Category: Sports News

Ten days ago, the Golden State Warriors announced they’d re-evaluate Steph Curry’s ailing knee. Wednesday, they announced there would be no good news about the Baby-Faced Assassin’s return for another 10 days.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote that time and tide wait for no man, and the second part of that quote seems like it’s about noted boating enthusiast Klay Thompson. Curry turns 38 on Saturday and he won’t be playing before then, nor will he be available for most of the Warriors’ brutal upcoming road trip, featuring six games in nine nights and matchups with each of the Eastern Conference’s top three teams.

Just for the record, Shams Charania wrote a truly terrible sentence in the above tweet, even for him. “Stretching his absence to five more games and a total of 20 consecutive” is the kind of thing you type one-handed while fielding calls from Rich Paul with the other hand. And you also haven’t slept more than four hours a night in case someone else announces publicly-available NBA information seconds before you do, since that is apparently worth millions of dollars per year.

Curry is apparently doing on-court work, but it doesn’t sound like he’s playing basketball yet, which is an important prerequisite for playing basketball in an NBA game. This means the Warriors will continue to lean on valuable two-way guard LJ Cryer and valuable former two-way guard Pat Spencer, but will remain an offense in search of an engine. The ragtag group of Warriors is basically enthusiastically pushing a powerless car around a track, but the upcoming East Coast swing is like trying to get said car up a hill in Pacific Heights.

How does this affect the Warriors playoff play-in chances? They’ve been passed by the LA Clippers and lead the Portland Trail Blazers by 1.5 games, but the bottom of the Western Conference is an ugly morass of injuries, tanking, and the New Orleans Pelicans, who are actually trying to win but are terrible at it. Even a team that lost back-to-back games to the Utah Jazz and Chicago Bulls won’t drop 8.5 games in the standings in their final 17 games, which at most a dozen will feature Curry.

The expected-but-disappointing injury news does make it quite unlikely the Warriors finish 7th or 8th, which likely dooms them to a first-round series with the defensing champion Oklahoma City Thunder — and that’s if everything goes right.

That’s why the Warriors may as well be patient with Curry, since their play-in fate is pretty much sealed, next week would be brutal even with him in the lineup, and his brother needs playing time anyway. We’ll know more in 10 days, but don’t be surprised if we get another 10-day notice then.

The Washington Wizards take on an undermanned Orlando Magic team on Tuesday at Kia Center to close out the Florida leg of their four-game road trip.

Game info

When: Thursday, Mar. 12 at 7:00 p.m. ET

Where: Kia Center, Orlando, Florida

How to watch: Monumental Sports Network, League Pass

Injuries: For the Wizards, Kyshawn George (elbow), Jamir Watkins (ankle), Anthony Davis (hand, groin), Cam Whitmore (shoulder), and D’Angelo Russell (not with team) are out.

For the Magic, Jase Richardson (back) and Jonathan Isaac (knee) are questionable, while Franz Wagner (ankle) and Anthony Black (abdominal) are out.

What to watch for

The Wizards will try their best to wash away the stench of the 83-point game they gave up to Bam Adebayo in their Tuesday tilt against the Miami Heat. The Magic will be without key pieces such as Franz Wagner and Anthony Black, but the Wiz may need to be wary of Wendell Carter Jr. going off for a career night.

Kidding aside, the Magic enter the contest on a four-game winning streak and desperately need a victory after getting passed by the Heat for the sixth seed in the East. After getting a rest day on Tuesday, Trae Young is expected to be back in action for his third game in a Wizards uniform.

For the tank watchers out there, the 16-48 Wizards made up some ground in the race to the bottom as both the Sacramento Kings (16-50) and Brooklyn Nets (17-48) picked up victories over the last couple of days. Only the Indiana Pacers currently have fewer wins than Washington.

The Cleveland Cavaliers will look to break the Orlando Magic’s four-game winning streak.

Share your thoughts as the game unfolds. If you aren’t a member of the community, sign up so you can talk to your fellow Cavalier fans and make your voice heard!

Go Cavs!

