
Harrison Barnes hits 3-pointer at the buzzer as Spurs stun Warriors with 114-111 win
Harrison Barnes made a 3-pointer at the buzzer after committing a foul moments earlier that could have cost his team, and the San Antonio Spurs stunned the Golden State Warriors 114-111 on Wednesday night.
Draymond Green made two free throws with 3.1 seconds left to make it 111-all after Barnes fouled him, then the veteran guard let it fly over Jimmy Butler and was immediately swarmed by his teammates when the horn sounded.
Keldon Johnson made a go-ahead layup with 11 seconds left after tying the game with 32 seconds remaining and finished with 21 points.
Butler scored 13 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter and converted 16 of 17 free throws and Stephen Curry scored 30 with five 3-pointers and grabbed eight rebounds, but this loss could jeopardize Golden State securing a top-six playoff seed and avoiding the play-in tournament.
Stephon Castle also had 21 for San Antonio.
Green contributed 13 points, nine rebounds and eight assists but the Warriors lost a critical game at home for a second straight time.
Buddy Hield came off the bench to score 12 as the Warriors for much of the game looked like the more energized group as both teams played on consecutive nights — Golden State coming off a 133-95 win at Phoenix and San Antonio a 122-117 road loss to the Clippers.
Barnes wound up with 20 points against his former team as the Spurs snapped a three-game skid with just their second victory in 10 games.
Rockets: Chris Paul scored 10 of his 12 points in the second quarter facing his team from last season.
Warriors: Of Golden State's 45 first-half shots, 29 were 3s.
Curry hit back-to-back 3-pointers 30 seconds apart early in the third quarter and that gave him the three 3s he needed to reach 300 for the season — his NBA-record sixth season with 300 or more from deep. Klay Thompson and James Harden have each done so once.
Golden State notched 29 assists on 36 baskets.
San Antonio visits Phoenix on Friday night while the Warriors play at Portland on Friday night before returning to Chase Center to host the Clippers in Sunday's regular-season finale.

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USA Today
24 minutes ago
- USA Today
Steph Curry will return to Tahoe celebrity golf tournament at Edgewood in summer 2025
Steph Curry will return to Tahoe celebrity golf tournament at Edgewood in summer 2025 Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Steph Curry's hole-in-one at Tahoe celebrity golf tournament Steph Curry's ace on the 152-yard hole No. 7 was his second ever and first in a tournament. Reno Gazette Journal After taking 2024 off from the celebrity golf tournament, Steph Curry will be back at Edgewood Tahoe for the 2025 event. Curry, the 2023 American Century Championship winner, is back in the field to defend his 2023 title in the 36th annual tournament July 9-13 at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. The Golden State Warriors star had to miss the events in 2024 to play basketball for the gold-medal-winning Team USA at the Paris Olympics. In the 2023 American Century Championship at Edgewood, Curry drained an 18-foot putt on hole No. 18 to take a dramatic win over Mardy Fish. Fish won the ACC in 2024. When Curry won the ACC in 2023, he made a hole-in-one on the 152-yard 7th hole, followed by a celebratory sprint from tee to green, which was among the most prominent viral sports video highlights of 2023. It will once again be a Curry family affair with Dell and Seth Curry also joining the celebrity field of 90 sports and entertainment stars. The tournament will feature Hall of Famers from the NFL, NBA and MLB, active and retired players, and Hollywood actors, comedians and entertainers. The three-day, 54-hole event includes a $750,000 purse, with $150,000 going to the winner, plus a charity component for local and national nonprofits. The celebrity golf tournament includes fan favorites Charles Barkley, Tony Romo, Travis and Jason Kelce, Colin Jost, Miles Teller, Ray Romano, Nate Bargatze, Larry the Cable Guy, Brian Baumgartner and Jack Wagner and Jim McMahon. Those last two are the only players who have competed in every tournament. Current NFL stars include 2024 MVP Josh Allen; first-timer George Kittle of the San Francisco 49ers; Aaron Rodgers; Baker Mayfield; Davante Adams; Kyle Juszczyk; Adam Thielen; Trevor Lawrence; Matt Ryan; and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. NFL Hall of Famers participating at Edgewood include Jerry Rice, Steve Young, John Elway, Emmitt Smith, Marcus Allen, Charles Woodson, Tim Brown, Brian Urlacher, DeMarcus Ware and Dwight Freeney. Retired MLB superstars include Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Hall-of-Famer Joe Mauer, Kevin Millar, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. More top players competing are Annika Sorenstam; Joe Pavelski, the former Dallas Stars and San Jose Sharks center; MLB Hall of Famer John Smoltz; former Red Sox pitcher Derek Lowe; and NBA Hall of Famer Ray Allen. The 2025 American Century Championship will utilize the Modified Stableford format whereby points are awarded by score per hole. The event will be televised by NBC Sports, GOLF Channel and Peacock over the course of the three days. Since its inception in 1990, the American Century Championship has donated more than $8 million to local and national non-profits including the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, a 500-person, nonprofit basic biomedical research organization.


