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Tag: NBA basketball

  • The NBA Cup quarterfinal field is set: Heat-Magic, Knicks-Raptors, Suns-Thunder, Spurs-Lakers

    The NBA Cup quarterfinal field was set Friday night, with Miami going to Orlando and New York going to Toronto on the Eastern Conference side, followed by an Oklahoma City-Phoenix rematch and San Antonio facing the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference.

    And the defending Cup champions won’t have a chance to go back-to-back in Las Vegas.

    New York got the last of the four available quarterfinal berths from the East on Friday night, topping the reigning Cup champion Milwaukee Bucks 118-109 to win East Group C. The Bucks’ loss prevented them from moving on to the quarterfinals.

    “I told the guys they did a heck of a job finding a way,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.

    Toronto won East Group A, Orlando won East Group B, and both did so with 4-0 records. The Knicks went 3-1 in Group C and finished on top because they held the head-to-head tiebreaker over Miami, which also finished 3-1 to earn the East wild card.

    Oklahoma City — the defending NBA champion which is now 19-1 on the season — held off Phoenix on Friday to win West Group A and grab a quarterfinal spot, and San Antonio emerged from a back-and-forth battle in the final minutes to beat Denver in the game that decided West Group C and another quarterfinal berth.

    “I don’t know much about it other than the guys are really excited about it,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “I know we’re in because we won. I know we beat some really good teams to do it … so we feel really good about it.”

    The Suns went 3-1 in group play and earned the West’s wild-card spot. Their reward? A rematch with the Thunder in the quarterfinals.

    “They’re feisty as hell. They play hard,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of the Suns.

    The Magic won their group with a 112-109 victory over Detroit on Friday night — and as the East’s top seed, they will play the wild-card Heat.

    “We’re so happy to be home,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said. “We have some of the best fans in the NBA. They’re going to be back there, supporting us, ready to go. … For us to do this is very special for our guys right now.”

    The Heat-Magic, Knicks-Raptors and Thunder-Suns games will create a bit of a schedule quirk. The quarterfinal games count toward the regular season records, so Miami and Orlando will wind up playing five times this season — the first time that’s happened in the Sunshine State rivalry since 1993-94. The Knicks and Raptors will now also meet five times this season, as will the Thunder and Suns.

    The Heat play a regular-season game at Orlando on Dec. 5, their second time there this season, then will go back for a Cup quarterfinal four days later.

    “It’s great,” Orlando’s Desmond Bane said when told the Magic got a home Cup quarterfinal. “We’re building. We’re building something special.”

    The Lakers, who won the inaugural Cup in 2023, were the only West team to be assured of a quarterfinal spot going into Friday.

    (All games on Amazon Prime, all times EST)

    Tuesday, Dec. 9 — Miami at Orlando, 6 p.m.; New York at Toronto, 8:30 p.m.

    Wednesday, Dec. 10 — Phoenix at Oklahoma City, 7:30 p.m.; San Antonio at L.A. Lakers, 10 p.m.

    The 22 teams that missed the quarterfinals will all have two regular-season games added to their schedules to push their total to the full 82. All teams entered the season with only 80 games on the calendar to allow for what happens in the NBA Cup.

    Those additional regular-season games for those 22 teams — one will be home, one will be on the road — will be scheduled for Dec. 11, Dec. 12, Dec. 14 or Dec. 15.

    For the teams that moved on, the quarterfinals become game No. 81. The teams that lose in the quarterfinals will play the other quarterfinal loser from their conference, filling out the remaining game on their schedule.

    The semifinals are in Las Vegas on Dec. 13 and those games will also count toward the regular-season standings. The championship game — which doesn’t count in the standings — is in Las Vegas on Dec. 16.

    Players on the quarterfinal teams will each get $53,903. The payout increases to $106,187 for berths in the semifinals, $212,373 for a spot in the final — and $530,933 for each player on the winning team.

    Two-way players will receive half those amounts, if applicable.

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  • Wagner brothers are teammates, roommates and best friends living out their NBA dream with the Magic

    Franz Wagner fell in love with basketball as a kid in Germany when he went with his older brother, Moritz, to watch an under-19 game in Berlin.

    The Wagner brothers hadn’t even thought about playing professionally at that point. Local hoops was their first exposure to the sport and they were hooked.

    Fellow German Dirk Nowitzki became their connection to the NBA. Watching documentaries on Dwyane Wade and Kevin Garnett got their attention.

    Now they’re in their fifth season as teammates on the Orlando Magic.

    “I remember our grandparents built a little basket in front of the house, and we would always play no matter the weather,” Moe Wagner said. “And then I think Franz got a LeBron James Cavaliers jersey for Christmas, and I got a Kevin Garnett jersey, one of those nonauthentic fake jerseys. And I wore them to every practice. I wanted to wear the gear. I wanted to be part of that lifestyle and that is when we started watching YouTube videos and games and we kind of became obsessed with that idea of maybe wanting to do that ourselves as well.”

    Playing basketball came easier for the Wagners than soccer or other sports.

    “At the start, especially growing up in Germany, it was just purely (playing for) the fun of it,” Franz said. “Having those moments in practice where stuff is making sense, maybe more sense than in other sports that we’ve played prior, and then once we got kind of wind of the NBA and how big of a platform that is and how big of a production, I think that’s when the wheel started turning pretty quickly for both of us that the dream of playing there one day and going to America even and just seeing their culture, I think that kind of started a little bit later.”

    There are 13 sets of brothers currently playing in the NBA, including Giannis, Thanasis and Alex Antetokounmpo on the Milwaukee Bucks. It’ll be 14 when Seth Curry is signed. He’s expected to eventually join Stephen on the Golden State Warriors.

    The Wagners are four years apart and never played on a team together at any level until the NBA. Moe Wagner was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the 25th pick in the 2018 draft. The 28-year-old, 6-foot-11 center bounced around from Los Angeles to Washington to Boston before the Magic signed him in April 2021.

    Franz, who followed his brother to Michigan, was selected by Orlando with the eighth pick in the 2021 draft. The 24-year-old 6-10 forward is a top player, averaging 22.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.

