Patrick Redford

2 weeks ago | defector.com | Patrick Redford

As any broadcast crew will point out the second he starts cooking, Jamal Murray owns a strange and wondrous NBA distinction: No player increases their scoring average more between the regular season and playoffs than Murray does.

2 weeks ago | defector.com | Patrick Redford

One reason the NBA Playoffs are great is that the postseason's competitive structure and tactical complexity make something like the Buddy Hield Game not only possible, but necessary. The Golden State Warriors won a thriller in San Francisco on Monday night to take a 3–1 lead in their first-round series against the offensively inept and defensively murderous Houston Rockets, and they did so despite a straight-up bad game from Steph Curry.

2 weeks ago | defector.com | Patrick Redford

The Milwaukee Bucks got smoked by the Indiana Pacers in Game 4 on their home court, in a loss that felt less like ending a chapter and more like slamming a book shut, incinerating it, and purging the memory of ever having read it.

2 weeks ago | defector.com | Patrick Redford

Here is a backhanded compliment: The Houston Rockets have been one of the most fascinating teams in the league all year. The competitive dynamic of basketball is changing, and the Rockets epitomize the trajectory of that shift, with their deep rotation of committed hellraisers and one of the game's category-busting Thompson twins. What fascinates is that they won 52 games with depth, cussed determination, and an objectively bad half-court offense.

3 weeks ago | defector.com | Patrick Redford

If you simply looked at the box score from Game 2 of the Detroit Pistons–New York Knicks series and tried to reverse-engineer some narratives, you would probably look at Jalen Brunson's 37 points and seven assists (both game-highs), Karl-Anthony Towns's 10 anonymous points in 33 minutes, and the final score showing a 100–94 Pistons win and conclude that Brunson had a great game and that the Knicks dropped a game at home because his bum-ass teammates didn't step up.