Houston Rockets vs Denver Nuggets

March 11, 2026

Location: Ball Arena – Denver, Colorado

TV: ESPN

Radio: KBME Sports Talk 790

Online: Rockets App, SCHN+

Time 9:00 CST

Probable Starting Lineups

Rockets: Amen Thompson, Tari Eason, Jabari Smith Jr., Kevin Durant, Alperen Sengun

Nuggets:  Jamal Murray (GTD), Christian Braun, Cameron Johnson (GTD), Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokić 

SALT LAKE CITY — The precipitous fall in Mikal Bridges’ stats is widespread. 

Points. Minutes. Efficiency.

They’ve all plummeted since the end of January. It reached a low point during the Western Conference swing that ended Wednesday in Utah, where Bridges arrived with three straight games playing under 30 minutes and scoring in single digits. 

The problem, according to Bridges, isn’t about his lack of aggressiveness.

“The aggression thing is not an issue at all. I don’t think that’s the issue at all,” said Bridges, who failed to score a point in Sunday’s loss to the Lakers and was benched in crunch time of Monday’s defeat to the Clippers. “Even if I miss a couple, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nah, I don’t think that’s the issue.”

So what is it? 

“I don’t know,” Bridges answered. “I think it’s just the game of basketball. Sometimes you try to get open and sometimes it doesn’t find me. Just try to find ways to stay aggressive. That’s it.”

In other words, Bridges believes this is more about a lack of opportunity than broken confidence. And whether that’s it or the reasons run deeper, Bridges’ second season with the Knicks — which started strong and efficient — had devolved into disappointment heading into the Jazz game. 

Since the All-Star break and before Wednesday, Bridges averaged just 11.4 points and under 30 minutes while shooting 43.2 percent overall and 34.1 percent on treys.

Prior to the All-Star break, Bridges was up to 15.9 points in 34.5 minutes while shooting 50.4 percent overall and 38.6 percent on threes.

When you combine pre- and post-All-Star, Bridges is averaging his fewest points and shot attempts since 2021-22 with the Phoenix Suns. 

On top of his declines in efficiency, Bridges was losing playing time to his surging backup, Landry Shamet, including in fourth quarters. 

Jalen Brunson, who was teammates with Bridges at Villanova, said he offers reassurance. 

“Tell him to keep shooting. Tell him to keep playing,” Brunson said. “He’s out there. So he has to continue to be who he is.”

It wasn’t supposed to be such a slog for Bridges this season. The coaching change — from Tom Thibodeau to Mike Brown — was pitched as an avenue toward unlocking Bridges’ All-Star capabilities through a faster and freestyling offense. 

• CHECK OUT THE LATEST NBA STANDINGS AND KNICKS STATS

Less structure and fewer isolations (Brown says he doesn’t call plays) theoretically meant a better version of Bridges, who is one of the top-conditioned players in the NBA and thrives with movement. 

That began harmoniously as Bridges excelled through most of December. Lately, though, his attempts and conversions have dropped. 

“It’s got its pros and cons,” Bridges said about Brown’s offense, specifically when asked about not having plays called. “You try to have the feel of the game sometimes.” 

The good news that Knicks fans can fall back on is that Bridges also struggled through stretches of last season before awakening like a five-alarm fire in the playoffs. His heroic performances in Rounds 1 and 2 against the Pistons and Celtics, respectively, were viewed as justification for signing Bridges in the summer to a four-year, $150 million extension — which doesn’t start until next season. 

There was also his big Christmas of 2024 against the Spurs, and the OT thriller a year ago in Portland. So Bridges is capable. He’s proven it. But that also makes his regression this season more confounding as he adjusts to a decreased role.

“It’s all right,” Bridges said. “I’m just trying to do whatever it takes to win, trying to find opportunities, try to do all the right things and be aggressive.

“Sometimes [the ball] doesn’t come my way. Just try to do other things.”

