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My significant other suggested that I ask each of you to “tuna in” to the Utah Jazz’s upcoming contest against the Oklahoma City Thunder. I don’t know what could have possibly possessed her to ask this of me, nor have I figured out what tuna could have to do with a basketball game of any scale (no pun intended), but now we are both cursed with the knowledge of a heinous maritime pun.

May this article smite us both.

Assuming you, the reader, possess the fortitude to withstand such a gut-wrenching play on words, perhaps you’ll likewise brave the Utah Jazz’s (21-57, 14th in West) impending struggle against the NBA-best Oklahoma City Thunder (61-16, 1st in West) with similar grace. You are stronger than most, and it’ll take a titanium digestive track to bear the disparity between basketball’s strongest record (OKC) and one of its weakest (Utah).

May I turn your attention to Brice Sensabaugh, who has averaged just shy of 20 points in his last 30 games in the absence of Utah’s veterans. Maybe even Ace Bailey, the Jazz rookie who has erased any buzz that he isn’t happy in the Beehive State and has blossomed into one of the most promising young players in his class? Could I interest you in Cody Williams — who is not terrible — the once-deemed ‘lost cause’ who has scored 20 or more points in seven of his last 10 appearances leading up to Oklahoma City?

The Utah Jazz seemed directionless and empty just a season ago, but with another calendar year of sample size and time in the incubator, Utah’s youngsters are among basketball’s most promising, and could make the Jazz one of the deepest and most dangerous teams in 2026 with a healthy Markkanen, JJJ, Kessler, and George leading the charge (and also AJ Dybantsa or Darryn Peterson would be nice, lottery gods, but I’m not picky).

Sure, OKC is the basketball equivalent of a buzzsaw, essentially disintegrating every team it comes in contact with, and sure, they’ll be the favorites to hoist the NBA Finals trophy for the second consecutive season. Sure, they’ll likely make quick work of the visiting Jazz like a sniffling dog sneezing the powdered sugar off a donut. But something is manifesting in Utah. Don’t take this upcoming result as an indicator of these teams’ true value in the coming years.

Will Hardy and his intrepid group of Boy Scouts embarked on an excursion back in October that has lasted 78 games and taken the functionality of the troop’s most veteran members. Now, as Troop 801 comes across the Paycom Center and its native Oklahoma City Thunder. A storm of epic proportions forced the youth to fall under temporary shelter, shivering and frightened as lightning tore the sky, and the thunderous voice of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander followed.

Rain formed puddles, which formed ponds, which turned into lakes. The remaining scouts clung to floating debris like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Those who honored their parent’s age restriction wishes and hadn’t seen James Cameron’s nautical masterpiece were lost to the storm, but the Thunder’s wrath was withstood by the naughty boys who understand what it means to “paint me like one of your French girls”. Is that irony? Doesn’t matter. The waters are rising, and the Thunder is encroaching.

Suddenly, like a fountain, something shot swiftly from beneath the surface and took to the sky. If just for a moment, it seemed as though the storm… flinched? A sign of weakness? A fleeting glance of possibility for the young and chipper Jazz? The shape shed all ambiguity, revealing its head, tail, and… is that a tuna? Perhaps the task of conquering the Thunder is not impossible — perhaps the undermanned Jazz have a fighting chance after all. With a mighty sploosh, the rallier returned to his origin, having struck a match of hope in these fumbling scouts’ hearts.

[Did I stretch too far for the tuna thing? I feel like I might have.]

Calvin Barrett is a writer, editor, and prolific Mario Kart racer located in Tokyo, Japan. He has covered the NBA and College Sports since 2024.

Illinois coach Brad Underwood stole a quote from Houston coach Kelvin Sampson after the Fighting Illini's Final Four loss to UConn.

Sampson, one of the greatest coaches to never have won a national championship, knows a thing or two about March Madness heartbreak, which is exactly what Underwood was feeling after Illinois' 71-62 loss on Saturday, April 4, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

REQUIRED READING: Braylon Mullins keeps hitting big shots for UConn in Final Four win

"I feel sad," Underwood told reporters after the game. "I'm sad. If you want to know the truth, I'm sad. But I'll reflect on some of the other stuff later. Seasons coming to an end sting. I'm going to steal a quote from Kelvin Sampson: 'I may not be as big a part of their life, but they are my life.'"

With the injury to Jock Landale, the Hawks decided to add a familiar center as the team prepares for postseason play.

