Kevin O’Connor & Tom Haberstroh break down the surprisingly fiery NBA Wednesday, giving their thoughts on Jaylen Brown’s best SGA impression, the historic overtime collapse of the Houston Rockets vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves and the return of Joel Embiid & Paul George to the 76ers.
They react to Adam Silver’s recent press conference with big questions about tanking and expansion and discuss Victor Wembanyama’s MVP case. KOC & Tom also preview the biggest matchups and players in watch in the Sweet Sixteen round of March Madness games.
(1:03) Celtics beat Thunder at home (13:28) Wolves comeback vs. Rockets in OT (30:09) Heat blow out Cavs (37:12) Embiid & George return to 76ers (39:46) Will Billy Donovan leave Bulls for Tar Heels? (45:34) Will Steph Curry move to Charlotte? (51:16) Draymond Green comments on Wemby MVP case (1:00:45) State of Milwaukee Bucks (1:04:05) Adam Silver talks tanking, expansion & 65-game rule (1:23:31) NCAA Sweet Sixteen preview
HOUSTON, TEXAS – JANUARY 16: Head coach Ime Udoka of the Houston Rockets speaks with the team during the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Toyota Center on January 16, 2026 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Kenneth Richmond/Getty Images)
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that the league plans to implement major changes to its draft lottery system with an eye toward curbing the practice of tanking.
“We are going to fix it,” Silver said. “Full stop.”
“I would say virtually everything we covered at the board meeting was very positive,” Silver said. “One topic, not so positive. And that’s ongoing tanking issues in the league.”
The league’s owners had “a lengthy conversation about the issue,” according to Silver, who acknowledged that franchises doing less than their level best to win — intentionally plunging to the bottom of the standings in hopes of improving their chances of landing higher draft picks — is nothing new. Concerns about teams purposely putting non-competitive teams on the floor in pursuit of potentially transformative talents have persisted for decades, helping lead to the introduction of the NBA Draft Lottery in 1985.
“That lottery has been modified four times since then,” Silver noted. “Obviously, it does not seem to be operating optimally, where we are now.”
Adam Silver watches a game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Utah Jazz at Moda Center on March 13, 2026, in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Images)
Soobum Im via Getty Images
Over the years, the NBA has seen plenty of instances of teams choosing not to play certain players, often late in the season, with their sights set on improving their draft positioning and/or ensuring that they keep a protected pick that they’d previously traded away and that would be conveyed to another team if it landed after a certain spot in the draft order. Such machinations have become more pronounced and begun coming earlier in the season of late, though.
Last March — ahead of a 2025 NBA Draft headlined by Cooper Flagg — the Utah Jazz were fined $100,000 for sitting star scorer Lauri Markkanen. Last month, the league fined the Jazz $500,000, and the Indiana Pacers $100,000, claiming that the teams’ approach to roster management in certain games represented “overt behavior […] that prioritizes draft positioning over winning [and] undermines the foundation of NBA competition.” (Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle later called the fine, and the process by which the league arrived at it, “ridiculous.”)
Ahead of February’s trade deadline, some teams dealt away star players with an eye toward entering full rebuilds. Others traded for star players, only to then keep them in street clothes with various reported injuries.
“There is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild — a rebuild with integrity,” Silver said. “The problem we’re having these days is, it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.”
A month after Silver said that the league was considering “every possible remedy” to limit tanking and informed the NBA’s 30 general managers that changes would be forthcoming, the race to the bottom shows no signs of abating ahead of the 2026 NBA Draft, which will likely feature a number of highly touted prospects, including Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson, among others.
“This may be an unusual year, because of a perception of such a deep draft,” Silver said. “I’d say that’s combined with the advent of advanced analytics in all sports, that teams are now making calculations in terms of opportunities and risks and rewards. And I understand where that incentive takes our teams.”
A decade removed from “Process” architect Sam Hinkie’s ouster in Philadelphia, it became clear by the All-Star break that nearly one-third of the NBA’s teams were operating as if it would be better for them to lose than to win. That’s because under the current structure — with cost-controlled talent at a premium in the apron era, with free agency decreasing as a viable option for many franchises (especially smaller-market ones) to add elite players, and with the draft still likely the most direct path many teams have at being able to have a shot at a generational difference-maker — it arguably is.
