Kawhi Leonard stated the obvious on Thursday night. It’s just not the kind of obvious we’re used to seeing from NBA stars.

Following the Clippers’ 115-114 win over the Denver Nuggets on Friday, Leonard was asked about the Clippers reaching contender status with a younger core following the NBA trade deadline. He responded by emphasizing the importance of developing young players, but four words early on stood out: “It’s over now.”

The full exchange:

Question: “You mentioned you guys having a younger team and obviously younger guys still trying to find their way and that being part of why you guys aren’t quite in that contender tier. What do you think you guys need to do in order to break into that tier? Is it here, is it guys developing, or is there something missing?”

Leonard: “Just development over time. I think it’s over now. It’s, the second half, like a fourth of the season left. But every day is a day to grow. A day to learn and get better. So just got to keep looking over time and see in two weeks if we’re getting better and see what happens from there.”

Unless Leonard misspoke, that sure sounds like him saying the Clippers’ title chances are likely dead this season. Which, again, isn’t the wildest take, unless it’s coming from the team’s franchise star.

Following Thursday’s win, the Clippers’ record sits at 27-28, good for ninth place in the Western Conference and a spot in the worse play-in game. Eighth place might not be hard to achieve given the injury woes of the Golden State Warriors, but anything above that would require a lot of things to go right.

James Harden is gone. Ivica Zubac is gone. The trades that sent away those two both returned interesting young players in Darius Garland (who still hasn’t made his Clippers debut) and Bennedict Mathurin, respectively, but expectations are going to be low as the team reworks its core.

To Los Angeles’ credit, the team has come a long way after looking dead in the water when it began the season with a 6-21 record. They actually have the best win percentage in the NBA since that 27th game on Dec. 18, with a 21-7 record. Leonard has played some of the best basketball of his career in that time, with 29.8 points, 6.87 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.1 steals per game, plus his usual defensive impact.

However, there is still a long way to go before the Clippers are taken seriously.

Kawhi Leonard stated the obvious on Thursday night. It’s just not the kind of obvious we’re used to seeing from NBA stars.

Following the Clippers’ 115-114 win over the Denver Nuggets on Friday, Leonard was asked about the Clippers reaching contender status with a younger core following the NBA trade deadline. He responded by emphasizing the importance of developing young players, but four words early on stood out: “It’s over now.”

The full exchange:

Question: “You mentioned you guys having a younger team and obviously younger guys still trying to find their way and that being part of why you guys aren’t quite in that contender tier. What do you think you guys need to do in order to break into that tier? Is it here, is it guys developing, or is there something missing?”

Leonard: “Just development over time. I think it’s over now. It’s, the second half, like a fourth of the season left. But every day is a day to grow. A day to learn and get better. So just got to keep looking over time and see in two weeks if we’re getting better and see what happens from there.”

Unless Leonard misspoke, that sure sounds like him saying the Clippers’ title chances are likely dead this season. Which, again, isn’t the wildest take, unless it’s coming from the team’s franchise star.

Following Thursday’s win, the Clippers’ record sits at 27-28, good for ninth place in the Western Conference and a spot in the worse play-in game. Eighth place might not be hard to achieve given the injury woes of the Golden State Warriors, but anything above that would require a lot of things to go right.

James Harden is gone. Ivica Zubac is gone. The trades that sent away those two both returned interesting young players in Darius Garland (who still hasn’t made his Clippers debut) and Bennedict Mathurin, respectively, but expectations are going to be low as the team reworks its core.

To Los Angeles’ credit, the team has come a long way after looking dead in the water when it began the season with a 6-21 record. They actually have the best win percentage in the NBA since that 27th game on Dec. 18, with a 21-7 record. Leonard has played some of the best basketball of his career in that time, with 29.8 points, 6.87 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.1 steals per game, plus his usual defensive impact.

However, there is still a long way to go before the Clippers are taken seriously.

Kawhi Leonard stated the obvious on Thursday night. It’s just not the kind of obvious we’re used to seeing from NBA stars.

Following the Clippers’ 115-114 win over the Denver Nuggets on Friday, Leonard was asked about the Clippers reaching contender status with a younger core following the NBA trade deadline. He responded by emphasizing the importance of developing young players, but four words early on stood out: “It’s over now.”

The full exchange:

Question: “You mentioned you guys having a younger team and obviously younger guys still trying to find their way and that being part of why you guys aren’t quite in that contender tier. What do you think you guys need to do in order to break into that tier? Is it here, is it guys developing, or is there something missing?”

Leonard: “Just development over time. I think it’s over now. It’s, the second half, like a fourth of the season left. But every day is a day to grow. A day to learn and get better. So just got to keep looking over time and see in two weeks if we’re getting better and see what happens from there.”

