March 2026

There were 1,682 posts published in March 2026 (this is page 3 of 169).

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is letting ‘my game do the talking’ in MVP race — and, well, his game is awfully loud

A funny thing happened to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on Monday night, on the way to another signature moment to add to a résumé that may well earn him his second consecutive Most Valuable Player award: He wound up on the other side of the whistle.

With 15 seconds left in a tie game between his West-leading Oklahoma City Thunder (playing without starters Jalen Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein) and the East-leading Detroit Pistons (playing without four starters, including All-Stars Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren), Gilgeous-Alexander joined teammate Ajay Mitchell in double-teaming Detroit ball-handler Daniss Jenkins, and then sliced back into the passing lane to pick off a feed intended for Pistons guard Javonte Green. Gilgeous-Alexander dribbled the ball into the frontcourt, sized up Green, drove to his left and stepped back to his right, rising up for a would-be game-winning 3-pointer.

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The triple splashed through the net with four seconds remaining in regulation … and was promptly waived off, with the officials calling an offensive foul on Gilgeous-Alexander for pushing off on Green’s shoulder to create the space needed to get his shot off.

Considering he’d been called for only 10 offensive fouls in 63 games this season entering Monday, you can understand Gilgeous-Alexander’s shock at the FTW-erasing whistle:

(By the same token, you can understand the opposing coaches and fan bases who have repeatedly voiced frustration at the disparity between the level of physicality with which the Thunder defend and the level of physicality allowed against the league’s MVP being kind of shocked that this one got called.)

After Jenkins’ attempt to author a game-winner of his own went a little strong off the back iron, the game went to overtime knotted at 101. For Gilgeous-Alexander, that rare moment of late-game frustration gave way to a fresh new opportunity.

“I have five minutes to go win the basketball game,” he later told reporters.

And so, he did:

Gilgeous-Alexander scored, assisted on or delivered the hockey assist on all 13 of Oklahoma City’s points in the extra session, pushing the Thunder over the finish line in a 114-110 win. He’d finish with 47 points (12-for-19 from the field, 21-for-25 at the foul line), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in 40 minutes of work — his eighth 40-plus-point performance of the season (third-most in the league, behind Luka Dončić and Anthony Edwards), his 43rd 30-plus-point outing (tied with Dončić for the most) and his 136th straight game of at least 20 points, extending the NBA record he set earlier this month.

Most importantly: Gilgeous-Alexander’s big game and bigger closing kick enabled the Thunder to hold serve with the hard-charging San Antonio Spurs, who’d dominated the Chicago Bulls earlier in the evening for their 25th win in 27 games since the beginning of February. Holding off Detroit kept OKC’s lead over San Antonio in the race for the West’s No. 1 seed at 2.5 games with just two weeks left in the regular season.

Maintaining that lead isn’t only critical because it would afford the Thunder home-court advantage throughout the 2026 NBA playoffs. It also could help serve as a tie-breaker of sorts in what’s become an increasingly tight MVP race.

San Antonio superstar Victor Wembanyama recently made the case for his candidacy. Lakers head coach JJ Redick has stumped for Dončić, the league’s leading scorer, who has helped L.A. surge toward solidifying the No. 3 spot out West. (And oh, by the way, there’s still this guy named Nikola Jokić, who’s leading the league in rebounds and assists en route to averaging a triple-double for the second straight season at the helm of a Denver Nuggets team that still has a shot to take third place, too.)

Afforded the opportunity to step out onto the stump himself, though, Gilgeous-Alexander just smiled and demurred.

“No, I’m good. Thanks for asking, though,” he said, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “Yeah, I’m good. I let my game do the talking.”

Spoken like a man confident that his game’s awfully loud.

Gilgeous-Alexander trails only Dončić in scoring, averaging 31.6 points per game while shooting a career-best 55.2% from the field, 38.2% from 3-point range and 88% from the free-throw line. That gives him a true shooting percentage of 66.6% — just behind 2015-16 Stephen Curry for the most efficient 30-point-scoring season in NBA history.