Newsweek
35 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Christian Roots of the NBA—From Naismith to This Year's 79th NBA Finals
Faith and sports go hand in hand. Quarterbacks quote Bible verses in interviews, and today's top NBA players, from Golden State Warrior star Stephen Curry (verses of scripture adorn his sneakers) to Indiana Pacers sensation Tyrese Halliburton (he cites church as "a big part of my success and my sanity"), count themselves among the 62 percent of Americans who call ourselves Christians. As sports fans nationwide watch the drama of the 79thth NBA Finals unfold, it's worth telling the story of basketball's Christian roots. Indeed, Christianity was the driving force behind the game's origin story. "I want to take you back to the first game of basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891," Paul Putz, author of The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports, told Our American Stories. "Eighteen grown men, most in their mid-20s, walked into the gym at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School, where they were students. There were two peach baskets tacked to banisters on opposite sides of the gym, 10 feet off the ground. There was a soccer ball, too, and 13 rules for a new game their instructor, James Naismith, explained to them." Putz described that first game: "They divided into two teams of nine: No dribbling, no jump shots, no dunking. Instead, they passed the soccer ball back and forth, trying to keep it away from their opponents while angling for a chance to throw it into the basket." The inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, stands in a field carrying a ball and a basket. The inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, stands in a field carrying a ball and a basket. There was no template for what a shot might look like, Putz explained. As the players positioned the ball at the top of their heads to toss it toward the basket, a defender would swoop in and grab it away. "If you've ever tried to coach second-graders, it was probably a scene like that—except with big players and beards," Putz said. When the game ended, just one person made a shot. The final score: 1 to 0. To the students—and Naismith—it was a success. The students loved the challenge and possibilities of the game. Naismith loved those things, too. But he loved what the game represented, and why he was at the YMCA Training School in the first place. On his application, he was asked to describe the role for which he was training, and wrote: "To win men for the Master through the gym." Naismith's idea was simple but revolutionary: He believed sports could shape Christian character in ways mere study could not. So who was this man who created one of America's great homegrown sports? "He grew up in rural Canada," Putz said. "His parents died of illness when he was 9, and his uncle, a deeply religious man, took him in. When Naismith was 15, he dropped out of school, working as a lumberjack, but returned to high school at the age of 20 and entered college with the goal of becoming a minister." Most Christians in Naismith's day viewed sports as, at best, a distraction; others saw sports as a tool of the devil. "But Naismith was coming of age during the rise of a new movement called 'Muscular Christianity,'" Putz said. "It pushed back against the dualism that separated the spiritual and physical," Putz explained. "The body itself had sacred value, they believed, and human beings should be understood holistically—mind, body and soul intertwined." For Naismith, this idea came home in an epiphany playing football as a seminary student. During a game, a teammate lost his temper and let out a stream of curse words. During a break, he turned to Naismith and said sheepishly, "I beg your pardon, I forgot you were there." Naismith never spoke out against profanity, but his teammate felt compelled to apologize because, in Naismith's words, "I played the game with all my might yet held myself under control." His teammate was responding to Naismith's character on and off the field. Soon after that encounter, Naismith heard about the YMCA Training School in Springfield, a new college dedicated to connecting physical activity and Christian formation. And away he went to America to invent the game we know and love. "Naismith believed strongly in individual expression, and wanted basketball players to have space to create," Putz explained. "He celebrated inventive moves—like the dribble and the hook shot—and