Skip Bayless accuses LeBron James of faking knee injury in Game 5
Skip Bayless accuses LeBron James of faking knee injury in Game 5
This year's NBA playoffs were a big disappointment for the Los Angeles Lakers, who were eliminated in five games in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Coming into the playoffs, many felt they had a real shot at winning it all, but instead, they were sent home in the opening round for the second year in a row.
LeBron James had an underwhelming series, and he played poorly in multiple fourth quarters in the series. Late in Game 5, he collided with Donte DiVincenzo, and although he remained in the game, it was later reported that he had sprained his MCL.
Skip Bayless isn't buying that report. On his podcast "The Skip Bayless Show," he accused James and his agent, Rich Paul, of manufacturing an excuse.
"Another LeBron playoff flameout, mostly uncriticized, followed by another leaked and planted excuse for said flameout," Bayless said. "He and his inner circle just did it again. Rich Paul, you are the all-time greatest at excuse planting with key media members. Never seen anything quite like this. Congrats on this coup that you just pulled off, Rich Paul."
"... A longtime NBA trainer I know very well immediately texted me soon after this story was posted, and he said to me in the text, 'You cannot have a grade two MCL sprain and come back in a game.'"
James may have overdramatized past injuries he had in the past, and if Bayless was telling the truth about that text from that trainer, this could be another case of just that.
In any case, the initial report did say he would take three to five weeks to recover. In fact, he did not attend the annual Met Gala in New York City as a result.
James has a player option for next season. He was non-committal following the Lakers' playoff exit, but many, including Bayless, one of his biggest critics through the years, expect him to be back for the 2025-26 campaign.
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San Francisco Chronicle
32 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Finals things to know: Shai nearing a milestone, and don't expect close games
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has a chance to make a whole slew of history in these NBA Finals. The Oklahoma City star is the first reigning MVP who'll play in the finals — they start Thursday night when the Thunder play host to the Indiana Pacers — since Golden State's Stephen Curry in 2016. He could become the first player to win a scoring title and an NBA title in the same season since Shaquille O'Neal did it for the Los Angeles Lakers in 1999-2000. And sometime in Game 1 or Game 2, Gilgeous-Alexander will likely hit another milestone. He comes into this series with 2,960 points this season — officially, anyway, more on that in a second — between the 82-game regular-season slate and now the postseason. With 40 more points, he will record the 25th instance of a 3,000-point season when combining the regular season and the playoffs. The most recent to do it was Luka Doncic, who had 3,005 points for Dallas last season. If the NBA Cup championship game counted statistically, which it doesn't, Gilgeous-Alexander would only need 19 more points for 3,000. He had 21 in that OKC loss to Milwaukee at Las Vegas in December, but those points don't count toward his season total. Michael Jordan had 10 seasons with at least 3,000 points, Wilt Chamberlain had five and nine other players — Bob McAdoo, Elgin Baylor, James Harden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Rick Barry, Shaquille O'Neal and Doncic — have one. Last year, it was Oshae Brissett for Boston and AJ Lawson, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Dwight Powell for Dallas. This year, it's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort for Oklahoma City, along with Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard for Indiana. 'I played against Andrew when I was 9 years old,' Gilgeous-Alexander said. 'It's been an amazing journey. To see him having success, my own success, obviously Lu's success, Ben's success, it's special. It's hard to even wrap your head around. ... For us to make it to this stage, is a testament to our hard work, our character, people around us that helped us get here. It's been a blessing. It's been super fun.' Dort said he hopes Canadians enjoy seeing four of their own in the finals. 'Obviously we represent our teams here,' Dort said. 'But at the end of the day we represent our country as well.' And it's certain that Montreal will get a title: Dort and Mathurin are both from there. 'I think it's a great opportunity for me, Lu, the whole Montreal city,' Mathurin said. 'I think it's a great step in the right direction just to be able to go against each other. You know, Lu's a great friend of mine. I would call him brother right now, but we're enemies.' Finally, the finals, for James Johnson Indiana's James Johnson has been in the NBA for 16 seasons. He has played for 10 different franchises. He has played under 11 different coaches. He has finally made the NBA Finals. Johnson came close in 2019-20, starting the season with Miami — which wound up making the bubble finals that season. But Johnson was part of a three-team trade about a month before the pandemic hit and ended up in Minnesota. 