Sports
NBA roundup: Last-second trey gives Suns wild win over Lakers
Feb 26, 2026; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Phoenix Suns forward Royce O’Neale (00) celebrates the game winning shot against the Los Angeles Lakers in the second half at Mortgage Matchup Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images Royce O’Neale made a 3-pointer with 1.7 seconds remaining as the host Phoenix Suns overcame a 13-point second-half deficit for a 113-110 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday.
O’Neale gave the Suns a 110-108 lead on their previous possession before LeBron James’ tip-in tied it with 22.7 seconds remaining. The Suns played for one shot, and Grayson Allen drove the lane and kicked it to Collin Gillespie, who found O’Neale wide open on the left wing.
Allen scored 28 points and made six 3-pointers, while Gillespie scored 21 points and also hit six 3-pointers as the Suns overcame a 41-point game from Luka Doncic to win the season series with only one game remaining. Doncic made six 3-pointers and had eight assists and eight rebounds, as well.
LeBron James had 10 of his 15 points in the second half and Marcus Smart had 14 points for the Lakers, who have lost five of seven and are one game ahead of the Suns for the sixth spot in the Western Conference.
Hornets 133, Pacers 109
Kon Knueppel set the NBA single-season rookie record for 3-pointers and Brandon Miller matched a season high with 33 points, fueling Charlotte Hornets to a victory over Indiana in Indianapolis.
Knueppel highlighted his 28-point performance by matching his own franchise rookie record with eight 3-pointers, boosting his season total to 209. LaMelo Ball collected 20 points and eight assists and Moussa Diabate contributed 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Hornets, who extended their franchise-best road winning streak to nine.
Indiana’s Andrew Nembhard contributed 20 points and seven assists and Micah Potter added 19 points off the bench. Jarace Walker added 16 points for the free-falling Pacers, who have dropped five in a row and nine of their last 11 games.
Spurs 126, Nets 110
Julian Champagnie scored 26 points in a successful homecoming and San Antonio extended its longest winning streak since the 2015-16 season to 11 with a victory over Brooklyn in New York.
Champagnie’s big night helped offset a second straight quiet showing from Victor Wembanyama, who was held to 12 points and had eight rebounds. Stephon Castle added 13 of his 18 in the opening quarter, Devin Vassell scored 14 and De’Aaron Fox contributed 10 of his 14 in the third.
Michael Porter Jr. scored 17 of his 25 in the third when the Nets made a comeback attempt before taking their sixth straight loss. Day’Ron Sharpe contributed 14 points and 11 rebounds off the bench and rookie Danny Wolf also scored 14.
Rockets 113, Magic 108
Kevin Durant scored 40 points and Houston went on a 21-0 run in the third quarter to overcome a 19-point deficit and drop host Orlando.
Reed Sheppard added 20 points and made five 3-pointers for Houston, while Alperen Sengun had 16 points and Jabari Smith Jr. scored 13 for the Rockets, who won their third straight game.
Desmond Bane led Orlando with 30 points, while Paolo Banchero totaled 19 points, nine assists and eight rebounds. With the Magic leading 76-57 with 5:04 left in the third, Houston scored 21 straight points over a span of 3:31 to grab the lead. A Sengun layup with 3:07 left in the game gave the Rockets the lead for good.
76ers 124, Heat 117
Tyrese Maxey registered 28 points, 11 assists and five steals to guide host Philadelphia to a victory over Miami.
Joel Embiid produced 26 points and 11 rebounds for the 76ers, who finished the game on an 8-0 run to capture their third straight win. Kelly Oubre Jr. added 21 points and eight boards.
Bam Adebayo paced Miami with 29 points and 14 rebounds and Tyler Herro pitched in with 25 points and seven assists off the bench, but the Heat lost their second game in a row.
Timberwolves 94, Clippers 88
Anthony Edwards scored 31 points and Donte DiVincenzo added 18 as Minnesota shook off short-handed Los Angeles to earn a victory in Inglewood, Calif.
Jaden McDaniels and Ayo Dosunmu each scored 12 points and Rudy Gobert added 13 rebounds as the Timberwolves improved to 5-1 since Feb. 9 and 2-0 to start a three-game road trip that ends Sunday at Denver.