Which is why, according to Silver, the league will look to take aim at that incentive structure — an approach that the commissioner said “seemed unanimous in the room” of team owners, who agreed on the need to make a change to the system before the 2026 NBA Draft and free agency period.
What specific changes the league office might look to implement, however, remains unclear. Previous reports have suggested that the NBA’s powers that be have discussed a range of ideas, including limiting protections on first-round draft picks, freezing lottery odds at some point during the season rather than at its end, preventing teams from picking in the top four in consecutive years, giving every lottery team the same odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick, and more. Silver said the governors are continuing to work through proposals, with a “special board meeting” likely coming in May and featuring a vote on “whatever modification we come up with.”
“I do think ultimately this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level,” Silver said. “It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league. So, it’s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop. And I want to say that directly to our fans.”
While Silver’s intention is clear, the path is not. The league instituted lottery reform in 2017, flattening out the odds of landing the top overall pick; nearly a decade later, the league’s stakeholders are back to the drawing board.
“There’s such a subtlety to this when incentives don’t match — when we’re now into it with coaches’ decisions on lineups, and when players come in and out of the game, injuries, doctors going back and forth with each other, pain levels of players — that my sense is when I say ‘fix now,’ yes, we need to do something more extreme than we did with those incremental changes the last four times along,” Silver said. “[…] Certainly, going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now.”
The hope, from Silver and his office, is that adjusting those incentives to put a greater premium on winning will lead to a shift in focus back toward the more positive elements of the on-court product.
“I’m sorry to have to talk about tanking, because it takes away from the incredible competition we’re seeing from roughly 20 teams in the league right now going into a wide-open playoffs,” Silver said. “[…] What’s so incredible about live sports at this level — and I think it’s not just the NBA, but we’re seeing a rising tide among all premium sports — is that people have this hunger for this live, unscripted drama.
“Of course, the opposite of that is when there’s a sense that both teams aren’t out there trying to kill themselves to win a game. And so, as I said, we have to fix that problem.”
Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes came into the 2026 MLB season looking to take home his second straight Cy Young award. The early returns Thursday were not encouraging.
Skenes lasted just two-thirds of an inning against the New York Mets on Opening Day. He threw 37 pitches and allowed five earned runs in the outing. The Mets led 5-2 when he left the game.
Skenes got himself in trouble early in the first frame with a leadoff walk to Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor. The Pirates’ ace then allowed a bloop single to Juan Soto, making it first and third with no outs.
New Mets third baseman Bo Bichette then drove in Lindor with a sac fly, giving Skenes an out and the Mets a run. The next batter, new Mets infielder Jorge Polanco, hit a weak single up the third-base line. The ball had a 44.2 mph exit velocity.
With men on first and second, outfielder Luis Robert Jr. drew a 10-pitch walk to load the bases. That brought up Brett Baty, who drove a ball to deep center field.
Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz misjudged the ball off the bat, taking a few steps in before realizing the ball was sailing over his head. He couldn’t course-correct in time to make the catch, allowing all three baserunners to score and Baty to reach third.
The next Mets hitter, Marcus Semien, hit a lazy fly ball to Cruz in center. This time, Cruz had trouble seeing the ball in the sun. If dropped harmlessly, allowing Baty to score and Semien to wind up on second with a double.
A disaster sequence (consecutive plays) for Pirates CF Oneil Cruz in the first inning vs the Mets.
It played into Paul Skenes getting pulled in the first inning after 37 pitches.
One Philadelphia-based athlete who wasn’t happy about that sequence was Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, who told Cruz he should prepare to be a DH from now on.
After a quick strikeout to rookie Carson Benge for the second out, Skenes hit catcher Francisco Alvarez with a pitch to put two men on base. At that point, the Pirates’ ace was pulled from the contest.
Yohan Ramírez came on in relief of Skenes and was able to induce a flyout from Lindor to get out of the inning.
But the damage was done. For Skenes, the outing marked the shortest of his young career. His previous low came in a September 2024 game vs. the New York Yankees. Skenes pitched just two innings in that contest, though that was due to limiting his innings, not an issue of Skenes’ performance.