Unless Leonard misspoke, that sure sounds like him saying the Clippers’ title chances are likely dead this season. Which, again, isn’t the wildest take, unless it’s coming from the team’s franchise star.

Following Thursday’s win, the Clippers’ record sits at 27-28, good for ninth place in the Western Conference and a spot in the worse play-in game. Eighth place might not be hard to achieve given the injury woes of the Golden State Warriors, but anything above that would require a lot of things to go right.

James Harden is gone. Ivica Zubac is gone. The trades that sent away those two both returned interesting young players in Darius Garland (who still hasn’t made his Clippers debut) and Bennedict Mathurin, respectively, but expectations are going to be low as the team reworks its core.

To Los Angeles’ credit, the team has come a long way after looking dead in the water when it began the season with a 6-21 record. They actually have the best win percentage in the NBA since that 27th game on Dec. 18, with a 21-7 record. Leonard has played some of the best basketball of his career in that time, with 29.8 points, 6.87 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.1 steals per game, plus his usual defensive impact.

However, there is still a long way to go before the Clippers are taken seriously.

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Munetaka Murakami was a late arrival for his first spring training game with the Chicago White Sox.

Once he got to the ballpark, everything went pretty smoothly.

Murakami had two hits and two RBIs in his Cactus League debut on Friday. The Japanese slugger is learning his way around the major leagues after reaching a $34 million, two-year contract with the rebuilding White Sox in December.

The 26-year-old Murakami was momentarily removed from the starting lineup after he got caught in some traffic on his way to Sloan Park. But he arrived about 20 minutes before the first pitch and bounced to second base in his first at-bat in the first inning of an 8-1 victory over the Cubs.

“There was a big, big accident in the highway,” Murakami said through a translator. “I was just concerned the whole time. … To be really, really honest, I wasn’t able to prepare fully, but I made it in time I think.”

Murakami was part of a slate of debuts on the first day of spring training games. Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso and Diamondbacks third baseman Nolan Arenado homered for their new teams, and Alex Bregman went 0 for 2 while playing three innings in his first game with the Cubs.

“It was a great to be out here and play in a spring training game with the Cubs,” said Bregman, who signed a $175 million, five-year contract with the team in free agency. “It was fun. Obviously super cool to have all that energy in the ballpark.”

Alonso got a warm ovation before his first at-bat against the Yankees. He was robbed of a hit on Kenedy Corona’s diving catch in the third, but he drove Bradley Hanner’s first-pitch curveball deep to left for a two-run shot in the sixth inning of Baltimore’s 2-0 win in Florida.

Alonso hit 38 homers last year in his final season with the New York Mets. He agreed to a $155 million, five-year contract with the Orioles in December.

Arenado hit a leadoff drive in the second inning of a 3-2 victory over the Rockies in Scottsdale. The eight-time All-Star was acquired in a trade with St. Louis in January.

Murakami is hoping to provide a lift for the White Sox after they dropped a whopping 324 games over the previous three seasons. He hit .270 with 246 homers and 647 RBIs in 892 games over eight years with the Yakult Swallows of Japan’s Central League.

Murakami, who started at first base, got his first hit when he drove a 91.9 mph sinker from Connor Schultz the middle in the third inning. The one-out single had a 108.3 mph exit velocity.

With one out and the bases loaded in the fourth, Murakami hit a drive to center off Porter Hodge. Cubs center fielder Seiya Suzuki lost the ball in the sun, and it landed on the back of the warning track for a two-run double.

“I’m really happy how it went, without any injuries,” Murakami said. “I had butterflies inside me the first few minutes of it. But after I started fielding and I got an at-bat, I felt a bit more comfortable and felt myself.”

Murakami and Suzuki are going to play together for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic, and the two talked in the offseason about what it’s like to play in Chicago.

“I loved him, but after the popup, I hate him. So I’m not going to support him,” Suzuki joked through a translator.

Murakami looked at a called third strike in his final at-bat in the sixth. He was replaced in the field before the bottom half of the inning.

Manager Will Venable praised Murakami for collecting himself after his trouble getting to the game.

“This guy is so committed and such a professional,” Venable said. “We’ve asked him to do some things that he hasn’t necessarily been accustomed to and how he prepares and his adaptability and flexibility to do those things has been awesome. That adjustability gives you confidence that he’s going to be able to go out there and make adjustments throughout the year.”

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Just over half the ball/strike challenges were successful on the first day of spring training games Friday as Major League Baseball prepared for the first regular-season use of the automated ball-strike system — the so-called robot umpires.

Thirteen of 23 calls were overturned during the five games, MLB said, which came to 56.5%.

There were an average of 4.6 challenges per game and 2.6 overturned calls per game.

Seven challenges were made of plate umpire Alex MacKay’s calls during Arizona’s 3-2 win over Colorado, and six were successful. The Diamondbacks had four of five decisions reversed and the Rockies were 2 for 2 in challenges.