    “My situation was a lot different than Franz,” Moe said. “He was freshly drafted. I had just gotten waived the year before. So that was a challenge, which in retrospect, I actually really enjoyed having a brother with me, even though it was kind of a challenge because he obviously, when the organization drafts a player, they put everything into him. And you’re like, look at your younger brother. It’s like, damn, I wish I had that opportunity, but at the same time, you’re super happy. And in retrospect it actually helped me to define myself as a player a little bit as well, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”

    The Wagners are not only teammates but they also live together.

    “I think it was a no-brainer for both of us to live together because we missed some valuable time when he went to college, and just because of basketball, obviously, being super busy,” Franz said. “So we’re super happy to get some of that time back. But at the same time, we’re also working together. So that dynamic is a little bit different. You’ve got to make sure you don’t bring the frustration sometimes from work home. And then we’re also adults now. So, I think our relationship has changed a great deal in a positive way in the last couple of years.

    “And I think that took us one or two years to kind of figure out how to talk to each other in a working environment, figuring out this is the face that he’s making when he’s mad and maybe you leave him alone for a second and vice versa for other stuff. I think it’s just been a great experience just to get to know each other as adults on a really close level, which I think other siblings don’t have that opportunity, especially in this type of work.”

    While Franz plays a big role along with Paolo Banchero, Desmond Bane and Jalen Suggs for a Magic team expected to contend in the Eastern Conference, Moe Wagner is still recovering from a torn ACL sustained on Dec. 21, 2024. He was playing some of his best basketball at the time of the injury and was in the final year of his contract. Despite the injury and lengthy rehab, the Magic signed him to a one-year, $5 million deal in July.

    “I’m going to get this all the way right,” Moe said. “I don’t expect anything to change, other than play winning basketball.”

    Perhaps he’ll be back before the Magic and Memphis Grizzlies play a game in Berlin on Jan. 15.

    “This is probably one of the coolest things that I will ever experience in my career,” Moe said. “I’ll speak for myself and Franz here because I know that he doesn’t ever express it the way that I do, but that’s very meaningful for us. Our family, our friends, people that we weren’t able to take on this journey with us to America, get a chance to see us play. Family members get a chance to see us play. That means a lot. We grew up in that gym. We grew up with that club. So, to have this opportunity, to have the league and the Magic figure this out is very meaningful to us.”

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  • Lakers fire Joey Buss, Jesse Buss from front office positions after ownership change

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joey Buss and Jesse Buss are no longer working in the Los Angeles Lakers’ front office after the franchise’s recent ownership change, a person with knowledge of the move told The Associated Press on Thursday.

    The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the Lakers didn’t publicly announce the firings of the two children of longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss, who died in 2013. The Lakers are also overhauling the scouting staff that worked with the brothers.

    The Buss brothers confirmed their departure in a statement issued to ESPN, although both will retain their inherited minority ownership stakes under new controlling owner Mark Walter.

    Jesse Buss was an assistant general manager, while Joey Buss was the Lakers’ alternate governor and vice president of research and development.

    “We are extremely honored to have been part of this organization for the last 20 seasons,” Joey and Jesse Buss said in their statement. “Thank you to Laker Nation for embracing our family every step of the way. We wish things could be different with the way our time ended with the team. At times like this, we wish we could ask our Dad what he would think about it all.”

    Jerry Buss had at least seven children, and six of them worked for the Lakers at some point during his ownership.

    Jeanie Buss became the Lakers’ governor when their father died. Jim Buss was the Lakers’ executive vice president of basketball operations until Jeanie ousted her brother in 2017, also firing general manager Mitch Kupchak and turning over the basketball side of the business to Magic Johnson and current general manager Rob Pelinka.

    Walter finalized his purchase of a controlling stake in the Lakers three weeks ago in a sale initially announced in June and conducted with a $10 billion franchise valuation. Jeanie Buss will remain the Lakers’ governor for the foreseeable future, but the Lakers are now primarily owned by Walter, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

    Joey and Jesse Buss have been involved in the Lakers’ scouting and player development operations for many years, and they’ve been praised for their roles in the Lakers’ successful drafts and free-agent signings.

    Perhaps sensing the upcoming changes in the Lakers’ leadership structure following the decision to sell the team, the brothers launched an investment firm in September dubbed Buss Sports Capital.

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  • Rodney Rogers, the ‘Durham Bull’ who starred at Wake Forest before a 12-year NBA career, dies at 54

    Former Wake Forest star and 12-year NBA player Rodney Rogers has died. He was 54.

    The school announced Saturday that Rogers had died on Friday. Rogers — the No. 9 overall NBA draft pick in 1993 — had been paralyzed from the shoulders down since a dirt bike accident in November 2008. Rogers died of natural causes linked to his spinal cord injury, according to a statement from the National Basketball Players Association on behalf of Rogers’ family.

    “The last 17 years have been both challenging and profoundly blessed,” the NBPA statement said. “Through every moment, Rodney remained a light — positive, motivated, and full of the quiet strength that inspired everyone around him.”

    Rogers was the Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year in 1991 and player of the year in 1993 whose No. 54 jersey was retired by the Demon Deacons. The burly 6-foot-7 forward with powerful athleticism earned the “Durham Bull” nickname during his prep career, then went on to score nearly 9,500 points in the NBA while being named league sixth man of the year in 2000.

    Rogers’ injury led to the establishment of a foundation bearing his name, with Rogers encouraging people with spinal cord injuries while promoting resilience and personal growth in the face of those challenges. The school honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2022 along with an honorary degree.

    “Rodney is the strongest person I have ever met — physically and mentally — and his resilience was evident in the fight he showed every single day,” program great and former teammate Randolph Childress said in a statement released by the school. “I’ve said this before and I still mean it today: he was the best athlete ever to walk onto Wake Forest’s campus. He meant so much to so many people, and I feel profoundly blessed to have been with him yesterday.”

    Rogers played three years at Wake Forest, averaging 21.2 points in the 1992-93 season that saw Wake Forest reach the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, before entering the NBA draft as a junior. He started his NBA career with the Denver Nuggets and went on to play with the Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix Suns, Boston Celtics, New Jersey Nets, New Orleans Hornets and Philadelphia 76ers.

