Mavericks reportedly called Warriors about potential Anthony Davis trade originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

It appears one NBA team is open to a blockbuster deal with the Warriors, but it’s unclear if the feeling is mutual.

Golden State (18-16) currently sits at eighth in the Western Conference as of Wednesday afternoon after its 132-125 win over the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center, and is headed toward another trade deadline where a move might be necessary to keep its playoff hopes alive.

If the Warriors wanted to swing big, perhaps in a blockbuster deal for Dallas Mavericks center Anthony Davis, who has been linked to Golden State already, it likely would require parting with either forwards Draymond Green or Jimmy Butler in the trade package, which The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported in a story published Wednesday, citing team sources, is not something the Warriors want to do.

Not only are the Warriors not keen on parting with one of their veteran forwards in a potential deal, but they might not even be interested in Davis at all. Amick also reported in his story, citing team sources, that Dallas contacted Golden State about a potential trade for Davis, not the other way around.

“A Butler-for-Davis swap works financially, as the Warriors forward also makes $54.1 million this season, but Golden State has shown no interest in making such a move,” Amick wrote. “While team sources say the Warriors have not completely closed the door on the prospect of doing a Davis deal, it appears unlikely. What’s more, it should be noted that the Mavericks called Golden State about the Davis possibility — and not the other way around.”

While the Warriors reportedly have not completely closed the door on the idea of a Davis trade, any potential deal likely would include young forward Jonathan Kuminga, who Dallas appears to be enticed by.

“While a league source said the Mavericks do have interest in the Warriors’ Jonathan Kuminga, who can’t be traded until Jan. 15 but is widely expected to be dealt before the deadline, the fifth-year forward’s salary ($22.5 million) comes well short of Davis’ ($54.1 million) and would thus require the inclusion of another big contract — i.e. Green ($25.8 million),” Amick added. “Yet as Warriors coach Steve Kerr said publicly last week, and team sources confirmed, a move like that is simply not in their plans.”

While a trade for Davis does not seem likely for the Warriors at this moment, a lot can change in the five weeks leading up to the Feb. 5 deadline, and it appears Dallas, at least, is open for business.

Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast

Before the Los Angeles Lakers’ 22-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday, head coach JJ Redick knew exactly how things would play out. Prior to the contest, Redick warned that, “[The Pistons are] going to foul on every possession, probably three or four times.”

After the contest — a 128-106 loss for the Lakers — Redick said his pre-game prediction came true. The coach said he believed the Pistons got away with multiple fouls in the contest, which wound up frustrating the Lakers, per ESPN.

“I think there’s probably a level of frustration when you’re turning the ball over and you’re feeling like you’re getting fouled,” Redick said. “There’s frustration there, for sure. But I mean, again, I said it even here, we said it this morning: They’re going to foul every possession. It’s just, you got to play through it.”

Lakers star Luka Dončić agreed with that sentiment, saying the refs allowed physical play during the contest. Dončić didn’t necessarily express frustration over being fouled, but he said the Lakers needed to match Detroit’s physicality once it became clear the refs weren’t going to penalize it.

“We’ve got to definitely match their physicality,” Doncic said. “That’s the whole point. We got to match how they play. You saw the refs let it go, so we should play [with] physicality, for sure.”

Dončić led the Lakers with 30 points, but he was also responsible for eight turnovers in the loss.

A total of 50 fouls were called during the contest, though they were split evenly among both teams. The Pistons were called for 26 fouls on the night. The Lakers received 24 fouls.

But it was a chippy game overall, as the Pistons were called for one flagrant foul and one technical foul and the Lakers were called for two technicals. 

Unlike Dončić and Redick, LeBron James — who turned 41 on Tuesday — declined to take the bait on whether he believed the refs called the game properly, saying, “It’s not my lane to talk about how it was officiated or not.” He finished with 17 points.

With the loss, the Lakers dropped to 20-11 on the season. While the team still sits in the thick of the playoff race in the West, things haven’t gone well for the Lakers lately. Los Angeles is just 1-4 over its last five games, with Redick calling out the team’s defensive effort during that stretch.

Following Tuesday’s loss, the Lakers’ next three games will come against the Memphis Grizzlies (twice) and New Orleans Pelicans. Both teams are below .500, with the Pelicans having one of the worst records in the NBA. 

That should give Los Angeles a few opportunities to get back on track before a Jan. 7 matchup with the upstart San Antonio Spurs. 

Before the Los Angeles Lakers’ 22-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday, head coach JJ Redick knew exactly how things would play out. Prior to the contest, Redick warned that, “[The Pistons are] going to foul on every possession, probably three or four times.”

