Emma Raducanu will miss next week’s Berlin Tennis Open as she continues to manage a back problem. The 22-year-old has been struggling with her back since competing in Strasbourg last month before the French Open and took an off-court medical timeout during her quarter-final loss to Zheng Qinwen at Queen’s Club on Friday.
After the match Raducanu said: “It’s been lingering for the last few weeks and I have had back issues before. I think it’s just a vulnerability of mine. I’m not overly concerned that it’s something serious, but it’s something that’s very annoying and needs proper and careful management.”
The Philadelphia Flyers are one of a few teams towards the bottom of the NHL looking to add talent in any way they can. One NHL insider just connected them to a... high school quarterback?
Mason West, one of the hottest prospects in the 2025 draft class right now, is a 6-foot-6 right wing who most recently played for the Fargo Force of the USHL, scoring a goal, eight assists, and nine points in 10 games last season.
Last season, as well as in the two seasons prior, the 17-year-old played for his local high school, Edina High, in Minnesota. But there's a catch: he's also a three-star quarterback who's passed for 65 touchdowns and 5,217 yards in the last two seasons.
West, according to 247 Sports, has visited with the University of Illinois and has drawn interest from fairly decent football schools like Marshall and the University of California.
That all said, the hulking winger is focused on hockey and will dedicate his efforts to the rink after his last seasons at the helm of Edina's offense on the gridiron.
According to NHL insider Elliotte Friedman, teams are going to be playing the game of chicken with West in the draft, seeing which of their peers will bite and select the polarizing dual-sport athlete first.
The Flyers, with multiple first- and second-round picks, could very well be one of those teams.
"He's kind of got his own list on each team's draft board. The way it was explained to me was, every time a team gets a pick from the second round on, he'll be part of the conversation," Friedman said of West on his latest episode of the "32 Thoughts" podcast. "Is now the time we take him? He's really raw, but he's big, he's obviously a great athlete, and he can score. He scores goals, and he plays on the power play, too.
"Someone told me that he was playing point on the power play because he can really shoot the puck. Because you're always looking for big, mobile guys, everyone's watching him. There's so little eye test against really good players. He briefly played in the USHL, he's planning on going there, I guess, for the back half of next year, that he's the biggest wildcard in the draft. Because he could go boom. It really could turn out to be a great pick."
And that's where the Flyers come in. The Flyers have the 22nd, 31st or 32nd, 36th, 40th, 45th, and 48th picks in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft, excluding the No. 6 pick that will be used on a better and more projectable prospect.
"What a couple teams told me is, every time your pick comes up, you're going to be sitting there saying, 'If we don't take him now, is somebody else going to jump in there and do it? Are we going to lose our opporunity?'" Friedman added. "So that's going to be the question. When is some team going to say, 'We have to do this now because we won't get another opportunity to do it later?'
"The same team told me that they wonder about those teams with multiple first-rounders. A team like Nashville, or a team like Philadelphia, do they look at it and say 'Look, we've got multiple first rounders, we're just going to do it,' (...) I think teams are trying to figure out who's really serious about this guy, and where do we take this player? It's going to be fascinating. I was told [West is] the biggest wildcard of the draft."
West is currently ranked as high as 46th and as low as 98th based on rankings compiled by EliteProspects, so there's a fairly high chance he'll be available to the Flyers at the top of the second round later this month.
But, as Friedman said, the scouts and GMs are going to be playing the game of chicken. Will the Flyers be one of the teams willing to pull the trigger on West late in the first, even with the plethora of right wingers in the system?
His size and athleticism are two things the Flyers would love to add to their ranks, but is that worth passing up on a top goalie or defenseman they so desperately need? It's a question the Flyers have two weeks to answer for themselves.
Dodgers fans celebrate after Kiké Hernández hit a home run during Game 1 of the World Series against the Yankees at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 25. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
As part of their Pride Night celebration, a Dodgers official received a commemorative scroll from Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath before the team opened its three-game series against the San Francisco Giants.
“It is truly my pleasure to be celebrating Pride with the Dodgers,” Horvath said. “Especially a time like this to have the Dodgers look at our community and see all of us, and celebrate everyone, especially our LGBTQ community, it is just so incredibly special.”
In almost any other time, Horvath’s presentation would have inspired, well, pride — specifically, pride in how the Dodgers started celebrating Pride Nights when they weren’t commonplace in sports.
