ATLANTA — The Atlanta Braves have addressed one of their offseason priorities by re-signing closer Raisel Iglesias to a $16 million, one-year contract.
Atlanta announced the deal on Wednesday. The 35-year-old right-hander had completed a $58 million, four-year contract that paid him $16 million in each of the last three seasons.
The Braves also acquired Mauricio Dubón from the Houston Astros for Nick Allen in an exchange of infielders.
Dubón, 31, appeared in 133 games with Houston last season and batted .241 while earning his second Gold Glove, each time as a utility infielder. He also won a Gold Glove in 2023.
Dubón had a $5 million salary this year and is eligible for salary arbitration. He can become a free agent after the World Series.
Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos said Dubón can play all over the infield and outfield, and his role will be determined by what other moves the team makes this offseason. Anthopoulos said the Braves still may pursue a shortstop.
“I told him I don’t know what your role is going to be yet, but the fact that we have the flexibility to play him all over … he’s just a good piece,” Anthopoulos said.
Allen is eligible for arbitration for the first time and can become a free agent after the 2029 season.
Iglesias had 29 saves in 34 chances in 2025, finishing strong after an uneven start. Iglesias posted a 4.42 ERA in 39 games in the first half before a dominant finish. He recorded a 1.76 ERA in the second half and was successful on his final 18 save opportunities after July 28.
It was the longest streak without a blown save to close the season in the majors.
“We knew we needed to address closer one way or the other and who better than somebody we know,” Anthopoulos said. “He wanted to be here. His first choice was to be back in Atlanta. I’m glad we were able to get it done.”
Overall, Iglesias had a 3.21 ERA. His 29 saves ranked ninth in the majors and fourth in the National League.
The deal with Iglesias frees Anthopoulos to focus on other offseason needs.
Iglesias, a native of Cuba, became the 40th pitcher with 250 career saves on Sept. 16 against Washington. He became one of just five active relievers to reach the milestone. He finished the season with 253 career saves.
Overall, in four seasons with Atlanta, Iglesias has a 2.35 ERA. He began his career with Cincinnati in 2015 and pitched for the Los Angeles Angels in 2021 and 2022.
Brandon Williams thought he had forced overtime on Wednesday night. But a late, questionable offensive foul call said otherwise.
The Mavericks guard drove all the way down the court and somehow managed to get around Knicks guard Landry Shamet and sink a wild layup at the American Airlines Center with 0.7 seconds remaining on the clock. That would have put the Dallas Mavericks in line with the New York Knicks, and likely forced overtime.
But Williams, despite seemingly making it around Shamet cleanly, was called for an offensive foul. That negated his layup, and ended up giving the Knicks the 113-111 win. Williams and the Mavericks were completely stunned.
Brandon Williams’ last chance bucket was ruled an offensive foul 👀
The NBA upheld the call in its Last Two Minute report, the league’s assessment of the officiating in the final minutes of close games. In the report, the league said that Williams’ foul was correctly called, saying that Williams “illegally hooks” Shamet.
However, the NBA admitted that an earlier foul on P.J. Washington, on Knicks center Mitchell Robinson, should not have been called. Robinson missed both free throw attempts, so the foul did not affect the final score.
The Knicks had several chances to put the Mavericks away in the fourth quarter, but they struggled repeatedly at the free throw line. They made just one of six free throws in the final 22 seconds of the game, and Washington then hit a pair of free throws with about six seconds left to get the Mavericks back within a single point. Jalen Brunson split his free throws after that following a quick foul, which put New York up by two points and allowed Dallas the opportunity to tie the game up with a layup rather than a 3-pointer.
“Great execution, great catch, great pass by [Dereck Lively],” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said after the game. “And then for him to catch it and for him to find B-Will on the run was great execution, tough call.”
Jason Kidd on the Mavericks’ attempt to tie the game that ended with a Brandon Williams offensive foul:
“Great execution, great catch, great pass by D-Live…And then for him to catch it and for him to find B-Will on the run was great execution, tough call. He a good look, called… pic.twitter.com/7toRQWcndv
Brunson led the Knicks with 28 points in his return from an ankle injury, which kept him out for a week. He shot 11-of-23 from the field and had five assists on the night. Karl-Anthony Towns had 18 points and 14 rebounds, and Josh Hart added 16 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.
The Knicks improved to 9-5 on the year with the win, which was their second in their last three games. They’ll take on the Orlando Magic Saturday in the second of a five-game road trip.
D’Angelo Russell had 23 points and seven assists to lead the Mavericks, who were playing without Cooper Flagg for the first time since they selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft this past summer. Flagg was ruled out for Wednesday’s game due to an illness. Naji Marshall added 23 points off the bench for Dallas. Williams had nine points and shot just 2-11 from the field.