    “It’s easy to focus on his extraordinary talent, but what stood out to everyone who knew him was that he was every bit as remarkable as a human being,” said Dave Odom, Rogers’ coach at Wake Forest. “He loved his teammates, he loved his family, he loved Wake Forest and he loved the game of basketball. He loved playing for Wake Forest.

    “Every time we visited him, I walked away reminding myself never to complain — because he never did. He faced life exactly as it came and made the very best of every moment. He was a joy to watch as a basketball player, but he was an even greater man. He shared his strength, his spirit and his life with everyone around him.”

    According to the NBPA statement, Rogers is survived by wife, Faye; daughters Roddreka and Rydiah; sons Rodney II and Devonte; his mother, Estelle Spencer; and Eric Hipilito, embraced as a son by Rogers.

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  • Mavericks fire GM Nico Harrison 9 months after widely panned Luka Doncic trade

    DALLAS (AP) — The Dallas Mavericks fired general manager Nico Harrison on Tuesday, an admission nine months later that the widely criticized trade of Luka Doncic backfired on the franchise.

    The move came a day after Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont attended a 116-114 loss to the Bucks in which fans again chanted “fire Nico,” a familiar refrain since the blockbuster deal in February that brought Anthony Davis from the Los Angeles Lakers and angered the Dallas fan base.

    The Mavericks appointed Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi as co-interim general managers to oversee basketball operations.

    Dumont’s hope for goodwill with the fans never came even after Dallas landed No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg with just a 1.8% chance to win the draft lottery.

    There have been plenty of empty seats in the upper deck of American Airlines Center this season, something not seen consistently since 2018, when the Mavericks traded up to get Doncic with the third overall pick.

    Doncic was a 25-year-old generational point guard in his prime when Harrison unloaded him for the oft-injured Davis, who has missed 30 of 44 regular-season games since his arrival in February.

    Harrison was in his fourth season and had engineered three trades that helped the Mavs go on a run to the Western Conference finals in 2022 and the NBA Finals two years later.

    The Doncic trade and a slow start to the first full season without the young superstar led to a stunning downfall for Harrison, who declined to comment to The Associated Press. Dallas is 3-8, and Davis has missed six of the 11 games with a calf injury.

    “No one associated with the Mavericks organization is happy with the start of what we all believed would be a promising season,” Dumont wrote in a letter to fans. “You have high expectations for the Mavericks, and I share them with you. When the results don’t meet expectations, it’s my responsibility to act.”

    While Dumont didn’t directly mention the Doncic trade in the letter, he acknowledged the vitriolic reaction of fans, who protested after the shocking deal. The Las Vegas-based Dumont and Adelson families, who bought the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in late 2023, were targets of the criticism as well.

    “I understand the profound impact these difficult last several months have had,” Dumont wrote. “Please know that I’m fully committed to the success of the Mavericks.”

    Dumont approved Harrison’s decision to trade Doncic, which kept the Mavericks from having to commit to a $346 million, five-year supermax extension for the Slovenian star.

    Harrison tried to defend the deal by repeating a “defense wins championships” line. But with Davis sidelined by a calf injury and star guard Kyrie Irving still out after tearing the ACL in his left knee last March, defense hasn’t mattered much because Dallas has one of the worst offenses in the NBA.

    With Davis and Irving playing together for just part of one game last season, the Mavericks missed the playoffs a year after Doncic led them to the NBA Finals.

    The slow, injury-plagued start to this season for the Mavericks coincided with Doncic joining Wilt Chamberlain as the only NBA players to open a season with three consecutive games of at least 40 points.

    Doncic’s historic run was interrupted by a three-game injury absence, but the Lakers won twice without him and are 8-3.

    Harrison had spent 20 years with Nike and had close relationships with several NBA stars, including the late Kobe Bryant, when Cuban hired him in 2021.

    The hiring of Harrison was the first step in trying to restore stability after former general manager Donnie Nelson was fired, then Rick Carlisle resigned as coach a day later. Nelson and Carlisle had been together for 13 years.

    Harrison hired Jason Kidd as coach, and the Mavericks reached the Western Conference finals their first season together after Harrison’s first blockbuster trade.

    He broke up the European pairing of Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis and got Spencer Dinwiddie, who played a key supporting role with Doncic as the Mavericks stunned Phoenix with a Game 7 blowout in the second round before losing to Golden State in five games.

    A year later, Dinwiddie was part of the next blockbuster trade, which brought Irving from Brooklyn. The Mavericks faltered the rest of that season largely because of injuries, but they reached their first NBA Finals in 13 years in 2023-24, led by the pair of star guards. Dallas lost to Boston in five games.

    That deep playoff run came in the first six months after Cuban sold the team. He said then that he would maintain control of basketball operations, but that didn’t happen.

    Dumont quickly put full control of the basketball side in the hands of Harrison, who saw Davis as a championship-caliber player in the mold of Bryant. Davis won a title with LeBron James and the Lakers in 2020.

    Cuban criticized the trade of Doncic, saying he never would have approved it and adding that he didn’t think Dallas got enough in return. Months later, though, Cuban credited Harrison for his salary cap management.

    Finley, who was Harrison’s top assistant and has been in the Dallas front office for a decade, was a two-time All-Star for the Mavericks in the early 2000s when Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki was coming of age.

    Finley had moved on to San Antonio when Nowitzki led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2006. Dallas lost to Miami that year but beat the Heat five years later for the franchise’s only championship.

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  • Jokic’s 55-point game pays off with rare win for Nuggets on one of his prolific scoring nights

    INGLEWOOD, Calif. — INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Nikola Jokic scoring 50 or more points had never been enough for the Denver Nuggets to win. Until now.

    Jokic tied the highest-scoring performance in the NBA this season with 55 points, and the Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Clippers 130-116 on Wednesday night for their sixth straight victory.

    The Nuggets were 0-4 in his previous 50-point outbursts.

    “It’s a good feeling,” the three-time NBA MVP said.

    He equaled Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 55 in a double-overtime game at Indiana on Oct. 23.

    Jokic has been on a roll during Denver’s winning streak. He’s the first player in NBA history to average a 35-point triple-double while shooting 60% or better across a six-game stretch.