On Friday night, however, with many parts of Los Angeles terrorized by large-scale immigration sweeps, the county supervisor’s words evoked an entirely different range of emotions.
Demonstrations against the federal raids have been staged in downtown for more than a week, but the Dodgers have remained silent. Angel City FC and LAFC released statements sympathizing with the residents experiencing “fear and uncertainty,” but the Dodgers have remained silent.
If the Dodgers really see everyone, as Horvath suggested, they’re ignoring what’s happening right in front of them.
Literally.
The Dodgers boast that more than 40% of their fan base is Latino, but they can’t even be bothered to offer the shaken community any words of comfort.
A protestor wearing a Dodgers cap is detained and carried by law enforcement after helping close the 101 Freeway on June. 8. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
How ungrateful. How disrespectful. How cowardly.
Don’t expect this to change.
“We’re not going to comment,” Dodgers executive vice president and chief marketing officer Lon Rosen said.
“We’re not going to comment on anything,” Rosen said.
When the Dodgers announced they accepted Trump’s White House invitation, team president Stan Kasten claimed the decision had “nothing to do with politics.” Kasten sounded as if he was counting on the fans to give the team a pass for visiting an aspiring tyrant, either because their love of the Dodgers overwhelmed their disgust for Trump or because they lacked the intellectual faculties to connect Trump’s racist rhetoric to real-life consequences.
But what were once abstract concepts proposed by Trump and other right-wing extremists are now realities, and these realities have struck Los Angeles particularly hard.
The detention of working immigrants outside of Home Depots. The breaking up of families. The racial profiling that has resulted in law enforcement harassing American citizens. The propaganda campaign to portray the largely-peaceful demonstrations as an insurrection. The invasion of federal troops. The general feeling of unease that has swept over the city.
The team had said nothing about any of this. Manager Dave Roberts, the franchise’s designated public-relations meat shield, was the only person to acknowledge the situation.
“I just hope that we can be a positive distraction for what people are going through in Los Angeles right now,” Roberts said on Monday in San Diego.
The Dodgers are once again asking a significant portion of their fans to look the other way, but how can they look the other way when these developments affect many of them directly?
Dodgers fans honor Fernando Valenzuela at a memorial outside Dodger Stadium on Oct. 24, 2024. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
All because the Dodgers are afraid of offending the 32% of Los Angeles County voters who cast their ballots for Trump in the most recent presidential election, many of whom don’t expect ICE agents to ever show up at their workplace.
The Dodgers have abdicated their social responsibilities, and in doing so, they have once again let down many of their most loyal fans — the fans who made the Dodgers a part of their family because of Fernando Valenzuela, the fans who passed down the love of the team to their children and grandchildren, the fans who wear their merchandise around town.
That won’t stop the likes of Kasten and Rosen from reaching into their pockets, of course. A couple of hours before their team’s 6-2 loss to the Giants on Friday night, a commercial featuring an upcoming promotion was shown on the Dodger Stadium video scoreboard.
Baseball is a game of inches, and in the Giants’ 6-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night, it was centimeters at times.
Aces Logan Webb and Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched around a tight strike zone all game with umpire Adam Beck behind home plate at Dodger Stadium — particularly Yamamoto, who walked the bases loaded in the third inning before Casey Schmitt’s go-ahead grand slam.
Beck called 92 percent of Friday’s pitches accurately with 13 missed calls, per Umpire Scorecards, resulting in a plus-1.36 run favor for the Giants. Nine balls called by Beck were true strikes, with the most impactful coming during a full count to Mike Yastrzemski in the second inning.
Yamamoto walked five batters on the night and struck out four across 4 2/3 innings pitched, while Webb walked three and punched out four as he kept Los Angeles’ star-studded lineup off balance over seven innings with a mix of pitches — including a cutter he worked on all spring.
Changes to how balls and strikes are called could be coming to MLB soon, however, as commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters last week he plans to introduce a proposal the league’s competition committee that would implement the automated ball-strike system in 2026.
LOS ANGELES — A year ago, with Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy on the other side one night, Logan Webb mixed it up. The Giants ace started throwing a cutter in a start at Oracle Park, and he got more and more comfortable with it as the season went on.
Webb kept working on the pitch this spring, hoping to provide a different look for the game’s best left-handed hitters, who had started to dive out over the plate and hunt his sinker and changeup. He threw 13 of them at the Cincinnati Reds on Opening Day and 14 a few weeks later at Yankee Stadium.
