The Detroit Tigers have been in a bit of a slump of late, having lost five of their last six, which includes a sweep at home at the hands of the Chicago White Sox and dropping two of three on the road to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Just when they were one game from reaching the .500 mark, things once again came unraveled for the Olde English D.
The Motor City Kitties now move on to the second leg of their current road trip with three games against the Kansas Royals — who have won five straight and six of the last seven — at Kauffman Stadium this weekend. Still well within striking distance of a wildcard spot in a weak American League playoff race, AJ Hinch’s squad could really use a strong showing against the division’s bottom dwellers.
First up on the mound for the Tigers is left-hander Framber Valdez, who has had two straight rough outings after posting a pair of quality starts to open up August. Over the 32-year-old’s last 11 1/3 innings, he has put up a 6.35 ERA and 5.47 FIP, allowing 11 hits (one home run) and nine walks while striking out eight, hitting a batter and throwing a wild pitch.
Valdez has faced Kansas City twice this season — both in Detroit — with varying results. On April 14, he tossed seven frames of one-run ball on four hits and two walks with a strikeout for a no-decision in a 2-1 team win; on July 26, he served up three runs (two earned) on four hits (0ne home run) and three walks with four strikeouts over five frames, also failing to figure in the decision in an eventual 5-4 loss.
For the Royals, fellow southpaw Noah Cameron will take the mound in the series opener coming off the best start of his two-year career. The 27-year-old tossed a complete-game shutout against the Los Angeles Angels, allowing just a single hit and walk while striking out eight in a 3-0 home win.
Cameron has taken on the Tigers twice this season, and like Valdez, produced much different results between the two. On May 10 in Kansas City, he allowed three runs on four hits and three walks while striking out four over four frames for a no-decision in a 6-3 team loss; on July 24 in Detroit, he threw seven innings of scoreless ball on two hits and three walks while striking out eight also for a no-decision in an eventual 2-1 loss.
Take a look at how the two match up on Friday night below.
Detroit Tigers (61-66) vs. Kansas City Royals (55-74)
Time (ET): 8:10 p.m. Place: Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri SB Nation Site:Royals Review Media: Detroit SportsNet, MLB.TV, Tigers Radio Network
Game 128: RHP Troy Melton (7-1, 1.71 ERA) vs. LHP Noah Cameron (7-8, 4.16 ERA)
JUPITER, FLORIDA - MARCH 19, 2026: Leo Bernal #44 of the St. Louis Cardinals bats during the first inning of a spring training Spring Breakout game against the Washington Nationals at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium on March 19, 2026 in Jupiter, Florida. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images) | Diamond Images/Getty Images
An oddity began last November when the Cardinals chose to carry an almost unheard of five catchers on the 40-man roster. At the time, Pedro Pages, Ivan Herrera, Jimmy Crooks, Yahel Pozo and Leo Bernal occupied those spots. While five was pretty unusual, some explanation could be found due to the uncertainty of Ivan Herrera, who would undergo off-season elbow surgery and was mired in a deep throwing slump. Still, 12.5% of the roster being dedicated to catching seemed to create pinch points in other areas. How would this resolve? Many advocated for clearing up this apparent roster logjam.
As spring turned to summer, concerns about Herrera’s health dissipated, but the view on his throwing remained a tempest. In spite of the varied opinions, it had become apparent that the Cardinals see Herrera as a legit option at C (to the chagrin of many who looked at the CS rate), catching him regularly on the short end of a 60:40 rotation. Further evolution has led to an additional split, where Jimmy Crooks has taken the primary catching duties with Pedro Pages on the shortest end of a now three catcher rotation. Herrera’s slice is largely unchanged, although he isn’t bolted to the same two pitchers anymore. Meanwhile, Pozo was DFA’ed when roster needs elsewhere became acute, and picked up by Baltimore (who now, interestingly, carry 3 catchers). Perhaps the Cardinals have discovered the new market inefficiency.
Yet even four catchers on the 40-man seems an unusual allocation, particular over a longer period of time. Even more pressing, another one young catcher (if you haven’t heard) by the name of Rainel Rodriguez has played well enough at A+ and then AA that his name enters almost any catching conversation, even though his name does not yet appear on the 40-man roster. He is quite precocious. This isn’t article about Rainel, but if it was, I would be regaling you with statistical accomplishments he has achieved already that compare quite favorably to some of the league’s top hitters over the last generation.
All this leads many pundits and fans to comment that this situation needs resolution. Many expected Pages to be moved at the trade deadline. To think a bit asynchronously, does 4 catchers on the 40-man roster really require resolution? Granted it is unconventional, but does it really require some management intervention? If so, when?
Complicating any future plan is the difficulty in evaluating each of the individual players and more so, figuring out who might be the best fit on a roster that in and of itself is undergoing more churn. For instance, it seems the club preferred Pages defense, but his offense really doesn’t fit well on this weak-hitting roster. If the club had more good hitters, he would be a better fit.
Some look at Crooks as a better blend of offense and possibly even superior defense, but in his second go at MLB really has done little to impress. Some underlying metrics do support the notion of his blend, but how long might it take to emerge?
Bernal, unseen in the MLB, is a mystery, with widely varying views of both his offense and defense. Some evaluators believe Crooks far superior defensively, others with the opposite point of view. Which is it? And how do they tell? As we’ve seen, catching at the MLB level is different than Memphis or elsewhere in the minor league circuit.
Ivan Herrera’s offensive chops are now well established. He is clearly the best hitter of the current group, although Rainel seems destined to challenge that. Ivan’s offense is prolific enough that Oli works very hard to get his bat in the line-up each and every day. His offense is enough that some might argue he is an everyday bat if not an everyday catcher, and this leads to some advocating for a position change.
Rainel seems a bit of a mystery defensively, but it is becoming very clear that his bat has the chance to be very special. Special enough that the arguments around Herrera are extended to RainRod even more emphatically. Many will say a bat like that needs to be in the line-up every day and not subjected to the rigors of MLB catching. I have no good argument for that point of view. Unless he is Pudge Rodriguez or Yadi Molina defensively, they say, catching is not where his greatest value is to be found.
How does all this unfold? Straight up, I don’t know. But based on conversations I’ve had and actions I’ve observed, I’m developing a framework for how it could unfold.
Many people expected Pages to be moved at the deadline and, absent that, to be moved this winter. Possible, but I’m not so sure on the timing. Some believe that this off-season, the Cardinals need to choose a path and that RainRod is going to be the ultimate victor in this positional competition. The goal for them becomes to “sell high” and get prospect returns from some of the others. Again, I’m not so sure. Let’s be clear, I’d suspect if the right deal came along, they’d probably take it. But I’m beginning to suspect that is not their primary plan going forward.
Let’s unpack this individually first, then treat these guys as a group to try and formulate that framework.
Pages will not be eligible for arbitration until the end of the 2027 season. That is an important consideration, in the sense that there really isn’t pressure to move him. He is major league minimum salary for 2027 and there is no alternative that would be cheaper. But, but…wouldn’t they rather have a pitcher using that 40-man spot?