    He’s averaging 35.8 points, 12.0 rebounds and 11.0 assists while shooting 73.9% from the field and 55.6% from 3-point range.

    Opposing defenses have thrown everything at him in a fruitless effort to slow down the 7-foot Serbian.

    “I think I saw everything,” he said, “but I think it’s hard. We are really running a lot of plays for me, all kind of different plays.”

    Playing on the second night of a back-to-back, Jokic scored 25 of Denver’s 39 points in the first quarter.

    “I didn’t open the game really good,” he said. “I think I missed like two, three layups, and after that I felt good.”

    Last season, Jokic played well on the back end of consecutive games, too. His routine on 24 hours’ rest includes a daytime nap in between eating things like avocado, eggs, oatmeal and toast.

    “The way he played today is how he works out when no one is watching,” coach David Adelman said. “He prepares every day for situations like this.”

    Jokic had eight points in the second quarter before coming back with 19 in the third, including two personal runs of six straight points.

    “The guys, especially in the fourth quarter, they’re giving me the ball,” he said. “I just keep shooting it.”

    Jokic sat out the fourth until coming back with about six minutes remaining. He scored three points to complete his night going 18 for 23 from the field. He missed adding to his league-leading six triple-doubles with six assists. He was 5 of 6 on 3-pointers and made 14 of 16 free throws.

    “He was extraordinary,” Adelson said. “That’s one of those performances you won’t forget.”

    The Nuggets led by 16 points going into the fourth and extended their advantage to 22 points early on.

    Adelman said there was “zero disrespect” to the Clippers in deciding to put Jokic back in.

    “They started to press us and he’s one of our best ballhandlers, he’s a guy that can bleed the clock, he’s one of the best players alive,” the coach said. “It would be stupid for me not to put my best players back in to make sure we win the game.”

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  • Clippers’ Bradley Beal out for the season with hip fracture, will have surgery

    INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Los Angeles Clippers guard Bradley Beal is done for the season.

    He has a hip fracture and will undergo surgery, the team announced Wednesday. He is expected to make a full recovery in six to nine months.

    The three-time All-Star played in just six games this season, averaging 8.2 points and 1.7 assists. He signed an $11 million, two-year deal with the Clippers in July after the final two years of his contract were bought out by the Phoenix Suns.

    The 32-year-old was listed as out for Wednesday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets because of left hip soreness. Beal had already missed games because of a left knee injury and lower back soreness.

    Beal’s two seasons in Phoenix were riddled by injury. The 14-year veteran hasn’t played at least 60 games in a season since 2020-21 when he was with the Washington Wizards.

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  • Richie Adubato, former NBA and WNBA coach, dies at 87

    Richie Adubato, a former Dallas Mavericks, Orlando Magic and New York Liberty basketball coach, has died, his family said. He was 87.

    Adubato died Thursday, his family posted on social media on Friday.

    “Let’s remember him as the funny, smart, energetic, genuinely warm human being he always was,” Adubato’s daughter, Beth, wrote on social media.

    Adubato took the New York Liberty to the WNBA Finals three times in his six years coaching the team from 1999-2004. He still holds the franchise record for games coached with 178 and is second for career wins in New York behind Sandy Brondello. He had 100 victories in New York while coaching future Hall of Fame players Teresa Weatherspoon and Becky Hammon.

    “With deep gratitude we remember the legacy of Richie Adubato, who guided the Liberty to 3 WNBA Finals appearances and set a standard of excellence that still inspires our organization today,” the team wrote on social media.

    Adubato was the interim head coach of the Magic in 1997 after serving as an assistant for a few years. He was also was the team’s radio analyst from 2005-20.

    “The DeVos family and the Orlando Magic are saddened to learn of the passing of Richie Adubato,” the team said in a statement.

    “Richie’s legacy lives on in every story and lesson he shared — a coach who turned the gym into a place of connection and joy, impacting countless lives with warmth, humor, and unforgettable spirit,” the Magic said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Carol, and the entire Adubato family.”

    He was also an interim head coach in Detroit during the 1979-80 season and later was the head coach in Dallas from 1989-93.

    “The NBA and WNBA mourn the passing of Richie Adubato,” the NBA posted to X on Friday. “Richie’s coaching career spanned four decades, including serving as head coach for the Dallas Mavericks, New York Liberty and Washington Mystics, as well as interim head coach for the Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic.”

    Before coaching in the NBA, Adubato spent 18 years coaching high school and college basketball in New Jersey. He graduated from William Paterson and was captain of both the basketball and baseball teams there.

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  • Nuggets dominate Warriors without Stephen Curry 129-104, Nikola Jokic just shy of triple-double

    DENVER — Nikola Jokic scored 26 points, Jamal Murray added 23 and the Denver Nuggets improved to 5-0 at home Friday night with a 129-104 rout of the Golden State Warriors, who were without Stephen Curry again.

    Jokic, who sat out the entire fourth quarter, finished one rebound and one assist shy of his sixth triple-double of the season.

    The Nuggets have won six of seven since their opening-night loss to the Warriors, including three wins to start their four-game homestand that concludes Saturday night against the Indiana Pacers.

    Curry, whose late flurry in the season opener led the Warriors to a 137-131 overtime win against Denver, missed his second straight game with an illness. Draymond Green (ribs) and Jimmy Butler (back) returned to the Warriors’ lineup after also missing the team’s 121-116 loss to Sacramento on Tuesday night.

    Green scored 17 at Denver and Butler had 16 as the Warriors lost their fifth straight road game.

    “Steph’s good, feeling a little better today,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said before tipoff. Kerr said he has only exchanged texts with Curry, whom he hopes can return Sunday night against the Pacers.

    The Nuggets have been much better this season in their non-Jokic minutes but the Warriors used an 11-0 run in the second quarter when Jokic went to the bench to pull to within 32-31.

    Murray sank back-to-back 3s coming out of the timeout and Jonas Valanciunas added another to spark Denver’s 34-18 run to end the half with a 66-49 lead.

    The Nuggets pushed their lead to 99-77 after three quarters and Jokic watched the rest of the game from the bench.

    The win allowed the Nuggets to stay alive in West Group C after losing their first game in the round-robin portion of the NBA Cup at Portland on Oct. 31. This was the Warriors’ first NBA Cup game.