'Getting here now means that I was fortunate enough to be on a team of guys that only want winning," Johnson said. "I was fortunate enough to join a team of guys that just want to win — and they want to win by any means necessary.' Where are the close games? The last time Indiana's Rick Carlisle coached in the NBA Finals, every game was basically decided at the end. All six games of the Dallas-Miami series in 2011 were decided by 10 points or less. Since then, those games are rare. Out of the last 73 NBA Finals games, starting with the 2012 Heat-Thunder matchup through last season's Boston-Dallas series, the average margin of victory has been 12.4 points per game. There hasn't been an instance of more than three consecutive single-digit finals winning margins in that stretch, and 45 of the 73 games have been decided by at least 10 points. And there have been only six games in the last 12 finals decided by three points or less — while 10 have been decided by 20 points or more. Record drought between overtimes There hasn't been an overtime game in the NBA Finals since Game 1 of the 2018 series between Golden State and Cleveland. The seven-year drought and counting without a finals overtime game is the longest in NBA history. There was a six-year stretch from 1984 through 1990 without an OT finals game, but never seven — until now. The division champion quirk If Oklahoma City wins the NBA title, it will mark the 13th time in the last 14 seasons that a division champion has wound up winning the finals. The only exception in that span was Golden State in 2022. Before that, the last team to not win their division but win the NBA title was Dallas in 2011 — coached by current Indiana coach Carlisle. Playoff pool totals The Thunder and Pacers are playing for the NBA championship, the Larry O'Brien Trophy and about $5 million. Technically, $5,002,359. That's what one team will get added to its share of the league's annual playoff pool by winning the NBA Finals this season. The total pool this year, which will be divided by the 16 playoff teams, is $34,665,698. The Thunder have already secured no worse than $7,418,145 from the pool. The Pacers have secured at least $6,160,260. ___
Fox Sports
42 minutes ago
- Fox Sports
Finals things to know: Shai nearing a milestone, and don't expect close games
Associated Press OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has a chance to make a whole slew of history in these NBA Finals. The Oklahoma City star is the first reigning MVP who'll play in the finals — they start Thursday night when the Thunder play host to the Indiana Pacers — since Golden State's Stephen Curry in 2016. He could become the first player to win a scoring title and an NBA title in the same season since Shaquille O'Neal did it for the Los Angeles Lakers in 1999-2000. And sometime in Game 1 or Game 2, Gilgeous-Alexander will likely hit another milestone. He comes into this series with 2,960 points this season — officially, anyway, more on that in a second — between the 82-game regular-season slate and now the postseason. With 40 more points, he will record the 25th instance of a 3,000-point season when combining the regular season and the playoffs. The most recent to do it was Luka Doncic, who had 3,005 points for Dallas last season. If the NBA Cup championship game counted statistically, which it doesn't, Gilgeous-Alexander would only need 19 more points for 3,000. He had 21 in that OKC loss to Milwaukee at Las Vegas in December, but those points don't count toward his season total. Michael Jordan had 10 seasons with at least 3,000 points, Wilt Chamberlain had five and nine other players — Bob McAdoo, Elgin Baylor, James Harden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Rick Barry, Shaquille O'Neal and Doncic — have one. 4 Canada For the second consecutive year, there are four Canadians in the NBA Finals. Last year, it was Oshae Brissett for Boston and AJ Lawson, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Dwight Powell for Dallas. This year, it's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort for Oklahoma City, along with Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard for Indiana. 'I played against Andrew when I was 9 years old,' Gilgeous-Alexander said. 'It's been an amazing journey. To see him having success, my own success, obviously Lu's success, Ben's success, it's special. It's hard to even wrap your head around. ... For us to make it to this stage, is a testament to our hard work, our character, people around us that helped us get here. It's been a blessing. It's been super fun.' Dort said he hopes Canadians enjoy seeing four of their own in the finals. 'Obviously we represent our teams here,' Dort said. 'But at the end of the day we represent our country as well.' And it's certain that Montreal will get a title: Dort and Mathurin are both from there. 'I think it's a great opportunity for me, Lu, the whole Montreal city,' Mathurin said. 'I think it's a great step in the right direction just to be able to go against each other. You know, Lu's a great friend of mine. I would call him brother right now, but we're enemies.' Finally, the finals, for James Johnson Indiana's James Johnson has been in the NBA for 16 seasons. He has played for 10 different franchises. He has played under 11 different coaches. He has finally made the NBA Finals. Johnson came close in 2019-20, starting the season with Miami — which wound up making the bubble finals that season. But Johnson was part of a three-team trade about a month before the pandemic hit and ended up in Minnesota. 