I’m going to publish an update that looks at 40-man issues that might be appearing this fall. You will get the details next week, but it turns out there really isn’t a significant 40-man roster pressure, pitchers or otherwise. The Cardinals have lots of pitchers in the pipeline, but only a few need 40-man protection. They are in zero danger of losing a needed pitcher even if the keep all 4 catchers on the 40-man roster. Unconventional? Certainly. Possible. Yes. Achievable. Definitely. It turns out management has finessed the 40-man roster, as a whole, quite nicely. Read the article next week, in the meantime trust me that the 40-man roster can handle 4 catchers for another year or so. On to the individuals:
Crooks is a runway guy. He has enough scouting data and underlying metric to forecast the potential for better offense and better defense than Pages. So, he gets runway. That runway will run into next year, almost certainly.
Bernal is also a runway guy. He profiles different than Crooks in how he gets there, but he also projects to be better offensively and defensively than Pages (and perhaps Crooks). He will get his shot, in St. Louis, unless someone blows Bloom and Company away with a trade offer.
Herrera is an established top-flight hitter. They’ve played him EVERY day. If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what will. I don’t know if they view him as cemented in at C, but there is no data to suggest he will be moving on to another team or another position. Moving him to another team would be problematic in that it would leave them with the need to acquire another top-flight hitter when they are short of that talent already. Again, the right offer might dislodge him, but that seems the less likely path.
That leaves RainRod. As each day passes, the confidence that his bat will be special grows. He keeps doing things that only Hall of Fame caliber players have done before him. I’m not projecting HOF status for him (it’s a wee bit soon), but his trajectory is unmistakable. I would think of him as untouchable, so a trade seems unlikely. Given his trajectory, a position switch seems unlikely too. Remarkably, he is too close to MLB already and learning a new position would require they slow down his ascension. That seems counter-productive. He is getting time at 1B, which I find notable if I think some about Alec Burleson’s primary weakness as a hitter (LHP platoon splits).
So, how does all this work?
Let’s introduce the idea I think of as Three-into-Four. Hear me out.
The three is this equation are the catchers: Today, the three are Pages, Crooks, Herrera. By this time next year, good chance the three are Crooks, Herrera and Bernal. Much beyond that horizon comes another name. Rodriguez. That is the three part of 3into4.
To understand the Four, let’s go conventional. Most teams carry 2-3 catchers on their 40-man and carry two catchers on their active roster, right? The Cardinals (today) are clearly not “most teams”. Conventionally, each team has a DH (either a dedicated one or a rotation through), a primary C, and backup C and a primary first baseman. That is the Four I write of.
Now, let’s move off conventional and look at the Cardinals rather unconventional situation, and picture this scenario. They have some challenges:
They have too many catchers (as compared to conventional)
They have a first baseman with a serious LHP platoon split that degrades his value.
They have a bat-first, short-side platoon catcher who needs protection to stay healthy, who by the way, is a really, really good hitter.
How can these be made to work to advantage? Let’s look at next season for starters, and leave RainRod out of the discussion on the assumption that his ETA is really more like 2028. I’m not writing that in stone, but positing that to understand the strawman I think the Cardinals have built around this situation.
Start with the idea that out of 3 catchers, on any given day, one can catch and one can DH, so they can always play 2 of them. Remember that Crooks is a LH batter, Herrera a RH batter and Bernal a switch hitter. Flexibility exists here. The biggest obstacle here isn’t carrying 4 catchers. It is ridding themselves of the notion that DH is a position to rotation various players through. In this strawman, DH will be a spot to rotate a solid hitting catcher into to keep their bat in the line-up while protecting them physically from the rigors of catching.
It looks like this:
When there is an LHP on the mound, in addition to one catching and one DHing, the last one can play first base (likely Bernal, who is working there at AAA). This approach would serve to alleviate the LHP platoon split presented when Alec Burleson plays 1B or DH with an LHP on the mound. This approach requires that Bernal’s bat be MLB ready. When?
When there is an RHP on the mound, Crooks or Bernal catches (depending on matchup and who caught yesterday) and Herrera DHs, with Burleson manning first.
This approach actually results in a 40-30-30 catching ration (with Herrera now on the long side of the platoon, although not catching any more than this year). The allocation of most of the DH spots to catchers on days they aren’t catching ends up with each guy getting into around 120 games, which tends to be on the high side for a catcher. It preserves their body, though, and results in end of the season flexibility to go with a hot hand.
At some point in time, RainRod will be ready and, bluntly, when he is, he dislodges one of the three. It is not only hard to predict exactly when this may happen, but also who he dislodges. Who is dependent on performance we have yet to see as well as any MiLB action RainRod encounters at other positions. Maybe a catcher. Maybe a first baseman. Maybe a third baseman. Hard to say. But until the day RainRod arrives, it strikes me that the current catching carousel can continue without pressure to make a move. This will allow the team to let development and competition settle out who goes and who stays in due time, not under any pressure to “get something done”.
Where does Pages fit in all this? I think he has a spot until they are ready to bring Bernal up, and then, not. Will that be out of 2027 spring training? Who knows? But I can begin to see how they have a plan to let all this organically work itself out without feeling pressure to make a move and try to pick the winner of this derby too early.
For those of you who think the Cardinals need to clear this up this coming off-season, don’t expect it to occur that fast unless a mind-blowing offer accompanies it.
Aug 19, 2026; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Justin Crawford (2) runs the bases against the Miami Marlins at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The Phillies are about to face an Arch-enemy. Not in the sense of their most loathed foe, but in the sense that their opponent plays under an arch.
Sep 10, 2024; San Francisco, California, USA; General view of the helmet used by the Milwaukee Brewers before the start of the first inning against the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-Imagn Images | Stan Szeto-Imagn Images
Greetings, Brew Crew Ball community. The Brewers bounced back nicely this week, as they maintained (and even slightly outplayed) the Cubs this week to stay atop the NL Central with just over a month to go.
Feel free to use this thread to chat about (almost) anything you want: video games, food, movies, non-baseball sports, the Brewers, you name it. As long as it’s appropriate and is allowed by our moderators, it’s fair game here.
Aug 20, 2026; Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Baltimore Orioles infielder Pete Alonso (25) bobbles a foul ball near the dugout in eighth inning against the New York Yankees at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Jamie Sabau-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Hello, friends.
Just when you thought you were in, they shove you back out. That’s the 2026 Orioles guarantee. Three straight exciting wins against the Rays to start a tough ten-game stretch have now been followed by four straight losses, ground gained by those wins evaporated along with any fan excitement. A 6-1 setback to the Yankees last night sealed a sweep, a lifeless affair by the O’s that saw them allow two more unearned runs to head towards the probable franchise record there. Check out Stacey’s recap of the game for more of the not-so-lovely totals.
As far as their lingering wild card hopes, the Orioles are only two games back even after the four-game losing streak. Their problem is going to be more that they have five teams to pass. They’re going to have to be at least a game and as many as three games hotter than all five of those teams from this point forward. They probably won’t be able to do it. There are too many flaws going on with the roster, especially if the starting pitching is losing its edge as the inning totals creep up.
The Rays are next. The Orioles played them pretty well down in the Trop. Maybe they can pull another reversal for us; it wouldn’t be the first time this year that they’ve tempted people to give up on them only to see them find another rally. It’s been a regular feature of the team going back to the start of the season. Always bad enough to inspire disgust, never quite bad enough to completely give up on them.