“They’ve got some guys with 30 and 40 at-bats against him,” manager Bob Melvin said of Webb and the Los Angeles Dodgers. “Guys that know him really well, know how they want to attack him, have had some success off of him. And now all of a sudden, you’re seeing two completely different pitches and the ability to pitch inside more. There were different swings from them today, and that’s just how you get better as you go along — you come up with some new wrinkles.
“Within the division, we have so many guys, including Webby and Tyler [Rogers], that have faced these guys a lot, and teams know how to game plan. To be able to do things differently like that is a credit to a guy trying to get better.”
Webb did the same thing earlier this month against the San Diego Padres, throwing 41 sliders, his most since 2022, to give them a different look. In the two games against division rivals this month, he has allowed just eight hits and two runs over 14 innings.
“I wish I could just throw four-seamers and get it by guys, but I can’t do that,” Webb said. “I’m just trying to find new ways to get very good hitters out. That was kind of the game plan today.”
Webb got 22 strikes with the 29 cutters. He threw all five of his pitches at least 10 percent of the time, including the four-seamer that he adores. That pitch hit 95 mph, as did his sinker, which has become a theme this month. Webb had one pitch at 95-plus going into June but has thrown six against the Atlanta Braves and Dodgers in his past two starts.
“I’m feeling good,” he said. “I feel like the mechanics are good right now. I’m not really going out there and trying to do too much. Weirdly, I feel like every season I feel like I start to throw a little harder as the season goes on.”
Webb said he has a competition going with some other Giants pitchers about who can throw the hardest pitch. Of course, Hayden Birdsong and Justin Verlander aren’t allowed in it.
“I am in the lead with these certain guys,” he said, smiling.
On The Board
Webb credited catcher Andrew Knizner with helping to formulate the game plan and get through the lineup three times. They had never worked together before — not even in a bullpen session — but it looked natural.
Knizner also picked up his first Giants hit and homer on the same odd play. He homered to center in the eighth, but initially there was confusion about whether the ball had gone out or hit the top of the center field wall. It was Knizner’s first hit in 15 at-bats in orange and black, and it came an inning after Webb got tagged by Teoscar Hernandez.
“I told him he waited too long and he said that because I gave up the homer, he had to get the run back,” Webb said.
The Real Willy?
Willy Adames hit two homers at Coors Field, including his longest blast since 2019. Before Friday’s game, Melvin insisted it wasn’t just a thin-air thing. Adames then went out and hit a solo shot in the top of the first.
Adames has five hits, six runs and six RBI in four games since Matt Chapman went on the IL. Obviously, it would have been ideal for the two to form a one-two punch. But right now, the offensive jolt is desperately needed, and the Giants will need him to keep it going since Chapman might not return until the middle of July.
“The swing looks a lot smoother,” Melvin said. “He’s not trying to force anything. He hit the ball the other way out of the ballpark here at night; we saw him go to center field a couple of times in Colorado. It just looks like there’s way less tension in his swing and we’re seeing the results.”
Having previously swapped rugby union for NFL, Wade shares his excitement for a fresh challenge after a ‘humbling’ start to life in rugby league
For a man who has done it all in rugby union and experienced the bright lights of the NFL, the glint in Christian Wade’s eye when asked what drew him to a new challenge with Wigan suggests this was an opportunity he couldn’t miss.
It has been some fortnight for one of the Premiership’s all-time greats. His farewell appearance for Gloucester – and perhaps in rugby union altogether – ended with victory against Northampton and two tries. The second of those was a sensational long-range finish in the dying embers of that game which would have caught the eye of any Wigan supporters keenly checking out what their new signing is capable of.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (left) has averaged 32.8 points per game in the NBA Finals [Getty Images]
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 35 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder came from behind late on to beat the Indiana Pacers and level the NBA Finals.
The Thunder won 111-104 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis to tie the best-of-seven series at 2-2.
They trailed by seven points entering the fourth quarter but outscored Indiana 31-17 in the last period, closing with a 12-1 run in the last three minutes.
"I knew what it would have looked like if we lost tonight," said Gilgeous-Alexander. "I didn't want to go down not swinging."
Thunder coach Mark Daigneaul gave Gilgeous-Alexander, this season's Most Valuable Player, a break late in the third quarter rather than his usual rest early in the fourth.