    Golden State hosts the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night.

    Denver hosts the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night.

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  • Fire destroys Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra’s home. Nobody was hurt

    CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Fire destroyed Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra’s home early Thursday, with officials saying more than 20 units were dispatched in what became a frantic, futile effort to save the property.

    Nobody was in the home when the fire broke out, and no injuries were reported. Spoelstra plans to coach Miami’s next game, a home matchup against the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night, the team said.

    “We are grateful to learn that nobody was harmed in the fire at coach Spoelstra’s residence this morning,” the Heat said in a release. “Our thoughts, prayers and assistance are with Spo and his family during this time.”

    An investigation into what caused the fire was underway, officials said. Those probes can take weeks in some cases.

    Spoelstra was on an airplane when the fire started, flying home with the Heat from a Wednesday night game in Denver. The fire was called in around 4:36 a.m., county records showed, and the Heat charter landed in Miami about 35 minutes later.

    Multiple fire trucks and other vehicles were at the fully involved scene when Spoelstra arrived at the property. Television cameras captured Spoelstra walking around the perimeter of the property in the pre-dawn hours, sometimes stopping and holding his head in apparent disbelief as flames continued shooting into the darkened air.

    Drone footage captured after the blaze was extinguished showed that much of the home was reduced to charred rubble.

    Smoke was still seen rising over parts of the property more than three hours after the first fire trucks arrived, but officials declared the blaze contained around 8 a.m. Some crews remained on the scene, monitoring hotspots, until early Thursday afternoon.

    Miami-Dade Fire Rescue battalion chief Victoria Byrd said the fire — with flames “as tall as the trees,” she said — was fought with crews both on the ground and in the air. The fire was contained to the property owned by Spoelstra and no nearby homes were damaged, Byrd said, adding that a privacy fence and tree cover impeded the initial firefighting efforts.

    “Our units came in and did an excellent job,” Byrd said.

    Property records show Spoelstra bought the five-bedroom home in December 2023. He had done extensive work to the property following the purchase.

    Spoelstra — who has been part of all three of Miami’s NBA championship runs, two as head coach — is in his 18th season as coach of the Heat, an organization he originally joined as a video coordinator in 1995. He finalized a deal last month to serve as coach of the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

    The Heat were off Thursday. Spoelstra is scheduled to have a pregame media session Friday, as per usual.

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  • Ex-NBA player Damon Jones pleads not guilty to selling injury secrets

    NEW YORK — Former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges he profited from rigged poker games and provided sports bettors with non-public information about injuries to stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

    Jones, a onetime teammate of James, said little during back-to-back arraignments in federal court in Brooklyn, letting his court-appointed lawyer enter not guilty pleas in a pair of cases stemming from last month’s federal takedown of sprawling gambling operations.

    Jones, 49, acknowledged he read both indictments and that he understood the charges and his bail conditions, which include his mother and stepfather putting up their Texas home as collateral for a $200,000 bond that will allow him to remain free pending trial.

    Jones’ lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, told a judge that they “may be engaging in plea negotiations.” He is due back in court for a preliminary conference with other defendants on Nov. 24.

    Jones was among more than 30 people arrested in the gambling sweep. The others included reputed mobsters and prominent basketball figures, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier.

    Sports bettor Marves Fairley also pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges alleging he cashed in on information about injuries to NBA players, including some that prosecutors say Jones provided to him.

    Jones, an NBA journeyman, earned more than $20 million playing for 10 teams in 11 seasons from 1999 to 2009. He and James played together in Cleveland from 2005 to 2008 and he served as an unofficial assistant coach for James’ Los Angeles Lakers during the 2022-2023 season.

    According to prosecutors, Jones sold or attempted to sell non-public information to bettors that James was injured and wouldn’t be playing in a Feb. 9, 2023, game against the Milwaukee Bucks, texting an unnamed co-conspirator: “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out.”

    James wasn’t listed on the Lakers’ injury report at the time of the text message, but the NBA’s all-time scoring leader was later ruled out of the game because of a lower body jury, according to prosecutors, and the Lakers lost the game 115-106.

    On Jan. 15, 2024, prosecutors said, Fairley paid Jones approximately $2,500 for a tip that Davis, the Lakers’ forward and center at the time, would see limited playing time against the Oklahoma City Thunder because of an injury.

    Fairley then placed a $100,000 bet on the Thunder to win, prosecutors said, but the tip was wrong. Davis played his usual minutes, scored 27 points and collected 15 rebounds in a 112-105 Lakers win, prompting Fairley to demand a refund of his $2,500 fee, prosecutors said.

    Jones, a native of Galveston, Texas, who played college basketball at the University of Houston, is charged in both cases with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. As part of his bail agreement, his travel is restricted to parts of Texas and New York City. He was allowed to keep his passport to use as identification for flying until he obtains a REAL ID, which his lawyer said should happen soon.

    A hot hand from outside the three-point arc, Jones once proclaimed himself in an interview with insidehoops.com as “the best shooter in the world.” He played in every regular season game for three consecutive seasons from 2003 to 2006.

    After his playing days, he worked as a “shooting consultant” for the Cavaliers and was an assistant coach when the team, led by James, won the NBA championship in 2016.

    In the poker scheme, according to prosecutors, Jones was among former NBA players used to lure unwitting players into poker games that were rigged using altered shuffling machines, hidden cameras, special sunglasses and even X-ray equipment built into the table.

    According to the indictment, Jones was paid $2,500 for a game in the Hamptons where he was instructed to cheat by paying close attention to others involved in the scheme. His instructor likened those people to James and NBA All-Star Steph Curry, prosecutors said. When in doubt, Jones was told to fold his hand, prosecutors said.

    In response, according to prosecutors, Jones texted: “y’all know I know what I’m doing!!”

    The poker scheme often made use of illegal poker games run by New York crime families that required them to share a portion of their proceeds with the Gambino, Genovese and Bonnano crime families, according to prosecutors.

    Members of those families, in turn, also helped commit violent acts, including assault, extortion and robbery, to ensure repayment of debts and the continued success of the operation, officials said in court documents.

