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1 week ago | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
Dorian Finney-Smith slams his hand in frustration against an empty chair on his way to the shower. The locker room is so silent you could hear a pin drop. In spite of every expert prediction, it was not “Lakers in five,” or, at least, not on the right end of five. The LeBron James, Luka Dončić, and JJ Redick-led Lakers were sent packing by the Minnesota Timberwolves on their home court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, in a five-game series whose final tally doesn’t tell the whole story.
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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune |Bryan Armen Graham |David Lengel |Andrew Lawrence |AR Shaw
Is the regular season in crisis? Absolutely not. Could it stand to be a little shorter? Sure. Do the referees need to be more judicious with when they intervene? I’d argue they do. But the real problem the NBA faces is, in my opinion, a PR one. Its loudest voices should spend less time pearl-clutching and more time celebrating. Claire de LuneStar players sit, games blur together and offense is unchecked.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Andrew Witherspoon |Claire de Lune
Tom Thibodeau just became the fourth-winningest coach in New York Knicks history, passing Pat Riley on Saturday as his team notched their 49th win of the season. But as has often been the case with Thibodeau’s coaching milestones, the moment wasn’t met with pure celebration. Instead, familiar questions around a controversial overtone of his NBA coaching career loomed – namely, Thibs Minutes Syndrome.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
“A lot of emotions, not much sleep … I’m just glad it’s over.” Those were 25-year-old Slovenian basketball phenom Luka Dončić’s succinct and surprisingly vulnerable initial thoughts on Tuesday night after his first rendezvous with his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, when his Lakers hosted them in Los Angeles.
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Feb 13, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
It’s a Tuesday night outside of downtown Los Angeles and I’m in a half-empty Galen Center on the University of Southern California campus. The whole place smells like movie-theater popcorn, sticky spilled soda, and, vaguely, sweat. The cheerleaders jumping up and down on the court, attempting to amp up the somewhat sleepy crowd, look like they could pass for middle schoolers. This is, in unmistakable and almost caricatured fashion, a college campus.
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Feb 7, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
Well, if last year’s NBA trade deadline was a snooze, this year’s could be likened to something closer to a Red Bull laced with amphetamine. This particular deadline was already destined for the NBA history books with the shocking swap of Luka Dončić of the Dallas Mavericks for Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday, marking what many agree is the biggest trade in league history.
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Feb 2, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
Every lifetime, you get to experience a few “where were you when?” moments. Finding out Michael Jackson died. The American presidency being called for Donald Trump in 2016. And any true NBA fan will remember where they were on the evening of 1 February 2025. I was waiting in line for a drink at a bar in Los Angeles when a friend tapped me on the shoulder and asked: “Have you seen this fake Shams tweet?”The tweet, as it turns out, was real, as unbelievable as it still may be.
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Dec 30, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
It’s Christmas Day and a scrum of journalists surround a smiling, exhausted LeBron James in the visiting locker room at Chase Center in San Francisco, minutes after the latest installment in a decades-spanning catalog of thrilling battles with his friend and foe, Stephen Curry. James is asked, in light of all the recent hand-wringing about the state of the NBA as an entertainment product, what he thinks the “good stuff” is in the league on a given night.
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Dec 18, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
Antetokounmpo is having an MVP seasonGiannis Antetokounmpo’s NBA Cup final opponent Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver’s Nikola Jokić have deservedly been garnering a lot of MVP buzz a quarter of the way through the regular season. But over three days in Las Vegas, Antetokounmpo added to what is already a pretty convincing case of his own to take home his third NBA MVP trophy.
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Claire de Lune
Thirteen games into the Los Angeles Lakers’ season, freshman head coach JJ Redick is not the headline story – and that’s a story in and of itself. There are, of course, plenty of other storylines for the Lakers already this year: for starters, the rumblings that they haven’t done enough to provide a competent supporting cast around superstars Anthony Davis and LeBron James, the former of whom is having an MVP-caliber start to the season.
