Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Konnor Griffin made his major-league debut on Friday in the team’s home opener versus the Baltimore Orioles. He drove in a run in his first at-bat, hitting a double for a 1-0 Pittsburgh lead in the second inning. The Pirates went on to win, 5-4.

Batting seventh for the Pirates, Griffin came up as the third batter in the bottom of the second. Orioles pitcher Kyle Bradish walked Ryan O’Hearn to lead off the frame, followed by Spencer Horwitz striking out.

Against Griffin, after Bradish got ahead on a 1-2 count by throwing sliders, he left a curveball out over the plate that Griffin drove into the left-center-field gap. O’Hearn scored easily.

Griffin came around to score when the next batter, Jared Triolo, followed with a single. The Pirates scored four runs before the inning was over.

Defensively at shortstop, Griffin made the third out of the first inning, fielding a ground ball by Adley Rutschman and stepping on second base unassisted. He also started a 6-4-3 double play to end the second inning, fielding the ball and flipping it to second baseman Brandon Lowe for the relay to first base.

Leading off the fourth, Griffin drew a walk in his second plate appearance. He laid off sliders and sinkers from Bradish, who continued to work the rookie outside. Then facing left-hander Dietrich Enns in the fifth, Griffin made his first ABS challenge when he was called out looking on a changeup low and inside. The call was overturned. But Griffin struck out swinging two pitches later on a high, inside 95 mph fastball.

In his final at-bat of the day, Griffin grounded out on a comebacker to pitcher Rico Garcia, who flipped to Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso for the out.

Altogether, Griffin batted 1-for-3 in his MLB debut with an RBI and run scored. He also walked and struck out. Oneil Cruz, O’Hearn, Triolo and Henry Davis each driving in runs. Mitch Keller allowed two runs and four walks over six innings to earn the win.

Gunnar Henderson cut Pittsburgh’s lead to one run in the ninth inning with a solo home run off Gregory Soto. Soto recovered to strike out Alonso on three pitches to close the game out.

Griffin, who turns 20 on April 24, is the first teenager to make his MLB debut since Juan Soto did so with the Washington Nationals in 2018. For the Pirates, Aramis Ramirez debuted as a 19-year-old in 1998. 

Ranked as the No. 1 prospect in baseball by MLB.com and The Athletic, Griffin was the Pirates’ 2024 first-round pick (No. 9 overall) out of Jackson Preparatory School in Flowood, Mississippi.

Last season in the minors, he advanced from low-A to Double-A. Overall, he hit .333/.415/.527 with 21 home runs, 23 doubles, 94 RBI and 65 stolen bases in 563 plate appearances.

Griffin came into spring training with an opportunity to make the Pirates’ Opening Day roster. But while he hit four home runs, his spring triple-slash of .171/.261/.488 showed he needed some prep time, so the Pirates assigned him to Triple-A. That stint lasted only five games, however, in which Griffin hit .488/.571/.625 across 21 plate appearances.

The team is reportedly nearing agreement with Griffin on a nine-year, $140 million contract extension.

Caleb Williams said he had no idea NBA Hall of Famer George Gervin’s nickname was “Iceman” and that his motive for trying to trademark the name was about “control.”

“It’s funny because I didn’t know, my dad probably knows his [Gervin’s] nickname was that,” Williams told Front Office Sports this week. “It’s not anything between me and George or anything like that, it’s more or less people making clothing or people making things like that, and I can’t control what people are making of me or anything like that and putting the name on it. And so it’s just to control that aspect of it. That was the main reason of doing it.”

Last week, it was reported a company titled “Caleb Williams Holding, Inc.” submitted four trademarks in March related to “Iceman.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Bears quarterback filed the trademark so he could sell goods and services using the phrase.

Days later, Gervin Interests LLC filed trademarks for “Iceman” and “Iceman 44,” a reference to Gervin’s jersey number.

While Gervin was known as “Iceman” much earlier than Williams, his late registration for the trademark was due to confusion over “the death of a business associate,” Gervin Global Management president and CEO Jerald Barisano told the Sun-Times.