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  • Doncic returns after 3-game absence, scores 44 to lead Lakers past Grizzlies 117-112

    Luka Doncic had 44 points, 12 rebounds and six assists in his return after a three-game absence and the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies 117-112 in the opening game of the NBA Cup for each team

    MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Luka Doncic had 44 points, 12 rebounds and six assists in his return after a three-game absence and the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies 117-112 on Friday night in the opening game of the NBA Cup for each team.

    Austin Reaves added 21 points for the Lakers and Jake LaRavia scored 13. It was Doncic’s 11th straight games of scoring at least 25 against the Grizzlies.

    Jock Landale and Jaylen Wells scored 16 points each to lead Memphis and Jaren Jackson Jr. finished with 15 points. Ja Morant was held to eight points — going 3 of 14 from the field — and seven assists.

    The Lakers continued to play without LeBron James, who is dealing with right sciatica. But Doncic, who missed the last three games with a left finger sprain and a lower left leg contusion, returned to the starting lineup.

    Both teams had significant runs before it settled into a closely played game. Memphis’ rally came in the second quarter and the Lakers answered it in the third before pulling away in the fourth.

    The Grizzlies built a double-digit lead in the second quarter while scoring 42 points, including a 27-4 rally in the closing minutes of the half. That gave them a 69-55 lead at the break.

    But the Lakers with Doncic controlling the offense, sliced away at the Memphis advantage in the second half, erasing the deficit in the first seven minutes of the third. That led to an exchange of leads as Doncic had 16 in the quarter.

    Entering the fourth, there had been 14 lead changes and seven ties.

    Lakers: Host Miami on Sunday.

    Grizzlies: Visit Toronto on Sunday.

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  • Mark Walter finalizes his purchase of a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers

    LOS ANGELES — Mark Walter is the majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers after the NBA Board of Governors approved his purchase of a controlling stake from the Buss family.

    The Lakers and the league confirmed the next step Thursday in a transaction that is expected to close shortly. The sale of the NBA’s most valuable franchise was initially announced in June.

    Jeanie Buss will remain the Lakers’ governor under the deal for at least the next five years, and she will oversee day-to-day operations “for the foreseeable future,” the team said. Her father, Jerry Buss, bought the Lakers in 1979.

    But the Lakers are now primarily owned by Walter, the billionaire who is the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks among his numerous sports investments. His TWG Global holding company is also the majority owner of the new Cadillac Formula 1 team, which begins competition next year.

    Walter bought a 27% minority stake in the Lakers in 2021 before the current sale, which was completed with a franchise valuation of $10 billion — the highest ever set for a pro sports team.

    “The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most iconic franchises in all of sports, defined by a history of excellence and the relentless pursuit of greatness,” Walter said in a statement. “Few teams carry the legacy and global influence of the Lakers, and it’s a privilege to work alongside Jeanie Buss as we maintain that excellence and set the standard for success in this new era, both on and off the court.”

    The Lakers have won 17 NBA championships and built a worldwide fan base through decades of consistent winning with many of the most famous players in basketball history, from George Mikan to LeBron James.

    “Mark Walter has a long association with our leagues, having served as a minority owner of the Lakers and as the principal owner of the WNBA’s Sparks for more than a decade,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “As Mark assumes his role as majority owner of the Lakers, I have no doubt that he will be a committed steward of the team and a great addition to our league given his many successful ventures in business and sports.”

    Jerry Buss bought the Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and the Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million.

    Silver said he is “thrilled” that Jeanie Buss will remain “an active and engaged member of our league.”

    Lakers fans are hoping Walter can match his success with Los Angeles’ other traditional marquee sports franchise.

    Since Walter took over the Dodgers in 2012, the team has made 13 consecutive playoff appearances while winning five NL pennants and two World Series titles. The Dodgers will play Game 6 of the current World Series on Friday night in Toronto.

    “Over the past decade, I have come to know Mark well — first as a businessman, then as a friend, and now as a colleague,” Jeanie Buss said. “He has demonstrated time and time again his commitment to bringing championships to Los Angeles, and on behalf of Lakers fans everywhere, I am beyond excited about what our future has in store.”

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  • Poker’s NBA-and-Mafia betting scandal echoes movie games, and cheats, from ‘Ocean’s’ to ‘Rounders’

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The stakes. The famous faces. The posh private rooms. The clever cheating schemes.

    The federal indictment of a big-money poker ring involving NBA figures on Thursday, in which unsuspecting rich players were allegedly enticed to join then cheated of their money, echoed decades of movies and television, and not just because of the alleged Mafia involvement.

    Fictional and actual poker have long been in sort of a pop-cultural feedback loop. When authorities described the supposed circumstances of the games, they might’ve evoked a run of screen moments from recent decades.

    Poker in ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Molly’s Game’ and ‘The Sopranos’

    A 2004 episode of “ The Sopranos ” showed a very similar mix of celebrities and mobsters in a New York game whose players included Van Halen singer David Lee Roth and football Hall-of-Famer Lawrence Taylor, both playing themselves.

    In 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” George Clooney finds his old heist buddy Brad Pitt running a poker game for “Teen Beat” cover boys including Topher Grace and Joshua Jackson, also playing themselves. Clooney spontaneously teams with Pitt to con them. And the plot of the 2007 sequel “Ocean’s Thirteen” centers on the high-tech rigging of casino games.

    Asked about the relevance of the films to the NBA scandal, which came soon after a story out of Paris that could’ve come straight out of “Ocean’s Twelve,” Clooney told The Associated Press with a laugh that “we get blamed for everything now.”

    “‘Cause we also got compared to the Louvre heist. Which, I think, you gotta CGI me into that basket coming out of the Louvre,” Clooney said Thursday night at the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, “Jay Kelly.” He was referring to thieves using a basket lift to steal priceless Napoleonic jewels from the museum.

    2017’s “Molly’s Game,” and the real-life memoir from Molly Bloom that it was based on, could almost serve as manuals for how to build a poker game’s allure for desirable “fish” in the same ways and with the same terminology that the organizers indicted Thursday allegedly used.

    The draw of Bloom’s games at hip Los Angeles club The Viper Room were not NBA players, but Hollywood players like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and “The Hangover” director Todd Phillips. (None of them were accused of any wrongdoing.)