It may not have seemed so in the early hours of February 9, 2023, but the Nets’ trade of Kevin Durant in February 2023 is increasingly seen by many as a big positive for the Brooklyn franchise. Sean Marks & co. ultimately wound up with 11 first round picks and swaps when all the by-products of the deal are accounted for. It is indeed the foundation stone of their current rebuild.

Of course, the trade dashed all hopes that the “Clean Sweep” and “Big Three” era would lead to a title. Now though, in some quarters particularly at the HSS Training Center, it’s seen as a sunk cost, not something to dwell on. But even outside those halls and behind the Great Window, there’s a new take. It may not be unanimous and Marks’ position with the fanbase remains tenuous, but it’s there.

Call it revisionist history or worthy counter-narrative, but in recent weeks, we’ve started to see a new appraisal of Marks tenure, nowhere more effusively than on a little noticed discussion last week between the two hosts of the “Third Apron” podcast co-hosted by Sam Quinn of CBS Sports and Yossi Gozlan on his “Third Apron” podcast. The two are known for their attention to detail and insight.

In that discussion, Quinn not only called the Durant trade a “historically great trade” in NBA annals and “the home run of home runs,” but he and Gozlan said it was the first of several deals in which Marks secured a much better deal that he had initially been offered, whether for Mikal Bridges or Cam Johnson, whose trades Quinn described as “awesome” and “killer”, respectively. Quinn even suggested that one of the fire sale trades that preceded Durant — those of Kyrie Irving and James Harden — also deserve some praise. For his part, Gozlan said he believed the Bridges trade alone warranted him consideration as Executive of the Year in 2024-25.

The two also offered critiques of Marks, particularly on the loss of the “Big Three” but in general that stand firmly on the side of NBA punditry that think Marks may be about to turn the corner again … with the support of the team’s owner, Joe Tsai.

“They’ve consistently done very well when trading away their own players,” said Quinn with Gozlan nodding in agreement. “Think about what the market was for Kyrie  when hey traded him away to Dallas  Getting what they got for Kyrie was a win.

“The Kevin Durant trade?!? The home run of home runs. Other than the Paul George trade, maybe the best selling away trade of a player in NBA history.  I guess they didn’t get Shai Gilgeous Alexander (as OKC in the 2019 Paul George trade.) That’s why the Paul George trade has to be better. but you get the point. It was a historically great trade.”

The two officially were discussing Quinn’s February 17 analysis of all 30 NBA front offices on Gozlan’s “Third Apron” podcast (starting at about 42:00 in) but wound up going more in depth. That analysis was published coincidentally on the 10th anniversary of Marks hiring by the Nets. It ranked the Nets F.O. 15th. Quinn has admitted, including in talking with Gozlan, that he now thinks Marks deserves even a higher grade, that his analysis may have been colored by pushback he received after ranking Marks 17th last year! Gozlan said that he had voted for Marks as Executive of the Year in 2024 based mainly on the biggest off-shoot of the deal, the subsequent trade to Mikal Bridges to the Knicks!

“They have held on to their players throughout good offers in search of great ones and that has worked out very very well for them. Like how many offers did they get for Mikal Bridges that would have been fine. Like if they had traded him to Memphis for all those picks (in the aftermath of the KD trade) that would have been a decent trade. I think the Rockets came in with an offer at one point. I don’t know what it was. They waited and got the historic haul for Mikal Bridges, that now looks like an awesome trade for him.”

As Adrian Wojnarowski reported at the 2024 trade deadline, the Nets had offers of four or five firsts that they turned down. Brian Lewis subsequently wrote that the Rockets offer mentioned by Quinn would have retuned two firsts and other assets to Brooklyn and there was a rumor that the Trailblazers would’ve offered the rights to Scoot Henderson.

“They waited on Cam Johnson too. It might have cost them draft position in 2025.  I think Egor Demin looks good. I’d be very excited to have him. Maybe they could have gotten higher up in that lottery, who’s to say. BUT they get an unprotected pick for Cam Johnson plus Michael Porter Jr. who’s better than Cam Johnson. That’s a killer trade”.