Thursday’s performance also ties Skenes’ career high in runs allowed. The only other time he gave up five earned runs came last year, when the St. Louis Cardinals scored five runs against him over six innings during a game in April.
Even worse, Opening Day was a historically poor performance for Skenes. He became the first starting pitcher to register fewer than three outs on Opening Day since Jose Berrios in 2022.
The rough start comes at an extremely inconvenient time for the Pirates, who enter the 2026 season with playoff hopes for the first time in about a decade. After some key offseason acquisitions, the Pirates are considered dark-horse wild-card contenders in the National League.
One of those new additions, infielder Brandon Lowe, got his season started on a much better foot, hitting a two-run homer in the top of the first inning that briefly put the Pirates ahead. Lowe hit a second home run in the third, making it 5-3 at the time.
If there’s any positive to take from all this, it can be argued that Skenes deserved much better from the defense behind him. Cruz’s misplays in the outfield cost the pitcher two outs. Had Cruz made those plays, Skenes might’ve made it out of the inning with the score tied at 2-2.
In addition, three of the four hits against Skenes were pretty fluky. Soto’s single blooped into shallow center, Polanco’s didn’t make it halfway to third base, and Semien’s was lost in the sun. Baty’s triple likely should’ve been an out, though he did hit the ball hard.
Despite that, all of those runs were charged to Skenes, who will turn his attention to getting back on track in his next start, slated to come Wednesday against the Cincinnati Reds.
Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams developed a knack for pulling out dramatic, game-winning plays late in games during the 2025 NFL season. Due to his fourth-quarter excellence, Williams embraced the nickname “Iceman,” a moniker that seemed to accurately describe the ice in his veins during the game’s biggest moment.
Turns out, there already was an “Iceman” in sports, and he’s not too happy about Williams trying to trademark that nickname.
NBA Hall of Famer George Gervin decided to fight against Williams’ trademark of the “Iceman” moniker. Gervin, 73, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he respects Williams, but the “Iceman” moniker “is taken.”
Gervin added, “All I’m saying is: Young fella, we’ve already got one ‘Iceman.’”
Following Williams’ excellent 2025 season, a company titled “Caleb Williams Holding, Inc.” submitted four trademarks related to “Iceman” on March 16. Williams filed the trademark so he could sell goods and services using the phrase, per the Sun-Times.
Four 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.
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.
Gervin spent 12 of his 14 NBA seasons as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. Over his career — which stretched from 1972 to 1987 — Gervin became known as “Iceman” due to his ability to “drop 25 and not break a sweat,” Gervin revealed in a 2016 chat on ESPN.
Gervin was a 12-time All-Star, seven-time All-NBA selection, four-time scoring champ and was named to the league’s 75th anniversary team. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996.
One day after the union representing NBA players accused the Milwaukee Bucks of wanting to shut Giannis Antetokounmpo down for the season because they are trying to lose games, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers offered an alternative rationale for keeping the two-time Most Valuable Player on the injured list: that he’s injured.
“He’s not [healthy],” Rivers said Wednesday, before the Bucks’ Wednesday matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers, according to Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “He’s progressing. He’s just not healthy.”
Rivers was responding to a claim levied by the National Basketball Players Association on Tuesday, intimating in a strongly worded statement that the Bucks were engaging in anti-competitive behavior by attempting to prevent Antetokounmpo — currently sidelined by a hyperextended left knee and bone bruise that he sustained in a March 15 win over the Indiana Pacers — from returning to the court for the final weeks of Milwaukee’s season.
After suffering the injury against the Pacers, Antetokounmpo tried to return to the game, only to be held out by Milwaukee’s medical and training staff. Following the game, he told reporters that he wasn’t “really bothered by [the knee] at all,” that he didn’t think he’d need to have any imaging done on the knee, and that he planned to proceed as if he’d be back on the floor for the Bucks’ next game.
“For me, every game is worth it,” Antetokounmpo told reporters. “Every time I step on the floor, I try not to take it for granted. I appreciate just being out there, especially when I’m getting my rhythm back and I’m feeling good.”