After the contest — a 128-106 loss for the Lakers — Redick said his pre-game prediction came true. The coach said he believed the Pistons got away with multiple fouls in the contest, which wound up frustrating the Lakers, per ESPN.

“I think there’s probably a level of frustration when you’re turning the ball over and you’re feeling like you’re getting fouled,” Redick said. “There’s frustration there, for sure. But I mean, again, I said it even here, we said it this morning: They’re going to foul every possession. It’s just, you got to play through it.”

Lakers star Luka Dončić agreed with that sentiment, saying the refs allowed physical play during the contest. Dončić didn’t necessarily express frustration over being fouled, but he said the Lakers needed to match Detroit’s physicality once it became clear the refs weren’t going to penalize it.

“We’ve got to definitely match their physicality,” Doncic said. “That’s the whole point. We got to match how they play. You saw the refs let it go, so we should play [with] physicality, for sure.”

Dončić led the Lakers with 30 points, but he was also responsible for eight turnovers in the loss.

A total of 50 fouls were called during the contest, though they were split evenly among both teams. The Pistons were called for 26 fouls on the night. The Lakers received 24 fouls.

But it was a chippy game overall, as the Pistons were called for one flagrant foul and one technical foul and the Lakers were called for two technicals. 

Unlike Dončić and Redick, LeBron James — who turned 41 on Tuesday — declined to take the bait on whether he believed the refs called the game properly, saying, “It’s not my lane to talk about how it was officiated or not.” He finished with 17 points.

With the loss, the Lakers dropped to 20-11 on the season. While the team still sits in the thick of the playoff race in the West, things haven’t gone well for the Lakers lately. Los Angeles is just 1-4 over its last five games, with Redick calling out the team’s defensive effort during that stretch.

Following Tuesday’s loss, the Lakers’ next three games will come against the Memphis Grizzlies (twice) and New Orleans Pelicans. Both teams are below .500, with the Pelicans having one of the worst records in the NBA. 

That should give Los Angeles a few opportunities to get back on track before a Jan. 7 matchup with the upstart San Antonio Spurs. 

Starter Tyler Mahle, Giants reportedly close on one-year MLB free-agent contract originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Giants appear to be adding additional arms to the starting rotation.

San Francisco is close to signing right-handed starting pitcher Tyler Mahle to a one-year contract, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Shayna Rubin reported Wednesday, citing a source.

Mahle, 31, posted a 6-4 record with 66 strikeouts, 29 walks and a 2.18 ERA in 86 2/3 innings pitched for the Texas Rangers last season.

A seventh-round pick by the Reds in 2013, Mahle debuted with Cincinnati in 2017, and spent five-plus seasons with the team before the Reds traded him to the Minnesota Twins before the 2022 MLB trade deadline.

Mahle spent an additional season with Minnesota before signing a two-year, $22 million contract with the Texas Rangers in Dec. 2023.

After a strong 2025 season with Texas, Mahle now appears close to joining a Giants starting rotation that was in need of multiple arms at the start of the offseason, and already has added veteran Adrian Houser.

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

Starter Tyler Mahle, Giants reportedly agree to one-year MLB free-agent contract originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Giants are adding additional arms to the starting rotation.

San Francisco agreed to a one-year free-agent contract with right-handed starting pitcher Tyler Mahle, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported Wednesday, citing a source, after the San Francisco Chronicle’s Shayna Rubin was first to report that the two sides were nearing an agreement.

Mahle, 31, posted a 6-4 record with 66 strikeouts, 29 walks and a 2.18 ERA in 86 2/3 innings pitched for the Texas Rangers last season.

A seventh-round pick by the Reds in 2013, Mahle debuted with Cincinnati in 2017, and spent five-plus seasons with the team before the Reds traded him to the Minnesota Twins ahead of the 2022 MLB trade deadline.

Mahle spent an additional season with Minnesota before signing a two-year, $22 million contract with the Texas Rangers in Dec. 2023.

After a strong 2025 season with Texas, Mahle now appears close to joining a Giants starting rotation that needed multiple arms at the start of the offseason, and already has added veteran Adrian Houser.

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

The Philadelphia 76ers keep looking like they have something on their hands with rookie VJ Edgecombe.

The third overall pick of the 2025 NBA Draft continued a clutch run to open his career with a game-winning 3-pointer in overtime against the Memphis Grizzlies, snapping a six-game losing streak for Philadelphia. The 20-year-old had five points at halftime and finished with 25.

Edgecombe already entered the game shooting 61.9% from the field and 55.6% from deep in clutch situations, with the Sixers outscoring teams by 43 points in 75 minutes with him on the floor. This wasn’t the first time he saved them from a crushing loss.