The whole situation didn’t sit well with the 73-year-old Gervin, who told the paper that while he respects Williams, the “Iceman” nickname “is taken.”

Williams, for his part, said he has no ill will toward Gervin and hopes to speak to the NBA legend at some point.

“It’s all respect to George,” Williams said. “I didn’t know personally, and I understand, maybe what he’s trying to do. We haven’t talked, him and I, and we may talk at some point, but it was nothing between George and I.”

Williams also has no plans to withdraw his trademark requests, saying that while he didn’t like the nickname at first, now he feels it “fits.”

“It’s the right fit, the right nickname, and so, I think it fits. Chicago’s freakin’ frigid for many, many months out of the year,” Williams said. “I think it fits. My teammates started calling me it, and it festered into a whole thing, whether it’s social media or the media side of it, and obviously it started with my teammates.”

It will likely takes months before the issue is sorted out and the “Iceman” trademark is awarded. Gervin, however, said he plans to contest the decision if Williams is given the trademark.

“I’m really the ‘Iceman’ in sports,” Gervin told the Sun-Times.

The Chicago White Sox have a lengthy history in MLB, but World Series titles have been elusive. Since the franchise’s first year in 1901, the team has won the World Series just three times, the most recent of which came in 2005.

The man at the center of that win — manager Ozzie Guillén — finally got his flowers from the team Friday, learning during the broadcast that he would have his number retired by the franchise.

Upon hearing the news, Guillén immediately burst into tears in an incredibly touching moment. One of Guillén’s players on that World Series-winning team — outfielder Scott Podsednik — nearly got choked up as he read the news to Guillén.

But since it was Guillén, there was obviously going to be some humor involved. He showed off his wit and sarcasm just moments before getting the news, joking that he thought he was getting “another bobblehead.” It made the moment all the more enjoyable when Guillén found out the news was much better than that.

Guillén then called his wife onto the broadcast and shared a hug and kiss with her before waving to the cheering White Sox crowd. After all the dust had settled and his emotions were in check, Guillén quipped, “I can die August 9 now.” The White Sox will retire Guillén’s No. 13 on Aug. 8.

Guillén’s time in Chicago extends far beyond his managerial career in the city. After signing with the San Diego Padres as a shortstop in 1980, Guillén was traded to the White Sox in 1984. He made his MLB debut with Chicago the following year and spent his first 13 seasons in the majors with the franchise. Guillén, known for his strong defense up the middle, won the Rookie of the Year award, made three All-Star teams and won a Gold Glove with the White Sox.

Following his playing career, Guillén went into coaching. He was hired by the White Sox in 2004 and led the team to a winning record in his first season with the club. The next year, Guillén led the team to a 99-win season that culminated in a World Series title.

Thanks to some incredible starting pitching, and Guillén’s willingness to ride his aces, the White Sox went 11-1 in the postseason that year, one of the most dominant playoff records ever.

Guillén remained the team’s manager for six more seasons, going 678-617 in his eight years as manager.

Following his managerial career, Guillén eventually returned to the team as a local broadcaster, where he provides analysis of the team and finds ways to work in his trademark humor at every opportunity.

There is no good time to lose a player like Luka Dončić, and no good way to lose him. But the way the Los Angeles Lakers lost him Thursday night — in the midst of getting absolutely poleaxed by the defending NBA champion and Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, to a non-contact soft tissue injury, just over two weeks before the start of the 2026 NBA playoffs — is about as brutal as it gets.

The Lakers’ lifespan this season likely rests on his left hamstring strain, which will keep Dončić shelved for the remainder of the regular season. “There’s a lot on the line,” is how injury expert Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes put it, and that’s true in multiple directions: for the fate of Dončić’s late-season surge toward the top of the Most Valuable Player race, yes — seriously, it’s like someone wished on a cursed monkey’s paw that voters could see what the Lakers looked like without Luka — but also for L.A.’s chances of winning a playoff series for the first time in three years.

“At this point, at this juncture of the season, it’s the last thing you want to see,” LeBron James told reporters.