The Mavericks fell to 4-12 on the season with the loss, which marked their fifth over a six-game span. Four of those five losses have been by single digits. They’ll host the New Orleans Pelicans next on Friday.
The Atlanta Braves upgraded their defense and stabilized the back of their bullpen with a pair of transactions late Wednesday.
First, the Braves announced they’d retained closer Raisel Iglesias on a one-year, $16 million deal. Then they announced they’d acquired Gold Glove utility player Mauricio Dubón in a trade with the Houston Astros. The Braves sent infielder Nick Allen to Houston in return for Dubón.
The deal with Iglesias ensures they’ll retain their closer of the past three seasons. Iglesias was a free agent whom Yahoo Sports ranked as the 45th-best player available on the market.
Raisel Iglesias has a one-year, $16 million deal to remain with the Braves.
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
What Iglesias offers
Iglesias, who will be 36 next season, had his worst season in Atlanta, with a 3.21 ERA, 73 strikeouts and 16 walks in 67 1/3 innings pitched. He tallied 29 saves.
Iglesias had posted a 1.95 ERA and 34 saves in 2024 and a 2.75 ERA and 33 saves in 2023 in his two full seasons with Atlanta. But much of Iglesias’ relative struggles in 2025 came at the front end of the campaign.
Iglesias allowed six home runs across his first 25 appearances last season and had a 6.75 ERA in early June. He finished the season from there with a 1.25 ERA over the course of 43 1/3 innings while allowing just two more home runs. Atlanta’s surely hoping that’s the version of Iglesias who shows up in 2026.
Why Braves traded for Dubón
In Dubón, the Braves obtain a versatile utility player who just secured his second Gold Glove.
Dubón, 31, is capable of playing at a high level in the infield and outfield. He played 15 games or more at each of second base, shortstop, third base and in the outfield last season in 133 games and thrived across the board, earning his second Gold Glove in three seasons.
At the plate, Dubón slashed .241/.289/.355 with 7 home runs, 33 RBI and 3 stolen bases in 2025. He’s a career .257/.295/.374 hitter across seven MLB seasons.
In Allen, the Astros acquire a four-season veteran who was a third-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft. Allen, 27, slashed .221/.284/.251 with 22 RBI and 8 stolen bases in 135 games played primarily at shortstop. He did not hit a home run and has nine for his career. He was a Gold Glove finalist at shortstop.
From a league-wide star availability standpoint, the return of the King can’t come soon enough. Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has been nursing a sciatica injury for the opening month of the season and missed the team’s first 14 games. On Tuesday, James will reportedly make his season debut for the Lakers in the team’s home tilt against the Jazz.
Hopefully, LeBron’s return helps reverse a startling trend across the league. The NBA’s star availability problem has somehow worsened this season. The latest blow to the league’s elite came on Monday afternoon when, first, it was reported that Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama will be sidelined for at least a few weeks with a calf strain, and the Grizzlies announced Ja Morant is expected to miss time with a calf strain of his own. Then, Giannis Antetokounmpo exited Monday night’s Bucks game early due to a groin injury.
Tuesday night was supposed to be Wembanyama’s much-anticipated debut on NBC, taking on Morant and the Grizzlies. Two weeks ago, the league flexed the game onto national television after Wemby’s dominant start. Both Wembanyama and Morant are now out, joining the sidelines along with Rookie of the Year winner Stephon Castle (hip) and the Spurs’ No. 2 overall pick Dylan Harper (calf).
All told, NBA stars have already missed over 200 games this season due to injury or illness, doubling the total we saw at this point two years ago. The NBA’s official star designation in the league’s player participation policy stipulates that a star player is one who has made an All-Star or All-NBA team in any of the previous three seasons. This season, 45 players meet that criteria, which means that, on average, NBA stars have already been sidelined by about five games each.
For a league fighting the image that star players aren’t playing enough, this season’s power outage is especially alarming. In 2023-24, with the first year of the midseason tournament seeming to motivate its biggest names to suit up, star players played 87.2% of its games by this juncture of the season (12 games in). Last season, it dipped to 82.6%. This season, the bottom has fallen out, with star participation falling to 67.6%.
Put another way, in the opening month of the season, star players used to miss only one out of every nine or 10 games. Now, on average, it’s one out of every three games.
Of greatest concern for the league, stars played in just 56% of their teams’ 12 games this season, continuing a downward trend as we head toward Thanksgiving. The league is dangerously close to having the distinction of having over half its stars in street clothes on any given night in the NBA, something we typically don’t see until the last week of the season as teams rest their stars for the postseason. Now, we’re seeing it in November.
What’s causing the trend?
Wemby’s takeover of the league has been stalled by a calf injury.
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters
It’s not just the season-ending injuries
The NBA has faced an unusual number of major leg injuries that have jeopardized the entire seasons of some of its brightest stars. Achilles injuries have sidelined Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard, while Kyrie Irving is nursing a torn ACL that will sideline him for the foreseeable future.