Antetokounmpo did not return for Milwaukee’s next game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, though. The Bucks did have him undergo an MRI, which reportedly revealed no ligament damage, but did lead to the diagnosis of a hyperextension and bone bruise that put him on the shelf for at least a week — and perhaps setting the table for the superstar forward to miss the remainder of the season, in what could be a boon for the Bucks’ odds of landing a top pick in June’s NBA Draft.
In the 36 games that Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee’s leading scorer and rebounder, has played this season, the Bucks have gone 17-19. In the 36 that he has missed due to a variety of injuries, they’ve gone 12-24 — including a 130-99 loss to the Blazers on Wednesday. The Bucks have outscored opponents by 4.4 points per 100 possessions with the 10-time All-Star on the floor, and have been outscored by 10.1 points-per-100 with him off it, according to NBA Advanced Stats — one of the biggest differentials of any player in the league.
With the Bucks now nine games out of the final spot in the play-in tournament, multipleprojectionmodels give them virtually zerochance of qualifying for the postseason. At 29-43, tied for the ninth-worst record in the NBA, the Bucks have a 17.3% chance of landing a top-four pick in the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery, and a 3.8% chance of jumping up to first overall, according to Tankathon — odds that could conceivably improve if they finished the season by losing a handful more games than the 25-48 New Orleans Pelicans, who are 4.5 games “above” Milwaukee in the reverse standings, but who have been playing significantly better than the Bucks for quite some time, and who owe their first-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks and thus have no incentive to lose.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks not on the same page
That inverted incentive, it appears, is at the heart of the ongoing dispute in Milwaukee. The Athletic’s Nehm reported on March 18 that the Bucks had approached Antetokounmpo about sitting out the rest of the season, and that the perennial All-NBA selection had rejected the idea. Six days — and three more Bucks losses — later, the NBPA issued its statement.
“The Player Participation Policy was designed by the league to hold teams accountable and ensure that when an All-Star like Giannis Antetokounmpo is healthy and ready to play, he is on the court,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, anti-tanking policies are only as effective as their enforcement; fans, broadcast partners, and the integrity of the game itself will continue to suffer as long as ownership goes unchecked. We look forward to collaborating with the NBA on meaningful new proposals that will directly address and discourage tanking.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver discussed the union’s statement on Antetokounmpo during a press conference following the league’s Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday.
“Prior to that press release from the players association, we were not aware there was an issue,” Silver said Wednesday. “We knew Giannis was injured. He was within the sort of usual period it was taking to come back from that injury. So I was a bit surprised by that press release. Yes, when our players association announces they see an issue, of course we’ll look into it. So that’s where it currently stands.”
Rivers, for his part, downplayed Silver’s response.
“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said, according to Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “Maybe you don’t know this, but they look into every injury. This is nothing new. Probably because it’s been talked about, [Silver] felt the need to say something, but I’ve not been on a team where when you have injuries, they don’t look at it. So I don’t think it’s anything new.”
Hanging over all discussion of Antetokounmpo’s availability and prospective return to the floor: a year (really, many years) worth of rumors, reporting, speculation and scuttlebutt over whether or not the 31-year-old has determined, or might determine, that his best chance of competing for another NBA championship might lie elsewhere, and that the time has come for him to leave the franchise that drafted him in 2013.
When the Bucks held on to Antetokounmpo at February’s trade deadline, that delayed any decisions on his future to the offseason, when he’ll become eligible for a four-year, $275 million maximum-salaried contract extension.
“Giannis is going into the last year [of his contract],” Bucks controlling owner Wes Edens recently told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “So one of two things will happen: Either he will be extended or he’ll be traded. The likelihood you’ll let him just kind of play out the last year, we can’t afford that. It’s not consistent with what’s good for the organization.”
The operative questions appear to be whether putting Antetokounmpo back on the floor before the April 12 season finale against the Philadelphia 76ers — thus potentially reducing the Bucks’ odds of losing enough to climb the lottery standings, and potentially increasing the chances that Giannis sustains another leg injury that could diminish his trade value this summer — would represent “what’s good for the organization,” and whether that should matter at all if Antetokounmpo, in fact, is healthy enough to play.