Hindsight is 20/20, and also unhelpful, but watching how Thursday’s game unfolded after the fact, you start to wince in anticipation of what’s coming. Late in the first quarter of what was already a blowout against Oklahoma City, you could see Dončić grimacing as he ran back on defense after a jump stop and layup and after hitting the deck on a drive. Soon after, you could see him reaching for his left hamstring — which he’d strained back in February, costing him four games heading into the All-Star break — after missing a free throw, and again while James shot one.

After a brief rest at the start of the second quarter, he appeared to be moving gingerly, but remained in the game, delivering a pair of assists and drilling a 3 over great defense by Luguentz Dort. Late in the second, though, Dončić drove on Thunder guard Cason Wallace, leaped to throw a cross-court pass to Luke Kennard in the corner, and then once again came down grimacing and reaching for the back of his left leg. He labored on his way back down the floor, grabbing for it again after a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dunk, before staying in for the final minute of the first half.

Dončić received treatment on his left hamstring at halftime, but Lakers coach JJ Redick said that he’d been cleared to return to the contest.

“We’re not going to put a player at risk,” Redick told reporters. “Those things happen.”

And when they do, all you can do is deal with the fallout as best you can … and brace for impact.

The Lakers now find themselves facing the prospect of an indefinite stretch without one of the NBA’s most overwhelming forces — a near-peerless offensive engine whose ability to consistently create and cash good looks for himself and his teammates at Herculean volume has been the driving force behind their second straight 50-win campaign.

Dončić is headed for his second scoring title, pouring in a league-best 33.5 points per game; his 8.3 assists per game are good for third in the NBA, behind only Nikola Jokić and Cade Cunningham. Between his own scoring and the points he generates via assist, Dončić accounts for 71.2 of the Lakers’ 116.5 points per game, according to Databallr; only Jokic (72.2) creates more.

The advanced metrics, as you might expect, largely paint Dončić in a beatific light. Among players who’ve played at least 60 games, Luka ranks third in value over replacement player, fourth in estimated plus-minus, box plus-minus and Jeremias Engelmann’s xRAPM, fifth in player efficiency rating, win shares and Neil Paine’s wins above replacement, and sixth in The BBall Index’s LEBRON and DARKO daily plus-minus. 

Reasonable people can disagree over whether Dončić’s brilliant play and towering production merits placement ahead of the likes of Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić and Victor Wembanyama in this year’s Most Valuable Player race. It’s pretty close to inarguable, though, that he’s in their company, ticketed for a fourth top-five finish on the MVP ballot and a sixth selection to the All-NBA First Team.

Or, at least, he was.

Thursday’s game was Dončić’s 64th of the season; as you’ve no doubt heard, players must appear in 65 games to be eligible for year-end awards under the player participation guidelines the NBA instituted before the 2023-24 season. Dončić won’t hit that criterion.

While the policy does include a “season-ending injury” exception, that clause only applies to players who’ve appeared in at least 85% of their team’s games prior to suffering the injury; Dončić has played 64 of the Lakers’ 77 games, which is just over 83%. (The one-game suspension that Dončić served this week for racking up too many technical fouls now looms awfully large.) There is also perhaps one more avenue for Dončić to gain awards eligibility, but it certainly seems like a long shot:  

Still, Dončić’s agent, Bill Duffy, said Friday they would apply for the extraordinary circumstances exception so the Lakers star could be eligible for end-of-season honors.

If Dončić is unable to qualify, then he’ll join Cunningham, Anthony Edwards and a litany of high-profile players who find themselves ineligible for consideration by the media members who comprise the awards electorate — an exceedingly rare case of a player being able to lead the league in scoring, but unable to be recognized as one of its 15 best players.

Beyond individual accolades, though, the uncertainty surrounding Dončić’s wheels obviously places a massive hurdle in front of the Lakers with just 10 days left in the regular season — one that threatens to derail the momentum they’ve built up during a sensational stint that had seen them win 16 of 18 games entering Thursday.