“I don’t think you can fault them for holding on to their guys. It’s worked out for them,” Quinn added. (One league source told ND that indeed that policy of waiting for a better deal has been a criticism of Marks. Quinn also said that the Nets have succeeded in some lesser deals areas have some big if less tangible assets.

“They’ve done pretty well on the margins. Day’Ron Sharpe is one of the better back-up values in the NBA,” the CBS Sports writer added, speaking of the two-year, $12.5 million contract Sharpe signed last summer. The second year of that contract is a team option making it even more favorable to Nets.

“Jordi Fernandez … awesome coaching hire,” Quinn added. “I think that’s going to manifest in the enxt couple of years. And by the way we don’t think about them because they’re not the Knicks, but they ARE in New York, they ARE a big market team. Guys want to live there. By the way, I don’t know if casual fans know this, when you play for the Knicks, you don’t live in New York City. Their practice facility is in in Westchester, They’re an hour away. When you play for Brooklyn, your practice facility in sin Brooklyn. You get to live in New York It’s a very desirable place to be.” 

His bottom line: “They’re loaded with draft picks right now. They’re in an awesome position. They’re going to be good again in two or three years.”

Gozlan echoed Quinn in many ways.

“I had Sean Marks as my big vote for Executive of the Year mainly because of the Bridges trade,” he noted. “I thought that if those rumors were true that the Nets declined four picks for Mikal Bridges from the Grizzlies in 2023 as soon as soon as they got him. If that was true, I thought it was they declined these trades. and yet to worked out. 

“You’re right. They are so good at valuing players on the market. and knowing how long that value could sustain  I really can’t think of a situation where that lost value on a guy although maybe if you want to say Kyrie.That was Kyrie destroying his own value.”

Quinn countered by arguing that the Nets “lost a ton of value with Harden.” (Internally the company line on the deal centered on Harden-for-Ben Simmons is that neither the Nets nor the 76ers won that trade.) 

“As an organization you have to bear some blame for what went wrong for Kyrie and Durant and Harden, like when a player quites on you like James Harden did, that’s a red flag,” Quinn argued, reiterating the single biggest criticism of the Nets front office, its inability, at least in the hires before Fernandez, to choose the right coach.

“I think the Steve Nash coaching hire. I think it showed some promise early.  They just thought we’re not going to need an experienced coach. Oh now, you did need an experienced coach,” said Quinn.  “I think they let the players have a little bit too much control over the roster and therefore there was nobody to put their hands on the wheel when things went south. Trading Jarrett Allen to appease Kyrie and Kevin Durant? Not looking great.” 

“I think there are some organizational things they should be dinged for but mostly I’m thinking I should have ranked them a little bit higher. and maybe let backlash from previous rankings get to me. 

Gozlan agreed.

“But when you think of all the things they do on the margins … they’re excellent at free agency, not just getting KD and Kyrie, but getting all these good players to come on the minimum. There’s so many good assets that they good in the buyout market,” he said, referring primarily to Blake Griffin and Lamarcus Aldridge, even getting Paul Milsap and Goran Dragic,“ admitting ”they really didn’t work out.“

“Theyre pretty good at the draft,” Gozlan, editor of capsheets.com, said ticking off the 20 and 30-something values they got: Jarrett Allen, Caris LeVert, Nic Claxton, Day’Ron Sharpe, even contending that while Cam Thomas wound up wanting out, they got good value for him at No. 27.“

Gozlan’s one big criticism is big contracts. Not so much superstars but stars.

“Negotiating below maximum contracts leaves a lot to be desired,” he added. “The Claxton deal is okay. The Joe Harris deal was pretty bad.  the D’Andre Jordan deal was pretty bad. The one deal that I thought was a pretty good value was the Dinwiddie one from like six seven years ago when they got him at the midlevel at the time.”

Gozlan said he also has questions about the 2025 Draft.

“The strategy going into last year’s draft is pretty hard to evaluate,” he said of the five first round picks. “It just seems so weird that they took all these picks. They don’t have one pick that has real value. You can’t point to anyone there so far that can really turn things around. It’s still early to see if anyone there that can at least become an All-Star.  But that’s the kind of thing if they can get only one guy to really pop, that would set them back.”

