June 2025

There were 1,837 posts published in June 2025 (this is page 176 of 184).

Jazz reportedly hire Celtics assistant GM Austin Ainge, son of Danny, as new president of basketball operations

Austin Ainge is joining his dad in Utah. (Photo by Angela Rowlings/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)
MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images via Getty Images

The Utah Jazz are turning to the son of an NBA champion to stabilize their front office. Austin Ainge, son of Danny Ainge, will reportedly be hired as the Jazz’s new president of basketball operations, according to Shams Charania of ESPN.

Austin Ainge spent the last six seasons with the Boston Celtics, where he served as the team’s assistant general manager. He was previously brought on as the team’s director of player personnel in 2011, when his father was the team’s executive director of basketball operations. 

Danny Ainge served in that role in 2021, when he retired from the Celtics. A few months later, Danny Ainge joined the Jazz as the team’s CEO of basketball operations and alternate governor. He still holds that role, and will now be reunited with his son in Utah.

The Jazz are coming off a rough season, in which the team finished with an NBA-worst 17-65 record. Despite that record, the team secured the No. 5 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

While the team struggled last season, the front office believes it’s on the right path. The Jazz committed to head coach Will Hardy in May, signing him to a six-year extension. Hardy also briefly spent time in Boston, serving as an assistant with the Celtics during the 2021-22 NBA season.

Danny Ainge experienced plenty of success in his years running the Celtics. He was successful in that role, turning the team back into a contender and winning the NBA championship in 2008. Ainge’s fingerprints were present on the team’s 2024 championship roster as well, though he had already left the organization at that point.

Monday marks the second time Ainge has hired Austin to a front-office role. The team experienced success in Boston, albeit with Austin in a lesser position. The Ainges will now try and run it back with one of the worst teams in the league.

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Who did it better in Yankees-Dodgers: Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani?

LOS ANGELES — In one of the most anticipated series of the 2025 MLB season, Dodgers-Yankees made a regular-season clash at the end of May feel important. The three games counted the same as the others in the annual 162-game marathon, but in the first meeting between New York and Los Angeles since the Dodgers hoisted the World Series trophy at Yankee Stadium in November, it felt meaningful.

Add in three nationally-televised games, multiple All-Stars and league MVPs, we had the makings of a series filled with intrigue.

Here are three takeaways from the World Series rematch.

The reigning AL MVP did not disappoint against the Dodgers and looks as locked in as he’s ever been in 10 seasons. Judge went 5-for-13 in the three-game series with three homers in L.A. He continues to play at a level not seen in baseball in some time.

Judge, who’s now hitting .391 on the season, is in rarified air and as June begins, it makes his chase of .400 so impressive and even more real. Hitting with that high of a batting average combined with Judge’s prodigious power is unheard of in today’s baseball and more closely reminiscent of the days of Tony Gwynn or Ted Williams, who was the last player to hit .400 in 1941.

The highest batting average in a full season since Gwynn hit .394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season (110 games) was Larry Walker, who hit .379 for the Colorado Rockies in 2000. Judge hit a career-high .322 with 58 homers in 158 games last season.

There was theater and fireworks in this series. Judge and Shohei Ohtani, the game’s two biggest stars and reigning AL and NL MVPs, did not disappoint the baseball world.

It’s almost like Judge and Ohtani met before the series opener and agreed to give the people what they wanted. Once Judge kicked the festivities off with a homer in his first at-bat Friday, Ohtani matched him with a homer in his first AB. It almost felt scripted. The three-time MVP got the last laugh with a two-homer game in Friday’s 8-5 win for the Dodgers.

It was the first time in MLB history two reigning MVPs homered in the first inning of the same game.

“I feel like he was copying me, I started it off,” Judge said jokingly Friday. “He’s impressive. One of the best players in the game for a reason.”

Shohei Ohtani tallied four hits in a three-game series against the Yankees, two of them homers. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Getty Images

Judge, not to be outdone, followed up with a two-homer game of his own in the Yankees’ 18-2 loss to the Dodgers on Saturday. It gave him the 3-2 advantage over Ohtani in the series, but the Dodgers took two of three from the Bronx Bombers.

Baseball has been dying for a superstar to carry it for some time and after years of searching, it has two. And what this weekend’s three-game series showed exactly why.

If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best and going into this series against the Yankees, that wasn’t something the Dodgers had been doing very much, going 10-9 against teams above .500. With series victories over the Cleveland Guardians and Yankees, it’s the first time L.A. has taken a series from a .500 or better club since their sweep of the Detroit Tigers to open the season stateside.

While the Dodgers hold the fourth-best record in MLB, they haven’t been setting the world on fire in May, going 13-12 heading into the series vs. the Yankees. 

This current stretch of games against October contenders, including the New York Mets who come into L.A. starting Monday for a four-game series, serves as a measuring stick for where they are.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a statement. That’s a good club, good club over there,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said about the Yankees. “So I’m just happy with the process and how we’re taking the field and going about playing baseball.”