'Getting here now means that I was fortunate enough to be on a team of guys that only want winning," Johnson said. "I was fortunate enough to join a team of guys that just want to win — and they want to win by any means necessary.' Where are the close games? The last time Indiana's Rick Carlisle coached in the NBA Finals, every game was basically decided at the end. All six games of the Dallas-Miami series in 2011 were decided by 10 points or less. Since then, those games are rare. Out of the last 73 NBA Finals games, starting with the 2012 Heat-Thunder matchup through last season's Boston-Dallas series, the average margin of victory has been 12.4 points per game. There hasn't been an instance of more than three consecutive single-digit finals winning margins in that stretch, and 45 of the 73 games have been decided by at least 10 points. And there have been only six games in the last 12 finals decided by three points or less — while 10 have been decided by 20 points or more. Record drought between overtimes There hasn't been an overtime game in the NBA Finals since Game 1 of the 2018 series between Golden State and Cleveland. The seven-year drought and counting without a finals overtime game is the longest in NBA history. There was a six-year stretch from 1984 through 1990 without an OT finals game, but never seven — until now. The division champion quirk If Oklahoma City wins the NBA title, it will mark the 13th time in the last 14 seasons that a division champion has wound up winning the finals. The only exception in that span was Golden State in 2022. Before that, the last team to not win their division but win the NBA title was Dallas in 2011 — coached by current Indiana coach Carlisle. Playoff pool totals The Thunder and Pacers are playing for the NBA championship, the Larry O'Brien Trophy and about $5 million. Technically, $5,002,359. That's what one team will get added to its share of the league's annual playoff pool by winning the NBA Finals this season. The total pool this year, which will be divided by the 16 playoff teams, is $34,665,698. The Thunder have already secured no worse than $7,418,145 from the pool. The Pacers have secured at least $6,160,260. The bonus pool is typically split in some way among players and staff from the playoff teams. ___ AP NBA: recommended
New York Times
42 minutes ago
- New York Times
Sam Presti built a great Thunder team once. Then he did it again — his way
The bye-bye game was only six years ago. That famous moment in Portland Trail Blazers lore, with Damian Lillard hitting a series-ending bomb over Paul George, also doubled as the nadir for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Eliminated from the 2019 NBA playoffs in five games for a third straight first-round exit, with an aging team and bloated salary cap that also paid a whopping $61.6 million in luxury tax while playing in the nation's 47th-largest TV market, the Thunder appeared to be at an impasse. Advertisement It seemed like Lillard was waving bye-bye to an entire era in Oklahoma City, one that disappointingly ended without a title, and that it would be a long, painful journey to contend again. In a sense, he was: Russell Westbrook and George never played another game for the Thunder. But as it turns out, Lillard was also waving hello to a dramatic rebirth, one that liberated Thunder team president Sam Presti — now in his 19th season at the helm — to paint his Mona Lisa. If the Thunder, as many expect, prevail in the NBA Finals over the Indiana Pacers, this season will serve as both the first-line item on Presti's Hall of Fame resume and the thing that ensures his eventual induction. What happened since April 2019 has been one of the fastest and most complete rebuilds in NBA history. Starting from a spot where they seemed completely screwed, the Thunder took only half a decade to post the Western Conference's best record with the league's youngest team. One year later, they are massive favorites to claim the franchise's first title in Oklahoma and set up to be favorites again and again and again for years into the future. That rebirth is as much philosophical as it is about talent. If you go in the way-back machine, the Thunder's origin story is the greatest three-year draft run in NBA history. Presti's career with the franchise began in Seattle three weeks before the 2007 draft, when he was then a 29-year-old wunderkind blowing people away as he worked his way up the San Antonio Spurs organization. (Even then, it was obvious to anyone who met him that he was destined to run an NBA franchise.) He drafted Kevin Durant and Jeff Green in 2007, Westbrook and Serge Ibaka in 2008 and James Harden in 2009. Green was eventually traded for Kendrick Perkins, but allowing for that swap means that, in three years, Presti drafted the top five players on an NBA Finals team and three future MVPs. Advertisement Those picks, along with Reggie Jackson at No. 24 in 2011 and Steven Adams at No. 12 and Andre Roberson at No. 26 in 2013, were amazing, but in time, they became just as much a philosophical prison. In hindsight, you wonder if those Thunder teams became good too fast. They were caught in win-now mode with great