Tony Bradley never appeared for the Hawks, but he did spend a chunk of last season (12 games) with the College Park Skyhawks. He was later picked up by the Indiana Pacers, who went on to come to within one game of the title.

Across the last two seasons with the Pacers, Bradley appeared in 50 games and 11 postseason games as a big-bodied reserve center.

The reason for this move now is that it’s unclear when Landale may return. On April 2, the Hawks released this update about Landale’s ankle injury:

Center Jock Landale sustained a right ankle injury during the fourth quarter of last night’s game at Orlando. Following medical evaluation and imaging, Landale has been diagnosed with a right high ankle sprain. He will be re-evaluated in approximately two weeks and an update will be provided at that time.

In order to make space on the roster, the Hawks decided to let go little used shooter Caleb Houstan.

Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Charlotte Hornets
Date: April 5th, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM CDT
Location: Target Center
Television Coverage: FanDuel Sports Network – North
Radio Coverage: Wolves App, iHeart Radio

With Anthony Edwards sidelines, the Wolves went into Boston and pulled off a professional win, then followed it with that completely deranged, Scott Foster-fueled overtime escape against Houston, the kind of game that usually becomes a rallying point for a team trying to harden itself for the postseason. It felt like the Wolves had rediscovered their defensive identity, their connectivity, and maybe even a little bit of that stubborn edge that carried them on back-to-back Western Conference Finals runs.

And then they dropped three of four games, including back-to-back games to Detroit and Philadelphia, and suddenly the whole thing feels unstable again.

That is the maddening part of this Timberwolves season. They keep giving you just enough to believe they’ve turned the corner, and then they take that same corner like they’re driving on bald tires in sleet. Friday night in Philadelphia was the latest example. It was not some shameful no-show or one of those dead-eyed weekend matinee meltdowns where you question whether half the team remembered there was a game. In fact, the Wolves fought. They competed. They even built a ten-point lead in the third quarter. But eventually the weight of the week caught up to them. Anthony Edwards, still recovering from injury and illness, looked like a guy who had no business being asked to carry an offense, and the Sixers, refreshed, healthier, imposed their will.

That was the story. Minnesota came into Philly with its back against the wall after that exhausting loss in Detroit, needing to summon one more big effort on the second night of a back-to-back against a Sixers team that had started to find itself again with Joel Embiid back in the lineup. The hope was obvious. Edwards had returned Monday against Dallas, then sat Thursday in Detroit with an illness. Maybe the extra night of rest would help. Maybe the freshest legs on the roster would belong to the one guy who could actually bend the game. Maybe the superstar could be the superhero again.

Instead, the version of Edwards that took the floor looked like a shell of himself. He finished just 3-for-15 from the field and 0-for-7 from three, and for long stretches he was not simply ineffective, but almost invisible. That is not a criticism so much as an acknowledgment of the obvious. He was sick 24 hours earlier. He looked out of rhythm. He looked like a guy trying to force his way through a game his body was not ready to own. To be blunt, there were stretches where the Wolves functioned better without him, which is not something you say about Anthony Edwards unless the circumstances are screaming it at you.

The frustrating thing is that Minnesota still gave itself a chance. Even with Ant sputtering, even with the offense feeling patched together, they pushed out to that ten-point lead in the third and for a moment it felt like one of those ugly, admirable road wins you talk yourself into as evidence of maturity. But then the bottom fell out. The shots stopped falling. The legs got heavy. The Sixers got downhill, got to the rim, and started scoring in the kind of effortless, demoralizing ways that happen when one team is tired and the other senses blood. By the time the lead stretched to seventeen late, the game had taken on that ugly late-stage feel where everything Minnesota did required enormous effort and everything Philadelphia got seemed to arrive cleanly and on time.

The final numbers told the whole story. The Sixers shot 50 percent. The Wolves shot 38 percent. Philadelphia was better from three, better from the line, better on the glass, and over the course of 48 minutes there was almost nothing Minnesota actually did better. When the tape says one team beat you physically, schematically, and efficiently, there really is not much left to argue about.

So now the Wolves head into the final stretch of the regular season with things feeling less like a sprint up the standings and more like a desperate attempt to stay balanced on the ladder. Maybe the six seed is already where this thing is headed. Maybe the script has been written and all this scoreboard-checking is just emotional self-harm dressed up as fandom. But whether or not they can still climb, these last few games are now about something just as important: getting right. Getting healthy. Getting connected. Building momentum and rhythm and confidence so that when the playoffs arrive, they do not look like a team that has spent the past month in disarray.