Derrick Jones Jr. put up 18 points and Bennedict Mathurin added 14 for the Clippers, who were without Kawhi Leonard (ankle) and John Collins (head/neck). Kris Dunn scored 11 points for Los Angeles, which has dropped three consecutive games for the first time since a five-game skid from Dec. 5-18.
Hawks 126, Wizards 96
Corey Kispert and CJ McCollum took it to their old team, combining for 58 points to help Atlanta roll to a win over visiting Washington.
The duo, obtained in the trade that sent Trae Young to the Wizards last month, sparked Atlanta to its second wire-to-wire victory over Washington in the past three days,Kispert had career highs with 33 points and 11 field goals, including six 3-pointers. McCollum scored 25 points, shooting 9-for-19. They each scored 22 points in the first half.
Washington was led by Tre Johnson, Will Riley, Justin Hardy and Justin Champagnie with 14 points each. The Wizards were without leading scorer Alex Sarr, who missed his sixth game with a right hamstring strain, and second-leading scorer Kyshawn George, out because of a left knee contusion.
Trail Blazers 121, Bulls 112
Jerami Grant scored 27 points and Toumani Camara added 16 to help visiting Portland post a victory over struggling Chicago.
Robert Williams III recorded 14 points, a season-best 14 rebounds and four blocked shots and fellow reserve Vit Krejci also scored 14 points as the Trail Blazers won for the sixth time in their past nine games.
Matas Buzelis had 20 points and seven rebounds and Tre Jones scored 19 points off the bench as the Bulls dropped their 11th straight game, matching the third-longest losing streak in franchise history.
Kings 130, Mavericks 121
Precious Achiuwa posted a career-high 29 points to lead Sacramento to a win over host Dallas.
Achiuwa shot 13 of 19 from the field, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, and had 12 rebounds. Maxime Raynaud scored 22 points and Daeqwon Plowden added 19 off the bench.
Naji Marshall racked up a season-best 36 points to go with 10 boards for Dallas, which fell short of a third successive victory. Khris Middleton contributed 17 points and Brandon Williams had 16.
Pelicans 129, Jazz 118
Saddiq Bey had a season-high 42 points along with seven assists and five rebounds to lead New Orleans past Utah in Salt Lake City.
Zion Williamson added 20 points and four steals to help the Pelicans pick up their third straight win. Dejounte Murray tallied 17 points, nine assists and four steals in his second game back from an Achilles tendon injury.
Ace Bailey led Utah with 23 points. Brice Sensabaugh added 20 points off the bench for the Jazz, who shot 50% from the field but still lost their fourth consecutive game.
–Field Level Media
Sports
Jeff Kent's Hall of Fame Election Could Open the Door for Overlooked Second Basemen
Jeff Kent’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame is going to provide a boost to players representing one of Cooperstown’s most underrepresented positions.
It just may be a while before a second baseman can point to Kent as the player who helped him get over the top.
Kent will become the 23rd second baseman ushered into baseball immortality next Sunday, when he joins centerfielders Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones on the Clark Sports Center stage a little more than a mile from the Hall of Fame.
Kent was elected last December, when he received 14 of the 16 votes from the contemporary baseball era committee. A month later, fellow keystone star Chase Utley positioned himself for induction far sooner than later by finishing with 59.1 percent of the vote, the third-largest share behind Beltran and Jones. A candidate must finish with 75 percent of the vote on his ballot in order to be inducted.
But Utley has already established himself as a potential Hall of Famer by accumulating 28.8 percent and 39.8 percent of the vote in his first two years on the ballot. Who’s next after Utley knocks down the door?
“Over the years, you look at guys who are great players and why they haven’t gotten in it’s probably because their offense doesn’t stack up as a whole to the greats that are in there,” Kent said during a Zoom call with reporters Friday afternoon. “Some of my numbers don’t even stack up to the greats that are in there.”
While Kent’s 351 homers as a second baseman are the most all-time, he ranks 11th among Hall of Famers at the position with 2,461 hits, 12th with a .290 average and 19th with a Baseball-Reference WAR of 55.4.
By these measures, the players who would benefit most from Kent’s induction are fellow Era members candidates Bobby Grich, Willie Randolph and Lou Whitaker, all of whom were either retired or winding down by the time Kent made his big league debut in 1992.