The effort was buttressed by 34-point nights from both Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. Embiid also had 10 rebounds, 8 assists and 2 blocks, while Maxey had 12 assists and 2 steals. Those two and Edgecombe combined to either make or assist on 40 of Philadelphia’s 51 baskets.

The game had previously been shaping up to be Ja Morant’s night. The All-Star point guard finished the night with 40 points on 16-of-22 shooting and almost singlehandedly dragged Memphis to overtime.

Edgecombe wasn’t the only rookie to come up big either, as Cedric Coward, the draft’s 11th overall pick, continued a strong rookie year with 28 points, 16 rebounds and 4 assists. You can probably bet on seeing him and Edgecombe in the NBA for a long time.

Josh Giddey’s career season will be put on pause for a significant amount of time.

The guard has suffered a left hamstring strain and will miss at least a few weeks, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Even a three-week absence would mean 12 games missed.

Giddey sustained the injury early in the third quarter of the Bulls’ 136-101 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday. A seemingly benign play ended in him grabbing at his hamstring and gingerly walking off the court.

The Bulls currently sit at 15-17, good for ninth in the Eastern Conference, and many of those wins are attributable to a breakout performance from Giddey so far this season. At 23 years old, he is averaging career highs across the board and ranks third in the NBA in assists per game with nine, behind only Nikola Jokić (11) and Cade Cunningham (9.6).

That effort landed Giddey in 14th place in the most recent round of NBA All-Star voting in the Eastern Conference. He has been a true do-everything player for Chicago this season, and now it will have to figure out what to do for at least a dozen games without him.

Before the season, the Bulls made a long-term investment in Giddey with a four-year, $100 million contract in restricted free agency.

For all the angst about large, nine-figure MLB contracts when they’re first signed (welcome to the club, Dylan Cease, Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso), they actually tend to be decent investments.

Sometimes, you get a paradigm-changing superstar who uplifts your franchise to the promised land (e.g. Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Max Scherzer). Other times, you get a guy who never quite reaches the highs of his previous years but manages to be a legitimate MLB player for at least a few years (e.g. Xander Bogaerts, Albert Pujols).

But rare is the contract in which, almost from the get-go, the player ceases to be a starter-quality MLB player, if he’s playing at all. At the very least, you should be getting a guy who can immediately be an acceptable addition to the lineup or rotation. You can count on one hand the list of big contracts that failed to meet that standard.

So it’s quite surprising when two of those contracts contain the same terms and involved players originally from the same team.

The 2019 Washington Nationals’ dilemma was doomed from the start

Dec. 30, 2025, saw the arrival of news that seemed inevitable for years. Anthony Rendon and the Los Angeles Angels have reportedly agreed to a buyout of the final year of his contract in 2026, paving the way for the third baseman to retire at the age of 35.

Rendon spent all of 2025 recovering from hip surgery and is still owed $38 million for 2026. It’s unclear how much of that money Rendon will receive, but it will be paid out over the course of the next three-to-five years. Because he has nearly all of the leverage in buyout talks, he likely got most of that money in exchange for freeing up some 2026 cash for club and ending an Angels career that became a distracting fiasco.

Let’s now rewind back to the end of the 2019 MLB season. The Washington Nationals had broken through for their first World Series title, featuring an array of veterans and young stars. As they entered the offseason, they had two clear items at the top of their to-do list: Re-sign Rendon and World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg.

It was a tough decision. Rendon, at the time, was one of the best third basemen in MLB and theoretically a better long-term bet, despite past injury issues. He had just slashed .319/.412/.598 while leading the NL in doubles (44) and RBI (126). He had also played at least 130 games the previous four seasons.

Strasburg, meanwhile, had just posted the best season of his career and had the emotional factor of being the first overall draft pick who marked the beginning of the Nationals’ new era. He had been a face of the franchise since he was selected in 2009 and had just led the NL with 209 innings pitched while displaying his usual post-Tommy John surgery effectiveness.

The Nationals would’ve liked to retain both players but ultimately reached an agreement with only Strasburg, for seven years and $245 million. Coincidentally, those were the same terms Rendon agreed to with the Angels only two days later.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that the ideal outcome for Washington would’ve been signing neither of them. Because the identical deals turned out to be arguably the worst deals any MLB team has ever made from a financial perspective.

Only one other contract compares to Anthony Rendon’s and Stephen Strasburg’s

Let’s keep this simple. Here is Baseball Reference’s list of the 50 largest contracts in MLB history, with deals going back to 2001. It includes both free-agent contracts and extensions.

At the top end is Juan Soto’s record 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets. At the bottom end is Matt Olson’s eight-year, $168 million extension with the Atlanta Braves.