individual players who didn't necessarily fit great together. They ran through two coaches who were fine but also didn't move the needle for them, and they took too long to find the right center. (Flunking Tyson Chandler's physical in 2009 remains an all-time sliding doors moment in NBA history.) And as much as they talked about not skipping steps, the specter of losing Durant or Westbrook meant they started taking shortcuts, too — taking 14 cents on the dollar for Harden rather than trading Westbrook at the peak of his value, most notably, and later with moonshots on Enes Kanter Freedom, Carmelo Anthony and Dion Waiters. Here's the thing: If you talk to people who know and have worked with Presti, (or talk to Presti himself, for that matter), it's clear what gets his blood pumping. It's not the Durants and Westbrooks, but the high-character, cerebral, team-first grinders. This is a guy who cut his teeth in the prime of Spurs culture, one who gave Kenrich Williams a four-year, $27 million extension after a season in which he averaged 7.4 points and 4.5 rebounds for a 24-win team. That's important, because to me it's why this version of the Thunder feels so much more organic than the Durant-Westbrook one. Presti's platonic basketball ideal was nothing like his own team but a lot like his former one, the 2014 'beautiful game' Spurs squad that smoked his Thunder in the conference finals. (We'll get back to that San Antonio squad in a second.) Version 1.0 of Presti's Thunder was an overwhelming talent haul with a basketball team taped together around it; the whole was never greater than the sum of the parts, and at times was substantially less. Westbrook, in particular, was an off-the-charts athlete and a ruthless competitor; he was also stubborn to a fault and difficult for any other on-ball players to thrive alongside. The enduring image of the tail end of that era is a young Domantas Sabonis marooned at the 3-point line watching the Russ Show. This time, it feels completely different: From top to bottom, it's Presti-ball come to life. The core of the team is a dozen different versions of Kenny Hustle, just with some having more talent than others. In one sense, we have an easily available answer for how the Thunder rebuilt so quickly: The Paul George trade. Forget all the other goodies the Thunder still have coming from the LA Clippers; the first two assets in the deal were Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the pick that became Jalen Williams. That and one tank year that produced Chet Holmgren were enough to give the Thunder a championship core. Advertisement That answer is far too reductive, however, for the process that led the Thunder here. The three things that stand out about Presti's Thunder 2.0 rebuild were 1) stacking the draft-pick deck so heavily in the Thunder's favor that they didn't need to be perfect, 2) getting the right coach to share the vision and implement everything and 3) doubling down on the types of people they brought in as much as the talent. It so happens that they hit on the Jalen Williams pick, which was one of the five that had come from the Clippers in the George trade. But Presti also never stopped hustling, making a series of other trades to ensure the Thunder had a massive stockpile of first-round picks, nearly all with at least some potential to hit at the top of the lottery. Notably, even as it became clear that Gilgeous-Alexander would be a much greater star than initially envisioned, Presti stayed patient and kept making deals to enhance his odds of hitting big on talent. The ultimate tell was his willingness to give up an honest-to-goodness first-round pick in Dallas' P.J. Washington trade in exchange for an unprotected swap in 2028. There's a risk Presti might end up trading a late first for bupkus, and in the short term, he might inadvertently have helped the Mavericks upset his top-seeded team in the 2024 postseason. But in his eyes, he hadn't landed the plane yet, so the upside outcomes were worth it. To see this in practice, consider that the Thunder acquired the pick just before Jalen Williams in the 2022 draft and fired three lower-value future firsts into the sun to take Ousmane Dieng … and it doesn't matter. The whole point of accumulating six lottery picks between 2021 and 2024, as the Thunder did, is that perfection is no longer required. Build your chip stack high enough, and you can lose a few hands. They're not done, either. Oklahoma City has a redshirted lottery pick (Nikola Topić) ready to roll come summer. The Thunder will have two first-round picks this month, at No. 15 and No. 24; most likely have three first-round picks in 2026; and still have two in 2027 and 2029. They also have the aforementioned pick swap with Dallas in 2028 and one with the Clippers in 2027. If that wasn't enough, their second-round-pick inventory remains hilarious; they have 14 available from 2028 to 2031. That's 10 first-round picks in five years, and nine of them are likely to be other teams' picks, not their own mid-dynasty choice at No. 29 or No. 30. They could draft seven Aleksej Pokuševskis and it won't matter one iota if they hit on the other three. (More realistically, they likely will deal some of these for either future trades or move-ups in the draft to keep the loaded-dice party going even further into the future.) Advertisement The second element of all of this was hitting on the right coach, and Presti was deeply fortunate that the best candidate was already in his building in assistant coach Mark Daigneault. (Partly, we should note, because the Thunder gave him an unprecedented five-year run of reps coaching their G League team. The G has quietly been an awesome incubator of coaching talent.) Of course, that fortune wouldn't have mattered if Presti didn't have the stones to promote him after one total season on an NBA bench, and the two have formed a symbiotic partnership ever since. I asked Daigneault about this last weekend and about the challenges of the coach-GM relationship as a team goes from the bottom to the top. His lengthy answer underscored how fully integrated every level of this rebuild feels, and how important it was that, this time, Presti was as comfortable with the people as he was with the talent. 'When I started as the head coach, I already had six years in the organization,' Daigneault said. 'We had seen each other over the course of a long period of time in a lot of different situations, so there wasn't a relational feeling out process there. It was a continuation of an existing relationship that we had. … The communication between those two positions is essential, and I think that comfort helped with that. 'And then … a lot of those challenges come from philosophical differences. And I was raised here in professional basketball. Like, I didn't work anywhere else in pro basketball prior to coming here. I didn't know much about professional basketball before I came here. And so my entire philosophy in professional basketball was underneath the umbrella of the Thunder organization. 'A lot of it is stuff I've learned from Sam and learned from being in this organization in terms of understanding that these organizations are robust, and it's not just you coaching your team. You're part of a large ecosystem of developing players and developing a team, and you're executing a large strategy for an organization. Those are things that have to exist in order to be a sustainably successful team in the NBA.' Daigneault's promotion, however, is also one example of the larger trend line and the third item I mentioned above. Again, the Thunder were deeply fortunate that Gilgeous-Alexander was available in the George trade, but it's no accident that OKC targeted him in the deal. Remember those 2014 Spurs? SGA is the closest thing to Tim Duncan since Tim Duncan, a zero-maintenance superstar who, even coming out of Kentucky in the 2018 draft, had as many superlative exclamation points in his background reports as any draft prospect I can remember. (I was working for the Memphis Grizzlies at the time, and we did extensive research since we had the fourth pick that year.) Advertisement Of course, it goes way beyond Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren. That 2019 reset may have made it easier to win in other aspects of team-building. Remove all the first-rounders and Oklahoma City's player-acquisition resume in the last half decade is still a huge success; luck is always a factor in this, but a lot of it gets back to focusing less on hazy-outline projects and more on targeting Presti's type of guys. The other two players on this roster who were acquired by trade were the aforementioned Kenrich Williams and Alex Caruso — classic grinders in the Presti mold (and, in Caruso's case, a do-over after the Thunder let him slip out the door in the Westbrook era). OKC hit on a late draft pick (Aaron Wiggins at No. 54 in 2021), a waiver claim (Isaiah Joe in 2022), an undrafted development project (Lu Dort in 2019) and a cap-ballast trade throw-in (Kenrich Williams in 2020). None of these guys had 40-inch verticals or set scouts salivating as they went through the layup line. The Thunder used cap space to absorb contracts and get more picks year after year, including using one to move up to select Cason Wallace in 2023, until they finally found the perfect free-agent piece (Isaiah Hartenstein) to round out their team. They somehow traded Josh Giddey for Caruso without surrendering a draft pick. Even their biggest recent misstep came with a giant opportunistic side benefit. The 2024 trade for Gordon Hayward didn't work on the court, but it doubled as one of the great stealth salary-dumps in recent annals, shedding this era's one mistake contract (Vasilije Micić), Dāvis Bertāns and little-used Tre Mann and — at a cost of only two future seconds — giving the Thunder the necessary cap space to sign Hartenstein and extend the deals of Joe and Wiggins. You might wonder, after two decades in the same place, if finally winning a championship might spur Presti to ride off into the sunset, Bob Myers-style. Nobody I talked to can envision this happening. Behind the designer glasses is a ruthless competitor whose reaction to beating you four times in a row is to try to beat you even worse the fifth time. He'll get those chances and then some over the coming years. No team in the last dozen years has been more set up for a Spursian two-decade run of dominance than this one, not even the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. Presti doing it from the ashes of the bye-bye game only makes it all the more impressive. (Top photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Sam Presti: Zach Beeker / NBAE via Getty Images)