He, like Quinn, pointed to the failure of the “Big Three” and still less-than-fulsome explanation of what happened. 

“Why did all those stars just lose faith in the organization. and we still don’t know what it really is. it just imploded … There’s clearly more than went wrong with that team and until we see them turn the corner with a new group i think it’s reasonable to hold it against them.” 

Quinn agreed. “There’s clearly more to the story about what went wrong for that team and until we see them turn the corner with that team, the new group, I think it’s reasonable to hold that against them BUT if in two or three years, they’re really good, it’s going to pretty easy to push them up because we can just look back at it and say, Kevin Durant has had a checkered few years since he left and Kyrie is Kyrie. It speaks for itself. Harden is now four trades and multiple trades since then. It may have been a weird cocktail of personalities.”

As for the immediate future, Quinn and Gozlan debated whether the Nets exchange of first round picks with the Rockets the same night of the Bridges trade was worth it. In that deal, Marks retrieved the 2025 and 2026 first round picks they lost in the trade that brought Harden to Brooklyn. In return, the Nets gave up picks and swaps between 2027 and 2029 they got from the KD and Kyrie deals.

Quinn was more the skeptic, asking if “the lottery balls they got in 2026 was worth the assets they gave up in the Rockets trade that they ultimately had to give up just to get a pick in the 2026 lottery. I think that’s something that’s going to have play out over time and if they jump up to No. 1 or No. 2, yeah of course The 2026 draft is maybe so good, maybe it’s still worth it but I’d be holding my breath on that.”

Gozlan sees that trade and the Bridges trade as “one big trade,” and believes the Nets “had to do it.”

“I think you still have to do it knowing what we knew at the time that the Nets were so bad in 2024 and with the Suns … no one thought they’d implode as bad as they did.” he said. “I just think it’s better to have control of your draft. That trade doesn’t work without the Mikal Bridges trade. You really have to factor that in as one big mega-trade because the other element is that they’ve got all these Knicks picks in the future. They have control over their destiny and that could come into play whether they get some good picks of value or maybe they could leverage some type of trade in the future with the Knicks.”

We are approaching what Jordi Fernandez confidently described as, “the summer of our lives” and what they do in the off-season is going to tell the tale of just where Marks will stand when Quinn and Gozlan speak again a year from now. Internally, the Nets seem confident in what they have built and where they’re headed.

Everyone needs to calm down about Bam Adebayo’s 83-point performance. 

Was it cringeworthy? Yes. Was it achieved through an ungodly number of free throws? Yes.

Was it disrespectful to Kobe Bryant? No. 

Adebayo’s feat is drawing polarized reactions not just because of how he reached the second-highest point total in NBA history but because of whom he surpassed. 

Adebayo leapfrogged Bryant’s 81-point performance against the Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006. That was one of the most awe-inspiring performances of Bryant’s career. The Lakers needed those points for the come-from-behind win, and Bryant transformed into an unconscious scoring machine to make it happen. 

It was thrilling. It was vintage Bryant. It was part of the magic of what made him a legend. 

What Adebayo did Tuesday against a tanking Wizards team was very different than Kobe. He made 36 of 43 free throws to get to 83 points. With the Heat leading by as many as 28 points in the fourth quarter, what he was doing was pure, unadulterated stat chasing, a far cry from Bryant’s organic artistry. 

Wilt Chamberlain scored an NBA-record 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the Knicks on March 2, 1962, in their 169-147 victory. Chamberlain went 36 of 63 from the field and 28 of 32 from the free-throw line.

He scored 23 points in the first quarter, 41 by halftime, 28 in the third and 31 in the fourth.

The question is should Adebayo have allowed Bryant to keep the second-best mark?

Absolutely not. 

Here’s the thing, admittedly, something feels icky about watching Adebayo pass Bryant, who tragically died in a helicopter crash in 2020 alongside his daughter, Gianna. But that instinct needs to be curbed. Why? Because Bryant wouldn’t have wanted another player to defer to him. 