They are, however, running out of room to make the big move to the front of the pack. Only 34 games remain to them now. The Orioles might need to go 23-11 to do it. That’s asking a lot of a team that hasn’t had that kind of baseball in them for much of the season. We’ve all experienced too much of the stupid stuff that they can pull to believe in things going that way for that length of time.
But, it’s not over til it’s over, as the cliche goes. It’s not over yet for the Orioles. They could keep slim hopes alive for a while longer while also maybe even stoking some hopes for next year if certain players – especially Gunnar Henderson – are able to revive their fortunes between now and the end of the season.
Tonight’s game will air on Apple+ TV and on Apple+ only, so if you don’t have a subscription to that service, you have an easy excuse to take a day off from the Orioles if you want. Trevor Rogers and Freddy Peralta are the scheduled starting pitchers for the 7:15 game.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
The AL Wild Card mess is competitive balance, and it isn’t pretty (FanGraphs) After recent games, the Orioles are increasingly less a part of this mess. It’s even less pretty for us. Jay Jaffe’s focus particularly is on the possibility of a sub-.500 team getting into the postseason in a 162-game season for the first time ever. If that’s in play, then maybe the Orioles only need to go 20-14 – still asking a lot, if not quite as much.
This lefty Orioles prospect could join bullpen for stretch run (Orioles.com) An actual article about something I mentioned yesterday, namely that prospect Luis De León has moved into the bullpen to have him as a possible callup option for September.
Today in 1977, Brooks Robinson retired after 23 major league seasons and 2,896 games played for the Orioles.
In 2001, Tim Raines Sr. and Jr. were opponents in a Triple-A game that involved the Orioles then-Triple-A affiliate Rochester. By the end of the season, they were major league teammates with the Orioles.
There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2019-20 outfielder Mason Williams, and 1971 infielder Jerry DaVanon. Today is DaVanon’s 81st birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: jazz pianist Count Basie (1904), basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain (1936), musician Kenny Rogers (1938), System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian (1967), sprinter Usain Bolt (1986), and actress Hayden Panettiere (1989). Panettiere passed away earlier this week.
On this day in history…
In 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue in Haiti attended a “voodoo” ceremony that is now recognized as the beginning of the twelve-year Haitian Revolution, in which the enslaved people of Haiti overthrew their French colonizers and enslavers all at once.
In 1911, an Italian working at the Louvre stole the Mona Lisa with the aim of restoring the painting to Italian control. It was recovered three years later.
In 1959, Hawaii was admitted as the 50th of the United States.
**
And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 21. Have a safe Friday. Go O’s!
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA - OCTOBER 25: A general view of the Pittsburgh Penguins Hall of Fame display at PPG PAINTS Arena before the game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Columbus Blue Jackets on October 25, 2025 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The Penguins have unveiled the second class of individuals who will enter the team’s Hall of Fame this coming fall, highlighted by longtime goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
Fleury, along with Larry Murphy, Jim Rutherford and Jack McGregor will be inducted into the Penguins Hall of Fame this November, joining last year’s inaugural class of inductees.
Having spent 13 of his 21 seasons playing for Pittsburgh, Fleury was a unanimous selection to the Penguins Hall of Fame and won three Stanley Cups with the Penguins.
Larry Murphy, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2004, helped the Penguins win the Stanley Cup in 1991 and 1992.
Responsible for helping build the Pittsburgh roster that won the Stanley Cup in 2016 and 2017, Jim Rutherford will enter the Penguins Hall of Fame in the Builder category. Rutherford’s acquisitions like Phil Kassel, Patric Hornqvist, Nick Bonino, Justin Schultz, Carl Hagelin, and others will forever hold a spot in Penguins lore.
Jack McGregor was a key figure in helping bring an NHL team to Pittsburgh and served as the Penguins’ president from 1967 to 1970.
The induction ceremony will take place on Saturday, November 14 before the Penguins face off against the Ottawa Senators at PPG Paints Arena.
A third class of inductees next year will include Tom Barrasso, Jaromir Jagr, Chris Kunitz and Ray Shero.
Every year, The Athletic puts out an article about how much confidence fans have in each NHL front office. Unsurprisingly, the Montreal Canadiens have fared well in those rankings. Last year, Kent Hughes and co. were fifth, but this year, they moved into second place. The article grades each team in six areas: roster building, cap management, draft and development, trading, free agency, and vision.
The Habs grades given by the public are generally better than those given by the Canadiens’ fan base; they’ve always been a demanding bunch, and it’s never been as clear as in this exercise. While the public deservedly gave the Canadiens an A+ for cap management, Montreal fans gave them an A. It’s hard to imagine what Hughes could have done better in that respect. He’s got his young core locked up to lengthy and team-friendly deals that have positioned the Canadiens extremely well to add quality pieces around that core.
So far, four and a half years into his appointment, Hughes has shown that he’s the kind of man who makes a plan and sticks to it. Rather than pouncing on big-name free agents with big contracts (when some were available), he has decided to trust his team’s internal growth, and so far, it has worked; there’s no denying that. Montreal has made the playoffs in the last two years, and they even made the Eastern Conference final this past season, but drafting and developing can only go so far.
It’s impossible to use all of the prospects one’s organization drafts. Eventually, the pipeline gets too crowded because of the contract limit. If you want to have a balanced team, you can’t just keep adding the same kind of players and hope that they will bring you to the promised land (see the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Edmonton Oilers, for instance). At one stage, all that unexploited potential in the pipeline has to be turned into immediate help if you want to get over that hump.
It’s like Dom Luszczyszyn says in his article about the confidence rankings when he discusses the Florida Panthers:
The one downside of trading every pick? Getting a tough grade for drafting and developing. No worries – the Panthers have figured out that when the window is wide-open, talent now is better than talent tomorrow.
- Luszczyszyn on the Panthers' front office's strategy
The Canadiens' draft last year made it clear they were trying to get bigger and grittier. However, prospects need time to develop, and by the time this class comes to maturity and is ready to make an impact, Nick Suzuki’s contract will be nearly done. Furthermore, chemistry takes time; kids don’t tend to perform all that well in their first few years as professionals (though there are exceptions like Lane Hutson or Demidov).
To get over the last few hurdles, the Canadiens will likely need to get some immediate help while sacrificing some of their futures, but that’s easier said than done. When other GMs see how well a team is doing, they’re in no hurry to give them the last few pieces they need to become Stanley Cup champions, and eventually, the GM who has a near-complete puzzle ends up having to bite the bullet and accept that they cannot put too high a value on their assets, making them untradeable.
The other GMs are seeing Hughes coming from miles out now; they know the Canadiens have built a strong foundation, and they will force the Habs to pay dearly for those needle-moving pieces. There comes a time when a GM has to be ready to overpay, and knowing when that time has come isn't always easy. When the finish line is within reach, you have to dig deep to improve your roster.
Hughes won’t be dealing every pick; he’s made it quite clear that he wants to build a perennial contender, but he’ll have to be ready to sacrifice some of them. Such is the reality of a team whose contention window is open. Is the Canadiens’ contention window open? It certainly feels like it is, given that they were one of the last four teams playing hockey this Spring. However, their evisceration by the Carolina Hurricanes shows a few pieces are still missing from their puzzle, and logic dictates those elusive pieces can’t all come from the draft.
