Curtains close on Year 1 of the Luka and LeBron Lakers

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🚨 Headlines

⚾️ Scary scene in Pittsburgh: A fan fell from the 21-foot Clemente Wall in right field at PNC Park and landed on the field during the seventh inning of the Pirates-Cubs game. He was taken off on a stretcher and is in critical condition.

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⚽️ Barça 3, Inter 3: Barcelona and Inter Milan traded stunning goals in a memorable first leg of their Champions League semifinal. The second leg is next week in Italy.

🏀 Most Improved: Hawks guard Dyson Daniels, who led the league in steals, was named the NBA’s Most Improved Player over Pistons guard Cade Cunningham and Clippers center Ivica Zubac.

🏈 Prank call saga: The NFL came down hard on the Falcons after defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son prank called Shedeur Sanders during last weekend’s draft, fining the team $250,000 and fining Ulbrich $100,000.

🏀 Curtains close on Year 1 of Luka-LeBron

The Lakers’ season came to a disappointing end on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, where Rudy Gobert (27 points, 24 rebounds) and the Timberwolves finished them off in five games.

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Franchise firsts:

1. This is the first time the Lakers have ever lost a first-round series as a No. 3 seed or higher.

2. This is the first time the Timberwolves have ever won playoff series in back-to-back years.

Here’s a startling fact: Los Angeles was outscored by its opponents this season when LeBron James and Luka Dončić shared the floor (+24 in the regular season, -29 against Minnesota). “The Lakers just couldn’t make Luka and LeBron work in Year 1,” writes Yahoo Sports’ Tom Haberstroh, who has five trade ideas the team should consider.

Postgame sound: “Make that next step now. Come on,” James told Anthony Edwards after an encouraging embrace at mid-court. That next step, should it happen, will come against either the Rockets or the Warriors.

Win or go home: The Lakers were one of four teams facing elimination on Wednesday. Only one survived the night.

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• Rockets 131, Warriors 116: Steve Kerr waved the white flag in the third quarter, pulling his starters and resting them ahead of Game 6 tomorrow night in San Francisco. (Warriors lead 3-2)

• Capitals 4, Canadiens 1: Washington won its 11th postseason series of the Ovechkin era to set up a date with the Hurricanes in Round 2. (Capitals win 4-1)

• Panthers 6, Lightning 3: The reigning champions went 3-0 on the road to win the Battle of Florida and reach the second round of the playoffs for the fourth straight year. (Panthers win 4-1)

Plus: The Jets beat the Blues, 5-3, in the only non-elimination game of the evening. Winnipeg has the momentum and a 3-2 lead as the series heads back to St. Louis.

⚾️ MLB’s spending gap has become a chasm

The Dodgers and Marlins, who played this week in Los Angeles, have a payroll gap of $414.6 million, the largest ever between opposing MLB teams.

Consider this: The average annual value of Shohei Ohtani’s contract ($70 million) is more than Miami’s entire payroll this season ($67.9 million). Or this: The Dodgers have 13 players making at least $10 million in 2025, while the Marlins have one.

Zoom out: While the gap between the Dodgers and Marlins is historic, the reigning champs are far outspending most other teams, too. They’re on the hook for a record $482.5 million in 2025, calculated by adding their payroll ($331.7 million) and estimated luxury tax bill* ($150.8 million). That tax bill alone is larger than the total payroll of half of MLB teams.

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Parting shot: When “Moneyball” was written in 2003, A’s GM Billy Beane lamented the insurmountable spending gap between his ballclub and the Yankees, which at the time was $85 million. 22 years later, that gap between the top and bottom of the league has become a chasm.

*Luxury tax, explained: Teams who fall above a predetermined payroll threshold ($241 million this year) are subject to the Competitive Balance Tax on every dollar they go over. The Dodgers are one of seven teams estimated to exceed that threshold this year (official calculations come at the end of the season), alongside the Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Padres and Red Sox.

⚽️ In photos: Changing of the guard

On Wednesday night, across three continents, two of soccer’s great icons slipped — and their heir announced himself to the world.

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Cristiano Ronaldo went first, slumping out of the AFC Champions League semifinal in Saudi Arabia. Lionel Messi followed, losing in the Champions Cup semifinal in South Florida.

Meanwhile in Barcelona, their 17-year-old successor dazzled in the Champions League they’ve departed. His name is Lamine Yamal. He still wears braces. And he might already be the best soccer player in the world.

From Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell:

In his 100th game for Barcelona, Yamal scored his 22nd goal to go with 33 assists, and the Messi comparisons accelerated into overdrive.

At Yamal’s age, Messi had scored just once for Barcelona; Ronaldo had scored five times for Sporting Clube de Portugal. He is doing things that nobody his age has ever done.

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Yamal regularly evokes the feeling that Messi did all those years ago; the sense that we are watching something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. And on Wednesday, more so than ever before, that something felt like a changing of the guard.

What they’re saying: “He is a phenomenon born every 50 years,” Inter Milan coach Simone Inzaghi said of Yamal after Wednesday’s semifinal match. “He is a player I had not seen live before and we had to double up on him. He really impressed me today.”

🏈 Belichick following Coach Prime playbook

Consciously or not, Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson are following the example Deion Sanders laid down in 2023 when he took over at Colorado: Stand tall in the center of the chaos you create, and let the noise swirl all around you.

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From Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee:

If you were scripting a Lifetime movie, you couldn’t cast it any better: the 24-year-old former cheerleader and the crusty champion football coach, the oddest of odd couples making a go of it together in a college town.

Bill Belichick is the most fascinating what-if of the college football offseason, and his relationship with Jordon Hudson is a strangely compelling element — in large part because Hudson is theatrically protective of Belichick.

She shut down a CBS interviewer’s attempt to delve into their story during an interview about Belichick’s book. She’s tried to put PR distance between Belichick and his defensive coordinator … who happens to be his son, Steve. She’s asked to be included on all work-related emails.

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None of this is wrong or even improper, but — despite what Hudson wants to believe — it’s all newsworthy, given North Carolina’s all-in gamble that Belichick can return (bring?) Tar Heel football to relevance.

Maybe this is giving North Carolina officials and boosters pause, maybe it’s not. Maybe this will all be worth the publicity headaches, maybe it won’t. This much is certain: Belichick and Hudson are running the America-in-2025 publicity playbook the way Tom Brady used to run the Patriots’ offense.

🚨 The latest: How Hudson amassed an $8 million real estate portfolio within months of meeting Belichick (NY Post)

📺 Watchlist: Rooting for a Game 7

If you have no inherent rooting interest in tonight’s NBA and NHL playoff games, then you might as well pull for as many Game 7s as possible, right?

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• 🏀 NBA: New York (3-2) at Detroit (7:30pm ET, TNT); Denver (3-2) at Los Angeles (10pm, TNT) … Go Pistons and Clippers!

• 🏒 NHL: Toronto (3-2) at Ottawa (7pm, TBS); Vegas (3-2) at Minnesota (7:30pm, ESPN); Dallas (3-2) at Colorado (9pm, TBS); LA (2-3) at Edmonton (10pm, ESPN) … Go Senators, Wild, Avalanche and Kings!

More to watch:

• ⚽️ Premier League: Nottingham Forest vs. Brentford (2:30pm, USA) … With a win, Forest will leapfrog Chelsea, Man City and Newcastle and move into third place.

• ⛳️ Golf: PGA’s CJ Cup (7:45am, ESPN+; 4pm, Golf); LPGA’s Black Desert Championship (7pm, Golf); LIV Korea (10pm, FS1) … Round 1 in Texas, Utah and South Korea.

• ⚾️ NCAA Baseball: No. 1 Texas at No. 11 Arkansas (7pm, ESPN2) … The Longhorns are 19-2 in the SEC, which features seven of the nation’s top 15 teams, per D1Baseball.

• 🎾 Tennis: Madrid Open (10am, Tennis) … No 2. Iga Świątek faces No. 4 Coco Gauff in the women’s semifinals.

*Top 15 teams: (1) Texas, (2) LSU, (3) Clemson, (4) North Carolina, (5) Florida State, (6) Oregon, (7) Oregon State, (8) UC Irvine, (9) Georgia, (10) Auburn, (11) Arkansas, (12) Tennessee, (13) NC State, (14) UCLA, (15) Vanderbilt.

🏒 NHL trivia

The Capitals just won their first playoff series since capturing the 2018 Stanley Cup against what team?

Hint: They’re still alive in this year’s postseason.

Answer at the bottom.

🎾 Andre Agassi: Pickleball player?

The tennis legend made his professional pickleball debut on Wednesday at the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, where he won a mixed doubles match alongside Anna Leigh Waters, the No. 1 ranked woman in the world.

Trivia answer: Vegas Golden Knights

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