Bryant’s persona was being a stone-cold killer on the court. He was the Black Mamba, the human form of one of the most dangerous snakes on the planet. 

He wouldn’t have wanted mercy. He wouldn’t have wanted conciliation. 

Bryant would’ve wanted Adebayo to go for it. He would’ve been cheering for him louder than anyone. He would’ve scowled at anyone who criticized how he scored those points.

Just look at how Bryant handled things in the past. 

Back in 2018, when the sports world devolved into a nightmarish echo chamber as pundits endlessly debated whether LeBron James was the greatest player of all time after he reached the NBA Finals eight straight seasons, Bryant cut through the white noise.

Tweeted Bryant: “We can enjoy one without tearing down one. I love what he’s doing. Don’t debate what can’t be definitively won by anyone #enjoymy5 #enjoymj6 #enjoylbjquest.”

Here’s to guessing Bryant would’ve said something similar after Adebayo’s performance.

It doesn’t matter whose performance was more pure. Both feats can be celebrated. They were both superhuman.

After Bryant tragically died at age 41, his legend took on a completely different dimension, becoming sacrosanct. 

It was painful watching Adebayo break Bryant’s mark. It felt wrong. If he had stopped at 81 points as an ode to Bryant, Adebayo would’ve gotten even more respect. All he had to do was sit with 1:37 left and the Heat up by 27 points. All he had to do was take the high road. 

But Bryant wouldn’t have wanted that. And that’s what matters most. 

Bryant fully believed in celebrating greatness. He believed in putting a high heel on his opponent’s throat and stomping. What happened Tuesday was a celebration of that type of spirit. 

When James surpassed Bryant as third on the league’s all-time leading scoring list on Jan. 25, 2020, Bryant was at the front of the line to congratulate him. 

In his final tweet, Bryant wrote, “Continuing to move the game forward @kingjames. Much respect my brother.   #33644.” Bryant died the next morning. 

In a sense, Adebayo moved the game forward. 

You might not like it. You might not agree with it. 

But it was in the spirit of the game. 

It was in the spirit of what Bryant stood for. 

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Canada advanced past the first round of the World Baseball Classic for the first time, beating Cuba 7-2 Wednesday in a winner-take-all game at San Juan, Puerto Rico, behind Abraham Toro's homer and Otto Lopez's two-run single.

Brothers Bo Naylor and Josh Naylor drove in runs, Owen Caissie had two RBIs and reliever James Paxton struck out six over 2 2/3 scoreless innings for Canada (3-1), which eliminated the Cubans (2-2) and won Group A over Puerto Rico (3-1). Cuba was knocked out in the first round for the first time.

Canada and Puerto Rico will play quarterfinals in Houston this weekend.

Cuba finished with three errors, and left fielder Ariel Martinez allowed Toro’s catchable fly starting the seventh to fall for a double. The Canadians broke open the game with a three-run sixth inning that included a dropped popup, a foul pop that fell, a wild pickoff throw and a catcher's interference call on Andrys Perez, whose passed ball led to Canada's first run.

Later Wednesday, Mexico and Italy were to play at Houston in a Group B game that will determine whether the U.S. advances.

Cuba escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first when Matt Davidson hit an inning-ending popout off loser Livan Moinelo, but Canada went ahead in the third on Caissie's sacrifice fly. Toro homered in the fifth on a splitter from Yariel Rodríguez, a 420-foot drive to right.

Cuba scored in the bottom half on Yoelkis Guibert's run-scoring groundout off winner Cal Quantrill, who allowed an unearned run and two hits over five innings.

Canada opened a 3-1 lead in the sixth on Bo Naylor's RBI double.

Martinez drove in a run in the bottom half with his third hit and Josh Naylor had an RBI single in the seventh on a soft fly to left that popped up of the glove of Martinez, who tried for a sliding catch.

Cuba went 1 for 7 with runners in scoring position. Adam Macko escaped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth when Yiddi Cappe swung over a curveball and James Paxton struck out Moncada in the seventh to leave runners at the corners.

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb