Thursday, June 13th, 2019

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Written while listening to Bob Marley's One Cup of Coffee

 Nick Van Exel’s sudden love of iced coffee is the best   

We’ll get to the NBA Finals, but first…The absolute most endearing NBA-related thing right now is Nick Van Exel’s newfound love of iced coffee, and it’s playing out in front of our eyes. Let’s look at the timeline.June 9: Van Exel, the one-time all-star who played for six teams in the ‘90s and ‘00s and has an awesome highlight tape, tweeted this innocuous but thoughtful prose.This is fantastically random in its own right. But since his revelation, his love has taken on a life of its own. The iced coffee suggestions started pouring in. From the same day:(Someone commented on it, saying, “Is that beer,” to which Nick responded: “I have no idea. That’s what I thought it was. Lol. Must be some kind of coffee.”) Spot on.June 10: Good night, Nick.June 12: Three days from inception, it appears a favorite brand for Nick has emerged:(Interesting choice. I will say this: McD’s is so much cheaper than any of that artisional stuff. If you get it black and put in cream when you get home, it’s doable. The sin is leaving it up to the employees. They’ll make your iced coffee whiter than Mike Pence unless you repeat a few times that you want it with no cream and no sugar.)On the same day, Nick tweeted this magnum opus of a video while driving in a golf cart, which has now eclipsed one million views. Here’s what he had to say:

“Yo, what’s up, what’s up? Had a little iced coffee this morning, just wanna let everybody know -- all my Twitter followers, everybody that’s in my phone, my friends, my family -- I’m disappointed in y’all that y’all didn’t let me know about iced coffee before, so, disappointed, but ***takes sip of what appears to be Sonic iced coffee*** since it tastes so good, I forgive y’all, peace.”

June 13:

Uh oh, Nick’s discovered the good stuff.

Iced coffee is one of the great things in my life. I’m happy Nick has found this pleasant wrinkle in the universe, as well.

-- S.E.

It’s a ruptured Achilles for Kevin Durant

• Durant broke his own injury news on Instagram yesterday: He has a ruptured Achilles.

• Here’s some of what he wrote: “What’s good everybody I wanted to update you all: I did rupture my Achilles. Surgery was today and it was a success, EASY MONEY.”

• Interesting quote from Steve Kerr about the whole situation: “Now, would we go back and do it over again? Damn right. But that’s easy to say after the results. When we gathered all the information, our feeling was the worst thing that could happen would be a re-injure of the calf. That was the advice and the information that we had… So the Achilles came as a complete shock.”

• The consensus among smart NBA people is that he will still get max-contract offers this offseason, and that an opt-in with the Warriors is a “last resort.”

• Klay Thompson, on people questioning Durant: “That’s just the nature of the game, whether KD, Muhammed Ali, LeBron, Michael, who’s a baseball player? All are questioned.” People on Twitter were quick to point out that Klay’s brother, Trayce, is a baseball player.

From The Ringer: The Nick Nurse beat

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis has an awesome story out today about Brandon Hurley, the sports reporter from Nick Nurse’s hometown paper (Carroll, Iowa, population: 10,000), who convinced his editors to let him drive 14 hours to Toronto to cover the NBA Finals. He’s not going to Oakland, but he’ll be amongst the crowd tonight in Jurassic Park.It’s a great story of journalistic determination in the age of shrinking budgets and failing newspapers.Hurley, of one two sports reporters for the Carroll Times Herald, has been on the Nurse beat for years. At one point he even had a podcast with the Raptors’ coach, called Nursing School.Here’s a good snippet:

As Nurse morphed from obscure assistant to someone whose timeouts were scrutinized by Stephen A. Smith, Hurley felt a gentle, I-got-there-first sort of journalistic pride. His beat was now the world’s. After Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer-beater bounced in against the Sixers, Hurley tweeted: “Nick Nurse has the freaking Toronto Raptors into the Eastern Conference Finals. A dude from Carroll freaking Iowa… think about that for a moment.” When the Raptors beat the Bucks, Hurley switched to all caps: “HOLY EFFING CRAP.”

Read the whole thing here

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#TBT: Nick Van Exel's 360 3-point buzzer-beater

 Quick Hits

• The Cavs have hired Lindsey Gottlieb, California’s women’s coach, as an assistant. It’s the first time a women’s college coach has jumped to an NBA coaching bench.

• As of Thursday afternoon, most betting places have the Warriors as 2.5-point favorites tonight. They’re a plus-240 to win the series. On Sunday, they were a plus-450.

• It appears an Anthony Davis trade is imminent. The Lakers appear to be close to a deal, with a decision on Kyle Kuzma holding it up. The Celtics are also in there. Here’s Woj’s intel from yesterday.

• Kyrie Irving is likely going to hire Roc Nation as his new agency, which suggests he’s very interested in signing with Brooklyn, which is more bad news for the Knicks.  

• The new coach of the Grizzlies, Taylor Jenkins, is a 34-year-old Penn grad who’s been an NBA assistant for 10 years, mostly under Mike Budenholzer. There were 18 players older than him in the league this year.  

 Concrete Reads 

• The three questions that could define Game 6 [The Ringer]

• A basketball mecca that just needed a name [New York Times]

• Kevin Durant and Achillies, two heroes who had decisions to make [New Yorker]

• From last week: Jalen Rose has a problem with analytics [New Yorker]

 Podcast Pick

Zach Lowe and Howard Beck discuss the fallout from Game 5 and preview Game 6 [The Lowe Post]