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🚨 Headlines
⚾️ Permanent ban: MLB has banned Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano for life for betting on baseball. The league also suspended four players for one year in a scandal that is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
🎾 Djokovic withdraws: Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the French Open (torn meniscus) and is due to undergo surgery, meaning he is unlikely to play at Wimbledon next month.
🏀 Auriemma added: The University of Connecticut signed Geno Auriemma to a five-year, $18.7 million contract extension that will keep him in Storrs through 2029, when he will be 75 years old.
⚾️ Javier’s Tommy John surgery: Astros starting pitcher Cristian Javier will reportedly undergo Tommy John surgery, further weakening Houston’s injury-plagued starting lineup.
🏀 Kylie signs deal with her father: Kyrie Irving has signed a signature shoe deal with his father, Drederick, for Chinese sportswear brand ANTA, where he serves as chief creative officer.
⚽️ 16-year-old Johannes scores on debut for the U.S. Women’s National Team
Lily Johannes, 16 years old She made her U.S. women’s national team debut Tuesday night, scoring the team’s third goal in a 3-0 win over South Korea.
Historic Night: Johannes (16 years, 358 days) is the eighth-youngest player to make her debut for the U.S. Women’s National Team and the third-youngest player to score a goal, behind only Kristin Lilly in 1987 (16 years, 22 days) and Tiffany Roberts in 1994 (16 years, 340 days).
How she got here: Johannes was born in Springfield, Virginia, and moved to Amsterdam with her parents and two older brothers when she was 9. At 13, she began training with the country’s most successful club, Ajax, and has been a starter ever since.
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Her journey is unique in that respect, as nearly all of her U.S. women’s national team teammates spent their formative years playing for clubs or colleges in the United States.
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However, with women’s football becoming increasingly popular in Europe, more players may choose to follow Johannes’ example and play abroad.
From Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports:
While the U.S. men’s and boys’ national teams have a long history of recruiting players who grew up overseas in recent years, the women’s team has relied exclusively on players who spent their developmental years in the United States.
The reason is quite simple: Europe has long boasted the best men’s soccer academies, but when it comes to women, the United States has led the way and Europe has lagged behind.
But things are changing: the same professional clubs that scouted Lily’s siblings are now scouting and coaching girls like her, using the infrastructure and methodologies that already exist.
Many experts would argue that at least a dozen of Europe’s top clubs, including Ajax, and possibly more, currently offer a better soccer education than most or all youth clubs in the United States.
🏀 The principle of “the best player wins the series”
From Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports:
There’s an old saying in the NBA: “Most of the time, the team with the best player wins the series.”
If this were dogma, Luka Doncic’s Mavericks would win the NBA Finals even if Jayson Tatum’s Celtics won 14 more games in the regular season.
Doncic finished three spots higher (3rd) in MVP voting. Tatum may be the better defender, but Doncic averaged more points (33.9), assists (9.8) and rebounds (9.2) per game and was more efficient at it. Advanced statistics give Doncic a significant advantage.
There isn’t a huge difference between Doncic, a five-time All-NBA First Team selection, and Tatum, a three-time All-NBA First Team selection, but I think it’s almost universally accepted that Doncic is a better player than Tatum.
Using each season’s MVP race as the factor to determine who voters believe was the best player in that particular campaign, the better player has won 41 of 68 NBA Finals since 1956, or roughly 60 percent of the time.
Since the turn of the 21st century, players who finished higher in MVP voting have a 12-11 record in Finals matchups. That’s not an impressive stat. It’s certainly not dogma.
But based on a more general idea of who the best player was in each series, and excluding, for example, the 1993 MVP award when his Suns lost to Michael Jordan’s Bulls, it could be argued that the best player won 56 of the 68 championships (82.4%).
That’s a pretty compelling number, enough to give some credence to the statement.
Read the full story.
⚾️ Photo: Cosmic Baseball
The Tri-City Chili Peppers made history When we turned out the lights on Saturday and introduced the world to Cosmic Baseball, Jeff writes:
University Summer Team Teams in the Coastal Plain League* spent more than $100,000 to install black lights in their Virginia stadium, and all the equipment glowed in the dark during the Chili Peppers’ 9-4 win over the Greenbrier Knights, believed to be the first sporting event played under black lights.