That process continues against Charlotte, and while a late-season game against the Hornets does not exactly sound like an instant classic, it matters. It matters because Charlotte has been remarkably better in the second half of the season. It matters because the Wolves cannot keep alternating between “we’ve got it figured out” and “why is the house on fire again?” And it matters because if the Wolves are going to do anything meaningful in in the post-season, they need to start looking like a team that knows what version of itself it wants to be.

With that, here are the keys to the game.

#1. Match Charlotte’s energy and play with real defensive intent from the jump.
One positive sign lately is that the Wolves, for the most part, have not been sleepwalking through games the way they did in those dead-brained losses earlier in the season. The competition has gotten tougher, yes, but some of it also feels like this team understands it no longer has the luxury of coasting. That has to continue against Charlotte. The Hornets are hungry, feisty, and still trying to carve out something meaningful of their own down the stretch. If Minnesota walks into this game treating it like a lazy weekend game against those old, irrelevant Hornets, LaMelo Ball will happily turn it into a track meet, and guys like Brandon Miller and Kon Kneuppel will start bombing away from deep. This has to begin on the defensive end. Pressure the ball. Show real purpose on closeouts. Do not let Charlotte’s guards get comfortable. If Edwards is still working his way back into rhythm, then defense has to be the part of the game Minnesota can always count on.

#2. Win the rebounding battle for once.
The Wolves have let themselves get pushed around too often lately. Detroit did it. Philadelphia did it. It has become a recurring problem at the worst possible time, which is especially frustrating for a team with Gobert, Randle, and Reid on the roster. Charlotte does not have a frontcourt that should be able to duplicate what Joel Embiid or Jalen Duren did. That means Minnesota has to come into this game with the mindset that every rebound belongs to them. Rebounds are not just about ending possessions here. They are also about unlocking transition chances and giving this offense a simpler path to points than trying to grind through every halfcourt trip like it’s a tax audit.

#3. Stay aggressive and attack the rim.
If Edwards is not back to being Edwards yet, the Wolves need offense from other sources, and that means pace and rim pressure become essential. Bones Highland, Ayo Dosunmu and, Terrence Shannon Jr. are the types of guys who can inject some burst into the game by getting downhill and making Charlotte’s defense react. Minnesota cannot afford to spend 48 minutes walking the ball up, running a static set, and watching someone jack up a late-clock bailout jumper. Push off rebounds. Pressure the paint. Create easy looks in transition and force Charlotte to defend on the move. Even if the three-point shot is shaky, the Wolves have enough athleticism and enough downhill players to generate good offense by attacking before the defense gets organized.

#4. Hit your shots — at the line and from deep.
The Wolves shot 65 percent from the free-throw line against Philadelphia, and while that was not the only reason they lost, it absolutely helped turn the final minutes into a desperate uphill climb instead of a close clutch-time stretch. There is no polite way to say this anymore: it is completely unacceptable for a team with this much shot-making talent to keep punting away uncontested points from the stripe. It has been annoying all season. In the playoffs, it could be fatal. The same goes for the three-point line. Friday was not just an Ant disaster from deep, although 0-for-7 from your star certainly doesn’t help. DiVincenzo has looked off. Bones and Ayo have had hot stretches, but need to be steadier. This offense does not need to be elite every night, but it has to stop sabotaging itself with rotten efficiency in the two key scoring areas on the board: free throws and open threes.

#5. Use this game to get right, not just to get by.
This is the biggest thing. At this point, it may be less about obsessing over whether the Wolves can climb to fifth or whether they are locked into sixth and more about whether they can enter the postseason looking like a team you’d want no part of. That does not mean the standings no longer matter. They absolutely do. The Lakers could still slide and maybe that fifth seed becomes an easy ticket to round two. There are enough moving pieces left that Minnesota cannot just sit tight and accept its fate. But beyond all that, the Wolves need this game as a tune-up, a stabilizer, a confidence builder. They need Edwards to look more like himself. They need the offense to function. They need the defense to feel connected. They need to start stacking quality basketball, not just surviving individual nights. A solid win against this feisty Charlotte team could help them get back on balance if they approach it correctly.