For right now, though, Rivers insists those questions are irrelevant, because Antetokounmpo, in fact, is not.
“Our focus right now is just getting him healthy,” Rivers told reporters. “We’re just trying to get Giannis cleared and healthy; that’s our only focus. All the other stuff, we stay above.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers are adding a field sponsor for the first time in franchise history. The team announced Wednesday that the field at Dodger Stadium will now be called Uniqlo Field.
Uniqlo is based in Japan, the home country of three of the Dodgers’ biggest stars: Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. With Ohtani in particular becoming the sport’s biggest international star, several other Japanese companies, such as Nippon Airways, have lined up to sponsor the Dodgers.
Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest ballpark in MLB, having opened in 1962. The team has always eschewed the lucrative possibility of stadium naming rights, but the Uniqlo deal opens that revenue stream without actually changing the Dodger Stadium name. It still represents a change for the organization, though.
It’s a setup with precedent in other sports, such as the Kansas City Chief’s GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
Uniqlo’s signature red-and-white branding will be displayed throughout the field, including the in batter’s eye, in the press box and on the grass along the baselines.
Uniqlo founder Koji Yanai told the Associated Press that he became a Dodgers fan before the deal was made.
“Every one of us has become fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers because of the outstanding performances of Japanese players,” Yanai said through an interpreter.
The new signage will be visible as the Dodgers open their season on Thursday by hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first game of a three-game series.
Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio will begin the 2026 MLB season on the 10-day injured list due to a broken left hand, the team announced Thursday.
Chourio suffered what was described as a bruised left hand when he was hit by a pitch during a Venezuela exhibition game against the Washington Nationals ahead of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month. He went on to play five games in the tournament, including the final.
Chourio’s placement on the IL is retroactive to March 25, so the earliest he would be available is in time for the Brewers’ first road trip beginning April 3 in Kansas City. But MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy reports that early estimates have the young Venezuelan star possibly missing 2-4 weeks.
Milwaukee opens the season with a six-game homestand beginning Thursday against the Chicago White Sox.
The 22-year-old Chourio is entering his third season with the Brewers. In 2025, he batted .270 with 21 home runs and 78 RBI in 131 games.
And just like that, we have a season. We have results. We have highlights and stats and standings and all that good stuff.
We are so back.
To be fair, Opening Day to me is the first day when multiple teams play. That’s Thursday. I can’t wait to bounce around from Tarik Skubal to Hunter Brown, to watch Paul Skenes deal to Juan Soto, to savor Roman Anthony and Elly De La Cruz on the same diamond. But I enjoyed the standalone opener Wednesday night between the Yankees and Giants, even if the Giants didn’t score while the Yankees knocked around Logan Webb (one of My Guys) for seven runs (six earned).
Webb is going to have some days where he gets BABIP’d to death. He kept the ball in the park. He worked ahead of hitters. He recorded more ground-ball outs than fly-ball outs and he had seven strikeouts against just one walk. If you told me all that stuff ahead of time, I’d be thinking two runs or fewer.
The big New York rally was a five-run second, which featured four singles, one plunked batter and one triple to right. Webb even closed the inning by striking out Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger.
He should be fine. I’m not altering my stance after one night.
And hey, Judge went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts on the other side. It’s a long season. Settle in, settlers.
On the flip side, Max Fried had an easy time (6.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K) navigating a San Francisco lineup that doesn’t go particularly deep. This is a good spot for fantasy managers to attack — the Giants when they’re home in their roomy park. San Francisco ended the night with three piddly singles, a couple of walks and zero runs.
One other fantasy nugget to consider — Jazz Chisholm Jr. stole a base in the middle of the game, with the Yankees ahead by seven runs. The Giants took the steal in stride — it didn’t set anyone off — and the game meandered along. I’ve never had a problem with professional athletes trying hard for the entirety of their games, no matter the score. My lone concern would be if someone got hurt stealing a meaningless base in a blowout game, but perhaps that risk is low, too.
Anyway, for anyone who has Chisholm shares, it’s probably a good sign that he’s good for another 30-40 bags. Game situations aren’t going to slow him down.
