin Love has found a new NBA home. After agreeing to a buyout with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday, Love will sign with the Miami Heat for the remainder of the season, he confirmed Sunday. Love also talked with the Philadelphia 76ers before deciding to sign with the Heat. With the Heat he figures to have a sizable role as Miami makes a playoff push over the backend of the season.  In Miami, Love will provide the Heat with some added frontcourt depth, giving them a floor spacing forward who can still knock down 3s at a high clip. On the season, Love is shooting 35 percent from long range, and he's a career 37 percent shooter from beyond the arc.  Love suited up for the Cavs for nine seasons from 2014 to 2023 and played an integral role when the team made four straight NBA Finals appearances from 2015 to 2018 and captured the first championship in franchise History in 2016. He was the last remaining me...

The NBA dealt with a bit of a backlash when it announced that then-G-Leaguer/current Philadelphia 76ers two-way guard Mac McClung would participate in the Slam Dunk Contest. The event takes place at the NBA's All-Star weekend, and McClung wasn't technically an NBA player when he was announced as a competitor. So why is he participating? Well... let's take a look at the three NBA players he'll be competing against. Ignore their meager statistical credentials for a moment and consider their standing within the wider world. Trey Murphy III, Jericho Sims and KJ Martin have roughly 353,000 combined Instagram followers. That'd be impressive in almost any other context. It's less than half of McClung's 821,000 Instagram followers. The G-Leaguer is more famous than the big-leaguers he's competing against, and as the event is technically called the "AT&T Slam Dunk Contest" with...

It was a chaotic week around the NBA, highlighted by LeBron James becoming the league's new all-time leading scorer . But that was quickly overshadowed by a wild trade deadline in which Kevin Durant was dealt to the Phoenix Suns , forming a formidable trio with Devin Booker and Chris Paul. Kyrie Irving also got traded to the Dallas Mavericks , effectively ending the Brooklyn Nets superteam experiment. The trade deadline featured a slew of role players getting sent across the league, and while no rookies were dealt, some of the moves may impact first-year players. The biggest case of that is in Detroit, where the Pistons inexplicably traded for the former No. 2 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, James Wiseman. This was a confusing move considering Detroit just drafted a capable center in Jalen Duren in the 2022 draft, and who has been starting for the Pistons since December. Duren leads all rookies in rebounds this ...