Injuries continue to ravage the Golden State Warriors after the team lost four more players Friday night during their 127-117 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Lower back soreness knocked out Draymond Green 30 minutes before tipoff; Quinten Post suffered a sprained left ankle; and Al Horford (right calf tightness) and Seth Curry (left adductor soreness) exited the game at separate points.

For Sunday’s game against the New York Knicks, the Warriors have ruled out Green, Kristaps Porziņģis, Horford, Moody, Melton and both of the Curry brothers. Post is questionable for Sunday’s game.

Against the Timberwolves, the Warriors lost their fourth straight game and ninth in their past 12. At 32-34, they sit ninth in the Western Conference and have not won consecutive games since a four-game winning streak in mid-January.

“We’re going through it for sure,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr, via NBC Bay Area. “But you saw how hard the guys played and stayed in it and got the fans into it. We can’t ask anything more of our players right now what they’re giving effort-wise and playing together. But yeah, we’re about as beaten up as any team.”

The injury situation was already worrisome for the Warriors, who lost Jimmy Butler to a torn ACL in January and have not had Stephen Curry for the past 16 games due to a right knee injury.

(Curry, along with Butler, will not reach the league’s 65-game threshold for year-end awards this season.)

The road to turning around the final quarter of the season doesn’t get easier. The Warriors begin a six-game road trip on Sunday, which features games against the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks and Detroit Pistons. 

While there was no update on the statuses of Green, Post and Seth Curry after the game, Kerr said Horford suffered a calf “strain” and will likely miss time.

“With a calf, we’re not going to rush him back,” Kerr said.

Cal Raleigh seemed to make clear this week that he wasn’t interested in handing out fist bumps to opponents. Randy Arozarena tried and was unsuccessful. After days of speculation about supposed beef between the Seattle Mariners teammates, Josh Naylor attempted his luck during Friday’s World Baseball Classic quarterfinal between the United States and Canada.

He, too, failed.

In Naylor’s defense, he didn’t head to the plate expecting Raleigh to suddenly change his mind on the in-game greeting.

Naylor said after Canada’s 5-3 defeat to the U.S. that he had texted Raleigh prior to the game to let his Mariners teammate know he was going to do it before his first at-bat. The catcher responded simply, “Please don’t.”

“We were all just joking. Trying to really make light of the situation,” said Naylor. “But me and Cal are really good friends. He’s an awesome teammate and honestly one of my favorite teammates I think I’ve ever had in my career. He’s such a leader, too. I was really, really happy to get traded to the Mariners last year and kind of experience being in the locker room with him.”

The interaction at home plate was kept to a quick exchange of pleasantries.

“He’s like, ‘Good to see you, brother.’ And I was like, ‘Good to see you, too,'” said Naylor.

Raleigh’s “no fist bumping ” policy started with the Arozarena snub earlier this week. It wasn’t really noticed until the Mariners outfielder went off on his Seattle teammate to Mexican journalist Luis Gilbert, saying that Raleigh should “f*** off” and “go to hell.”

“The only thing he should be thankful for is having such great parents,” Arozarena said in Spanish, via a translation from The Athletic. “He’s very well educated, thank God. I was lucky enough to see them a few days ago at the hotel. They came over to greet me, gave me a big hug and were genuinely proud to see me again.”

Then, the interview turned. “That ‘good to see you’ that he said to me,” Arozarena said. “He can shove it straight up his a**. I’m out.”

Mariners manager Dan Wilson said he wasn’t worried about the dynamic when the players get back to camp.

Arozarena issued a statement on Saturday when he arrived back at Mariners camp, saying, via the team interpreter: “We didn’t get the results we wanted with Team Mexico, but I’m glad to be back in camp with my teammates. The WBC is behind us now, and I don’t want anything to take away from the Mariners. I’m focused on the season and helping this team compete for a World Series.”

Raleigh explained his stance by saying the WBC games are meaningful, unlike what we see in spring training.

“These are super important,” Raleigh said. “I have a responsibility to my teammates and my country to be locked in and focused each game and do everything I can to win.”

Naylor made sure to emphasize that there is no issue with Raleigh and that he knew what the likely outcome would be when he attempted the greeting.

“It’s not that big of a deal to be completely honest,” said Naylor. “I like joking with my teammates and he’s an awesome friend of mine. So I love Cal and wish him the best. I can’t wait to see him and joke about him with it in the locker room when we get back to Arizona.”

Fourteen years ago, on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, a group of 20 eager, Canadian teenage baseball players were handed a humbling bit of news.