The runway is getting short now. The regular season has gone from long and meandering to urgent and loud. And after the emotional swings of the two weeks, the Boston win, the Houston miracle, the Detroit stumbles, and the Philly fade, the Wolves need something solid. Something that feels like progress instead of another go-round on the rollercoaster.

This team may not ultimately control where it lands in the standings. Maybe the sixth seed is already inevitable. But they do control whether they go into the postseason looking organized, dangerous, and ready to punch back. That is what these final games are really about. Not just winning them, but using them to rediscover what their best basketball actually looks like.

And if they can do that against Charlotte, if they can shake off the Philly fog, hit some shots, defend with edge, dominate the glass, and get Edwards back into orbit, then maybe the story of this season is not that they fell short of where they wanted to be, but that they found the right version of themselves just in time.

If the Phoenix Suns make the playoffs, it’s a near certainty they’ll face the Oklahoma City or the San Antonio Spurs. The team will most likely be the seventh or eighth seed in the Western Conference, depending on how they perform in the play-in tournament. There’s a slim chance they can surpass the Minnesota Timberwolves for the sixth seed, but it’s highly unlikely.

With the Thunder and Spurs being the most likely candidates for the team to play in the first round, we asked Suns fans who’d they rather play. The vote speaks loudly.

I am not surprised by the results one bit. The Thunder are the strong favorites to win the title again and come out of the Western Conference, and have given the Suns more trouble than the Spurs have this season. In four games against the Suns this year, Oklahoma City is 3-1 and handed Phoenix its worst loss in franchise history back in December. Additionally, the defending champions are the healthiest they’ve been all season, just in time for the playoffs with Jalen Williams back in the lineup, and they just walloped the streaking Los Angeles Lakers.

While the Spurs look to be no piece of cake, they’re inexperienced. Boasting the second-best record in the NBA and the second-shortest odds to win the West and the title, typically it takes teams at least one or two playoff up and downs to become formidable threats to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy, and the Spurs were not even in the play-in tournament last year, let alone the playoffs, with a mostly similar roster from a year ago. Their biggest additions from a season ago are bench players Luke Kornet and Dylan Harper Jr. Phoenix has also had better luck against the Spurs than the Thunder this year.

The two teams split their four matchups against each other, with the Suns winning the first two and the Spurs winning the final two. The last time the two teams played came just a few weeks ago, when Victor Webmanyama hit a game-winner in the final moments in San Antonio’s comeback win. Wembanyama is the strong favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year and one of the leaders in the MVP race. Phoenix held the All-Star to one of his worst games of the season back in November, when they limited him to his lowest scoring game of the season, when he scored nine points on 14 shots. The home team won every game in the season series.

With how terrific Wembanyama and the rest of the Spurs have been, it would not be a surprise to see them soar during the playoffs; it’s just an unproven concept. Both Oklahoma City and San Antonio provide a challenge; they’re the two best teams in the league for a reason, but the Spurs are the unproven bunch.

While golfing recently, LeBron James mulled over a staggering stat.

He has faced about 37% of all players in NBA history. 

“I seen some s–t that made me feel so old the other day,” James said on an appearance on “Bob Does Sports,” before repeating that shocking number.

Well, James is about to get a lot more gray hairs on his beard.

Not only have the Lakers lost Luka Dončić to a Grade 2 left hamstring strain that he sustained Thursday against the Thunder. But an MRI Saturday revealed that Austin Reaves sustained a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury in that game, too. Both players could miss around a month — or more.

It’s a brutal turn of events for a team that had gone 16–2 heading into Thursday’s game and was considered championship contenders.

Now, it would be shocking if the Lakers survive the first round of the playoffs.

It’s time for James to dust off the cobwebs from his superhero cape that he used to carry 10 NBA teams to the Finals.

Before James found out the Lakers would be without Reaves, he was asked how things change for him without Dončić.

“The mindset changes a little bit, for sure,” he told reporters Saturday at Lakers practice.

Without Reaves too? His mind must be short-circuiting.

James spent the last month playing behind Dončić and Reaves, filling in the team’s holes. Now, he’s dealing with a gaping chasm.

It’s in the form of 56.8 points, 12.7 rebounds and 13.8 assists that Dončić and Reaves averaged this season.

Losing Dončić — who averaged a league-high 37.5 points, 8 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 2.3 steals in March — was a gut punch.

Having to also play without Reaves is form of decapitation for a team that seemingly had no ceiling a few days ago.