    In the movie written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Bloom, played by Jessica Chastain, describes the way a famous actor acts as an attractor for other players, the same way officials said Thursday that NBA “face cards” did for the newly indicted organizers.

    The unnamed actor, played by Michael Cera, was at least partly based on the “Spider-Man” star Maguire.

    “People wanted to say they played with him,” Chastain says. “The same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish.”

    In her book, Bloom described the allure for the players she drew.

    “The formula of keeping pros out, inviting in celebrities and other interesting and important people, and even the mystique of playing in the private room of the Viper Room added up to one of the most coveted invitations in town,” she writes, later adding that “I just needed to continue feeding it new, rich blood; and to be strategic about how to fill those ten precious seats.”

    Bloom would get caught up in a broad 2013 nationwide crackdown on high-stakes private poker games, probably the highest profile poker bust in years before this week. She got a year’s probation, a $1,000 fine, and community service.

    There were no accusations of rigging at her game, but that didn’t make it legal.

    The legality of private-space poker games has been disputed for decades and widely varies among U.S. states. But in general, they tend to bring attention and prosecution when the host is profiting the way that a casino would.

    A brief history of movies making poker cool

    Poker — and cheating at it — has run through movies, especially Westerns, from their silent beginnings.

    Prominent poker scenes feature in 1944’s “Tall in the Saddle” with John Wayne and 1950’s “The Gunfighter” with Gregory Peck.

    “The Cincinnati Kid” in 1965 was dedicated entirely to poker — with Steve McQueen bringing his unmatched cool to the title character.

    A pair of movies co-starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman really raised the game’s profile, though.

    In the opening scene of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ a hyper-cool Redford is playing poker and refuses to leave until another player takes back a cheating accusation.

    In 1973’s Best Picture Oscar winner “The Sting,” 1930s con-men Newman and Redford seek revenge against a big fish and run a series of increasingly bold gambling scams that could’ve come from Thursday’s indictments. Newman out-cheats the man at poker to set him up for the big con, a phony radio horse race.

    The 1980s saw a dip in screen poker, with the subject largely relegated to the TV “Gambler” movies, starring Kenny Rogers, based on his hit song.

    But the end of the decade brought a poker boomlet from the increased legalization of commercial games.

    Then, at possibly the perfect moment, came “Rounders.” The 1998 Matt Damon film did for Texas Hold ’em what “Sideways” did for pinot noir and “Pitch Perfect” did for a cappella: it took an old and popular phenomenon and made them widespread crazes.

    Soon after came explosive growth in online poker, whose players often sought out big face-to-face games. And the development of cameras that showed players’ cards — very similar to the tech allegedly used to cheat players, according to the new indictments — made poker a TV spectator sport.

    The “Ocean’s” films and the general mystique they brought piled on too.

    Clooney, talking about the broader set of busts Thursday that included alleged gambling on basketball itself, pointed out that his Cincinnati Reds were the beneficiaries of sport’s most infamous gambling scandal, the 1919 “Black Sox” and the fixing of the World Series, “so I have great guilt for that.”

    “But you know there — we’ve never had a moment in our history that we didn’t have some dumb scandal or something crazy,” he said. “I feel very bad for the gambling scandal ’cause this was on the night that, you know, we had some amazing basketball happen.”

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    Associated Press writer Leslie Ambriz contributed to this report.

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  • Lakers’ Luka Doncic likely out at least one week with sprained finger, bruised leg

    LOS ANGELES — Luka Doncic is expected to be sidelined for at least one week because of a sprained finger on his left hand and a bruised lower left leg, the Los Angeles Lakers announced Sunday.

    Doncic had been off to a spectacular start to the season with back-to-back 40-point games for the Lakers, who play at Sacramento on Sunday night. He will be reevaluated in approximately one week, the team said.

    Doncic scored 43 points in the Lakers’ loss to Golden State on opening night, and he racked up 49 points in a victory over Minnesota last Friday night. Doncic scorched the Timberwolves despite spraining a finger on his non-shooting hand in the opening minutes.

    The Lakers also are without LeBron James, who will be sidelined until at least mid-November because of sciatica.

    Doncic’s probable one-week absence comes at an inopportune time for Los Angeles, which has six games in the next nine days. The Lakers will have to lean heavily on Austin Reaves, who has scored 51 points in their first two games.

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  • NFL reminds players of league gambling policy in light of federal indictments

    NEW YORK — The NFL reminded its players Friday that they are prohibited from taking part in any form of illegal gambling and betting on league games.

    In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, the league asked all 32 teams Friday to reiterate key aspects of its gambling policy and make the document readily available to players.

    “We all have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the Shield by ensuring that our game is played fairly, honestly and to the best of a player’s ability,” the NFL management council wrote in the memo. “NFL players must also take appropriate steps to safeguard the game against gambling-related risks that may undermine the confidence and trust of the fans.”

    The reminder followed an FBI investigation into illicit gambling activities resulted in the arrests of NBA coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and others.

    “These developments underscore the risks that all sports are facing in the current environment and serve as a reminder of the need to adhere strictly to the NFL gambling policy,” the NFL wrote.

    According to the NFL policy, players must not:

    —place any bet on NFL Football;

    —throw or fix any NFL game or event, or otherwise manipulate or attempt to manipulate any play or other aspect of an NFL game;

    —share confidential, non-public information regarding any NFL game, player or event with any third party.

    “That topic comes up every year,” Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton said. “There’s a certain amount of presentations. It hits heavy. … Obviously, it hits the sports world and someone that’s a close friend of many of us, myself included, and you hate it. So, obviously, none of it’s worth it. … We’ve got to be pretty diligent on that.”

    The NFL Players Association sent a similar memo to players Friday pointing out that they should not bet on the NFL, gamble at the team facility or while traveling for a road game or staying at a team hotel, have someone bet for them, share “inside information,” enter a sportsbook during the NFL playing season except to access another part of the casino, or promote any form or gambling or any gambling entity.

    NFL players are allowed to legally place bets on other sports as long as they are off club property or not traveling with the team. They also are allowed to take part in traditional fantasy football leagues (prize money cannot exceed $250) and legally gamble at casinos on personal time.