The Pacers led 101-97 with less than four minutes remaining, but Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of the Thunder's final 16 points and ended the game with 10 free-throws from 10 attempts.
Jalen Williams scored 27 points and made seven rebounds for the Thunder, while Alex Caruso added 20 points off the bench.
Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 20 points and Tyrese Haliburton 18.
"We just didn't execute at the end of the game," said Siakam. "We didn't get easy shots. The easy shots that we got, we missed them. And they made them."
The Thunder host game five at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City at 19:30 local time on Monday (01:30 BST, Tuesday).
Following 27 years of agony and torment, South Africa has vanquished its demons in ICC knockouts after toppling Australia by five wickets in the topsy-turvy World Test Championship final at Lord’s.
The best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final has now become a best-of-three.
It’s been an incredibly exciting and close championship series to this point, with both the Panthers and Oilers earning a win on home ice and a win on the road to this point.
Now the series scene shifts back to Edmonton, as the Cats and Oilers will be fighting to be the first team with a chance to win the Stanley Cup when they return to South Florida after the weekend.
To this point, the Final has been extremely evenly matched and incredibly competitive through the first four games.
It’s been a bit of a throwback series, as there have an eye-popping 32 goals scored through the first four games, yet all but one of the four Final games have been decided in regulation.
One change we can probably expect to see with the Oilers is the re-insertion of Calvin Pickard as the starting goaltender.
Pickard replaced Stuart Skinner for the second straight outing on Thursday night for Game 4, entering a game Edmonton was trailing 3-0 only to turn aside all but one shot as the Oilers came all the way back and won 5-4 in overtime.
Pickard now holds a stellar 7-0 record during the postseason, though his corresponding statistics – a 2.69 goals against average and .896 save percentage – aren’t nearly as impressive.
As for Florida, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice spoke to the media prior to the team taking off for Edmonton on Friday.
When asked about potential roster changes, Maurice said he wasn’t anticipating making any.
He said the Panthers are healthy, which is about as good a compliment you could pay at team at this stage of the season.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Game 5 in Edmonton:
Photo caption: Jun 6, 2025; Edmonton, Alberta, CAN; Edmonton Oilers defenseman Jake Walman (96) checks Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk (19) during the second period in game two of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place. (Perry Nelson-Imagn Images)
Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto reacts after giving up a grand slam to San Francisco's Casey Schmitt in the third inning of the Dodgers' 6-2 loss Friday night at Dodger Stadium. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The billing couldn’t have been bigger. Dodgers vs. Giants. Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Logan Webb. One of the game’s oldest rivalries, pitting what were supposed to be two of the game’s top pitchers.
On Friday night at Dodger Stadium, however, only one right-handed ace showed up.
In the first meeting of the season between the Dodgers and Giants, Webb did his thing, giving up just two runs on two hits over seven spectacular innings.
Opposite him, Yamamoto was no match, floundering in a five-run, 4 ⅔-inning start that sent the Dodgers to a 6-2 defeat — leaving the teams tied atop the National League West with identical 41-29 records at the 70-game mark.
The evening was a study in pitching excellence (or, in Yamamoto’s case, a lack thereof); serving as a reminder that, for as good as Yamamoto has become in his second major league season, there are tiers to his talent he has still yet to reach.
Where Webb got soft contact and quick outs, needing just 98 pitches to complete his seventh seven-inning outing of the season, Yamamoto labored through hitters’ counts and long at-bats, issuing a career-high five walks while finding the strike zone on just 56 of his 102 pitches.
San Francisco's Casey Schmitt, right, celebrates with Wilmer Flores, center, and Mike Yastrzemski after hitting a grand slam in the third inning Friday. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Where Webb limited traffic and escaped rare damage, giving up just two hits while walking only three batters, Yamamoto toiled through self-inflicted trouble; none worse than when he walked the bases loaded in the third, before giving up a tie-breaking grand slam to Casey Schmitt.
Most of all, where Webb played the part of a contending team’s staff ace, lowering his earned-run average to 2.58 (fifth-best in the National League), Yamamoto faltered in a way that’s become uncomfortably familiar of late, his ERA rising to 2.64 despite an almost flawless opening month.
In his first seven starts, Yamamoto was 4-2 with a 0.90 ERA, a 0.925 WHIP and only one game in which he gave up even two earned runs.