My other assignment for Wednesday night was to process some FAAB offers. Two of my most competitive mixers (one a 12-teamer, the other a 13-teamer) had their first free agent run of the season, after recent drafts. Here are some of the more interesting players who were selected.
Early waiver wire pickups for Opening week
— Connelly Early, SP, Red Sox (58% rostered): While the sample sizes aren’t deep yet, Early has been a dominator ever since he put on a Boston uniform. He made four late-season starts last year and was tremendous (2.33 ERA, 1.086 WHIP), with 29 strikeouts against four walks per 19.1 innings. The strikeout rate wasn’t at that level during the spring, but Early still checked in with dominant ratios (1.59/0.941) and whiffed 16 batters against five walks over 17 innings. The Red Sox didn’t just put him in the rotation — he’ll start their third game of the year.
— Paul Sewald, RP, Diamondbacks (30%): His ERA has been in the 4s the last two years and he’s stepping into the age-36 season, but the barrier for relevance is low for any save-potential reliever. Until A.J. Puk is healthy again, Sewald is likely the best option at the end of the Arizona bullpen.
— Jordan Romano, RP, Angels (14%): Here’s another save-speculation play, one I’ve made in a couple of deeper leagues. With Ben Joyce and Robert Stephenson hurt, Romano will likely get the first call when the Angels have an early-season lead to protect. Romano hasn’t been healthy or effective for two years, but he was an All-Star in 2022 and 2023 and looked it in the spring, for whatever you can take from six innings (5 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K).
— Luis Rengifo, UT, Brewers (2%): This could be a sneaky little pickup, with Rengifo a possible regular in Milwaukee, and someone who covers three fantasy positions (2B, 3B, OF). He lost his way with the Angels last year, but he’s still just 29, and posted useful fantasy seasons from 2022-2024 (decent average, some category juice).
— Shane Smith, SP, White Sox (31%): This was one of my adds. Smith was surprisingly helpful in 29 starts last year (3.81/1.196), striking out a batter per inning. The White Sox aren’t close to playoff contention, but I expect them to be modestly improved from last year. You don’t have to start Smith against the Brewers on Thursday, but he could be a preferred streamer or spot-starter that we utilize against weaker opponents.
The Los Angeles Dodgers haven’t played their first regular-season game yet, but the team is already winning. Two-way star Shohei Ohtani once again tops the list of most popular MLB jerseys, the league revealed Thursday.
In a release, the league listed the top 20 most popular MLB jerseys since the end of the 2025 World Series. Unsurprisingly, Ohtani sits in the No. 1 spot. And four of his teammates aren’t far behind.
The top of the list shouldn’t come as a surprise. Ohtani is arguably the best player in the game and plays on the best team. Yamamoto in the No. 2 spot also makes sense, as he’s coming off a tremendous performance in the World Series.
The bigger surprise in the top 10 might be Arenado, who, despite being a future Hall of Famer, is no longer at the height of his powers. Still, he’s clearly popular enough to draw in fans after changing teams in the offseason.
But the biggest surprise in the top 20 has to be Hernández, who is essentially a part-time player with the Dodgers. He’s a fan favorite, though, and delivered one heck of a speech at the team’s World Series celebration in November.
Hernández’s inclusion on the top-20 list gives the Dodgers five players in the top 12, which is a bit of a surprise. Only three other teams are represented more than once — the Mariners, Mets and Phillies — and none of them has more than two players on the list.
The last time MLB released a most popular jersey list in July, Ohtani also occupied the top spot on the list. That should probably be expected by now. Until he either experiences serious decline or stops playing for the Dodgers, he should continue to dominate jersey sales in the sport.
BOSTON — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was in the building, but the MVP chants were not for him.
They rained down from the TD Garden rafters each time Celtics forward Jaylen Brown took the free-throw line in a 119-109 win over Gilgeous-Alexander’s reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder. He took the stripe a lot — a game-high 14 times in total — en route to 31 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists, outperforming the NBA’s returning regular-season and Finals MVP.
Brown even beat Gilgeous-Alexander at his own game, baiting him into a foul — and the bucket — midway through the fourth quarter. Brown was all smiles; all SGA could do was shake his head. He has, after all, made a nice living out of forcing opponents into compromising positions.