expressed awe as players pushed the limits of what was possible." But Naismith also understood that with freedom came constraints. "Basketball is personal combat without personal contact," Naismith would often say. Players can move anywhere at any time, and get close to their opponents, but can't overpower them physically, Putz explained. The only way to make the game work is consistently applying the rules. Which is why Naismith's favorite role wasn't player or coach but referee. Naismith would become a pioneer on more than one front. In the 1930s, while a professor at the University of Kansas, a young African American student named John McLendon enrolled, Putz explained. "He wanted to join the basketball team—but Kansas didn't allow Black players." Naismith took the young man under his wing, and McLendon would later become one of the most important basketball coaches of the 20th century. Basketball was influenced by Americans of all stripes. "In 1892, Senda Berenson, a Jewish instructor at a women's college, saw basketball as a rare opportunity for women to participate in sports," Putz said. "She adapted the rules and helped make it the most important women's team sport of the 20th century." The Jewish community embraced the game early, producing many of its first stars and innovators. So did Catholics and Latter-day Saints. Basketball also crossed racial and ethnic lines. Though the YMCA was segregated, Black Americans created their own spaces—often through churches—and built thriving basketball cultures, especially in cities like New York and Washington, D.C. It didn't take long for Naismith's creation to became a pluralistic and collaborative force—a gift to the world, developed and shaped by many hands, Putz added. "One of my favorite Naismith stories comes from the 1920s," Putz concluded. "He dropped by a small-college gym in Iowa, and a pickup game was about to begin. The players needed a referee and spotted the old man in the bleachers. One ran over to ask if he'd officiate—but before Naismith could respond, another player interrupted: 'That old man? He doesn't know anything about basketball.' The players walked off to find someone else. Naismith just smiled." The fact is, basketball would not be the game we know and love today if it hadn't been for Naismith's Christian vision. "I'm sure," Naismith wrote near the end of his life, "that no man can derive more pleasure from money or power than I do from seeing a pair of basketball goals in some out of the way place—deep in the Wisconsin woods an old barrel hoop nailed to a tree, or a weather-beaten shed on the Mexican border with a rusty iron hoop nailed to one end." Naismith's story is worth celebrating as we watch the Thunder and Pacers battle for the 79th NBA title.


USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
NBA Betting Promos & Bonuses for Pacers vs Thunder NBA Finals Betting Odds
NBA Betting Promos & Bonuses for Pacers vs Thunder NBA Finals Betting Odds After losing Game 1 at home, the heavily favored Thunder brought a sense of normalcy back to the NBA Finals, winning Game 2 123-107 on Sunday, boosting their championship odds back to -535. The series shifts to Indianapolis for Game 3 tonight, and you can jump in on all the action with the nation's best sports betting apps. Before getting started, though, be sure to check out these monstrous NBA betting promos created just for the NBA Finals. Just as it did in Game 1, OKC opened a big lead in Game 2, outscoring the Pacers by 18 at the half. But unlike in Game 1 when Indiana overcame a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit, OKC maintained distance to even the series. NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points for the Thunder, while Alex Caruso had 20 off the bench and Jalen Williams added 19. Tyrese Haliburton led the Pacers with 17 points. Oklahoma City is a -225 moneyline and a 5-point spread road favorite in Game 3 against Indiana (+185). Gilgeous-Alexander is -550, ahead of Haliburton (+600) in the NBA Finals MVP futures odds at Caesars Sportsbook. There are hundreds of odds available on the best NBA betting sites for both Game 3 and the series itself – and you can already bet on next year's champion. We're close to crowning the 2025 NBA champion. So grab all the lucrative sportsbook promos that deliver guaranteed bonus bets, odds boosts and more. While you're reading about these NBA betting promos, remember you can sign up for as many as you like. 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