Headbanded Randell to Stokes. A healthy crowd watch from the white bucket seats in the permanent-temporary stand. Stokes leaves one that slides across his stumps.
With September around the corner, so is Flyers hockey.
Let’s look at the key dates.
The Flyers open rookie training camp Friday, Sept. 11, before kicking off their series against the Rangers’ prospects at PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The rookie games are Saturday, Sept. 12 (7:05 p.m. ET), and Sunday, Sept. 13 (5:05 p.m. ET).
The club opens main training camp Thursday, Sept. 17, and starts its preseason slate Monday, Sept. 21.
After four exhibitions games, the Flyers host the Penguins in their regular-season opener Wednesday, Sept. 30. With the shortened preseason and the NHL extending its schedule to 84 games for every team, this will be the earliest the Flyers have ever started a regular season.
The Flyers are trying to reach the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time since the 2010-11 and 2011-12 campaigns.
Australia is in Mackay for the second Test against Bangladesh beginning on Saturday with a significant amount on the line after a dispiriting nine-wicket loss to the Tigers in Darwin prompted selectors to sharpen their axe.
Robert Morris wants to be a viral basketball program in 2026-27.
The small suburban Pittsburgh college has had success on its own merits in recent years after a transition from the Northeast Conference to the Horizon League in 2020-21. The Colonials reached the NCAA tournament as a No. 15 seed in 2024-25 and won over 20 games last year while just missing out on a return to the Big Dance.
Now they’re working with local creator Cullen Honohan on a first-of-its-kind jersey patch partnership in which the primary exchange isn’t money, but exposure. Both to fans and potential recruits.
Honohan, who lives in the city’s Strip District, has built a huge audience for his All Hail Cullen portfolio of basketball-focused social media accounts. He has over one million followers on TikTok and is nearing half a million on Instagram. Add about 370,000 subscribers on YouTube, and his reach is impressive.
Robert Morris, meanwhile, has struggled to draw fans despite putting a solid product on the floor. The Colonials averaged just 1,411 spectators across 17 home games at the UPMC Events Center, which opened in 2019 and was built to accommodate up 4,000.
Honohan wants to show that he can change that dynamic and build a greater following both locally and nationally. He plans to develop a video series following the team throughout its upcoming season. In exchange, his logo will appear on the team’s jerseys for each game.
“We want this to be the best basketball spectacle in the city,” Honohan said in a recent interview with USA Today.
Easier said than done. Pittsburgh is a notoriously difficult basketball market. There hasn’t been a viable professional franchise in town in decades. And even Pitt, which made the NCAA tournament 13 times in the 15-year period from 2001-02 to 2015-16, has had trouble filling its building since its move to the ACC a little over a decade ago.
That hasn’t stopped Honohan from setting down roots in the city. While he frequently travels out of state to interview top prospects and major college players for his social accounts, the Winter Park, Fla., native has embedded himself with the small but passionate grassroots hoops community through AAU programs.
He’s also developed a YouTube series focused on Luca Federico, a player at Chartiers Valley High School, south of the city. Federico was previously unranked by college recruiting services, but has since snagged multiple major college offers, a three-star rating at 247 Sport and tens of thousands of social media followers.
That work caught the eye of coach Andy Toole and Stephen Morrison, RMU’s associate athletic director for marketing and fan experience. It was the program that made the initial overture to work with Honohan, and the plan announced this week has flowed from subsequent meetings between the two sides.
It’s an innovative move that Toole told USA Today he might not have considered for his program a decade ago. Many coaches might view such outside attention as invasive and distracting for players. But Toole feels it’s important for programs to stand out in the age of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals reshaping the sport.
“There’s been radical change to college sports in general over the last four to five years,” Toole said. “How can we continue to adapt to the new landscape? I think content creators are part of that. It, I think, can help our players continue to become more attractive, and build a bigger brand and have a better experience.”
The reaction he’s received from players – past, present and possibly future – has been positive. Friends, likewise, have texted to let him know that their children have seen Honohan’s video announcing the partnership and asked questions about the school that is named for one of America’s Founding Fathers and a signatory to both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Toole hopes Honohan’s large following of high school players will be asking questions, too.
While the headline-grabbing tactic of putting a YouTube creator’s logo on a jersey is unique, the underlying value proposition RMU hopes to make is a fairly old school one that emphasizes things beyond the dollars and cents involved in playing basketball there.
“I think, at the end of the day, still being able to create relationships, show positive impacts, have positive outcomes, help people develop and grow, I still think are valuable,” Toole said. “I think you still have to be able to show those kind of things to people. And this is a way to kind of show that, right?
“Show some of the interaction between players and coaches. Show the experience that our players have in a way that they might not have been able to see before. And I think that can attract some of the right people, not only to our program, but then also to our university as a whole.”
Honohan plans to put those angles – and not himself – front and center. He expects his role to be more like a host than the focus of the videos. The tone will be less like a Mr. Beast stunt video and more like HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” he said. Neither side wants it to be a gimmick.
Maybe some will still see it that way. Honohan lamented that the distinction between “influencer” and “creator” tends to get blurred in the social media economy.
He’s nevertheless excited to have the buy-in of the program to do things at RMU this fall that aren’t happening quite like this anywhere else. The partnership may also include activations with nearby brands and appearances by some prominent local celebrities to get people out to games.
“Everybody there is just so incredibly open to doing the most creative idea,” Honohan said. “I think that’s what you need to do right now, especially as a mid major in college basketball, to be able to get in front of the most people and get in front of the right eyes when it comes to recruiting, sponsorship and everything along the line.”
BOSTON - 1984: Scoreboard reads "Beat L.A." during a game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics played in 1984 at the Boston Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 1984 NBAE (Photo by Dick Raphael/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images
NBA history spans 80 seasons, and as CelticsBlog readers well know, the Boston Celtics have won a league-high 18 championships. This month, we are recapping each of those title years.
Bird vs. Magic – Showtime vs. well, a team that wasn’t cool enough to have a nickname for its style of play. Boston vs. LA. Old vs. New. Gold and purple vs. green and white.
It was the 80s and the Lakers were the 80s in basketball form.
They played in the “Fabulous Forum” on a court that was trimmed in gold. Their head coach, Pat Riley, was a fashion plate as well as a competent strategist who had delivered a championship in his first year on the bench.
They had a player who more than lived up to his ‘Magic’ nickname. They had celebrities sitting courtside. They came from a city where it never rained and where winter was more theoretical than real. This was the city where dreams became reality, or at least as real as movies could make them. It was a city that was known, around the world, by just two letters: L.A.
Their star, with his infectious grin, had already made good in the NCAAs, defeating Larry Bird in the Final Four, and he’d won a pair of championships in the NBA as well.
At literally the other end of the country were the Celtics.
If the Lakers were the 80s personified, then the Celtics were the foundation and the first few floors of NBA history. They were run by Red Auerbach, who had been a fixture in the league from its inception. He had won fourteen championships by this point in time—nine as a coach and five as a general manager. They wore uniforms that were barely distinguishable from the ones that the team was wearing when Red was hired to coach them more than thirty years earlier. Their arena was a relic—a cramped relic painted mostly yellow, without air conditioning, with seats that were jammed together and placed behind columns and every one of them had been occupied for every single game the Celtics played for the past three seasons.