Of course, Brown has a Finals MVP award of his own. He also made an All-NBA Second Team as Jayson Tatum’s co-star in 2023. We knew he was good. Just didn’t know he was this good. In the absence of Tatum, who ruptured his right Achilles last May, Brown kept the Celtics in the hunt, performing at a level that warrants his consideration on ballots for MVP and All-NBA First Team.
“We all knew he could do it,” said Tatum.
Not like this. We figured him for a second option on a title team, because we have seen him do it before in 2024, but after Wednesday’s convincing win over the Thunder we have to ask: Can Jaylen Brown be the best player on a team that wins the championship this season?
Tatum is back in remarkable time from surgery, but he is not in his All-NBA First Team form, and that is OK. It’s actually a good thing, because now the Celtics know a new pecking order. It just looks different from what we’re used to seeing. Brown is their No. 1 option. Tatum is the co-star.
And he looked the part against the Thunder, totaling 19 points, 12 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals over 35 minutes of this battle between the league’s last two champions. As he has since his return, Tatum looked a lot like himself, only with a little less bounce and a lot more rust.
“I didn’t lose any of my game,” the superstar declared after only his ninth game back. The Celtics are 7-2 with him. ”I’m just kind of rusty right now and finding my wind and my rhythm.”
He is only getting stronger, and there are more than two months before these two teams could meet again in the NBA Finals. The Celtics must be thinking that way, or else they may not have brought Tatum back, as the Eastern Conference is up for grabs. The Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers will not scare Boston, especially not if these Thunder couldn’t.
“That was a great, encouraging game for JT,” Brown said of Wednesday’s effort. “They’re a high-level intensity, physical team, and I felt like it was a step in the right direction. We’re still encouraging him to get back to that level of aggression we know and are used to, but tonight was a great game of him making the right plays, the right reads and being Jayson Tatum.”
That’s right: The Brown-Tatum duo, which has yielded five trips to the Eastern Conference finals and a pair of NBA Finals appearances in eight seasons, is morphing into a new form. It may still be the best tandem in the NBA if Wednesday’s performance against OKC was any indication.
“Obviously, there are still going to be some ups and downs,” Brown said of their partnership. “We’re still working some kinks out, getting our flow. We’ve got 10 games left, and we need each one of those to get ready for the playoffs, but I think today was a very huge step for us.”
How huge?
“We can compete with anybody in the NBA,” said Boston’s Baylor Scheierman.
Scheierman is one of the Celtics who stepped up in Tatum’s absence, along with Hugo Gonzalez and Jordan Walsh, among others. And now those guys are ready to contribute, too. Scheierman scored 11 points off the bench against the Thunder and looked like he belonged.
What was so striking against Oklahoma City: Boston was every bit as deep. The Thunder come at teams in waves, rolling out role player after role player who could start for most other teams. Now, with Tatum making them a complete roster, the Celtics likewise have no end to a rotation.
“This team has just been awesome all year,” said Brown. “It’s been a very fun season. Our guys have really developed from trying to find their footing in this league, trying to find a rhythm, trying to find their confidence, to really competing against some of the best teams in the league.”
More concerning for the Thunder is the health of Jalen Williams, who scored seven points on nine shots and was a nonfactor in the loss to Boston. He recently made his second return from a hamstring strain, and he missed the first 19 games of the season to wrist surgery. He has played only 27 games. That Tatum looks every bit as healthy as Williams at this point is surprising.
All of a sudden, we might have to recalibrate who we consider the NBA’s best pairing heading into the playoffs. The Celtics, for their part, are eager to see how far Tatum can help take Brown.
“It’s super exciting,” said Scheierman. “We’ve just taken it a day at a time, not really knowing what to expect throughout the course of the season, but now that we have him back and integrated into our team, which has been an easy transition for us, it’s super exciting for what’s to come. We’re super excited and super confident in what we can do moving forward.”
This isn’t to say the Celtics are favorites from one win against the Thunder. Nor was the TD Garden crowd saying that Brown is the actual MVP over Gilgeous-Alexander. He can be on a given night, though, and if he can do it four times in seven tries, he might be a champion again.
