How to watch Clippers at Lakers with Luka Doncic, LeBron James hosting Kawhi Leonard, James Harden
A night before a top-five USC-UCLA clash on the west side, the Clippers and Lakers stage their latest Battle of Los Angeles downtown on national TV. The four stars on Friday's marquee — Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, LeBron James and Luka Dončić — combine for five MVPs, six rings and 38 All-NBA campaigns. Both teams are firmly entrenched in the Western Conference playoff scramble, albeit with different postseason ceilings.
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If each team were up for an Oscar on Sunday night…
Best International Feature: Ivica Zubac's career year. The old-school Bosnian big man has charmingly muscled his way to the best run of his nine NBA seasons. It's always fun to see a veteran player commit to steady improvement, especially in less-glamorous departments like post passing, paint defense and boxing out. Zubac is averaging more than 15 points and 12 rebounds, anchoring a Clippers defense that's fourth in scoring against.
Best Casting: Rob Pelinka. Yeah, landing a 25-year-old Luka Dončić to play the 'Lakers' next generational global superstar' role was a good move. Dončić's glares toward Nico Harrison and the Mavericks bench should qualify him for SAG-AFTRA status.
Since the All-Star break, LAC: Ty Lue and the Clippers are 1-3, and now have to deal with the retooled Warriors and the streaking Timberwolves on their heels. They're 18th in offensive rating and 23rd in defensive rating in that stretch. Leonard had four swipes and scored 17 points in Wednesday's defeat of the Bulls.
Since the All-Star break, LAL: JJ Redick's Lakers are 3-1, with that bizarre three-point home loss to the Hornets marring otherwise spectacular vibes. They're first in defensive rating in those four games but just 20th in offensive rating. Basketball is so weird. James was 11-for-17 in Tuesday's win over the Mavs, while Dončić messed around and had a revenge triple-double.
Starting five of players to wear both jerseys (min. 50 games with each franchise):
Kobe Bryant famously considered joining the crosstown Clips in 2004, but ultimately returned to the Lake Show on a seven-year max contract extension, signed one day after Shaquille O'Neal was dealt to the Heat.
(Photo of LeBron James: Keith Birmingham / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
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New York Times
29 minutes ago
- New York Times
We thought the Indiana Pacers were underdogs. But this team is a juggernaut
With each thrilling win, and with each step they take closer to achieving the first NBA title in franchise history, the Indiana Pacers are slowly testing our ability to consume and analyze the game of basketball. For so long, we've been conditioned to look at champions and great teams a certain way, with a certain formula and infrastructure. There has to be at least one superstar. There has to be a second star, capable of reaching All-NBA levels. There has to be a supporting cast around two or three players capable of making big plays and big shots at the same time. Even the 2011 Dallas Mavericks, for all of their talk about equal opportunity glory, featured Dirk Nowitzki, and his 2011 playoff performance qualified as one of the best individual runs in the history of the league. Advertisement Should the Pacers turn their current 2-1 NBA Finals lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder into a championship, they could be the most unique champion since the 2004 Detroit Pistons. And even that Pistons team had more star power, if we count the defensive brilliance of Ben Wallace and the all-around point guard artistry of Chauncey Billups. Those Pistons had four players make the All-Star team that season. These Pacers aren't built around superstar talent, although Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam are better than many of us gave them credit for entering these playoffs. They are built around depth, versatility and shooting, and a legendary head coach figuratively running circles around his counterparts, one eye-opening series at a time. They are built around having a roster full of players useful in playoff situations — there is a difference between just putting players on the floor and putting players on the floor who can contribute in the playoffs. They are built around the tenacity and ability to wear teams down with their speed, all the while finding defensive stops when needed. In five or 10 years, championship or not, this Pacers run will age well, because this is the new way to build a team in the new collective bargaining agreement era. The days of top-heavy rosters winning titles are gone. The Pacers and the Thunder proved that this season. The Boston Celtics proved that last season. The road to titles going forward is paved through having dynamic depth. That being said, because we aren't used to the Pacers, we call them an underdog. This series has all but been labeled as David deploying his slingshot at Goliath. With the Pacers winning two of the first three games, the word 'plucky' has been thrown around with the same ferocity of Myles Turner throwing Chet Holmgren around in the waning stretches of Game 3. Advertisement We need to stop. And we need to face reality. The Oklahoma City Thunder are fully capable of rallying to win this series. They were a great team in the regular season with 68 wins. They proved themselves a great team in the