But even if we remove those four players from the sample, as stars we knew were going to miss most, if not all, of this upcoming season, the overall trend remains concerning. Taking Tatum, Haliburton, Lillard and Irving out of the equation, star players are still playing only 75% of the games in the opening month of the season, down considerably from the 87% rate just two seasons ago. Even with a generous cut of the data, this isn’t just about the Achilles and ACL tears skewing the numbers.
Paul George and LeBron James making their season debuts should breathe some life into the overall system, but OKC’s Jalen Williams and Miami’s Tyler Herro, both 2025 All-Stars, have yet to suit up for their teams. Zion Williamson, Trae Young and Anthony Davis have barely played.
We’re one month into the season and a huge number of teams have yet to see what their full complement of stars looks like this season. Though it sounds absurd, the 17 teams with multiple stars have seen their full complement of stars play in the same game in just 31.8% of all contests this season.
If we lower the bar to the bare minimum, it doesn’t get much better. Only nine of those 17 teams with multiple stars have had a full complement of star players available together in at least one game this season. Of those nine teams, only five of them have had their stars available in the same game for the majority of the season — Houston, Golden State, Memphis, Sacramento and New York. And within that group, only one team has seen its two stars play in every game this season.
That team would be the Houston Rockets with Alperen Şengün and Kevin Durant having not missed a single game this season. But even they would argue they’ve lost starpower this season. In September, the team learned it would be without 2022 All-Star Fred VanVleet for perhaps the entire season after he tore his ACL. The point guard fell off the NBA’s official star designation list because his all-league appearance is too outdated to qualify.
If we broaden the list to include players who were named to the 2022 All-Star and All-NBA teams, the problem looks even more dire, partly because they can’t seem to stop getting injured. Beyond VanVleet, who is out for the season, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball, one of the league’s most popular players by All-Star fan vote, has missed nearly half this season with an ankle injury. New Orleans point guard Dejounte Murray missed 18 of the Pelicans’ first 49 games last season before tearing his Achilles in January and hasn’t taken the floor since.
Thankfully, Ball returned on Monday night, but he was without his co-pilot, Brandon Miller, once again. Charlotte fans hoping to see them play together have been let down in 137 of the 178 games since Miller was drafted No. 2 overall in the 2023 draft.
If players don’t hurry back, they won’t be seeing All-NBA lists this season. Hurry back too soon and they might risk aggravating an injury. Therein lies the dilemma of the NBA’s new policy.
League awards in jeopardy
Hoping to stem the tide of stars increasingly missing games due to load management, the NBA instituted a rule in 2023 to require players to play at least 65 games to be eligible for postseason awards like All-NBA, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player. But rather than fans seeing star players suit up more often, the trend has reversed in recent years.
We haven’t reached Thanksgiving and only 13 of the 45 stars can say they haven’t missed a game this season — an accomplishment that used to be commonplace for the league’s biggest names. Otherwise healthy up to this point in the season, Jalen Brunson, Cade Cunningham and Wembanyama are the latest stars to catch the injury bug.
Several players will be in jeopardy of losing postseason award eligibility if they don’t return soon. OKC’s Williams (wrist) would have to return by Sunday’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers or else he’ll be ruled out for making a second All-NBA and All-Defensive team appearance.
For Herro, who was set to miss 8-12 weeks with an ankle injury suffered in September, he needs to come back by Monday if he wants to still qualify for a supermax extension with the Miami Heat. The 2024-25 All-Star did not agree to terms on an extension in the offseason before his ankle injury saddled the start to his pivotal season.
On the other end of the spectrum, MVP candidates like Luka Dončić and Anthony Edwards are hovering just below the required 65-game pace. With Wembanyama sidelined with a calf strain, the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year races just opened up.
Anthony Davis in street clothes has unfortunately been a frequent sight in Dallas.
Jess Rapfogel via Getty Images
Wembanyama joins Jrue Holiday, Morant, Harper and Davis as high-profile players who are suffering from calf injuries in the early going. Though it’s too early to draw any grand conclusions about what’s causing the spike of injuries to stars in the opening weeks, it follows a larger parallel track of veteran star injuries and increased pace in the league.
This past postseason we saw speed in the NBA reach levels we hadn’t seen in decades, if ever. Golden State head coach Steve Kerr told me at the end of May: “The most important point of all of this is the pace and space and how much more mileage that players are covering. You see all these injuries … I don’t think players get enough rest anymore.”
The number of possessions has dialed up this season. The average pace in the opening month of the season has ticked up to around 101 possessions per 48 minutes this season, according to NBA.com tracking data, slightly increased from last season’s 99 possession rate at this point in the season. By comparison, that’s 10 possessions more per game than there were in 1997.