MLB experimented with the ABS system during spring training last year and teams won 52.2% of their ball/strike challenges (617 of 1,182) challenges.

Each team has the ability to challenge two calls per game. Teams that waste their challenges get one additional challenge in each extra inning. A team retains its challenge if successful, similar to the regulations for big league teams with video reviews, which were first used for home run calls in August 2008 and widely expanded to many calls for the 2014 season.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB

It’s been four months since the Seattle Mariners played a baseball game. Four months can feel like a long time. A lot happened: the holidays came and went, various roster moves were (and weren’t) made, Rick Rizzs announced his impending retirement, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, nearly the entirety of the Winter Olympics have happened… et cetera. Still, despite how much has happened, just 123 days have passed since the Seattle Mariners last played a baseball game.

“123 days” feels like a lot less time than “4 months”. I’m not sure why — maybe just a quirk of human bias and perception. For most of the last month, I’d identified more with the “4 months” side of things. It seemed like forever since we had baseball. To have gone from each day being punctuated with the joy of the 2025 Mariners, to each having no clear punctuation at all… well, they call it the bleak midwinter for a reason.

Today, though, it felt like baseball never left. From the moment this morning that the Mariners posted the first lineup card of 2026, all the way through the last pitch that non-roster invitee Nick Davila delivered to close out the ninth inning, today was a continuation of the excitement, joy, and momentum of 2025. Peoria Sports Complex looked and sounded like it was at capacity. Nary a patch of grass in the outfield was unoccupied, and every exciting moment on the field was answered by a chorus of jubilant cheers.

It helped that the Mariners’ starting lineup was mostly comprised of their actual projected Opening Day lineup. The same cannot be said of the pitching, as the team looks to more slowly bring their big-league staff up to speed. Non-roster invitee Dane Dunning took the bump for Seattle. Dunning, who projects to be a (hopefully unneeded) depth piece for the Mariners this year, ended up throwing 1.2 scoreless innings after working around some early traffic. His fastball, which last year averaged a hair above 90 MPH, sat around 89 MPH for most of the day. The presence of full Statcast numbers in Spring Training this year is fun. However, as I scour Dane Dunning’s February 20th velocity and vertical break, searching for meaning, it occurs to me that the availability of these data may not be optimal for my mental health. Verdict: Dunning looked fine.

The rest of today’s pitching staff for Seattle was comprised mainly of Guys on the Pile. One highlight was newcomer Cooper Criswell, acquired from the Red Sox over the offseason. Criswell, a soft-tossing righty, induced three strikeouts over two innings, including a particularly nasty one of Manny Machado.

Another familiar face was Troy Taylor, who looks to bounce back from a disappointing 2025. Taylor’s velocity was great: he was already up and over last year’s average speed of 96. Less great was a hung sinker that Romeo Sanabria whacked 416 feet over the center field fence.

Right hander Alex Hoppe, who the Mariners also acquired from the Red Sox this winter, had a doubly disappointing afternoon. A dinger surrendered to Jose Miranda might have been bad enough, but the broadcasting team outed Hoppe as a true sicko: apparently his favorite player growing up was Jack Flaherty? First of all, Flaherty is literally 30 years old and Hoppe is 27, so I truly do not know when he would have idolized Flaherty. Secondly, even if the timeline did make any sense, Hoppe is likely the first person ever to idolize Jack Flaherty.

Fortunately, the hitters on Seattle’s side were a lot more interesting than the pitchers. Luke Raley, Julio Rodríguez, Josh Naylor, Leo Rivas, and Dom Canzone each checked in with hits in their first game back (Raley had two). Canzone made a flashy play in right field, laying out for a sinking line drive to rescue Dunning’s first inning. The real story of today, though, was the young guys. Most specifically Michael Arroyo.

Arroyo, a 21-year-old second baseman who just today was revealed to be working out at third base and in the outfield, watched the first pitch he was thrown. It was a changeup on the corner, called a ball. The Padres challenged, and it was overturned. Arroyo fouled off a second changeup to go down 0-2. A third changeup went right down the middle, and Arroyo took it the other way. It looked somewhat innocuous off the bat, but the ball carried, and carried, and carried. 406 feet later, Arroyo had recorded Seattle’s first home run of 2026.

Star prospect Colt Emerson immediately hit a ball in nearly the exact same spot, but it died before reaching the fence.

Arroyo’s very next at bat saw him hit another ball hard to the same spot. This one dropped short of the fence, but Arroyo was left standing on second base for a double. Not a bad showing for the 67th ranked prospect in all of baseball.

