u/TheAthletic

DETROIT — As Cade Cunningham watched the 2024 Western Conference semifinals on TV, seeing Anthony Edwards outduel Nikola Jokić fired up his competitive spirit.

He was just a month removed from a 14-win season that was a stain on the Detroit Pistons’ storied franchise. Cunningham was fixated on the TV, experiencing FOMO as two of the game’s best players went head-to-head over seven games. He grabbed his phone and reached out to someone he knew would understand him at that moment.

“I was at the gas station when he texted me,” Pistons assistant coach Jarrett Jack told The Athletic. “He was like, ‘Yo, man. This is basketball. I have to be a part of this.’ That probably sounds crazy to someone who’s thinking, ‘This is where your mind is after winning 14 games?’"

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ASHBURN, Va. — This is not my lane, usually.

But they’re pretty dope.

“I just got the new helmet in my office,” GM Adam Peters said at his pre-draft presser Thursday. “Looks a lot better.”

The Commanders certainly inched as close as they could to their old name and logo with their unveiling Wednesday of the team’s 2026 regular and alternate jerseys and new helmets. It was little surprise that the team officially will be going back to its white, former “throwback” jerseys, the ones it wore while winning three Super Bowl titles in the 1980s and ’90s, and wore multiple times last season — as one of its primary uniforms next season. A burgundy jersey will be the other primary set.

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LeBron James’ chest heaved, sweat dripping off his brow as he tried to really rev his engine for the first time in a month.

Everything had changed for the Los Angeles Lakers the game before they played the Dallas Mavericks on April 6, his new life as a third option gone in the blink of a pair of muscle strains, first to Austin Reaves and then to Luka Dončić.

James had stepped back so the Lakers could win, so they could put together a credible chance at a championship. Now without their two leading scorers, there was no more time for complementing. As it’s been for almost all of his career, it was all on James again.

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Tottenham Hotspur are in advanced talks to sign Bournemouth defender Marcos Senesi this summer, subject to maintaining their Premier League status.

The north London club are currently the leading contender to sign the 28-year-old centre-back — who will become a free agent in July — although no deal has been finalised and the Argentine’s situation remains open with ongoing interest from other clubs.

MINNEAPOLIS — In an empty arena during the long, cold, COVID-strangled 2020-21 NBA season, the Minnesota Timberwolves hurtled toward rock bottom.

They were coming off a 19-win season and expected to take a big step forward. Less than a month into the season, things already looked bleak. Karl-Anthony Towns was out with COVID. D’Angelo Russell wasn’t becoming the star they initially envisioned. They were getting nothing from Jarrett Culver, the No. 6 pick in the 2019 draft.

Then came Jan. 21, when they let a 20-point lead against the Orlando Magic slip away, falling to 3-10 on the season. Desperation was high. With the league’s strict policy on social distancing, building connections between teammates and coaches was proving to be incredibly difficult. Organizational leaders threw a pizza-and-ice cream party at the practice facility to try to reset their minds and lighten the mood, a self-aware nod to the youngest roster in the league.

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BOSTON — The Boston Celtics moved with purpose even before starting practice Wednesday morning. Several players, including Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, could be seen lifting weights. On each hoop at the team’s practice facility, other players were going through early basketball workouts. Sam Hauser and Luka Garza operated with urgency while working on their shooting from inside and outside the arc.

The high intensity level seemed appropriate for a team scheduled to start the playoffs Sunday, but Payton Pritchard said he didn’t notice anything outside the norm from his team.

“We know it’s the playoffs,” Pritchard told The Athletic, “but I don’t think there is a different intensity. When you prepare like every day is the championship, there shouldn’t be a change. It’s, you live in that state of mind.”

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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The LA Clippers kept giving themselves chances to avoid this ending.

When they visited the Portland Trail Blazers on the final Friday of the regular season, they had an opportunity to all but secure two cracks at clinching a playoff spot. Instead, they were outplayed by a younger, hungrier Trail Blazers squad and left Moda Center looking like a group that had squandered its margin of error.

Tyronn Lue saw it coming.

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For the first time, the WNBA offseason happened all at once. Free agency, the college draft and an expansion draft were squeezed into a 10-day timeline, forcing teams to make a flurry of moves. And with the increased salary cap, more money than ever is at stake if these decisions don’t go according to plan.

Rosters are still in flux, and a few of the league’s top players remain unsigned, though we’re pretty sure Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier and the New York Liberty crew of Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu aren’t going anywhere. Nevertheless, training camp starts Sunday, so now is a good time to assess how teams have fared in this historic period and what this activity means for the 2026 WNBA season.

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LOS ANGELES — As Stephen Curry gets set for another postseason run, one that starts Wednesday night against the LA Clippers in the Play-In Tournament, he does so with an appreciation for the journey that has brought him here.

The 38-year-old Golden State Warriors guard doesn’t know exactly how much longer he wants to play, but after 17 years in the league, he knows this much: the finish is much closer than the beginning.

He’s not alone.

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"Someone like Manuel Neuer, of course, doesn’t come along every day. He ranks among the very greatest in football history, alongside Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, and he really should have won the Ballon d’Or at some point."

Philipp Lahm explains why Manuel Neuer is Bayern Munich's "grizzly bear" in his latest column for The Athletic, which is free to read.

[Full article free to read]

U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday that Matt Crocker is departing his job as the federation’s sporting director. Multiple sources told The Athletic that Crocker has accepted a similar role with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation.

He informed higher-ups over the past two weeks, but many he worked with — some of whom spoke to The Athletic Tuesday on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss Crocker’s departure — found out less than 48 hours before the announcement. Some were “shocked” or surprised.

Three sources suggested to The Athletic that the Saudis had offered to pay him multiple times more than he was making at U.S. Soccer. (He received $658,787 in base compensation and $179,100 in bonuses and incentives in the tax year ending March 31, 2025.)

What seems clear is that he was not pushed out. He was respected and well-liked in U.S. Soccer sporting circles. Even across the youth soccer landscape, he’d been working to earn trust.

His departure, in that sense, is perhaps a blow to U.S. Soccer’s efforts to reshape and refine developmental pathways.

But, according to U.S. Soccer officials, including Crocker himself, it is not a blow to the USMNT’s World Cup prep.

Crocker’s role was a high-level strategic one. USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino and his staff, on the other hand, “have done all the planning” for the tournament, Crocker told The Athletic last month. “And hopefully, I’m not needed. I think the only time I’ll be needed is if things aren’t going too well.”

So, although the optics are troublesome and the timing “clumsy,” as one source put it, this is anything but a crisis that must be solved over the coming month.