He has paired that gargantuan scoring efficiency with even tighter work as a ball-handler, delivering an assist on 34.6% of his teammates’ baskets while he’s on the floor while turning it over on just 8.5% of his offensive possessions. The only players in Stathead’s database to finish a season with a usage rate as high, a turnover rate as low and an assist rate even in the vicinity of what SGA has posted thus far? Michael Jordan in 1993, at the end of the Bulls’ first three-peat, and Tracy McGracy, back in 2003 — one of the great individual seasons of this era.

Gilgeous-Alexander leads the NBA in a slew of advanced metrics, including estimated plus-minus, win shares, Jeremias Engelmann’s xRAPM, win probability added and Neil Paine’s LAKER. He also ranks second or third in a slew of others, like value over replacement player, box plus-minus, player efficiency rating, regularized adjusted plus-minus and The BBall Index’s LEBRON.

If the all-in-one alphabet soup nerd numbers aren’t your thing: Gilgeous-Alexander’s also been absolute nails in crunch time.

He leads the NBA in points scored when the game’s within five points in the final five minutes, with 19 more “clutch” points than second-place countryman Jamal Murray, 175-156, in 36 fewer close-and-late minutes played. SGA is shooting 51.5% in those situations with a 21-to-7 assist-to-turnover ratio. On shots with a chance to either tie or take the lead in crunch time, he’s shooting 55%; he hasn’t missed a field-goal attempt in the fourth quarter or overtime in the last seven games, going 11-of-11.

Combine that scoring volume, pristine efficiency, timely shot-making and how much his on- and off-ball gravity opens things up for his teammates, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of why Oklahoma City scores like the NBA’s No. 1 offense with him on the floor, and like a bottom-five offense without him.

That impact’s been particularly critical given how many injuries the Thunder have dealt with; only the Grizzlies and Trail Blazers have lost more player games to injury this season, according to Spotrac. Oklahoma City has only had the starting five from its championship team — SGA, Williams, Chet Holmgren, Hartenstein and Luguentz Dort — for eight games and 75 total minutes this season. All told, Gilgeous-Alexander has played 926 minutes without either All-NBA running buddy Williams or All-Star stretch big Holmgren, according to PBP Stats; the Thunder have won those minutes by 242 points, a +11.9 net rating, scoring at a top-five clip.

There are excellent cases to be made for all the top candidates this season; plenty of proxies, or the pool of candidates itself, is already making them. For Gilgeous-Alexander and his backers, the argument starts with the consistency of his excellence from autumn through springtime, and needs no embellishment beyond what’s on display night after night.

“Just watch the games,” Thunder guard Alex Caruso told reporters. “Got a game-winner against the No. 1 seed in the East called off tonight and then had 47. His game does a lot of talking.”

Doc Rivers, Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne, Amar’e Stoudemire reportedly inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2026 was reportedly revealed Tuesday and includes an active coach, two of the greatest WNBA players of all time and a Phoenix Suns legend.

Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers, Candace Parker and Elena Delle Donne, and Amar’e Stoudemire were reportedly chosen for induction, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.

While Charania reported the news Tuesday, the official announcement isn’t expected until Saturday. The inductees will be announced at 12 p.m. ET that day on ESPN2. Those players will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame between Aug. 14 and Aug. 15.

After a successful 13-year run as a player, Rivers established himself as a longtime NBA coach. After a promising early stint with the Orlando Magic, where Rivers went 171-168 over five seasons, the coach came into his own with the Boston Celtics.

During Rivers’ nine seasons with the team, the Celtics made the playoffs seven times. The team made it to the Finals twice, winning it all during the 2007-08 season and losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games during the 2009-10 season.

Rivers then spent seven seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers and three seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers before joining the Bucks ahead of the 2023-24 season.

In his 27 years as a head coach, Rivers has a .580 winning percentage. His 1,191 career victories rank sixth on the all-time list.