“Right now, he’s pitching like the best pitcher in the world,” catcher Will Smith said on May 2, after Yamamoto pitched six shutout innings against the Atlanta Braves.
Since then, Yamamoto has been on a different planet — and not a good one.
Over his last seven outings, the 26-year-old Japanese star is 2-3 with a 4.46 ERA. In that span, he has more starts of less than five innings (two) than of seven full innings (one). He has given up three or more runs four times. And Friday was the second in which he was scored on five times, tying his MLB career-high.
The most consistent problem during that slump: Poor command.
Yamamoto has walked 17 batters in his last 38 ⅓ innings. And when he isn’t issuing free passes, he is putting himself in bad counts, like when Willy Adames opened the scoring Friday by getting ahead 2-and-0 and hitting a down-the-middle fastball to right for a solo home run.
Dodgers catcher Will Smith scores past Giants catcher Andrew Knizner during the second inning Friday. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Another potential factor in Yamamoto’s recent struggles: He has been forced to pitch on less rest between starts.
Over his first seven starts, Yamamoto pitched on at least six days of rest — mirroring the once-per-week schedule he had in Japan.
Since then, however, each of his outings have come on only five days’ rest.
Yamamoto has downplayed that factor in the past. And last year, he actually had slightly better numbers on five days of rest (2.97 ERA in 11 starts) than six (3.07 ERA in starts).
Still, for a Dodgers staff that has been shorthanded — leaving the club without the luxury of starting Yamamoto only once a week — it has been a marked drop-off, coming at a time when their once three-game lead in a competitive NL West has quickly evaporated amid a grueling stretch of the schedule.
The Dodgers’ lineup, of course, didn’t help Yamamoto much, either.
After scoring on an Andy Pages sacrifice fly in the second, when a throw home beat Smith but was dropped by Giants catcher Andrew Knizner while trying to apply a tag, the team’s only other production against Webb came via Teoscar Hernández, who lined the Dodgers’ first hit to right in the fourth before homering for a second-straight game on a solo blast in the seventh.
By then, however, Webb had already put the game on ice, becoming the latest starting pitcher this month to handle the Dodgers’ star-studded lineup (opposing starters have a 2.43 ERA against the Dodgers in June, and are averaging almost six innings per start).
It made Yamamoto’s clunker all the more costly, highlighting an extended slide in production that continues to plague the team’s only healthy ace.
And their hottest commodity happens to be one of their best players.
Right wing Bryan Rust, 33, has three years left on a contract that pays him $5.125 million annually - and his no-movement clause expired this summer. He had a career year for Pittsburgh last season, registering career-highs in goals (31) and points (65) despite missing 11 games due to injury.
Rust has a unique tool set as a player. Known for his work ethic, he is a hybrid power forward and grinder, a menace on the forecheck, and is capabale of being deployed in all situations. He is also a regular penalty-killer, has the hands of a goal-scorer, and can play a hard-nosed game.
The easy and logical path might be to move Rust if he can get the Penguins a good return. While that might be understandable and justifiable, that doesn't mean it's the right move.
In fact, there is a very big reason why Rust should be considered near-immovable barring the perfect deal. And it comes down to the Penguins' youth movement.
Penguins Facing Big Decision With Star Forward The Pittsburgh Penguins will be a team to watch very closely this off-season. After missing the playoffs for the third year in a row, there has naturally been speculation that the Metropolitan Division club will make changes to their roster.
Many may scoff at the idea that veteran presence in the locker room outside of 87 is necessary for the Penguins given the stage they're in. But, the reality is that Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson were all similar in that they made the NHL roster either immediately or quickly enough that going through several stages of development in professional hockey was not required.
For many young players the Penguins are acquiring - either through the draft or by trade - that will not be the case. The vast majority of them will need to follow a path of development that sees them work their way up through junior or college hockey before moving onto ECHL or AHL hockey, all prior to earning their way onto the NHL roster.
Having Rust around is valuable for that reason. Unlike the aforementioned players, he is someone who has been there. Done that. Experienced that. And for young guys trying to earn spots, he's a huge presence in that locker room.
Rust can relate to and connect with this crop of prospects and young players in a way that even Crosby cannot to an extent. Everything Rust has accomplished at the highest level of hockey was earned through his hard work and his grind as an AHL player who turned into a bottom-six grinder and, eventually, into a top-six goal-scorer.