Among those 50 players, Rendon ranks 41st in Baseball Reference’s calculation of Wins Above Replacement, and Strasburg is 46th. That doesn’t sound extravagantly disastrous, but consider that three of the deals (Cease, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Garrett Crochet) haven’t started yet, so those ranks are actually out of 48 players. And it takes only one good season — such as Max Fried’s 2025 — to rank 39th, where Fried is now.

Then consider that of the five non-Strasburg players below Rendon, three signed their deals in the past two years: Willy Adames, Aaron Nola and Corbin Burnes. It’s far too early to judge them.

That basically leaves two candidates to compare with Rendon and Strasburg for the worst ever: Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year, $240 million extension with the Detroit Tigers and Kris Bryant’s seven-year, $182 million deal with the Colorado Rockies.

At the risk of hand-waving, we can at least say Cabrera had a Silver Slugger-level year in 2016, the first year of that contract, and he’ll go into the Hall of Fame as a Tiger. The Tigers could’ve spent that money more wisely, yes, but Cabrera doesn’t fit in with this group.

That means that among the 50 largest MLB contracts ever, we’re left with Rendon, Strasburg and Bryant as the least rewarding from a financial standpoint, team-wise. All three are players who got enormous paydays — even bigger than Chris Davis’ infamous seven-year, $161 million deal, which might have been the previous low-water mark as far as value — and simply failed to stay on the field with any regularity.

In the case of Rendon, you have a player who started well — but only in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, in which he slashed .286/.418/.497 in 52 games. Since then, well, he still has yet to play more than 60 games in a season with the club while slashing .231/.329/.336 in 205 games from 2021 to 2025. There was a season-ending hip injury in 2021, a nearly season-ending wrist injury in 2022, a season-ending fractured tibia in 2023, a hamstring tear and oblique injury in 2024, and the hip surgery in 2025.

Strasburg was even more injury-ravaged. Following that 2019 season in which he led the NL in innings pitched, he made seven starts total, across which he posted a 6.89 ERA. That’s worth repeating: seven starts, or the number a pitcher usually makes over the course of less than two months. He experienced a nerve issue in his pitching hand in 2020, then was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome (TAS) in 2021. There might not be a more dreaded issue for a pitcher than TAS, from which successful returns are few and far between. Strasburg never adequately recovered and retired after negotiating a buyout last year.

Bryant’s contract was odd from the start. When the Rockies signed him, he was being sold as a middle-of-the-order bat who could play five different positions. Colorado, in its finite wisdom, decided he should instead be a full-time left-fielder. Like Rendon, the first year was fine when he was on the field, with a .306/.376/.475 slash line in 2022, but back and foot issues limited Bryant to 42 games.

Since then, Bryant has been barely playable in 128 games across three seasons and was diagnosed with a degenerative disc disease in May. If he plays a full season again, it will be a surprise. Like with Rendon, there are rumors Bryant has played his final game, though he recently insisted he’s not contemplating retirement.

How do you compare these three? That’s ultimately up to you, but let’s say Strasburg is the worst because, again, the Nationals ended up paying nearly that entire $245 million for seven overall bad starts. And the contract was reportedly not insured, so they were on the hook for the full sum minus whatever they saved in the buyout. Rendon and Bryant had similar arcs with good-but-limited first seasons and then a full injury breakdown, with Rendon playing 205 games in five seasons and Bryant playing 128 games in three seasons.

Now let’s consider two things. One, Rendon’s contract was $63 million more expensive overall, which ain’t nothing. Two, while Bryant has by all accounts been committed to coming back, Rendon has been blasé about his baseball future to an infamous degree. He said baseball wasn’t his top priority in 2024 and has shrugged off attempts by reporters at a status check-in. There was also that 2023 incident in which he took a swing at an opposing fan.

In other words, Rendon has barely played since 2020, hasn’t played well at all since 2020 and has played a central role in the Angels becoming the complete laughingstock they are now. To us, that sounds like a contract worse than Bryant’s, even if the latter is worse by total WAR.

As for other candidates, there are deals such as Davis and Ryan Howard, who got their paydays and simply ceased to be replacement-level players, but they at least stayed on the field. There’s also Josh Hamilton, whose disappointing Angels tenure ended two seasons in after he unfortunately relapsed with his addiction issues. But that’s a very difficult comparison for these purposes, especially when his contract came in tens of millions of dollars less than the three discussed here.

This is all admittedly harsh. None of these players has control over their health and to judge a person by the ratio of their labor to their cost is inherently dehumanizing. These were all good players at one point, and all three have well-deserved World Series rings. They just also happen to be major reasons so many fans get antsy when their teams actually commit to spending in free agency.

So congratulations, 2019 Nationals. You will be remembered for reasons beyond a cathartic World Series title. And those reasons are now beyond mitigation.