The truth is without Dončić, James would’ve become the Lakers’ first option even if Reaves’ injury hadn’t been so severe. Reaves is largely unproven in the postseason and infamously struggled last April.

But not having Reaves on the court as the Lakers’ second option is devastating for LA’s offense. Things just went from bad to catastrophic.

James is averaging career-lows in points (20.6) and usage rate (26.6) this season because it became obvious that the Big 3 functioned best when he deferred to both Dončić and Reaves.  

“It is a sacrifice,” James said March 12. “I know what I’m capable of still doing as an individual.”

Well, now it’s time for him to show the world what arguably the greatest player of all-time can do at this geriatric stage of his career.

At age 41, most NBA players have long retired. James will be called upon to carry a team on his arthritic feet past a grueling gauntlet of Western Conference superstars to four wins in a seven-game series.

The Lakers, who have five regular season games remaining, have already clinched the playoffs. Reaves will likely miss 4–6 weeks. The average time a player misses for Dončić’s injury is 30 days. The playoffs begin April 18, and here’s to guessing the Lakers are going to want to be conservative with their franchise’s cornerstone players.

So, James it’s you.

It’s a Herculean task.

Really, it’s impossible.

Look, James is still great. Last month, he had a triple-double with 19 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists on the second leg of a back-to-back against the Heat on March 19, following finishing with 30 points on 13-for-14 shooting the previous night against the Rockets. 

But there’s no way he can make up for the firepower of the team’s top two stars. James is the oldest player in the league. Heck, it would’ve been a really tough ask for him 10 years ago.

This is all a shame for so many reasons.

Dončić was having an MVP-caliber season. Reaves looked like an All-Star. The Lakers were soaring.

But there’s another major storyline: This could potentially have major ramifications on James’ future. 

James still hasn’t decided whether he’s going to retire after this season — or return next year for the Lakers or another team. 

It was obvious that whatever happened this postseason was going to have a major influence on that decision.

Now, with both Dončić and Reaves out, James is facing a completely different reality than he was days earlier.

It’s heartbreaking.

Over the course of a few dreadful days, everything went from sunny to dreary for the Big 3.

And James is now alone having to sort through the darkness.

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A post on reddit was the genesis of viral reactions earlier this week.

The user named mandevillan admitted that they had never seen the Hawk in the ‘Pac-Man’ logo used by the team as an alternate since 2014. The logo itself is a revamping of a bygone era for the franchise (and it’s seemingly more widely used that the primary logo that has “ATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL” in a ring around the hawk — even at halfcourt in State Farm Arena).

This person had been looking at this logo from right to left, apparently.

From the post:

I’ve been a fan since I was a kid who moved to Atlanta in 1992. Thirty-plus years!

I was on NBA.com just now looking at standings, and I noticed something that I never have before…I finally saw the Hawks logo the way it was meant to be seen.

My whole life I’ve been viewing it right to left. It always looked like some predatory Pac-Man-esque creature, like a hawk with a single tooth and open beak snapping at prey or something.

But today, for the first time ever, I viewed it left to right. And it’s clearly just… a hawk. In flight probably. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I feel like an idiot. Thirty years. I can’t be the only one. Right? Right??

That post drew ridicule from people. How could you not clearly see the Hawks with its eye and beak???

A quick backstory on the history of the logo (much of this info came via the great Chris Creamer at SportsLogos dot net). The original design debuted in 1972, just the fifth season since the franchise moved from St. Louis to Atlanta.

That logo had the hawk titled in an upwards direction from left to right. It’s an iconic and clean look that perfectly uses minimalism to great effect. I mean, just look at these warmup jersey sets:

But since the Hawks weren’t able to bring back the logo in its original form in 2014, they made a primary and an alternate logo that contained a re-designed Hawk outline, going from “ATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL CLUB” back to “ATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL” in the writing of the primary logo in 2020.

Pac-Man, the arcade game character, came out in 1980. You know, the loveable guy that gobble up white pellets and tries to avoid the ghosts chasing him.

That original character was just a yellow circle with a pie-shaped cutout for a mouth to the side:

So when you overlay the Hawks logo with the original Pac-Man, you can see the resemblance and reason behind the colloquial name — the ‘Pac-Man’ Hawks logo.

But, man, missing the hawk in the logo for almost 35 years? And then admitting that on the wide world web? You couldn’t torture that info out of me.

What do you think? Did you ever misinterpret the old or even current logo? Let me know in the comments.