The club, made up of talented high schoolers from across the commonwealth, was holding a pregame meeting before its opening matchup of the 2012 18-and-under Baseball World Championship against Team Japan. Head coach Greg Hamilton, a no-nonsense Canadian baseball lifer, strolled into the room. He gazed at the kids he’d helped assemble, the majority of whom had never been so far from home. A handful, such as Josh Naylor, Cal Quantrill and Jacob Robson, would go onto play in the majors. Others would carve out minor-league careers. Some chose other paths.

But all of them remember the rest of that day. It started with a scouting report from Hamilton that was half-warning, half-pep-talk.

“The guy on the mound for Japan is the best 18-year-old pitcher in the world.” the typically sensible, un-hyperbolic skipper told his players, according to Robson. “And he’s also the best 18-year-old hitter in the world.”

He was, of course, referring to Shohei Ohtani.

Although, technically speaking, Ohtani’s name did not yet have an anglicized H. During the 2012 18U BWC, both his Samurai Japan uniform and the official box scores spelled that now unmistakable surname “Otani.”

Things are a little different now. These days, the 31-year-old is a global superstar, a national hero and the captain of Japan’s quest to capture back-to-back World Baseball Classic titles. Three years ago, in his first WBC appearance, Ohtani propelled his club to glory with an unprecedented two-way performance. He won the tournament’s MVP Award by going 10-for-23 at the plate with 10 walks and five extra-base hits. He also made two brilliant starts, as well as an unforgettably dramatic relief appearance to close out the championship game against then-teammate Mike Trout. 

With the 2026 tournament in full swing, and Samurai Japan set to play Venezuela in the quarterfinals on Saturday night, the focus is once again on Ohtani.

But while his international career has blossomed into the stuff of legend, it started with a disappointing afternoon in front of a reported attendance of just 125 people. In the first Team Japan appearance of his life, Ohtani, already a decently known character in his homeland, was bested by a pesky squad of Canadians who didn’t know who he was until Greg Hamilton told them.

“[Hamilton] went on to say that he didn’t say it to get us scared,” Robson explained. “He was just trying to prepare us, like, ‘Hey, he throws super hard. He knows what he’s doing.’ Everybody’s been on him since he was a young kid. He’s a prodigy.”

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Prodigy he might have been, but Ohtani’s final pitching line that day was underwhelming: 3 1/3 innings, 3 hits, 3 earned runs, 4 walks, 4 strikeouts. At the plate, he went 1-for-3 with an intentional walk and a laser-beam, double-play lineout that nearly decapitated Canadian hurler Ryan Kellogg.

Coincidentally, though a handful of MLB evaluators were in attendance, it was a significantly smaller group than one might expect. That’s because a highly touted Korean lefty named Hyun-Jin Ryu, who was set to move to MLB that winter, was throwing the same day for the Hanwha Eagles. And so a number of scouts who would’ve otherwise seen Ohtani were out watching Ryu.

But even though Ohtani got knocked around and knocked out early, the opposing hitters were blown away by his stuff.

“I step in the box, and he’s just pumping heat, 94, 95,” remembered shortstop Daniel Pinero, who went on to win a College World Series with the University of Virginia. “At that time, nobody threw that hard, especially high schoolers. And we were coming from Canada, too, where it was 85, 86.

“This long, lanky kid goes on the mound, and he’s just pumping heat, with nasty movement, too, and we’re like, ‘OK, this kid is disgusting.’”

That overpowering arsenal left Canada flummoxed in the early going, with Ohtani inducing some ugly, ugly swings along the way. He struck out three in the second inning, including Naylor, the future All-Star and 2026 team captain for Canada in the WBC. In the third, Ohtani’s command abandoned him, as a walk, a few passed balls and a single led to Canada’s first run. Things went south one inning later, when a walk, a hit-by-pitch and two singles gave Canada the lead.

That brought Japan’s manager out of the dugout for a pitching change, but Ohtani’s day was far from done.

“I think they took him out of the game, and he just jogged to the outfield,” Robson said. “I think he played outfield every inning he didn’t pitch.”

Ohtani also continued to take at-bats, flaring an RBI single to left in the seventh and drawing an intentional walk in the ninth. Japan took the lead in the seventh, but Canada sent the game to extra innings in dramatic fashion in the bottom of the ninth, with a game-tying, two-run homer off the bat of third baseman Jesse Hodges. The Canadians ultimately walked it off on a wild pitch in the 10th, completing the upset.

“These are the types of games that you dream for as a kid,” Hodges was quoted as saying afterward. “Hitting a home run to tie the game in the ninth for your country is the best feeling in the world.”