The Celtics played on a parquet court that had been trod by the league’s legends going back to the first year after World War II. It was a scarred and uneven surface that matched the tough and gritty character of the arena built around it.
The Celtics played in Boston—a crowded city where the past was present everywhere, where landmarks from the beginning of the nation were part of the fabric of everyday life, a city somehow nicknamed ‘Beantown.’ It had everything that L.A. lacked—history, tradition, cultural institutions—and it was hopelessly, helplessly uncool.
The 1984 Finals were a culture clash as well as a basketball contest.
Boston was coached by K.C. Jones. Jones, who had played for Red Auerbach in the 1950s and 1960s, had been on the bench as an assistant with the Lakers when Pat Riley played for them in the early 1970s, and had already coached a team into the Finals—the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) in 1975.
Jones was on the bench because the Celtics had more or less quit on Bill Fitch the year before. “I admit it,” M.L. Carr would tell Jackie MacMullin in her tale of Magic and Bird, When the Game was Ours, “Our goal in 1983 wasn’t to win a championship. It was to get rid of Fitch.”
While it’s unlikely, in hindsight, that the Celtics could have stopped the ‘fo-fo-fo’ Sixers, the way the Celtics gave up on the season incensed Larry Bird, who realized that once a year was gone it wasn’t coming back: “We could have won in ’83, but we didn’t because of all the [expletive] with Bill Fitch. Then we could have won it in ’85, but we didn’t because of more [expletive]. There are two years, right there, where we were young and together and healthy, and we didn’t capitalize on it. Looking back, it just kills you.”
The Celtics, who had made a poor showing in both the regular season and the playoffs the year before, had a new point guard to go along with a new coach.
As good as Nate “Tiny” Archibald had been, there was a problem with him implied by his nickname. “Tiny” was barely more than six feet tall, and he had struggled mightily to contain Andrew Toney, the “Boston Strangler,” and off in the distance was Magic Johnson, a 6’-9” point guard whose size allowed him to play the position in a manner that has never really been seen before or since.
Red had traded for Quinn Buckner in 1982, but he realized that an even more capable player was needed.
Enter Dennis Johnson.
Dennis Johnson was yet another Auerbach heist. He had been labeled a ‘cancer’ by Phoenix Suns coach John MacLeod.
Desperate to rid themselves of him, and thinking that they were getting a real steal from Auerbach because they were actually going to get a serviceable big in Rick Robey in exchange for a player they really didn’t want, three-time Executive of the Year Jerry Colangelo let himself get fleeced by the master.
Rick Robey was good, but DJ’s years with Boston put him in the Hall of Fame.
Red didn’t see a malcontent, he saw a guy driven to win on a team that wasn’t. DJ had scrapped his way up from playing junior college ball and working a factory job into a Finals MVP award. He was an excellent two-way player who could defend as well as he could dunk in his early years in the league. He had bounced back from an atrocious showing in the 1978 Finals to being the linchpin of the Sonics’ 1979 title winning team.
And he had the size and the mentality to body up against Magic.
The Regular Season
The Celtics started off relatively slowly. On November 22, they were just 9-5 and coming off a four game losing streak, but they proceeded to rip off a 29-4 record over the next 33 games. They finished the season with a 62-20 record identical to that of their previous championship winning season in 1981. This was easily the best record in the NBA—the next closest team was Los Angeles, who were 8 games behind the Celtics.
The Celtics weren’t exactly a grit and grind team, no team was in the go-go 80s, but they played the game with more deliberation than most, finishing the season with a below average pace of 99.7 possessions per game, good for just 15th in a 23 team league. Nonetheless, their net rating was 6.5 points to the good per 100 possessions, which was the best in the league. As with so many of Red’s teams, Boston’s defense was the real story. The Celtics could score as well as anybody, but they were very good at keeping their opponents from scoring.
Larry Bird finally cracked through and won the MVP award. He led the team in scoring and assists and dang near led the team in rebounds as well. His free throw percentage, 88.8%, was the best in the league. After him, five more Celtics averaged double figures, with Kevin McHale winning the league’s inaugural Sixth Man of the Year award behind 18.4 points per game and a team-high 55.7% field goal percentage.
Bird’s MVP award broke a near stranglehold on the honor that had been held by centers. Since the award’s inception, it had only gone to three players who played other positions: Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson and Julius Erving. Since then, it has only been awarded to centers on seven occasions.
This was the first of three consecutive MVP awards for Larry Legend—a feat that only he, Bill Russell, and Wilt Chamberlain can claim.
Eastern Playoffs
BOSTON, MA – APRIL 19: Boston Celtics Larry Bird looks for an open teammate during a game against the Washington Bullets at the Boston Garden, April 19, 1984. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) | Boston Globe via Getty Images
The NBA expanded the playoffs for the 1983/84 season. Now the first round was a best-of-five affair and there were no byes granted to the top teams in the league.
Thus Boston would need to win three playoff series just to get to the Finals.
Their first opponent was the Washington Bullets. The Bullets had the worst record of any playoff team at 35-47. In reality, letting a team with a record this poor into the playoffs wasn’t exactly unexpected. The NBA was a 23 team league with a 16 team playoff. Three teams with losing records made the playoffs in 1984 and a fourth, Phoenix, sat at .500 on the nose with a 41-41 record.
Regardless of record, the Bullets put up quite a fight. After a relatively easy eight point win in game one, the Celtics won two games by three points and lost a game by three as well.
Bird averaged 22.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 7.8 assists and two steals per game for the series, but he was arguably outplayed by Jeff Ruland, the Bullets’ center, who torched the Celtics for 24 points per game to go with 12.8 rebounds and 7.8 assists. Ruland had made the All-Star team that year and was having his best season. Ruland’s career, like Bill Walton’s would be derailed by chronic and nearly debilitating foot problems, but for a while, he was a genuine star for the Bullets—and a tough, tough player. Also making himself a pest during the series was fourth year player Rick Mahorn. Mahorn would make himself more of a pest for the Celtics as the 1980s wore on.
Mahorn and Ruland were known as the “Beef Brothers” for their rather physical style of play—at least that’s what Bullets fans called them. Longtime Celtics radio announcer Johnny Most had different nicknames for them: McFilthy and McNasty. CelticsBlog contributor Mike Dynon, who’s been following the team since the 1960s, said that they were “Pistons lite, before the Bad Boys,” adding, “Ruland and Mahorn would hit people and then look at them in a ‘what are you going to do about it’ way.”
The Celtics’ series against the Bullets was a physical contest. It was a series that Dan Shaughnessy said was filled with “meanness, malice, and good old fashioned mud-slinging and name calling.”
In the closeout game, the Celtics were sitting on a 16 point lead in the third quarter when Parish picked up his fourth and fifth fouls in less than a minute. This keyed a 9-0 Bullets run. Parish, who was doing his best to contain Ruland, and who had looked rather pedestrian during the series, fouled out with just over two and a half minutes to go and the Celtics up by ten. The Bullets put in a solid effort to come back, scoring six points in a row, but two free throws by DJ gave the Celtics the margin they needed, 92-86, with less than a minute on the clock. A flurry of intentional fouls inflated the final score to 99-96.