postseason by running through the Western Conference, with the Denver Nuggets their lone speed bump. But the results of this series shouldn't diminish that two things can be true: OKC is a great team, a basketball giant. And the Indiana Pacers are a great team, a basketball giant. We have to start thinking of this series as two phenomenal teams going at each other, and a series that has the potential to reach six or seven games. We have to stop thinking of this series as one great team against a team trying to pull off a gargantuan upset. This isn't that. This isn't Villanova trying to slay Georgetown in 1985. This isn't Jim Valvano and the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack taking down the Houston Cougars. Maybe the odds say so in Vegas. But, when you watch the Pacers, the narrative around them simply doesn't fit. I can understand why things are talked about in this manner. Getting used to change takes time, especially in basketball circles. It took us a few years to figure out we were watching an all-time great in Stephen Curry. And, frankly, the Pacers didn't give us much of a reason to pay attention in the first two months of the season. They were 10-15 in their first 25 games. That's usually a pretty decent sample, so, understandably, Indiana slipped off the radar, especially with the Cleveland Cavaliers' dominant regular season. But the Pacers have gone 54-22 since that start. They were 12-4 in the first three rounds of the playoffs. And nothing proves dominance more than dominating an entire conference during an entire postseason run. The Pacers rounded into a great regular-season team. But they have become an absolutely elite playoff team. Haliburton and Siakam are All-Star level players who have been better in the postseason. Indiana checks every box when you look for a potential champion. You need point-of-attack defenders to deal with the guard play the league has to offer: Andrew Nembhard is one of the best around at that. Advertisement You need an elite wing defender who can effortlessly switch through a lineup: Aaron Nesmith has rounded into that, after a rough start to his NBA career with the Celtics. A shooting big man unique enough to protect the rim is the dream: Turner is one of the prototypes. You need shooting up and down the rotation: Other than T.J. McConnell, the Pacers don't put a subpar 3-point shooter on the floor. And even McConnell is unique in his ability to break the paint off the dribble. Ideally, you need scoring off the bench. Bennedict Mathurin changed Wednesday night's Game 3 with 27 points. And Indiana's collective athleticism, which has jumped off the screen, even against an elite Oklahoma City team, is rarely discussed. The Pacers were the best team in the Eastern Conference since the start of the year for good reason. The talent was always there, but they became a unit on both ends of the floor. They have stayed relatively healthy, and the confidence they gained from a run to the Eastern Conference finals a year ago has clearly translated to this current run. Offensively, they consistently create pace, create open shots and make the open shots they create. Defensively, they have been stingy and difficult to crack. And that's why they find themselves two wins away from an NBA title. Whether they get there, they aren't an underdog. In retrospect, the 2011 Dallas team that current Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle took to the promised land wasn't. In real time, we should respect the Pacers, and the Thunder for that matter, a lot more than depicting Indiana as the little engine that could. The Indiana Pacers are a juggernaut. And we should recognize them as such. (Photo of Myles Turner: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Padres' Machado is on the verge of 2,000 hits. Could he be the last player to reach 3,000?
One night in April, after another line drive moved him closer to a rare milestone, Manny Machado heard a fellow member of the San Diego Padres raise a theory. Machado, the team's franchise third baseman, professes to have forgotten who said it. But the idea has stuck in his head. Maybe it was the fact that the club had just faced the Houston Astros and Jose Altuve, who reached 2,300 career hits Wednesday. Maybe it was Machado's proximity to hit No. 2,000. Maybe, more than anything, it was the audacity of it all. If Machado were to eventually reach 3,000 hits, could he be the last to ever do it? 'It does sound crazy,' Machado said, 'but at the same time, you kind of see how the game is going right now.' Machado, who turns 33 next month, finds himself on the doorstep of an increasingly exclusive club. There are four active players -- Freddie Freeman, Altuve, Andrew McCutchen and Paul Goldschmidt -- with at least 2,000 hits. Machado, with only 19 more hits, will make it five. Yet as recently as two decades ago, there were 27 such players. This downward trend might only be accelerating. Pitchers are pairing unparalleled velocity with a greater understanding of how to manipulate spin and ball flight. The contact hitter is not extinct, but home runs and uppercut swings still drive team success and nine-figure contracts. While extreme shifts are now outlawed, defenses continue to pursue optimal positioning. 