Sports
Steph Curry to return from 27-game absence when Warriors host Rockets
Jan 13, 2026; San Francisco, California, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) makes a three-point shot against the Portland Trail Blazers in the third quarter at Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images The Houston Rockets’ quest to move up in the Western Conference standings is likely to encounter an undesirable hurdle Sunday night when Stephen Curry is expected to return to the Golden State Warriors’ lineup for the nationally televised contest in San Francisco.
The Rockets (48-29) enter the final eight days of the regular season in fifth place in the West, but with the possibility of passing the third-place Los Angeles Lakers and/or the fourth-place Denver Nuggets over the final five games.
Moving into fourth is critical in that it provides a home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
The Warriors (36-41) are likely to land 10th in the West, meaning they would have to win consecutive play-in games to earn the eighth and final playoff spot. The No. 8 team will open the playoffs against the top seed, which at this point would be Oklahoma City.
Having lost three in a row, Golden State would love to get that far. And even more importantly, the Warriors would love to fly to Oklahoma City with a relatively healthy roster, one that includes Curry, who has missed the last 27 games with a right knee injury.
The veteran has been cleared to return for the Warriors’ generally meaningless final five games, whose main purpose figures to be keeping Kristaps Porzingis healthy, getting Curry back up to speed and seeing Al Horford return from a strained right soleus that will cause him to miss a 12th straight game Sunday.
In the first of the five play-in ramp-ups, all eyes will be on Curry.
“He’ll be listed as questionable, but is expected to play,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr announced Saturday. “It’ll be nice to have him back.”
Curry played just one of the earlier two head-to-heads with the Rockets this season, scoring 14 points. The Warriors have been able to play Houston on relatively even terms, losing 104-100 at home in November before surprising the Rockets without Curry and Jimmy Butler III in a 115-113 overtime win in Houston last month.
The Rockets were in a 4-6 slump at the time, but have since won seven of nine, including the last five in a row.
A visit to San Francisco means a reunion for Rockets star Kevin Durant, who won two championships in three seasons with the Warriors from 2016-19.
The 37-year-old has returned to the San Francisco Bay Area five times since leaving, going 1-0 with the Brooklyn Nets and 2-2 with the Phoenix Suns.
He has never visited as a member of the Rockets. His only time facing Golden State in his first season with Houston came in the home loss in March, in which he had 23 points.
Durant has shot 52.6% and averaged 23.2 points during Houston’s winning streak, but assures he’s not the only Rocket who’s gotten hot.
“We started knocking more shots down,” he told reporters after Friday’s 140-106 win over Utah when asked about the key to the team’s recent success. “That’s really the only reason we’ve been inconsistent compared to people’s expectations. Once we start knocking them down, you see what type of team we are.”
–Field Level Media
Sports
Five Early 2026 MLB Takes That Might Already Be True
Mar 24, 2026; Los Angeles, California, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani (17) on deck in the fourth against the Los Angeles Angels at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images A week of games is never enough time to evaluate anything in Major League Baseball.
Unless, of course, it is enough time.
The Los Angeles Dodgers will win the N.L. West by 25 games.
This is more of a first impression of the rest of the division, and not even a “if everything goes perfectly” projection. But if the Dodgers win 110 games, which seems not far-fetched, second place needs to go 85-77 for a 25-game margin. That seems about right for the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, and don’t even bother worrying about the San Francisco Giants or Colorado Rockies winning more than 85. (Seventy-five? Sixty-five?)
The record margin for winning a division is 23.5 games by the 1995 Cleveland Indians in the AL Central, which came in a strike-shortened season. The top mark for a full season is the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won the AL West by 20 games, finishing with a 116-46 record. If the Dodgers win that many, they’ll take the West by 30.
Or more.
The San Francisco Giants will lose 95 games.
It’s going to take new manager Tony Vitello a moment to adjust to the big leagues after serving his apprenticeship in college.
But the Giants have had a questionable roster composition all along, which should make everyone also question how long it’s going to take team president Buster Posey to transition from team legend as a catcher to credible as a major league executive.
Brian Cashman will win Executive of the Year for running it back with the New York Yankees.
source: Getty Images The Yanks are 6-1 having played the Giants (oof), Seattle Mariners (middling start) and Miami Marlins (OK, but still meh) so far, not exactly a Murderer’s Row schedule. But they look pret-ty, pre-ty good, especially with Aaron Judge not having to carry them. And without having pitchers Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón and Clarke Schmidt on the active roster yet because of injury rehab.
New players include only left-hander Ryan Weathers, backup outfielder Randal Grichuk and Rule 5 reliever Cade Winquest. Well done, Cash! It’s not a World Series champion yet, of course…
You might have heard about rookie catcher Carter Jensen oversleeping and being scratched from the lineup Thursday afternoon. Jensen has a bright future if he’d just literally wake up.
Well, back in Spring Training, KC social media produced a TikTok video asking their players how many alarms and snoozes it takes for them to wake up. The answers varied, but the best one (and also the worst) came from Jensen.
“This is embarrassing,” Jensen began. “I need at least, like, six-to-eight alarms. It’s not good.”
It was all right there in the TikTok scouting report. When people tell you who they are, believe them!
The ABS system will be good for all parties, as long as umpires keep their cool.
Hawk-Eye tracking cameras are positioned around the stadium. Five cameras are used to track pitches. Additional cameras around the stadium are used to track player position and ball location. Major League Baseball is testing an Automated Ball-Stike (ABS) challenge system at select spring training parks. The system allows players to challenge a limited number of ball/stike calls during a game. Calls can be overturned if the pitch tracking technology shows an umpire got a call wrong. On a cold and wet night Wednesday, a hot mic caught umpire Andy Fletcher complaining about the Minnesota Twins challenging his strike zone.