Kent has more hits and a higher average than Grich, Randolph and Whitaker, though the latter trio all finished with a WAR between 65.9 and 75.1.
But Era ballots are notoriously stuffed, especially for players such as Grich, Randolph and Whitaker who could land within either the Modern Baseball Era (for players who constructed all or most of their career prior to 1980) or the Contemporary Era (for players since 1980). Some of their competition for ballot spots include Dwight Evans, Keith Hernandez, Graig Nettles, Luis Tiant, Tommy John, David Cone…and maybe Pete Rose, which is a thorny mess for another time.
Grich, Randolph and Whitaker also all went one-and-done on the writer’s ballot back in the days before WAR was an accepted Hall of Fame metric. Kent had far more success remaining in the conversation on the writer’s ballot, where he peaked at 46.5 percent of the vote in his final year of eligibility in 2023.
And he made it to the contemporary era ballot in the same year as the PED-stained Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Gary Sheffield, all of whom have about as much chance of being elected as anyone reading these words.
Speaking of PED stains, Robinson Cano, who was on pace to finish with 3,000 hits and a .300 average before he got busted twice for PEDs, will go one-and-done in 2028, by which time Utley will likely be in the Hall of Fame as the first example of a second baseman elected for his peak and not his counting numbers. Utley has a 64.6 WAR but just 1,885 hits, which would be the eighth-fewest hits for any player in Cooperstown.
Amongst active second basemen, Jose Altuve has the numbers (a .303 average with 2,455 hits and 53.4 WAR) for election, though he has to hurdle any fallout from his role on the sign-stealing 2017 Houston Astros. But the election of Beltran, the only Astros player punished for his role in the scheme, is a good sign for Altuve, who is signed through 2029 and unlikely to appear on a ballot before the mid-2030s.
There may be a sizable gap before and after Altuve. New York Mets second baseman Marcus Semien has 48.8 WAR to go along with 1,675 hits, 262 homers and two Gold Gloves, but appears to be in steep decline at 35. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte has 37.2 WAR at age 32 and is signed through 2030, though his peak has not yet generated much Cooperstown debate.
Dustin Pedroia, who played for the Boston Red Sox from 2006 through 2019, accumulated 51.8 WAR and batted .299 with 1,805 hits. He joined the ballot in 2025 and received 20.7 percent of the vote last year — an indication his candidacy will get a much closer look than those of Grich, Randolph and Whitaker, but also a reminder of how far Kent’s predecessors and successors at the keystone have to go between here and Cooperstown.
Sports
Why Spain Won the World Cup and 5 Teams That Could Stop Them From Repeating
July 19, 2026; East Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.; Spain’s Ferran Torres celebrates scoring their first goal with Lamine Yamal and teammates. Mandatory Credit: James Lang-Imagn Images It took eight matches into his joint-record sixth World Cup. But in Sunday’s final, a 39-year-old Lionel Messi may have finally become a liability to his national team, at least when playing against the very best competition the world has to offer.
Don’t get it wrong. Messi wasn’t at fault for Argentina’s 1-0 loss directly. And keeping him on the field for the entirety of the 120-minute encounter was probably the best of manager Lionel Scaloni’s imperfect options.
But at this stage in Messi’s career, he has to actively conserve energy on the defensive side of the ball to make sure he can be effective as an attacker in the late stages. And that put Argentina at an almost impossible disadvantage as they tried desperately in vain to limit Spain’s possession while essentially defending a technically gifted La Roja squad 11 on 10.
The totals from an Argentine perspective were ugly, even if the score was close. Spain had nearly twice as much of the ball. They completed more than twice as many passes, and had four times as many touches in the opposition box. And while it was clear Lionel Scaloni wanted to try and disrupt the Spaniards’ exceptional ball movement with occasional pressure at times, it was just as clear he had to be very selective about when to apply it.
You might look at the match summary and suspect some of this imbalance owed to Enzo Fernandez being sent off toward the end of normal time. But no. Spain’s statistical superiority was more or less distributed evenly across time. Ironically, it was only down a man — and a goal — when Argentina finally managed a shot during the second half of extra time.
Messi was still the primary creative source of those late chances, showing why he probably had to remain on the field. He remains the world’s most gifted player with the ball at his feet. There’s just a bigger defensive price paid for using him.