Entering Friday’s action, the Lakers sit at 50-27, one game ahead of the 49-28 Denver Nuggets, who’ve won seven straight. L.A. stands a decent chance of holding onto the No. 3 spot in the Western standings, by virtue of both holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over Denver and facing a season-ending slate that includes matchups against the tanktastic Mavericks and Jazz, which, according to Tankathon’s remaining schedule strength rankings, looks significantly friendlier than the Nuggets’ closing kick, which features two more meetings with Wembanyama’s Spurs.

Whether the Lakers hold onto third place or drop down to fourth, though, they desperately need Dončić back in the fold to have any shot of making a deep playoff run — and maybe even just to make it out of a first-round matchup against either the Houston Rockets or a Minnesota Timberwolves team that drummed L.A. out of the 2025 postseason.

The Lakers are 43-21 (.672 winning percentage) with Dončić in the lineup and just 7-6 (.538) without him, with four of those seven wins coming against the woebegone Kings, Mavericks, Wizards and injury-ravaged Warriors. They’ve been outscored by 2 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with Dončić off the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass, scoring like a bottom-10 offense in those minutes — even when both James and Austin Reaves have been available to carry the offensive load.

That relative punchlessness likely informs the dire outlook that multiple public-facing projection systems offered Friday morning. Dunks and Threes and ESPN’s Basketball Power Index both give the Lakers less than a 50% chance of making it out of Round 1, while Basketball-Reference.com has dropped their odds of hoisting the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy all the way down to 0.2%.

Projection isn’t prophecy, of course. With time to gameplan, to shuffle the deck and find a new angle of attack — possibly slotting Rui Hachimura or Jake LaRavia in the starting five, alongside a returned-from-ankle-injury Marus Smart — maybe James, Reaves, Redick and Co. will have enough in reserve to be able to stay the course for however long Dončić’s absence might last. What those odds underscore, though, is a fundamental truth of life on the eve of the playoffs for teams vying for the crown: The margins are vanishingly thin at this time of year, and sometimes, all it takes to swing them is one false decel step.

After more than two months out of action, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry “is expected to be cleared to return” to the floor for Sunday’s matchup with former teammate Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets, according to Shams Charania and Anthony Slater of ESPN.

Curry hasn’t played since Jan. 30, sidelined by lingering pain and swelling in his right knee that has cost him the last 27 games. Sam Amick and Nick Friedell of The Athletic reported Tuesday that Curry was targeting a weekend return after going through his first full practice in months.

“He went through a full practice, but it was very light,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told reporters. “We didn’t do anything live. He’s gonna scrimmage right now five-on-five. It’s a good step for him.”

With Curry taking more steps as the week wore on, he and the Warriors are now reportedly poised to end an absence that, combined with the loss of All-Star forward Jimmy Butler to a torn right ACL in late January, sent Golden State plummeting down the standings.

With the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player in the lineup this season, the Warriors have gone 23-16, outscoring opponents by 2.5 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with a near-top-five offense, according to Cleaning the Glass. Since his injury, though, they’ve gone 9-18 with the NBA’s fifth-worst offense and eighth-worst defense, plunging from eighth place in the West down to 10th, headed for their third straight trip to the Western Conference’s play-in tournament, and their fourth in the past six seasons. (The Warriors have also lost fifth-year swingman Moses Moody, who was in the midst of a career year, for the remainder of the season to a torn patellar tendon.)

The Warriors have five games left before the end of the regular season: three at home, against the Rockets, Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers, before finishing on the road against the Kings and Los Angeles Clippers. (The home finale against the Lakers and the road game in Sacramento are a back-to-back; it’s unlikely Curry will play both ends of that as he works his way back into form.) They enter Friday’s action at 36-41, three games behind the ninth-place Clippers.

It’s still mathematically possible for Golden State to leapfrog the Clips, but the overwhelming likelihood is Kerr’s club will need to win two play-in games on the road just to earn the right to advance to the postseason proper as the No. 8 seed in an opening-round series against whichever Western power finishes atop the conference. The defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder hold a two-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs with five games remaining.

Even with Curry back, the Warriors would be a sizable underdog against the West’s top seed. But according to Slater and Charania, the 38-year-old “has remained motivated behind the scenes to work his way back and return in time to give the franchise a boost in spirit to close out a turbulent season, even if championship hopes are unrealistic.”