Extensive testing was carried out They made preparations to ensure that a real game could be played in these conditions. It was dark, but “it wasn’t as dark as I thought it would be,” catcher Jacob Lee told MLB.com. “I was actually pretty surprised.”
And more to come: The Chili Peppers have three more Cosmic Baseball Games scheduled for this summer on June 15th, June 28th and July 20th.
*Famous Alumni: The Wood Bat Summer League features 15 teams from Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Many MLB playersThat includes stars like Justin Verlander and Ryan Zimmerman.
🏀 NBA Mock Draft 8.0
2024 NBA Draft With just three weeks to go, a new name has emerged at the top of the latest mock drafts: French winger Zachary Lisacher.
current situation: Yahoo Sports’ Krysten Peek has the lowdown…
While some of the top prospects are touring the country training for teams and meeting with officials, others are finishing the season in Europe, where many scouts are heading to Italy this week for the Adidas Eurocamp to get further insight into draft-eligible players.
Meanwhile, the Lakers currently have two draft picks, and the Pelicans will trade their 17th pick in 2024 for a first-round pick in 2025. Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul has revealed that Bronny James will only practice with a limited number of teams, including the Lakers and Suns, making it almost certain that Bronny will be selected by the Lakers in the second round.
📆 June 5, 1977: The Blazers win the championship
47 years ago today, The Trail Blazers defeated the 76ers in six games to win their first and only NBA title, becoming the first league champions since the NBA-ABA merger. Jeff writes:
Rest in peace, Big Red. 24-year-old Bill Walton was named Finals MVP after finishing with 20 points, 23 rebounds, 7 assists and 8 blocks in Game 6.
“I’ve never coached a better player than Bill Walton. I’ve never coached a better athlete. And I’ve never coached a better person.” — Blazers coach Jack Ramsay
Details for this day:
*Sign of the times: To give you a sense of how popular the NBA was at the time, Game 6 was originally scheduled for 10:30 a.m. to coincide with the final day of a mid-level golf tournament called the Kemper Open. CBS eventually agreed to start the game at noon, switching to golf right after the final buzzer sounded and skipping the trophy ceremony entirely.
📺 Watch list: Quarterfinals in Paris
French Open Quarterfinals Today we finished with two women’s matches and one men’s match. Jeff writes:
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woman: #4 Elena Rybakina vs. #12 Jasmine Paolini (8:15 a.m. ET, Tennis); No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka vs. Mila Andreeva* (9:30 a.m., Tennis)
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male: #4 Alexander Zverev vs. #11 Alex de Minaur (2:15 pm, Tennis); No. 7 Kasper Ruud defeats No. 1 Novak Djokovic (by walkover)
See also:
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🥎 WCWS Finals: #1 Texas vs #2 Oklahoma (8 p.m., ESPN) … The Big 12 rivals will meet in a best-of-three championship game in their final season before moving to the SEC.
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⚾️ MLB: Padres vs Angels (9:38 p.m., FS1)
*Teenage phenom: At 17, Andreeva is the youngest woman to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open since Cecil Karatantcheva in 2005, and the youngest player to reach the round of 16 at a Grand Slam tournament on any surface since Anna Kournikova in 1998.
🏀 NBA Finals Trivia
NBA Champion of the Year They will be just the third team this century to not have a current or former MVP on the roster.
The answer is at the bottom.
🇭🇷 Croatia’s new nationality: Bill Belichick
For the first time since 1975, Bill Belichick is no longer coaching in the NFL, which has freed up his time for other things, like exploring his Croatian roots.
Person of the Time: Belichick, who has worn a Croatian pin badge to news conferences in recent years, became a Croatian citizen on Monday and was honored during Tuesday’s soccer game between Croatia and North Macedonia, where he addressed the team.
“My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Draganić in 1910 and had a difficult life, but that’s why my father [Steve]The American football coach has achieved the American dream. … Yesterday I became a Croatian citizen. Now I am one of you.”
Trivia answer: Pistons (2004) and Raptors (2019)
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