'It's hard to hit the ball,' said Luis Arraez, the Padres' first baseman and a three-time batting champion. In 2025, the leaguewide batting average remains under .250 for a sixth consecutive year. If the season were to end today, the average on balls in play would mark a 33-year low. Arraez, 28, who has 915 career hits, secured the National League batting title last year with a mere .314 average. As players in their late 30s, McCutchen and Goldschmidt are long shots to even come close to 3,000 hits. Altuve was once considered a leading candidate, but he is showing signs of decline. Freeman is hitting as well as ever, but, like Altuve, is racing against time. Machado, meanwhile, has a chance to achieve something none of those decorated veterans did: become the 55th player to record 2,000 hits before age 33. He also has a $350 million contract that runs through 2033 and came with the understanding that he would provide the bulk of his production on the front end. So far, Machado, a six-time All-Star, has delivered few indications of offensive slippage. He spent much of the last three years playing through tennis elbow and then the lingering effects of reparative surgery. He still completed 2024 as the only active big leaguer to have hit at least 28 home runs in nine consecutive full seasons. Now, he is batting .320 with a seemingly healthy elbow and some of the best underlying numbers of his career. In a recent 3-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants, he lined an opposite-field single and pulled a two-run drive to become the 33rd player with 350 home runs by age 32. He was 3 for 5 with five runs batted in an 11-1 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday. 'It feels good to just be somewhat normal and be able to get some good swings out and not really be on the training room table every single day,' Machado said. Mike Shildt, the Padres' second-year manager, said he was seeing more 'consistency and clarity' from Machado. 'I just see a guy that's really comfortable where he's at, trusting the guys around him and not making the situation bigger than it is,' Shildt said. 'Just putting a good stroke on it, which is one of the best right-handed swings I've seen.' The team's hitting coach, Victor Rodriguez, added: 'He's healthy. He's not searching. He's not trying to feel how he can be comfortable. He's comfortable. And you see Manny sometimes get out of it, but the next day he's really focusing on getting back to the big part of the field and being himself.' Machado has been that guy from the beginning. On Aug. 9, 2012, when he was 20, he skipped over Triple-A and landed in a playoff chase with the Baltimore Orioles. In his second at-bat, he tripled into the right-center gap for his first career hit. In time, Machado turned consistent doubles power into 30-homer seasons. He won a Platinum Glove in 2013, given to the best overall defensive player in each league, and settled in as one of the finest defenders of his generation. After two knee operations cost him time early in his career, he demonstrated what would become another defining quality. Since 2015, Machado has started more major league games than anyone else. His only trip to the injured list over the last decade came in 2023, when a fractured hand forced him to miss two weeks. His durability reminds Los Angeles Angels Manager Ron Washington of Adrián Beltré, the third-base contemporary Machado most admired until Beltré retired in 2018. 'Injuries never stopped Adrián Beltré from playing,' said Washington, who managed Beltré for four seasons with the Texas Rangers. 'Adrián Beltré made other people want to be everyday players. There's a lot of guys that couldn't play every day, but because they were around Adrián Beltré, they'd think they could play every day. 'That's the kind of player that Manny Machado is. He makes everybody else want to come on the field and play.' As the games have piled up, so have the hits. Machado reached 1,500 hits in 2022, becoming the sixth third baseman to cross that threshold by age 29 -- and the first since Beltré in 2008. He has batted at least .275 in every season since his rookie campaign, and his gap-to-gap approach holds up in offense-suppressing venues. Given their continuing performances, Machado and Freeman, the Dodgers' metronome of a first baseman, appear to be the safest current picks to eclipse 3,000 hits. Both have supplied all-fields production in eerily similar fashion. Since the Statcast era began in 2015, Machado's batted-ball profile breaks down as follows: 37% to the pull side, 37% up the middle and 25% to the opposite field. The same goes for Freeman, who at 35 is leading the NL in batting average. 'Manny and Freddie, they came from a different era with a different philosophy and a different skill set on how to approach hitting, and they've been able to survive,' Shildt said. 'And yeah, their talent's extraordinary, but it's not so extraordinary that other people can't follow it. But the industry, including the amateur level, is tripled up where you're just devaluing the hit. It's not valued as highly.' A little more than three years have passed since Miguel Cabrera, an all-fields slugger Machado studied closely, became the 33rd and most recent player to enter the 3,000-hit club. Freeman and Altuve, with perhaps a handful more seasons, could approach elite territory around their 40th birthdays. Even Machado is far from a guarantee. Of the 10 players this century to reach 2,000 hits by age 32, five -- Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Beltré, Albert Pujols and Cabrera -- went on to attain 3,000. Victor Rodriguez, who worked as Cleveland's assistant hitting coach before the Padres hired him, suggested that 2,500 hits would be enough to earn Guardians third baseman José Ramírez entry into the Hall of Fame. (Ramírez, 32, has 1,581.) Washington, whose career in professional baseball began in 1970, said he could envision a world in which Machado winds up being the final player to amass 3,000 hits. 