“Just compete. That’s the job,” Kerr told Amick of The Athletic earlier this week. “And Steph’s in the final stages of his career. If he has a chance to be in the playoffs, he’s gonna want to [compete], and our group’s gonna wanna too.”

Prior to his injury, Curry was continuing to produce like one of the best offensive players in the world, averaging 27.2 points and 4.8 assists in 31.3 minutes per game, shooting 58% on 2-pointers, 39% on 3-pointers and 93% from the free-throw line — numbers that earned him his 12th All-Star nod, and very well might have resulted in a 12th All-NBA selection, had he played enough games to qualify for the honor.

(For the season, Curry’s 29th in the NBA in total made 3-pointers — despite appearing in only 39 games. This is also the ninth time in his career that he’s posted a usage rate north of 30% and a true shooting percentage north of 60% — tied with LeBron James for the most such seasons in NBA history.)

Curry’s return would also give Golden State brass a chance to see how he meshes with newcomer big man Kristaps Porziņġis, and how the team looks with them both on the court. They’ve yet to suit up together since the 7-foot-3 Latvian joined the squad at February’s 2025 NBA trade deadline; with Porziņġis set to hit unrestricted free agency after the season, even a small sample of shared floor time could help inform the organization’s path forward this summer, when it reportedly intends to make yet another run at major additions to fortify the roster around longtime franchise centerpiece Curry.

“That will be crazy,” Warriors forward Gui Santos recently told Friedell of The Athletic. “You’ve got Porziņģis, who can do whatever he wants in the paint. You’ve got Steph, who can do whatever he wants in the whole court. So, a pick-and-roll between both, I don’t know who can guard that. That’s going to be really, really interesting to watch the next couple games.”

Mac McClung continues to rewrite G League history.

On Friday, the 27-year-old three-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion became the first player to win multiple G League MVP awards. Last month, during a 59-point outing, the Chicago Bulls two-way guard, who stars for their affiliate, the Windy City Bulls, overtook Renaldo Major in career points, establishing himself as the league’s all-time leading scorer.

The G League has been around since 2001. Over five seasons, McClung has combined for 5,335 points across the G League’s tip-off tournament, regular season and playoffs. For reference, Major scored 5,299 points in the span of 10 seasons.

McClung last won MVP with the Osceola Magic during the 2023-24 campaign. The season before that, he won a G League title with the Delaware Blue Coats.

Just as he did with the G League’s Magic two seasons ago, McClung took home the scoring title this time around. He led the league with 31.8 points per game, plus he averaged 7.9 assists while making 3.5 triples per contest.

McClung still has only 11 NBA games under his belt, five of which he’s played this season, but since going undrafted out of Texas Tech in 2021, the springy, 6-foot-2 sensation has found a way to make an impact on the basketball world during his nomadic pro career.

McClung initially went viral for his dunks at Gate City High School in Virginia. He eventually showed off his hops on a global stage at the NBA Slam Dunk Contest: first in 2023, then again in 2024 and once more in 2025, when he completed his milestone three-peat in the event.

The contest could have used him in 2026. After an underwhelming showcase without McClung, he posted four dunks he would have performed. His creativity and athleticism remain impressive.

McClung began his college career at Georgetown before transferring to Texas Tech. He was part of a Red Raiders team that earned a No. 6 seed in the 2021 NCAA tournament before bowing out in the Round of 32.

Over the subsequent years, he’s had a collection of NBA regular-season opportunities, however, they’ve been fleeting.

Early this season, the guard-needy Indiana Pacers signed McClung to a multi-year deal — his first standard NBA contract — except they waived him less than two weeks later.

McClung played in three games for the Pacers, all losses. He averaged 6.3 points, 1.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals off the bench.

In two games with the Bulls this season, he’s tallied a combined 12 points. He got the nod on Wednesday and scored eight points on 3-of-6 shooting in a lopsided loss to the Pacers.

McClung’s played limited NBA minutes for the Bulls, Lakers, 76ers, Magic and Pacers. His chances at that level have been sporadic.

In the G League, though, his dominance has been consistent.