Is there a silver lining?
There does seem to be a flicker of good news in the overall injury data. Or at least, maybe some reason for hope. Jeff Stotts of InstreetClothes.com, the industry’s top injury tracker, has found that games lost due to injury for all players don’t seem to be significantly up across the league compared to last season. On Monday, Stotts reported that total games lost due to injury or illness reached 964 games, with 268 games added in the fourth week of the season. Last season, those same numbers were 968 and 272 respectively, per Stotts tracking.
By the end of the season, Stotts reported that 2024-25 saw the most games lost due to injury or illness since he began tracking in 2005 — excluding games lost due to COVID-19 or health-and-safety protocols during the pandemic.
Any league stakeholders who were hoping that last season was an aberration have to be disappointed with the data so far. Or at least they were hoping for a big bounceback of health. Around this time last year, we reported on Yahoo Sports that injuries league-wide had increased 24% compared to 2023-24. Instead, the overall trend has stayed in line with the injury-ravaged 2024-25 season, with stars appearing to feel the brunt of the health decline.
LeBron’s return should be celebrated by fans. But it’s a testament to the NBA’s star availability crisis that hope is hinging on a soon-to-be 41-year-old to carry the league into brighter, healthier times.
French side Paris Saint-Germain footballer Achraf Hakimi has been named African Footballer of the Year, becoming the first defender to claim the prize in 52 years.
Moroccan right back Hakimi finished ahead of Liverpool’s Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah and Nigeria striker Victor Osimhen in Wednesday’s vote at the 2025 CAF Awards in the Moroccan city of Rabat.
Hakimi was awarded the trophy after helping PSG to their first ever Champions League title in May when they bulldozed Italy’s Inter Milan 5-0 in the final as part of a historic treble-winning season in which they also won the Ligue 1 title and the Coupe de France.
In August, PSG also beat English side Tottenham Hotspur in the UEFA Super Cup to pick up their fourth trophy in the 2025 calendar year.
Hakimi – the first Moroccan to win the award since Mustapha Hadji in 1998 and the first defender since Bwanga Tshimen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Zaire, in 1973 – said it was “really a proud moment”.
“This trophy is not just for me but all the strong men and women who have dreams of being a footballer in Africa,” he said.
“And for those that always believed in me since I was a child, that I would be a professional footballer one day, I would like to thank them all,” he added.
A recognition that crowns years of hard work, success, and unforgettable moments.
My gratitude goes to my family, my teammates, and everyone who works with me every day, on and off the field. Your trust, dedication, and support make me stronger and allow me to grow.
Hakimi also finished sixth in the men’s 2025 Ballon d’Or rankings in September, the annual award for the world’s best footballer, achieving the highest position ever by a Moroccan. His teammate and French international forward Ousmane Dembele was named the Ballon d’Or winner.
Moroccan footballers also picked up the men’s Goalkeeper of the Year award and the Women’s Footballer of the Year awards as they were awarded to Saudi Arabia-based players Yassine Bounou and Ghizlane Chebbak, respectively.
Nigerian goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie, who recently sealed a move to the English club Brighton & Hove Albion in the Women’s Super League, won the Women’s Goalkeeper of the Year award for a third successive year.
Cape Verde manager Bubista was awarded Coach of the Year after leading the African island nation of 525,000 people to a debut appearance at next year’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Cape Verde will not be the smallest country at the World Cup, however, after the Caribbean island nation Curacao, home to just 156,000 people, qualified after a 0-0 draw with Jamaica on Wednesday.
“The owner comes up to me like, ‘Hey, do you want to coach?’” Barea remembers. After the surprise wore off, he answered with a question. “Man, I would love to, but I don’t know if I can.” Barea called Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson to ask if the NBA or the team had any rules against him coaching in a separate league during the offseason. Mayagüez just needed someone to get the team through the end of the schedule. “They called me back, said, ‘You’re good to go,’” Barea recalls. “So I did it.”
Even though one was a player and one was a coach, they were only two years apart in age. Barea and David often found themselves meeting for a beer after games, rehashing the night, then talking about the league, or maybe baseball. “It was always about sports,” Barea said. Their careers went their separate ways eventually, but they kept in touch sporadically. “He was really good just talking with players, having that relationship with me,” Barea said. “He’s no bull-(crap). He’ll tell you how it is. He’ll tell you straight up to your face. And his dad is similar. I was always a fan of his dad, the way they did things. … I was like, these are two good people to know and learn from more about the NBA.” Adelman hired him this summer while in pursuit of ex-players whose voices could resonate with the locker room. Barea had spent the last couple of years coaching the Mets de Guaynabo, another BSN team. He quickly started building relationships with Nuggets players on the golf course, where “he’s really (freaking) good,” Brown said. “We played in San Diego (during training camp). We had rental clubs, and he was hitting darts.”