You might also argue Scaloni got another crucial decision wrong.
If the plan was to sit as deep and play as direct as Argentina did, Lautaro Martinez — not Julian Alvarez — is the far better back-to-goal center forward. In the end, the Inter Milan man never got off the bench, perhaps because of substitutions forced by injuries or Fernandez’s dismissal.
But in retrospect, the needle was always going to be exceptionally difficult to thread against a team as good on the ball as Spain. The good news for Messi, should he long to continue with Argentina, is that there is only one Spain.
Third Time the Charm?
And so Argentina became the second team in as many World Cups to fall short of back-to-back titles. Now the question is whether Spain can be the first repeat winners since Brazil in 1958 and 1962 while playing in 2030 as a tournament co-host.
There’s no obvious reason why not. Spain were actually one of the younger sides in 2026, starting an XI with an average age of 27.0 or younger on six occasions. On Sunday, they were the first team ever to send two teenagers out in the formation for a World Cup Final, attacker Lamine Yamal and defender Pau Cubarsi.
Four years later, conventional wisdom says a La Roja squad with Lamine entering his prime at age 22 would be even better.
Who Joins Spain as Early 2030 Contenders?
July 18, 2026; Miami Gardens, Florida, U.S.; England’s Bukayo Saka celebrates scoring their third goal. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Here’s an (entirely too) early guess at which nations may be most likely to challenge Spain four years from now.
Portugal: Another talented 2030 co-host that may play much more freely now that the Cristiano Ronaldo World Cup era is officially over following their 2026 exit in the round of 16.
England: Despite a brutal semifinal defeat to Argentina, the Three Lions are another promising squad whose talent skews younger. And Harry Kane is still likely to be a very good center forward at age 36.
France: As good as the extended managerial tenure of Didier Deschamps was, it does feel like it’s time for a change of voice, be it the expected Zinedine Zidane or a more surprising hire.
Morocco: Don’t forget the North African co-hosts, who have now gone to the last eight in consecutive tournaments and were doomed by some key injuries in their 2-0 quarterfinal defeat to France on July 9.
Brazil: This will be Vinicius Junior’s team now with Neymar out of the picture. He looked ready for that in 2026, even if his team suffered a disappointing round of 16 exit to Norway.
Sports
G Jack Campbell officially retires
Oct 19, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Edmonton Oilers goaltender Jack Campbell (36) makes a save against the Philadelphia Flyers during the first period at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images Former NHL goaltender Jack Campbell announced his retirement on Sunday.
Campbell, 34, last played in the NHL with the Edmonton Oilers during the 2023-24 season.
He went 93-52-18 with 10 shutouts, a .909 save percentage and a 2.76 goals-against average with four teams.
Campbell was an All-Star with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2021-22 and signed a five-year, $25 million deal with the Oilers in July 2022. Edmonton bought out the final three years of his contract and placed him on waivers on Nov. 7, 2024.
Campbell posted on social media that he is starting a new chapter as an identity and performance coach.
“I grew up my entire life chasing one dream and that was to play in the NHL,” he said in a video posted on his Instagram account. “I was fortunate enough to accomplish that goal of playing eight seasons in the NHL, becoming an NHL All-Star (2021-22) and thankfully on paper, living a pretty awesome life. Super grateful for my days of playing but what a lot of people don’t see is the personal battles that I went through throughout my career. Not having somebody to hold me accountable for having a well-balanced life, that’s when I found four years ago my life coach, who’s completely changed everything for me.”
The Dallas Stars drafted Campbell with the No. 11 pick in 2010. He made one appearance for the Stars in 2013-14 before stints with the Los Angeles Kings (2016-20), Maple Leafs (2020-22) and Oilers (2022-24).
“Walking away from hockey wasn’t easy,” Campbell said. “It gave me more than I could have ever imagined. But over the last few years, I realized the work that brought me the most fulfillment wasn’t stopping pucks, it was helping people become who they’re capable of becoming.”
Campbell appeared in 18 Stanley Cup playoff games, finishing 7-8 with a 2.28 GAA, .920 save percentage and two shutouts.
–Field Level Media
Jeff Kent's Hall of Fame Election Could Open the Door for Overlooked Second Basemen
Why Spain Won the World Cup and 5 Teams That Could Stop Them From Repeating