Widely considered one of the greatest WNBA players of all-time, Parker was a star the instant the No. 1 overall pick first took the court for the Los Angeles Sparks. She won the MVP award in her rookie season and earned countless other accolades that year, including winning Rookie of the Year, making first-team All-WNBA and finishing fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.

In her 16 years in the league, Parker was a perennial MVP candidate. She won the award a second time in 2013, and posted eight other seasons in which she finished in the top five in voting. She also made seven All-WNBA first teams, won Defensive Player of the Year and won two WNBA championships over her career.

Delle Donne, similarly, got off to a tremendous start upon joining the WNBA. She experienced nearly unrivaled success in her first seven seasons, winning Rookie of the Year, taking home two MVP awards, being selected All-WNBA first team four times and winning a championship with the Washington Mystics.

The COVID-19 pandemic and a back injury threatened to end Delle Donne’s career prematurely. She opted out of the 2020 “Wubble” season due to Lyme disease and played in just three games in 2021 due to a back injury that eventually required surgery.

Despite that injury, she returned to play two more seasons, making one more All-Star team before stepping away from the game in 2024 and officially retiring in 2025.

Stoudemire is the third member of the group to win Rookie of the Year. He turned in a fantastic start to his career with the Suns, earning MVP votes in four of his nine seasons with the team and making the All-NBA team in each of those seasons.

His best season was 2004-05, when he averaged 26 points, 8.9 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.6 blocks for the Seven Seconds or Less Suns, who won 62 games and reached the West finals

He was similarly excellent in his first season with the New York Knicks, earning an All-Star appearance and another top-10 MVP finish. Injuries disrupted his Knicks tenure, though Stoudemire eventually emerged as a strong off-the-bench option and occasional starter with the team.

In 2024, the Suns retired Stoudemire’s No. 32.

Welcome to the NBA’s new A-League, B-League phenomenon. Is it here to stay?

Playing without Trae Young and Anthony Davis, the Washington Wizards were on the verge of a breakthrough. 

On Friday night, the 17-55 team entered the fourth quarter against the Golden State Warriors with a two-point lead. For Alex Sarr and the youthful Wizards, it stood as an impressive showing on the road against a Steve Kerr squad with playoff aspirations.

Now the hard part, the Wizards had to close it out with their stars in street clothes. But a weird thing happened. Wizards head coach Brian Keefe never put his key starters into the game when it mattered most. Washington fumbled the lead and lost by five.

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It showed in plain sight one of the most bizarre developments in NBA history. In that game, one team was trying to win and the other team was trying to lose. This happens every year. What’s different this season is the sheer quantity of teams doing it and how early they started doing it. With so many of these games these days, it’s time to look at the league through an entire different prism.

Yes, the NBA prides itself on being the top competitive basketball league in the world. But if you pay close attention, you’ll notice a new phenomenon: the league has broken into two separate leagues of competition. 

One league, comprising 21 teams, is competing to win. Call it the A-League. 

The other league — the B-League — is nine teams competing to lose.

They’re certainly competing, just in opposite directions. And it’s warped the league in ways the league stakeholders didn’t foresee. 

In February, the NBA handed out two tanking fines against the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers for not putting their best players on the floor. Since then, it hasn’t issued any additional punishments despite similar activity transpiring around the league.

Take the Wizards on Friday night for example. Wizards starting center Sarr had inexplicably been allowed to foul out with 5:31 left in the third quarter. Three other starters — Tre Johnson, Bub Carrington and Bilal Coulibaly — were pulled in the third quarter and sat on the bench the entire fourth quarter while Kristaps Porziņģis, Draymond Green and Brandin Podziemski starred on the other side. If you didn’t know any better, it was as if the Wizards were told that the NBA suddenly changed the rules to say the game is decided after three quarters as opposed to four. 