That victory pushed Canada to one of its best results on the international stage, a silver medal, following a loss to Team USA in the title game. Ohtani would pitch one more time in the tournament, in the fifth-place game against host Korea. In that one, he was dominant, striking out 12 across seven innings of two-run ball, a more appropriate harbinger of the stellar international career he’d go on to have.

But that first outing? Against Canada? For Ohtani and his teammates, it was one to forget. But for the Canadian players, it was a core memory, one they think about to this day.

Said Robson: “I always say that to random people when they’re talking about Ohtani — like, ‘Oh, I played against him in high school.’ 

“They’re like, ‘What?’”

Bam Adebayo and Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra answered critics of the star big man’s 83-point effort in Tuesday’s 150-129 win over the Washington Wizards.

“I apologize to absolutely no one,” Spoelstra told reporters, via ClutchPoints’ Zachary Weinberger.

Adebayo scored the second-highest total in a single game in NBA history, second to Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962 and surpassing Kobe Bryant’s 81 points in 2006. However, many observers questioned the integrity of Adebayo’s performance, during which he took 43 free throws (the most in an NBA game) and attempted 22 3-pointers.

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Spoelstra said Adebayo was doing exactly what was asked of him before the game. The effort simply went in a direction no one could have anticipated, resulting in what Spoelstra called “a magical night.”

“It’s a Tuesday night game against a team where they’re not playing for anything, the organization is trying to lose,” the Heat coach explained. “We’ve already lost a game in that kind of situation. We have players that are sitting out.

“And I spoke to Bam … I want, as our best player and team captain, for him to be locked in. And he sure was. … He approached that game appropriately.”

Later, after the Heat’s 112-105 win over the Milwaukee Bucks,Adebayo went at his critics just as hard:

“For the couch coaches, if you’re in my shoes … I was not the one who let me go 1-on-1 the whole game without letting me see a double.”

“I’m going for it. You can’t be mad at that. If you are mad, I don’t care,” he added.

Detractors noted Adebayo’s performance came against a Wizards team that has the third-worst record in the NBA and is apparently tanking in efforts to win the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft. However, a win was important for Miami, which currently holds the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference but is only a half-game from falling to the seventh spot, which would put them in the mix for a play-in spot rather than an assured playoff berth.

Others faulted Spoelstra’s eventual strategy of committing fouls to get the Heat more offensive possessions and thus more opportunities for Adebayo to score. That was one of the reasons Yahoo Sports’ Tom Haberstroh said Adebayo’s effort should be accompanied with an asterisk (albeit with a wink).

Yet with 62 points after the third quarter and Miami holding a 14-point lead, a historic scoring total was within reach and achieving it became a rallying point for the team and fans at Kaseya Center.

The coach dismissed attempts to define the effort as “unethical” or not playing real basketball. Those making such accusations likely didn’t even see Tuesday’s game and the circumstances of Adebayo’s performance.

“That’s unethical,” Spoelstra said.

Adebayo also noted chasing records is kind of the point of records:

“If you’re mad, I don’t care, because a lot of people, they’re upset because if they did play, they never had a chance to get that close to chasing greatness. And if you get that close to chasing greatness, that’s the point of chasing it, so you can surpass it.”

Spoelstra cited the galvanizing effect of the Heat players uniting toward one effort as important for the team’s playoff drive through the remaining 16 games of the regular season.

“This locker room has wanted something … I texted a little bit with Dwyane [Wade] afterwards and he’s talking about that buzz. Well, there’s going to be a buzz now,” he said. “There will be a responsibility to that buzz. Good. I want there to be pressure on our team.”

Ivica Zubac made his debut for the Indiana Pacers against the Phoenix Suns, scoring 8 points with 6 rebounds in 16 minutes of play. Zubac, 28, was originally listed as questionable for Thursday’s game; Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle told reporters on Tuesday that Zubac was close to returning from a left ankle sprain suffered in December.

Zubac was traded to the Pacers along with Kobe Brown in a deal that sent Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, two first-round picks, and one second-round pick to the Los Angeles Clippers before this year’s trade deadline. 

Zubac had become a reliable role player over the past few seasons for the Clippers. His stock rose further after a breakthrough season last year, when he was named to the second-team NBA All-Defensive team for the first time. Zubac also averaged a career-high 16.8 points and 12.6 rebounds last season and finished sixth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.

While Zubac’s numbers have decreased this season, he still posted a double-double average with 14.4 points and 11 rebounds per game in 43 games. Zubac spent his entire career in LA, and was a second-round draft pick for the Lakers in 2016 before being traded to the Clippers in 2019.