It took years - and a process of development - for Rust to reach his peak potential. Young players can learn a lot from a player like that who has been in their shoes and can help guide them through that process.
The Penguins have other tradeable assets that should net them good returns in Karlsson and Rickard Rakell. They should trade some of these players if they can get a good return.
But, in a rebuild - especially a rebuild on-the-fly, which is still the goal for the Penguins - you simply cannot trade everyone. A team needs some valuable veterans like Rust around to help usher in that new generation of players who will make an impact in the near future.
If the package is a can't-refuse offer, of course, the Penguins should consider it. But - barring that "perfect" deal - Rust is one of the few veterans who should stay put in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future.
INDIANAPOLIS — Oklahoma City did to Indiana what the Pacers have done to everyone else all playoffs and season long.
Indiana led by seven entering the fourth quarter in a game where it had largely been in control but it could never quite pull away. Then, with its season hanging in the balance, Oklahoma City played at its peak. The Thunder defense held the Pacers to one bucket from the floor in the final five minutes of the game, while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander took over and scored 15 points in the fourth quarter.
“We got stagnant, their second shots were a big problem,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said postgame, referencing the four offensive rebounds the Thunder had in the fourth quarter.
The result was only the second clutch game the Pacers lost this postseason, a 111-104 Thunder win that ties the series up at 2-2.
What has been a highly entertaining, well-played Finals will see Game 5 Monday night in Oklahoma City. It also feels like a series that is going to go seven games.
The Pacers have focused their defense this series on denying Gilgeous-Alexander the ball, then when he does get the rock and drives they make it hard to get his teammates involved and get their offense flowing. They did that in Game 4. The problem was that SGA took on the challenge and scored 35 on the night.
This is the loss Indiana will regret if it does not win the series, on the night the Thunder were just 3-of-17 from beyond the arc (Indiana was 11-of-36, just 30.6%, but they still outscored OKC by 24 from beyond the arc). While Pacers fans in the building (and online) want to complain about foul calls the Thunder shot just five more free throws than the Pacers, and that was bolstered by some intentional fouling at the end.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault made the first big adjustment of the series, returning to the double-big starting lineup of Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, which had been effective throughout the Western Conference postseason.
It didn’t work — for the first time this series it was Indiana getting off to the fast start leading 20-12 behind fast starts from Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner (the Thunder starting five was -2 for the night).
Indiana had the ball moving a step ahead of Oklahoma City’s rotations and it was getting great looks. Indiana was also knocking down its jumpers (only six of their first 24 points came in the paint).
Despite the hot start by the Pacers and some cold shooting from 3 by the OKC, the Thunder were hanging around, and at the end of a high-scoring first quarter, the Pacers were only up one, 35-34.
Midway through the second quarter, Obi Toppin was hit with a flagrant foul on Alex Caruso for what was a non-basketball play (but might have been just a hard playoff foul in another era). Hartenstein had a few words for Toppin after that, but nothing came of it.
Obi Toppin was charged with a Flagrant 1 foul on this play.
Indiana led 60-57 at the half and the difference was 3-point shooting: The Pacers were 7-of-19 from 3, while the Thunder were 1-of-10. The Thunder were 6-of-21 on shots outside the paint in the first half.
In the third quarter, the Pacers played like sharks smelling blood in the water — the crowd could sense it, their defensive pressure seemed to ramp up and the shots kept falling. Indiana led by 7 after three and Pacers fans were ready to celebrate being closer to an NBA title than the franchise had ever been.
Then came the Thunder’s fourth quarter and everything is even again.
Friday's series opener between the Yankees and the Red Sox was a heated one -- and not just because of the action on the field.
After Aaron Judge tied the game at 1-1 with his solo shot off of Garrett Crochet in the ninth, the Red Sox would pull out the victory in the 10th inning, thanks in part to some questionable umpire calls in the Yankees' half of the inning.
With Anthony Volpe on second as the ghost runner, the shortstop took off for third but was initially called safe. Boston challenged and it was overturned, eliminating the potential threat.
With two outs, DJ LeMahieu lined the ball over the first baseman's head that looked to clip the first base foul line -- first base umpire Jeremie Rehak called it foul, which LeMahieu could not believe.
Yankees skipper Aaron Boone challenged, and after a lengthy wait the call on the field stood.
That drew Boone's ire as he was ejected for arguing.