When the buzzer sounded, the Celtics were the winners, but the series wasn’t over—at least not for Gerald Henderson and his Bullets counterpart, Frank Johnson. The two got into a fight that saw them wrestling around on the floor as the rest of the Celtics and Bullets mostly tried to separate them. Mostly they were trying to separate them, “I had no idea what was going on out there,” Ruland said after the game, “I was just sorry I couldn’t get one punch in just for the fun of it.” Cedric Maxwell alleged that Frank—or someone on the Bullets—bit Gerald, “I want to know how Gerald Henderson could have a human bite on him.”
No one was suspended and no one was fined. Times have changed.
The Bullets were a rough and tumble team and they gave as good as they got for four games against the Celtics.
In the next round, the Celtics faced the New York Knicks.
The Knickerbockers were at the tail end of a brief bout of competence. They had finished above .500 three times in four years, a feat that they hadn’t accomplished since their championship winning seasons over a decade earlier. The team would tank their way into Patrick Ewing the following season, but for 1983/84, they were a tough matchup for Boston.
The series was pure chalk, with the home team winning every game. The Celtics probably should have put the Knicks away before it came down to a winner-take-all contest at Boston. They won their games by an average margin of 17.75 points, but Madison Square Garden seemed to have some store of Kryptonite on hand, as the Celtics lost those contests by a combined 15 points.
The series was a bizarre affair, considering that a seven game contest usually means a number of close games along the way. Instead, five of the seven games were won wire-to-wire, and there were only four lead changes during 336 minutes of cumulative play.
The star for the Knicks was Bernard King, whose Hall-of-Fame career probably could have been even more spectacular if not for a gruesome injury incurred while trying to block a dunk in a meaningless game against the Kansas City Kings in 1985. King broke his femur and wrecked his knee and was never quite the same. For the series, King’s stat line was 29.1/4.9/3.3 in points, rebounds and assists.
Larry Bird, on the other hand, was transcendent. He averaged 30.4 points per game, just edging out King’s 29.1 average; Bird also netted 10.6 rebounds per game which, again, topped both teams. He led both teams in steals at 2.7 per game, and his 50 assists for the series were the most of any player as well. He led all players in field goal percentage at 58.5%, and singlehandedly ensured that the Celtics would live to fight another day.
This was Larry at his peak.
In game seven, Bird recorded a triple double with 39 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists and a perfect 12-12 performance from the free throw line.
Defeating the Knicks set the table for an Eastern Conference Finals that proved anticlimactic.
The Celtics were up against the Bucks, who had soundly trounced them the year before—of course, this was also the year that the Celtics were in open rebellion against Bill Fitch, so the Bucks might have brought the wrong ideas into the contest. The Celtics, on the other hand, were determined to make sure they buried the past.
The series was over in five games.
Once again, Bird led all players—on both teams—in points, rebounds, assists and (almost) steals. On that last stat, he was tied with the Bucks’ Sidney Moncrief, a fellow Hall-of-Famer.
Boston’s average margin of victory across four wins was 13.5; none of the contests were particularly close, including the Bucks’ sole win in game four.
This set up the showdown that everyone had been waiting five years for.
The Finals
INGLEWOOD, CA – 1984: Magic Johnson #32 of the Los Angeles Lakers battles for position against Larry Bird #33 of the Boston Celtics during a game in 1984 at The Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 1984 NBAE (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images
The Lakers had already won—and lost—against the Sixers, and the Celtics had taken a championship from the Rockets the year that the Lakers quit on Paul Westhead, but Bird and Magic had not, as yet, squared off for all the marbles.
L.A. was coached by Pat Riley, in his third year, and had the league’s second best record at 54-28. They had six future Hall-of-Famers on their roster, although two of them, James Worthy and Jamaal Wilkes, were at the beginning and end of their respective careers.
Game One
Game one went to the Lakers in frustratingly undramatic fashion. They simply came into the Garden, took control of the game as though they were playing a junior league squad, and forced the Celtics to play ball the way they wanted to play it. Los Angeles had a 12 point lead after the first quarter and never really looked back. Kareem, who had almost beat the Celtics all by himself ten years earlier, picked up as though no time had passed at all and rattled off 32 points on 12 of 17 shooting from the field and 8 of 9 shooting from the line. The Lakers’ second year player, James Worthy, scored 20 points, and the team shot 51.8% from the field.
Game Two
Game two went to Boston in a contest that featured extra basketball for everyone. Boston came out hot and won the first quarter 36-26, but the Lakers clawed their way back. Their deficit after three quarters was just three points, and they made that up and then some in the fourth period. They had a two point lead when McHale was fouled and sent to the line. With a chance to tie, he missed both free throws and the home team looked like they were headed into a 2-0 hole. There were 20 seconds left on the clock. The Lakers called a timeout. Magic inbounded the ball to James Worthy.
And then James Worthy passed the ball to Gerald Henderson. Henderson sprinted down the court and laid in a game-tying basket with thirteen seconds to go.
The Celtics locked down every single Laker during the subsequent possession.
Los Angeles held the ball for the rest of regulation.
They never got a shot off.
In overtime, things once again looked bad for the Celtics. The Lakers had a three point lead when Kareem’s normally flawless sky hook went off the mark. Bird (who else?) corralled the rebound and sent an outlet pass down the court to Gerald Henderson who made a traditional three point play count for another tie.
With the Celtics down 121-120 and fourteen seconds on the clock, Scott Wedman buried a 13 foot jumper for the lead. At the other end of the court, Parish stole the ball from Bob McAdoo and the Celtics hung on to win.
Game Three
The series shifted from Boston to L.A., from a city steeped in tradition to a city that, despite being over 250 years old, is somehow always new.
The Lakers were in their element here. This was their home and they were comfortable.
After a close first quarter, the Lakers proceeded to curb stomp the Celtics. They ran Boston out of the Forum behind seven double-digit scorers, including five of their six future Hall-of-Famers and Kurt Rambis, who went a perfect seven for seven from the field.
The Lakers had a 2-1 lead on the Celtics, but to be honest, it really felt like a 3-0 lead. The Celtics had barely squeaked out a victory in game two, and it looked like the future of the league belonged, exclusively, to Los Angeles. Sure the Celtics were good and Bird was extraordinary, but, well, it seemed that they just didn’t have ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ was.
Game Four
Official scorer’s report from Game 4
There are games and then there are games.
Boston found themselves in a ten point hole at halftime of game four and looked like they were completely out of it. If the Lakers held onto their lead, they would be sitting on a 3-1 advantage, with three opportunities to close out a team that owed its sole victory primarily to a Gerald Henderson steal.
But there’s something to be said for the tenacity the Celtics showed in that game two win, because they brought it out again in game four. In fact, tenacity is what defined the Celtics in this series.
For starters, Boston finally managed to slow the game down in the third quarter—in dramatic fashion.
After six quarters of letting the Lakers play the game the way they wanted it played, after six quarters that they had lost by a combined 43 points, something snapped.
K.C. Jones told the team “No more layups.”
And Kevin McHale took the instruction about as literally as anyone could take it.
About halfway through the third quarter Kurt Rambis broke free off a Boston miss, with the Lakers holding onto a six point lead, 76-70.