Zubac now appears set to be the Pacers’ center of the future after the team lost Myles Turner to the Milwaukee Bucks in free agency this offseason. He will also team up with Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton and forward Pascal Siakam. Siakam was an All-Star this season, while Haliburton has been out so far this season after suffering a torn Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.

The Pacers are currently 15-50 and sit last in the Eastern Conference. Using Zubac late in the season, despite their record, might help prevent the Pacers from facing further punishment after they were fined, along with the Utah Jazz, for violating the league’s player participation policy.

While the NBA world remains absolutely flummoxed after Bam Adebayo’s 83-point inferno, we’ve witnessed another historic feat that melts the brain.

On the eve of Halloween in 2024, the San Antonio Spurs did something that no team has been able to accomplish since. They “held” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to under 20 points. I deliberately put held in quotation marks because the Spurs were getting beat so badly in that game that SGA barely needed to play in the fourth quarter. He finished with 18 points.

On Thursday, 127 games later, Gilgeous-Alexander passed Wilt Chamberlain for the most consecutive games with at least 20 points, a record that stood for over half a century. 

It’s a streak that has gone on for so long it began before Cooper Flagg had ever played a game at Duke. 

To put Gilgeous-Alexander’s streak and his MVP candidacy into proper perspective, here are seven ways to better understand how Gilgeous-Alexander is wrecking the record books. 

1. SGA’s streak is longer than the next two longest current active streaks combined: Kawhi Leonard and Joel Embiid. Actually, it’s longer than the next TEN highest streaks combined.

Kawhi Leonard has delivered a metronome-like scoring streak for the Clippers this season. From Nov. 28 to now, he has put up 20-plus points in 43 straight games. It’s incredible. Joel Embiid has strung together 24 straight games of his own with at least 20 points. Impressive! Tyrese Maxey has mounted 13 such games in a row. Remarkable.

Between this chart and Bam Adebayo’s 83, the Wizards have seen a lot of red recently. Yeah, it’s been a tough week for them.

USA vs. Canada box score: Full stats from 2026 World Baseball Classic quarterfinal originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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It’s do-or-die time at the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Pool play is over — and while a team could overcome one loss in its previous action, now one bad night will end its run in the tournament. For Team USA, which fell to Italy in its final Pool B game to drop to 3-1, then got some help from that same Italy team to advance to the quarterfinals, everything will be on the line starting Friday night.

The U.S. will be tasked with beating a team that continues to rise at the WBC: Canada. The Canadians have made the quarterfinals for the first time ever, using a 3-1 start in Pool A to advance to the elimination bracket.

MORE: Follow live updates on the WBC quarterfinal game between U.S and Canada 

As Logan Webb gets the ball for Team USA and Michael Soroka pitches for Canada, only one team can advance to the semifinals.

The Sporting News is tracking the full box score and updated stats from Friday’s WBC matchup between the United States and Canada. Below, you can find the full numbers from each team’s lineup.

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC HQ:Live scores | Updated standings | Full TV schedule

USA vs. Canada baseball box score

USA stats

Hitting

Pitching

Canada stats

Hitting

Pitching

MORE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC 2026:

• The biggest differences between WBC vs. MLB
• How many innings in World Baseball Classic games?
• Why WBC games can end early with mercy rule
• How qualifying, pool play, standings and more work in the WBC

World number one Aryna Sabalenka roared into her third Indian Wells WTA 1000 final on Friday, overpowering 14th-ranked Czech Linda Noskova 6-3, 6-4.

The Belarusian star, chasing her first Indian Wells title after runner-up finishes in 2023 and 2025, could find herself up against Elena Rybakina in a rematch of the Australian Open final won by Rybakina in January.

Kazakhstan’s Rybakina, who also beat Sabalenka in the 2023 Indian Wells final, faced ninth-ranked Ukrainian veteran Elina Svitolina in the other semi-final.

Sabalenka fired 37 winners, including 11 aces, applying relentless pressure from the baseline against her 21-year-old opponent.

She broke the big-serving Noskova twice as she powered to a 5-1 lead in the opening set.

There was a hiccup as she tried to serve out the set and Sabalenka, who had lost just one point in her first three service games, was broken.

Noskova kept the set alive with a battling hold in a marathon eighth game, fending off a set point with a service winner and sealing the game with an ace.

Serving for the set again, Sabalenka opened with a double fault and went down 0-30, but a pair of big serves and a backhand winner brought her to set point and she claimed it with an ace.

Sabalenka broke Noskova to open the second and was on her way. Noskova fended off a second break, but she was unable to convert a break opportunity in the eighth game as Sabalenka brought it home, capping the victory with a forehand winner on her third match point.

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