'It's not the pitching, it's the players,' Washington said, adding, 'You need pure hitters to reach that.' Future applicants will also need the kind of longevity Machado is tracking toward. Twenty-eight of the 33 members of the 3,000-hit club played in at least 20 big league seasons. Only one, Ichiro Suzuki, arrived in the majors after his 23rd birthday. Twenty-six made their debuts before turning 22. Sitting at his locker on a recent afternoon, Machado pointed out that the number of players who have ever reached the major leagues -- now almost 23,500 -- would not quite fill half of Petco Park. He marveled at that fact, as well as his proximity to 297 players who have crossed a lofty threshold. 'It's going to be pretty cool, man,' Machado said. 'Obviously, it always takes you back to that first hit. You kind of reflect on how that was your childhood dream, to get a hit in the big leagues. And now you're pushing 2,000, which is crazy.' He also considered a certain theory. Maybe one day the likes of Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill and Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. will have the opportunity to disprove it. Maybe future legislation will help swing the game back in favor of hitters. Maybe, if Machado does not do it, someone else will. Actually, he sounded certain of it. 'I'm pretty sure it will continue,' Machado said. 'We're going to be seeing a lot of great players come through the minor leagues and be really good baseball players and break a lot of records.' Still, as Machado marches toward his 2,000th hit and an even greater milestone, his career already puts him in rare territory. He could end up among the last -- if not the very last -- of his kind. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Michael Johnson cancels Grand Slam Track's LA meet amid financial concerns
Michael Johnson will cancel the fourth and final meet of the inaugural Grand Slam Track season in Los Angeles to avoid major financial losses at the event. Athletes and their representatives will be updated in a Zoom call on Thursday amid silence in the build-up to the LA leg scheduled for 28-29 June, after competing 'challenger' athletes were not announced ahead of time as they were before the previous three meets. Advertisement The Independent understands that the economics of the LA event, and Grand Slam Track's deal with its host partner, UCLA, had become financially unviable. New investors are set to be announced next week and sources inside Grand Slam Track suggested that making the best short-term financial decision was key to ensuring the longer-term outlook of the project. The Los Angeles leg will not be replaced with another host city and the season will instead come to a premature end. But organisers remain confident that Grand Slam Track will continue in 2026, with LA likely to be on the circuit, and have privately stressed the positives of what they insist has been a relatively successful 'pilot' year. Before the opening event in Kingston, Jamaica, Johnson's co-founder Steve Gera told The Independent that they were 'maniacally focused on having the youngest fanbase of any sports league in the world in the next five years'. Josh Kerr, Dina Asher-Smith, Fred Kerley and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone signed up to Grand Slam Track (Getty/The Independent) The star-studded list of athletes – which included US stars Kenny Bednarek, Gabrielle Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone as well as British names including Josh Kerr and Dina Asher-Smith – competed in two linked events, such as 100m and 200m sprints, with results combined to calculate the winners in each category. Prize money for winners stood at $100,000, with $50,000 for runners-up and $10,000 for eighth place. Advertisement The competition was billed as a much-needed shot in the arm for athletics, although the decision to include only track events and omit field disciplines was met with criticism. 'I am going to save what I think I can save,' Johnson explained. 'I think I can save track, I don't think I can save track and field.' But ticket sales have been slow and sponsorship and broadcast revenues have not met lofty expectations. The Times reports that organisers will save around £2.2m in prize money and travel expenses by cancelling the Los Angeles event. Some of the action has played out in half-empty stadiums, although the third event in Philadelphia was more popular, with close to 30,000 tickets sold over two days after the action was compressed from the three days of events held in Kingston and Miami. A disappointing crowd in Jamaica prompted organisers to review their locations for 2026, with a variety of other markets being considered, including European cities. Advertisement Gera told The Independent in March: 'We had discussions with a couple of different cities across the UK [but] that was a decision that we made to just focus on tightly packaging our run of shows [in the Americas] in year one. But we're really excited to get the product into Europe in the not too distant future.' Grand Slam Track is set to officially confirm its decision on the LA event later on Thursday. Organisers declined to comment.