He had just left his feet on the way to the basket when Kevin McHale took him out.
McHale grimaced and awkwardly extended his left arm catching Rambis in the neck and shoulder. Kurt’s momentum sent him flying onto his back somewhere near the baseline.
By the time Rambis hit the court it wasn’t just the tenor of the game that had changed. The whole series changed. The Lakers, who had cruised to two easy victories, would lose three of the next four contests.
McHale stayed in the game. In fact, he wasn’t even called for a technical, despite a brawl nearly erupting in the aftermath of the foul.
The Celtics won the balance of the third quarter by four points, and headed into the fourth quarter down two. They weren’t going to cruise to a comeback victory, and cruising to a comeback just wasn’t their style. The Celtics were going to take every point they scored from the Lakers by force and by desire.
The Celtics were going to win game four because they wanted to win the game more than the Lakers did, and it was as simple as that.
The Lakers were trying to protect a five point lead off a pair of Magic free throws with less than a minute to go when the Celtics, who never led during regulation, closed the gap. They reduced the lead to two on a traditional three-point play that came after Parish caught his own offensive rebound and put it back in the midst of a rugby scrum under the basket. The Lakers did their best to dribble out the clock but ultimately settled for a Michael Cooper two from deep that bounced off the rim and into the hands of Parish, but not before Kareem shoved Bird. It was the sixth foul on the Lakers center, and it sent the league’s best free throw shooter to the line. The first free throw hit nothing but net. The second one rattled around a bit and then dropped through. The game was tied.
On the Lakers’ subsequent possession, Jones put Parish on Worthy, a move that paid off when Magic, being hounded practically off the court by DJ made what should have been a routine pass down the sideline to Worthy. Parish stuck an arm into the passing lane, deflected the pass and then wrapped it up with four seconds on the clock. A long three by Bird and a putback by McHale both caromed off the back of the rim and the game headed to overtime.
DJ scored Boston’s first four points in the extra period—but the Celtics were struggling to contain second year player James Worthy, already well on the way to earning his “Big Game James” nickname. Worthy scored nine of the Lakers’ twelve points in the overtime session. When he made a hoop and the harm count late in the overtime period, he gave the Lakers their last lead of the game at 123-121. Bird proceeded to tie the game up with 1:19 to go. Magic had a chance to put the Lakers up two, off a foul by DJ, but missed both free throws. Bird came out of the Boston timeout that followed and gave the Celtics the lead on a turnaround jumper. With ten seconds to go, Worthy was fouled by McHale, and after he missed his first free throw, Cedric Maxwell walked across the lane in front of James with his hands to his throat signifying ‘choke.’
When the dust settled, the Celtics had beaten the Lakers 129-125, but more than that, they had seized control of the series.
UNITED STATES – JUNE 03: Basketball: finals, Los Angeles Lakers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33) upset, arguing during game vs Boston Celtics Larry Bird (33), Los Angeles, CA 6/3/1984–6/10/1984 (Photo by Richard Mackson/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images) (SetNumber: X30111)
Game Five
The Celtics ran away with game five. The Lakers played the Celtics close in the stifling heat of Boston Garden for the first two quarters, but couldn’t keep up with Boston as the game wore on. The Lakers were outscored 33-24 in the third quarter and 33-26 in the fourth; the final score was 121-103 Boston. The Celtics finally shot the ball better than L.A., hitting at 51.9% compared to a 42.9% clip from the Lakers. Worthy was the only Laker to crack 20 points. On the other end of the court, Larry Bird led all scorers with 34 points and bested both teams with 17 rebounds as well.
The Celtics, who had been left for dead after game three were in the driver’s seat with a 3-2 series lead.
Game Six
The Lakers salvaged game six off a furious fourth quarter comeback. The Celtics had played their brand of basketball for, basically, eight and a half straight quarters, going back to the midpoint of the third quarter of game four, but they let up on the Lakers in the fourth quarter of game six. Los Angeles came into the quarter down four and proceeded to outscore Boston 36-21, for an eleven point victory, 119-108. Kareem put in 30 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists, against 28 points, 14 rebounds and 8 assists from Bird.
Some Lakers fans might have seized onto this aberration as proof that, perhaps, the tide had shifted back in favor of the purple and gold.
If so, game seven would prove to be a colossal disappointment for them.
Game Seven
The Lakers and Celtics were knotted at 30 all after one, but the Celtics had a six point lead by halftime, and after the third quarter the Lakers were down thirteen. The Celtics held on to win the game—and the title—by a final margin of 111-102.
Los Angeles fouled the Celtics 32 times—in a 48 minute game—and sent the Celtics to the line 51 times, where the Celtics shot a lights-out 84%. Both DJ and Bird were perfect from the line.
In fact, the Celtics outscored the Lakers by 25 points from the charity stripe. This more than made up for another bad shooting performance from the Celtics, who really only had one game during the series where they shot at a rate that even approached their regular season levels.
Was there a conspiracy afoot? Hardly. The game was called with a tight whistle—Gerald Henderson picked up three fouls in the first four minutes of the game.
Boston adjusted. L.A. did not.
Larry Bird won a well-earned Finals MVP to go with his regular season title.
For the series, the Legend led all players in points, rebounds and steals. Magic, to no one’s surprise, led both teams in assists.
In the 1984 Finals, Larry was on the court with nine other future Hall-of-Famers, and he out-performed every one of them.
BOSTON, MA – JUNE 12: Players rejoice on the Boston Celtics bench during Game Seven of the 1984 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers at the Boston Garden on June 12, 1984. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) | Boston Globe via Getty Images
Turning Point
There really were two turning points in this series. The first was Gerald Henderson’s steal and layup that forced overtime in game two. Without it, the Lakers probably cruise to an easy championship victory, or, at best, the Celtics do no better than make things interesting for a game or two.
But Henderson’s steal didn’t really stop L.A., as they clobbered Boston in the next game.
The second turning point came when McHale rather emphatically kept Rambis from grabbing an easy two. From that point on, Boston took over the series.
In the thirteen and a half quarters that followed the Rambis clothesline, LA had one where they looked like the team that was on the verge of a 3-1 lead at halftime of game four. It was all Boston the rest of the way.
Boston had taken the first round of this new rivalry with Los Angeles. The Lakers, however, would be back. Bad health and bad luck would rob this rivalry of much of the sizzle this series promised, but for 1984, at least, Boston had carried the day.
BOSTON – JUNE 12: Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics celebrates after winning Game Seven of the 1984 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers played on June 12, 1984 at the Boston Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 111-102 and won the series 4-3 to claim the 1984 NBA Championship. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 1984 NBAE (Photo by Dick Raphael/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images
Australia weighed up launching an all-pace attack in a must win Test against Bangladesh in Mackay, but champion off-spinner Nathan Lyon has earned a reprieve for the vital clash.
Boxing’s most mercurial star is putting an old friendship aside as he moves up to 147lb to challenge Rolly Romero for the welterweight title he won against Ryan Garcia
For more than a decade, Teófimo López’s friendship with Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero endured through amateur tournaments, Las Vegas sparring sessions and the mismatched peaks and troughs of two volatile careers. That friendship ended, López says, the moment they signed to fight one another.
On Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena along the Vegas Strip, the 29-year-old López will challenge for Romero’s World Boxing Association welterweight title. The former lightweight and junior-welterweight champion is moving up to 147lb in pursuit of a belt in a third division. For Romero, himself a three-weight belt-holder after stacking titles at 135lb and 140lb, a victory would add another marquee name to a résumé transformed by last year’s upset of Ryan Garcia. The fight will be broadcast globally on Dazn pay-per-view and will see the champion go off as a roughly 2-1 underdog.
A general view outside Crypto.com Arena, home of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers.Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
For years, the NBA was built on the alliance of patient money and marketing pizzazz, and no team captured that curious mixture better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Through Showtime in the 1980s and the dominance of the Shaq-Kobe years, the Lakers became the benchmark for a league and a sport intent on global conquest: charismatic, ambitious, and flashy, a sporting-cultural amalgam in which athleticism and celebrity held equal rank. Through careful front office recruitment, savvy coaching, and the harnessing of Hollywood’s star power, the Lakers evolved from a team into a “brand,” establishing a template that virtually every other outfit in the NBA has felt compelled to mimic in the years since. But the razzle-dazzle on the court – the Laker Girls, Magic flinging no-look passes, Shaq smashing the glass, Jack Nicholson smiling his Joker smile in the front row, all eyebrows and mischief – depended on a far more staid and stable arrangement off it. Real estate investor Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $16m in 1979, and remained the majority owner until his death in 2013, when his children assumed control of the franchise.
When Jerry Buss died, the Lakers were valued at $1bn. Now, the team looks set to be sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, for $12.5bn. The sale is still under negotiation and will need to be approved by the NBA’s board of governors; the Buss siblings are also now bickering over whether to join the stampede and sell their minority 17.8% stake in the franchise to Iger and Kushner, which has added a subplot of Shakespearean family intrigue to proceedings. But in the likely event it goes through, the sale would make the Lakers the most valuable franchise in basketball. It would also signal an acceleration in private equity’s scramble to get its claws into the world of sport.
The disappearance of the patient old world of sporting capital that Jerry Buss once embodied can have no better advertisement than the fact that Iger and Kushner’s bid for the Lakers comes a little over a year after the franchise was sold to an entirely different set of private equity investors. Mark Walter and Todd Boehly announced their purchase of a majority stake in the Lakers at a valuation of $10bn in June 2025, with the Busses retaining a minority share in their family inheritance. Walter’s mooted disposal of this sporting crown jewel – for a tidy $2.5bn bump in the franchise valuation, of course – just 14 months after he took control of it symbolizes the arrival of a brash new era in US sporting investment. Today teams are flipped with the calculated emotionlessness that a real estate speculator might get rid of a block of cheaply renovated apartments, and the old ideas of heritage, tradition, family, and community that once bound the pro leagues’ owner dynasties to their teams are now mostly useful as a rhetorical device, rather than a set of values to respect in practice.
There are still teams in the NBA holding out against the tide of private money: the Indiana Pacers have been in the same (majority) hands since 1983, the Chicago Bulls since 1985. But many long-time owners are now spying the exit, which is understandable given the boom in franchise valuations: Mark Cuban, for example, sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks in late 2023 after 24 years running the franchise. He now says he regrets the sale, but only, it seems, because the team has fared so poorly since his exit and he’s no longer as influential in basketball decisions; patient money may be draining away from the NBA, but the egos attached to it remain as large and self-adoring as ever.
The NBA opened up to institutional money – investment from private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capital funds, and the like – in 2022, the first big pro league in US sports to embrace the worldwide emergence of sport as an investible asset class like technology or construction. It makes a rough kind of sense, given the NBA’s status as first mover, that basketball is now at the forefront of a fresh intensification in the sports investment cycle. Iger and Kushner are wealthy, but they don’t exactly inhabit the Muskosphere. Iger, the veteran in the couple, was last estimated by Forbes as having a net worth of $690 million in 2019 – not bad, but that won’t even buy you a stadium half-court in the modern NBA. Iger and Kushner’s deal to buy the team will have to be structured in various tricky and byzantine ways – most likely as a consortium involving a number of individuals and firms, with finance coming via a mix of debt and cash – to get around their own comparative poverty and the restrictions the NBA places on institutional investment (in particular, the rule stating that no individual fund can hold more than 20% of a single team). But it’s clear that this type of deal, for this type of money, involving this type of investor, is precisely what the league wants. There’s more where this came from. The families are out; the sharks are in.
What exactly does private equity want from sport? “Good returns” may seem like the simplest answer, and when appraising the surplus a figure like Walter has been able to extract in a single year from the Lakers, it’s hard not to feel that’s also the best answer: this was also a year, let’s not forget, in which LeBron James left LA and the team went backwards as a basketballing proposition, while not faring much better in the commercial realm. If all that’s required these days to book a fat profit is to sit back, do nothing to arrest a team’s slide into mediocrity, then exit the scene, perhaps owning a professional sports team, especially a storied and prestigious one like the Lakers, really is the perfect modern investment.
Others have speculated that the rich guys’ (and it is almost always a guy stumping up the cash) newfound interest in sport is a bid for cultural relevance, a cry for attention and perhaps even love amid the vexed politics of extreme wealth in an age of populist rage. No doubt there’s some truth to that, too. But the typical sports investor of the future probably looks more like Josh Kushner than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, now perfecting his impersonation of a Scouse accent as he prepares to take a minority stake in Liverpool; the moneymen piling into the sector over the years to come will probably be dominated by mid-career financial guns rather than post-divorce billionaires looking to escape the boredom of their own personalities.
Kushner, according to most reports, is the driving force behind the Lakers deal – which represents a remarkable rebound just a few weeks after FIFA Forward Enterprise, the scheme he concocted with Gianni Infantino to create an outside investment-friendly subsidiary tasked with managing FIFA’s commercial operations, went up in flames. Kushner is the founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, a VC firm that “builds and invests in internet, software, and technology-enabled companies,” according to its own website; the firm’s portfolio includes positions in OpenAI, Stripe, and Anduril – all Silicon Valley darlings. The investment in the Lakers will go through Thrive Eternal, a subsidiary of the main investment firm, which Kushner and his partners formed earlier this year in a ploy to diversify their portfolio beyond traditional tech. Thrive Eternal’s goal is to invest in “assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology,” the fund’s mission statement reads, including “iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience.” Buying up sports teams (the Lakers, for example) and even whole sporting institutions, as with the failed attempt to devour the World Cup, represents an important hedge against the vagaries of the US tech sector, which is now dangerously exposed to AI. America’s lunatic pursuit of a vandalizing technology no one wants is now responsible for the desecration of your beloved local basketball franchise. The team of Kareem and Kobe might be a lucrative investment in strict financial terms. But to the Kushners of the world, what the Lakers are, above all, is a hedge.
The old NBA of Jerry Buss was about making money, building dynasties, giving the fans a good time, and injecting sport with a slick of Hollywood glamor. The new NBA of Josh Kushner is about saving investor-owners’ bank balances from the consequences of their own poor decisions. Everything else in sport now is secondary to the basic imperative of investor enrichment and protection. Once the Lakers were Showtime; now they are Insurance Time.