After the (four-quarter) game, Keefe stood by his dubious substitution patterns, responding to questions from  Nate Duncan and Josh Robbins by saying the players had reached their minute limits set by the medical staff. Oddly though, Keefe played Carrington for the entire first quarter and then decided he was no longer good enough — or in his explanation, healthy enough — to play at all in the fourth quarter when a win was within reach. Meanwhile, Leaky Black, playing on a two-way contract, played 42 minutes.

To those watching around the league, it was obvious what had gone down: The Wizards were tanking. By removing their best players, it seemed clear they were working to secure their 2026 first-round pick, which goes to the New York Knicks if it falls out outside the top-8. As long as the Wizards own one of the four worst records, they keep the pick. A loss, in this sense, was a win.

To date, the league has not announced any fine against the Wizards or any other teams that have violated the league’s code of conduct since the initial punishments handed out last February. Last week, the NBPA issued a statement urging the NBA to take action against the Milwaukee Bucks for holding out star Giannis Antetokounmpo and said the “integrity of the game” was at stake. The Bucks have not yet been penalized for their handling of their global superstar.

Giannis Antetokounmpo has had front-row seats to the B-League this season. (AP Foto/Tyler Tate)
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As of now, nine teams are responding in kind to the draft lottery structure that incentivizes losing games and the expanded race to the bottom has distorted everything. A look at the standings reveals a stratified league unlike ever before. In the East, the No. 10-seeded Charlotte Hornets have a 9.5-game lead on the No. 11 Milwaukee Bucks. In the West, the No. 10-seeded Warriors have an 11-game lead on the No. 11 Memphis Grizzlies.

A perfect storm of draft lottery incentives, the play-in tournament, a loaded draft class and increasing star absences has created a phenomenon of other sorts: a pseudo minor league within the NBA ranks. 

The chasm between leagues is obvious once you track the results. The only teams the Wizards have beaten since the All-Star break are the Indiana Pacers (twice) and the Utah Jazz — two members of the B-League, which means that for almost two months straight Washington has yet to beat a team that is not actively trying to lose. 

For the Wizards, Friday’s loss to the Warriors, Sunday’s defeat at the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers and Monday’s blowout loss to the Los Angeles Lakers extended their A-League losing streak to TWENTY straight games. That’s right: The Wizards have gone 0-20 against teams trying to win, having dropped every game against an A-League opponent since Detroit lost to the ‘Zards in early February.

Here’s a summary of the B-League teams in recent “competition’ against A-League teams:

  • Washington is 0-20 in its last 20

  • Brooklyn is 1-29 in its last 30

  • Sacramento is 1-23 in its last 24

  • Indiana is 2-12 in its last 14

  • Utah is 1-14 in its last 15

  • Memphis is 1-17 in its last 18

  • Dallas is 2-23 in its last 25

  • Milwaukee is 1-12 in its last 13

  • Chicago is 3-17 in its last 20

Aggregate those utterly sad win-loss figures and you’ll find B-League teams have posted a dastardly 12-167 record against A-League teams across those varying chunks of games. Twelve wins and 167 losses. That’s almost 15 losses for every win.

The outright futility is so pervasive that it’s worth wondering if more than a third of the league has essentially split off and morphed into a G League division. Seriously, if the South Bay Lakers, who went 26-10 in the G League this season, played 179 games against A-League competition, could they eke out 12 wins over that span? It’s not out of the realm of possibility, and that’s what’s so unnerving about the state of the league. 

If you feel the above breakdown is misleading, the monthly breakdown paints the same alarming picture. In the month of March, B-League teams have been walloped by A-League teams to the tune of a 12-98 record, which equates to a .109 record — the worst month this season. Since December, the B-League teams have fared increasingly worse as the draft lottery nears.

(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

Another way to put this in perspective is looking at the postseason gap history. The East postseason gap is 9.5 games while the West postseason gap is 11 games, which means the moat between postseason teams and non-postseason teams is a combined 20.5 games. That’s nearly twice as big as the previous largest gap this century (11 games in 2018-19). In fact, this year marks by far the largest cushion since the NBA went to the 16-team playoff format in 1984.