The final effort from today that I wanted to highlight was from fellow Top 100 Prospect Lazaro Montes. In the box score, Montes’ day didn’t look overly impressive: 1-for-3 with a single and a strikeout. The single, however, was one of the more difficult ones you’re likely to see.

The at bat in question was against Padres flamethrower Mason Miller, who we all know well from his days with the Athletics. Montes started by working a 2-2 count off Miller — an impressive feat in its own right. Miller responded by dialing up a 101.5 MPH fastball, which he lost control of. The resulting errant pitch nearly decapitated Montes, who had to leap out of the way. With a slight smile on his face, Montes dug back into the box and fouled off another 101.5 MPH fastball. Miller tried to switch it up with a slider, which Montes pulled for a line drive single into right field. Talk about Big League stuff from the 21-year-old.

Countless battles of NRI-on-NRI later, the Mariners were left standing with a 7-4 advantage over the Padres. Sure, the game was meaningless. Though, isn’t every game meaningless in the long run? Everything, even?

With meaning ultimately left as an exercise for the reader, I hope you enjoyed seeing the sunlight today, even if it was through a laptop or television screen. Fewer than five weeks remain until Opening Day and fewer than three until Daylight Savings. We made it.

The coaching carousel for the 2025-2026 men’s college basketball season is starting to heat up.

Numerous programs around the country are virtually eliminated from NCAA Tournament contention, barring a surprise conference championship win. Some athletic directors are already starting to get ahead of the curve and filing away candidates.

REQUIRED READING: Kansas State said it fired Jerome Tang ‘for cause.’ Will that hold up in court?

Kansas State’s Jerome Tang was one of the first major dominos to fall, although there’s still discourse between Tang and the school regarding his $18.7 million buyout. Kansas State claims it has bounds to fire Tang for cause, which would invalidate the total.

There are multiple mid-major coaches that are also on the rise and could be next up for Power Four gigs. Names like Saint Louis’ Josh Schertz, New Mexico’s Eric Olen and Utah State’s Jerrod Calhoun have all been wildly successful in 2025-26.

Here’s a running list of every head coaching change during the 2025-26 men’s college basketball season:

College basketball coaches out in 2026: Full list

This story will be updated live.

Feb. 20: Joe Scott, Air Force

Scott was suspended indefinitely in January while being investigated for treatment of Air Force’s cadet-athletes. It was announced Feb. 20, however, that he and the school mutually agreed to part ways.

“Coach Scott’s passion for the game of basketball has long been evident in his competitive and direct coaching style. It was this coaching style that guided Air Force Basketball to some of the program’s most memorable achievements during his initial tenure at the Air Force Academy,” Air Force athletic director Nathan Pine said in the announcement. “This is a different day, and now is the right time for a new voice and a new approach to drive the culture and success of the men’s basketball program, aligned with the Air Force Academy’s mission of forging leaders of character developed to lead in our Air Force and Space Force.

“We thank Coach Scott for his 10 years of service to the Academy and wish him and his family well.”

Air Force went 97-183 in Scott’s second tenure as head coach from 2020 onward. He also led the program from 2000-04, taking the team to an NCAA Tournament berth in 2004. – Austin Curtright

Feb. 18: Steve Lavin, San Diego

Lavin won’t return to San Diego for the 2026-27 season but will remain as head coach for the remainder of the current campaign. The former UCLA and St. John’s coach has a 46-79 record at San Diego in four seasons, and currently holds an 11-17 mark this season.

“As my coaching tenure at USD begins to wind down, I would like to pause and express my heartfelt appreciation to President Jim Harris for presenting this life-changing opportunity in 2022,” Lavin said in the announcement. “Teaching and coaching at the University of San Diego has been an experience of unparalleled pride and joy. Specifically, I will carry forward the gift of participating in our players’ journeys, and will treasure the relationships forged along the way.” – Austin Curtright

Feb. 17: Jerome Tang, Kansas State

Tang led Kansas State to the Elite Eight in his first season at the helm in 2022-23, but it was a downward spiral from there. The Wildcats failed to reach the NCAA Tournament the next two seasons and had a 10-15 record with a 1-11 mark in conference play this season before Tang was fired.

“This was a decision that was made in the best interest of our university and men’s basketball program,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said. “Recent public comments and conduct, in addition to the program’s overall direction, have not aligned with K-State’s standards for supporting student-athletes and representing the university. We wish Coach Tang and his family all the best moving forward.”

Kansas State is attempting to fire Tang for cause after he called out his players in a press conference after a blowout loss against Cincinnati. – Austin Curtright

Jan. 12: Marvin Menzies, Kansas City

Kansas City announced in January that Menzies would finish out the season at Kansas City but wouldn’t be returning for the 2026-27 season. The Roos hired former Maryland coach Mark Turgeon shortly after. – Austin Curtright

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Men’s college basketball coach firings, changes in 2025-26 season