“For God’s sake,” Fletcher whined after one of 11 challenges went up, including nine by the Twins — who were right about eight of them.
As they challenged, the Twins chipped away at an 11-run deficit, losing 13-9 to the Royals but bringing the tying run to the on-deck circle in the ninth. It would have been a less competitive game without ABS.
“There will be some umpires that have an ego behind it,” Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers told reporters. “But at the end of the day, I think most of them understand that it’s part of the game now.”
Sports
LeBron James, depleted Lakers face Mavericks
Feb 12, 2026; Los Angeles, California, USA; Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) pleads his case to referee Che Flores (91) in the second half against the Dallas Mavericks at Crypto.com Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images The Los Angeles Lakers head into the final week of the regular season with an opportunity to sew up home-court advantage for the first round of the NBA Playoffs, but they begin the final push Sunday at Dallas with Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves sidelined.
Doncic, a 2026 Most Valuable Player candidate and former Maverick, sustained a hamstring injury in Thursday’s 139-96 blowout loss at reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City.
Reaves will be sidelined for the remainder of the regular season with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury, according to ESPN.
Doncic went into the matchup with the league-leading Thunder on a run scoring 41-plus points in the previous three contests, boosting his NBA-best scoring output to 33.5 points per game. Doncic is also averaging 7.7 rebounds and 8.3 assists per game, the latter a team-high for Los Angeles (50-27).
“We’re not going to put a player at risk,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said of Doncic being in the game in the third quarter, despite Oklahoma City holding a 31-point lead at halftime. “(The coaching staff) thought we’d give (the Lakers starters) about six minutes, and if we didn’t cut into the lead, we were gonna pull them.”
Doncic’s injury came shortly before that six-minute mark in the third period.
Meanwhile, Reaves was enjoying a breakout season, averaging 23.3 points, 5.5 assists, and 4.7 rebounds across 51 games.
Their absence now looms with Los Angeles playing five games in the final eight days of the regular season and holding a half-game lead over fourth-place Denver.
After West-leading Oklahoma City and San Antonio, which are vying for home-court advantage throughout the Playoffs, the conference is a logjam. The third-place Lakers are separated from sixth-place Minnesota by just four games, with Denver and Houston between.
With Doncic and Reaves out, LeBron James is expected to shoulder a large workload. The 41-year-old, who posted a triple-double last Monday vs. Washington, is averaging 20.6 points, 6.9 assists, and 6.0 rebounds per game.
James leads the Lakers against a Dallas team that has dropped eight of its last nine, including the last three.
In their most recent outing, the Mavericks (24-53) fell to Orlando, 138-127, despite rookie Cooper Flagg’s career-high 51 points.
The 19-year-old Flagg became the youngest player in NBA history to score 50-plus points, shooting 19-of-30 from the floor and 6-of-9 from 3-point range on his way to the milestone. Flagg is averaging a team-high 20.8 points per game, as he makes his case for 2025-26 Rookie of the Year.
“He should be Rookie of the Year,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said. “It’s unbelievable, the country is not watching the same thing that we get to watch on a daily basis.”
Flagg is jockeying with his former Duke teammate Kon Knueppel for the award. Knueppel is averaging 18.8 points per game for the surprising Eastern Conference playoff contenders Charlotte.
Flagg has five games remaining to finish his case for Rookie of the Year, four of which pit Dallas against teams bound for the postseason, including the Lakers. Flagg missed the Mavericks’ most recent matchup with Los Angeles, a 124-104 loss on Feb. 12.
The Lakers moved to 3-0 against Dallas on the season with that win and can complete the season sweep on Sunday. Los Angeles has won the past five meetings.
–Field Level Media
Sports
Robert MacIntyre maintains lead at weather-shortened Valero Texas Open third round
Apr 4, 2026; San Antonio, Texas, USA; Robert MacIntyre reacts to his shot from the second tee during the third round of the Valero Texas Open golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Dunn-Imagn Images Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre maintained the lead during the storm-interrupted Valero Texas Open’s third round Saturday in San Antonio.
MacIntyre was 1 under through six holes, putting him at 15 under for the tournament and holding a two-stroke edge on Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg at TPC San Antonio’s Oaks Course. Aberg was 3 under for the round through six holes.
No golfers completed the third round, which will resume Sunday morning.
The third round was suspended late Saturday morning because of storms. There were multiple announced restart times, but the weather prevented those from taking place before the decision to not return to the course Saturday.
A pair of Englishmen made the biggest moves before the weather interfered. Matt Wallace was 7 under through 14 holes, moving to 11 under for the tournament. Marco Penge also completed 14 holes, doing so in 6 under to move to a tie for fifth place at 10 under.
Japan’s Ryo Hisatune is tied with Wallace in third place after finishing eight holes at 3 under Saturday.
Chris Kirk, Chandler Phillips, Michael Kim and Tony Finau — all only completing holes on the front side — were all at 10 under.
MacIntyre carried a four-shot lead into the weekend.
At 14 through two rounds, MacIntrye held the lowest opening 36-hole total since the tournament moved to TPC San Antonio.
MacIntrye is bidding to become the third consecutive left-hander to win the tournament following Akshay Bhatia in 2024 and Brian Harman in 2025.
Aberg had top-five finishes in his last two PGA Tour outings.
Defending champion Brian Harman shot 3 under through 11 holes Saturday to move to 6 under.
Play also was suspended Friday in the second round. Luke Clanton had to play his final hole Saturday morning before the third round began, and he made the cut. The third round was pushed up a couple of hours in hopes of avoiding weather problems, but those weren’t averted.
–Field Level Media
Five Early 2026 MLB Takes That Might Already Be True
LeBron James, depleted Lakers face Mavericks