Interestingly, the advent of the play-in tournament seems to have broadened the gap. Excluding shortened seasons in 2020-21, 2019-20 and 2011-12, recent seasons have exhibited a much more pronounced separation. 

In the first 82-game season after the pandemic, the gap between No. 10 and No. 11 was a collective seven games. Since then, it has jumped to nine games in 2022-23, nine games again in 2023-24 and 10 games in 2024-25 before exploding to 20 games this season. In the post-play-in-tournament world, we have seen an average gap of 11 games of separation. In the previous 10 seasons, with no play-in tournament, that same figure was just 4.8. To put it simply, the play-in era could also be known as the play-out era.

This is not to suggest that the play-in tournament has been a total miss (I’m still a fan). But it also hasn’t been perfect. The play-in tournament was supposed to be an anti-tanking sledgehammer, but it seems it only axed the league into two parts: the Haves and Have-Nots. Those who think this is a one-year stratification blip should consider that the gap has doubled in size in recent years. 

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly one main cause of this recent phenomenon of the A/B League stratification. One possible catalyst is the fact that every NBA owner and front office saw the Dallas Mavericks jump all the way from No. 11 to No. 1 in the draft lottery to land Cooper Flagg last season. The previous season, the Hawks soared to No. 1 from No. 10. 

While it’s true that the draft lottery odds haven’t changed in recent seasons, there’s that whole cognitive bias about “seeing is believing.” Teams in the back of the lottery always knew the odds were stacked against them, but when lightning is caught in a bottle not once, but twice? That might change behavior in some front offices.

Add that recency bias to the fact that this is a loaded draft class featuring AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer, Caleb Wilson and Darius Acuff Jr., and it’s totally possible that front offices are responding to a cost/benefit analysis that points toward ping-pong balls, not the play-in. As we get deeper into the play-in era, a spot in the play-in tournament may not be as appealing as initially designed. 

For those on the outside of the play-in tournament picture, chasing the No. 10 seed isn’t all that thrilling when you look at the less-than-exemplary results. Among the No. 10 seeds in the play-in era, only one out of 10 teams has successfully punched a ticket into the playoffs. That team, the 2024-25 Miami Heat, tells a story that won’t inspire many future No. 11 seeders.

Last year, the No. 10 Heat were beaten to a pulp by the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, getting swept 4-0 in one of the most lopsided series in NBA history. The final scores in Game 3 and Game 4? 124-87 and 138-83. Congratulations No. 10 seed, you made the playoffs — now get pantsed in front of the national audience!

The latest anti-tanking proposals reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania probably won’t address the B-League stratification problem. If anything, one of the proposals might only exacerbate the race to the bottom 10 teams. 

The first proposal, ESPN reported, envisioned a system in which 18 teams would all be part of the draft lottery. The bottom 10 teams would have an equal 8% chance of moving up in the lottery, with the other 20% of odds being shared among the eight play-in teams. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how that would further incentivize the bottom 10 teams to stay there by losing a gazillion games and maximizing its odds to land the No. 1 overall pick. 

The other two proposals also expand the draft lottery to playoff teams, and work in different ways to attempt to thwart tanking, but each of them could present new unintended consequences, such as tanking out of the first round in order to land a shot at the No. 1 pick. Any team going down 2-0 in the first round would have a giant carrot to blow the next two games and throw its hat in the draft sweepstakes.

The solutions aren’t going to be easy. From where I sit, the league should do away with the draft entirely and go from scratch with a rookie free agency. Shortening the schedule as I proposed would also curtail extended tank jobs. The dizzying anti-tanking proposals above may seem sophisticated and comprehensive, but it’s unclear how the models will correct the NBA’s A-League and B-League phenomenon. If you think too many teams are trying to lose now, just remember, the list could expand soon. The NBA might add two more teams to the B-League party.

Fantasy Baseball: These post-hype pitchers — and one hitter — should be on your waiver wire streaming radar

If you like post-hype fantasy baseball sleepers, Monday was your kind of day. Especially on the pitcher’s mound.