“It looked like Anthony on the slide, the ground caught his arm, so he couldn’t extend like he normally would’ve otherwise, he’s safe easily," Boone said of the 10th inning after the game. "And then fair ball down the line, and [they] don’t have the courage to overturn. That’s it."
"It looked to me the ball didn’t go foul until after it bounced," LeMahieu said. "They reviewed it, but obviously frustrating. We’re fighting for baserunners right there."
LeMahieu would ground out and make a comment to Rehak as he got to first base. Rehak would eject LeMahieu, the first time the veteran infielder has been ejected in his career.
When asked what he told Rehak to get him ejected, LeMahieu said he didn't curse or anything, and that he's definitely said worse things to umpires in the past without being ejected.
"I just said that was a brutal call. He was like, ‘What did you say?’ I said that was brutal. And that was it," he said.
"I want the courage to overturn the call," Boone later added. "A quarter of the ball is on the line. It takes a lot of something…a lot of imagination to say that’s fair. Whatever, it’s over with. Not saying we score there. In the end, they outlasted us tonight."
Boone said he already spoke to Michael Hill, MLB’s senior vice president of on-field operations, before the media arrived at his office in the visitors' clubhouse about the 10th inning, but kept the contents of the conversation to himself.
He also walked back his "courage" comment, saying he's still heated, but Boone is right, though. While the calls in the 10th did not go the Yankees' way, the Red Sox simply outlasted them, and it started with their ace.
Crochet shut down the Yankees for 8.1 innings before Judge's home run gave New York life, but in the end it wasn't enough as the Yankees dropped their record in extra innings to 1-4 (0-4 on the road). In those four road extra-inning games, the Yankees have played six innings in extras this season and have yet to score with the automatic runner.
The Volpe caught stealing eliminated that chance on Friday and Boone defends the decision, citing, again, how the ground did not allow his shortstop to extend further than usual. But the longtime Yankees skipper complimented his players for fighting back on a day where they weren't at their best.
"On a night we get in at four in the morning, they’re coming off an off day. We’re short down there. The compete from our guys tonight I thought was awesome," Boone said. "It was an awesome game to be in. The Red Sox played well. Obviously, Crochet was great. We did enough to hang around and almost pulled it off. Really loved the way the guys competed on a tough day."
The Yankees are now 1-3 against the Red Sox this season, but look to get back in the win column on Saturday at Fenway Park.
Mets catching prospect Kevin Parada has had a bit of a rough season.
The former first-round pick is hitting just .212 with a .286 on-base percentage through 46 games.
Of late, though, he seems to be finding a groove -- Parada lifted a solo homer for the second straight game on Friday night, helping Binghamton beat the Richmond Flying Squirrels 6-5.
He also picked up a single earlier in the game and drove in the go-ahead run in the 10th.
Parada is now hitting .309 with seven home runs and 16 RBI over his last 21 games.
Ryan Clifford also enjoyed himself a nice day at the plate -- reaching twice with a single, double and driving in a run with a fielder’s choice.
After going hitless over the first three games of the month, the 21-year-old slugger is now riding a seven-game hitting streak.
He has four homers, a .408 on-base percentage, and a 1.066 OPS in June.
Kevin Parada homers for the second-straight game 💣
Parada in his last 21 games: .309 AVG, 7 HR, 16 RBI
Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leaves the court after Game 4 of the NBA finals.Photograph: Michael Conroy/AP
The Oklahoma City Thunder stormed back from a 10-point second-half deficit to beat the Indiana Pacers 111–104 on Friday night, evening the best-of-seven-games NBA finals at two games apiece.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of his 35 points in the fourth quarter, including nine straight during a crucial stretch as the Thunder pulled ahead for good.
Oklahoma City shot just 3-for-16 from beyond the arc, a season low, and Gilgeous-Alexander finished without an assist for the first time all season. But Jalen Williams added 27 points, Alex Caruso had 20 and Chet Holmgren posted 14 points and 15 rebounds.
Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 20 points. Tyrese Haliburton added 18 and Obi Toppin scored 17, including a highlight-reel dunk that gave Indiana their first double-digit lead of the series late in the third quarter.
The Pacers started fast and led most of the night, but couldn’t hold off the Thunder, who tied the game three times in the fourth before Gilgeous-Alexander’s step-back jumper with 2:23 left put them in front for good.
Game 5 is Monday in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder will try to protect their reclaimed home-court advantage in what is now a best-of-three series.