Can we interest you in Lance McCullers Jr.? Did Mike Soroka catch your eye? Could Kyle Harrison finally be ready for his close up?

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Post-hype SPs to consider adding

Let’s start with Harrison, who was a top-30 prospect a few years back. He’s still just 24. The Red Sox considered him a key part of the Rafael Devers trade/salary dump last summer, or so it seemed. Harrison spent most of his summer with Triple-A Worcester, muddling through a 3.93 ERA and 1.59 WHIP.

But ears perked up when Harrison was traded to Milwaukee in the offseason. The Brewers have an outstanding track record with player development and identifying under-appreciated assets in other organizations. Harrison earned a rotation spot during a solid spring, where he had 20 strikeouts against four walks over 14 innings.

His Monday debut against Tampa Bay was a success — four hits, one run, one walk, eight strikeouts, 16 swinging strikes. Harrison allowed a leadoff homer to Yandy Diaz but otherwise was not in trouble. His fastball checked in at 95.1 mph, a notable jump from his early career. He also was effective with his retooled change, giving Harrison a logical path to retiring right-handed hitters.

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Armed with bumped velocity and a new pitch, Harrison looks like a plausible-upside case for mixed leagues. He’s pushed to 28% rostered in Yahoo, so there’s time to climb on board. He pitches at Kansas City on the weekend.

While Harrison’s case needs some imagination, we have proof of concept with McCullers. He was an All-Star back in 2017 and received downballot Cy Young votes five years ago. He’s been a fantasy asset before. It’s just a matter of him staying healthy.

McCullers didn’t pitch at all in 2023 or 2024, and he was hit hard in 16 appearances last year (6.51 ERA, 1.80 WHIP). So it makes sense that he was completely off the radar during draft season. But McCullers answered the bell in his 2026 debut, holding the Red Sox to one run over seven innings. He scattered four hits, walked one, struck out nine.

McCullers doesn’t hold the velocity from his salad days, but his 92.4 mph readout Monday was a notable tick up from last year’s 91.6 mark. Stopping a deep Boston lineup also impresses me. I understand why McCullers still lags at 9% rostered in Yahoo leagues, but I’ll scout his upcoming Athletics start with interest.

While McCullers is looking to rebound from arm injuries in his past, Soroka’s rehab story has a different slant. It was a pair of Achilles tears that cost Soroka two full seasons, 2021 and 2022. His amazing 2019 debut season — when he was second in NL Rookie of the Year voting and sixth in the Cy Young ranks — feels like 20 years ago. Soroka is now with the Diamondbacks, his fifth team. He’s won just eight games since 2019.

But you couldn’t watch Soroka on Monday and not be impressed. He kept the Tigers off the scoreboard over five smooth innings, with 10 strikeouts. He walked just one, allowed four hits. And I don’t know if the radar guns are hot this month, but he was another pitcher showing increased velocity in his debut turn.

Soroka was such an easy watch in his Atlanta days, using impeccable control to get positive results. He was the hardest starting pitcher to homer off in 2019. You revel at watching a craftsman at work, and he felt like the latest Atlanta pitcher to steal our hearts.

Soroka is still just 28. Arizona has a competitive club and an outstanding defense. The next two turns aren’t easy — Soroka draws the Braves and Phillies — but he’s earned the right to at least be a proactive streamer. He currently is rostered in just 7% of Yahoo leagues.

Keeping comebacks in the theme of the day, I want to give you one hitter to consider. Jake Burger is doing good things in the cleanup spot for Texas. He homered in his first two games of the year, and knocked in two more runs Monday. That’s a tidy .471/.500/.882 start.

Injuries cost Burger about a third of the season last year, but keep in mind the 63-homer guy we saw in 2023 and 2024. This is merely his age-30 season. Given how depressed the first base position appears in 2026, I’m mildly surprised Burger is still available in about 70% of Yahoo leagues. Keep an open mind here.