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  • Sports betting is a booming business. The FBI’s NBA probe is putting it in the spotlight

    NEW YORK — The stunning indictment that led to the arrest of more than 30 people, including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and other NBA figures, on charges of illegal sports betting has drawn new scrutiny of the booming business of professional sports gambling across the U.S.

    Since widespread legalization, the multibillion-dollar industry has made it easy to place wagers on everything from the outcome of games to that of a single play with just a few taps of a cellphone. It’s just about impossible to go to a basketball, football, baseball or other pro game today — or watch a matchup on TV — without seeing ads for sports betting.

    Fans can place wagers from their stadium seats, while “Bet” tickers scroll on TV sports broadcasts. Star athletes are frequently at the center of ads promoting it all.

    In Thursday’s indictment, federal investigators accused Rozier and other defendants of breaking the law by exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement that his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.”

    A separate indictment alleges Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and others participated in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games. Billups’ attorney declined to comment Thursday.

    Regulating sports wagering has proven to be a challenge — and experts warn about the ramifications for gamblers who typically lose money. Professional leagues’ own role in promoting gambling has raised eyebrows.

    Here’s what we know.

    Sports betting is probably as old as sports itself. But in the U.S., legal gambling really took off in 2018.

    That’s when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act, which barred sports betting in most states. Once allowed only in Nevada, sports betting is now permitted online or in retail locations in 38 states and Washington, D.C. Missouri will become the 39th state on Dec. 1.

    Experts say the biggest jump has been online, through smartphone apps and platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel. Through the third quarter of this year, legal sports betting generated $10 billion in revenue, up about 19% from the same period a year ago, according to the American Gaming Association.

    The industry argues that legal wagering generates money for states and can deter illegal betting. Major operators point to technology they use to monitor suspicious activity. FanDuel said Thursday’s news illustrates “the stark contrast between legal and illegal betting markets.”

    There is plenty of money on the table both for those who place winning bets and the platforms that make it possible. The NBA and other pro sports leagues have also created revenue streams by partnering with sportsbooks and reaping advertising dollars.

    Live game stats provided by leagues are key to the sports world’s relationship with the gambling industry. When you’re able to bet what the next pitch in a baseball game is going to be, that’s because Major League Baseball is selling data to platforms “for a pretty high price,” according to Isaac Rose-Berman, whose research focuses on sports betting as a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men.

    The NBA has a partnership with Sportradar for its data rights. Sportradar, in turn, provides FanDuel Sportsbook official NBA statistics. When the deal was announced in 2022, Sportradar touted it as a way “to monetize our long-term partnership with the NBA.”

    Each state has its own regulations and tax rates for sports betting. A handful restrict where you can place bets — allowing users to use mobile apps, but only while they’re physically inside a casino or within a certain radius of a stadium, for example. Others limit which betting platforms you can use or what you can bet on.

    “States sort of opened up a can of worms, and now some of them are starting to realize just how crazy this sports betting world sort is,” said Wayne Taylor, a professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University.

    An even stickier factor is when players and other team or league personnel are involved. The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL all prohibit employees and players from betting on their own league games, although some gambling in separate areas is allowed.

    Legalized betting has certain security advantages in that unusual betting patterns — such as large bets being placed on a random player’s performance — can be immediately flagged. In some cases, sportsbooks have taken down odds on certain events to protect against manipulation.

    Still, experts like Taylor note that companies’ own financial interests may bring some of that into question. And across the sports market, he says the large number of players and scope of micro bet possibilities makes potential manipulation “easier to hide.”

    A prop is a type of wager that allows gamblers to bet on whether a player will exceed a certain statistical number, such as whether a basketball player will finish over or under a certain total of points, rebounds, assists and more.

    This kind of bet is key to the sports betting probe announced Thursday. Investigators pointed to a March 23, 2023, game involving Rozier, then playing for the Charlotte Hornets.

    Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did he not return that night, citing a foot issue, but he did not play again that season. He finished with five points, four rebounds and two assists — a productive opening quarter, but well below his usual total output for a full game. At the time, many bettors turned to social media to say that something shady occurred regarding prop bets involving his stats for that night.

    More broadly, the NBA has expressed concern about prop bets, while other sports leagues have worried about the potential for manipulation.

    Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine urged his state’s gambling commission to ban prop bets after Major League Baseball placed two Cleveland Guardians pitchers on leave during a sports betting investigation.

    Sports betting also faces criticism for opening the door to addictive gambling.

    “The fact that it’s normalized, the advertising is aggressive, it’s available 24/7, the micro bets — all of this is adding up to tremendous increase in usage across individuals,” said Taylor, citing algorithms and other incentives betting platforms use to increase engagement.

    Rose-Berman notes that platforms make the most off of returning “biggest losers.” Recent research suggests that young men in low-income communities are particularly affected by financial consequences tied to sports gambling.

    “Upwards of 90% of sports bettors are not really going to experience significant negative impacts — but it’s really concentrated among those big losers and it’s going to be devastating for them,” he said.

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    Associated Press reporters Tim Reynolds in Miami, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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  • LeBron James, Chris Paul and Kyle Lowry enter season as the NBA’s largest 20-year club

    LeBron James’ beard has quite a bit of gray in it these days. Chris Paul has been hearing questions for years about how much longer he wants to play. Kyle Lowry already has his retirement job lined up, for whenever that day comes.

    Meet the NBA’s current 20-year club. It’s bigger than ever before.

    There are no players currently in the league — and very few in the league’s 80-season history — with more seniority than the trio of James, Paul and Lowry. For the first time, the NBA has three players simultaneously entering their 20th seasons; James, when he makes his 2025-26 debut, will be the first 23-year player in league history, while Paul is going into his 21st season and Lowry is entering his 20th.

    “The love of the game is still high. The love of the process is even higher,” James said. “So, that’s what continues to push me to play this game. I mean, it is really that simple.”

    There’s nothing simple about it. To still be contributing at this level, at this point in their careers, is practically unheard of.

    All three invest plenty of their own money (they’ve made a combined $1.2 billion in NBA salaries) in their own individualized programs that have helped them survive the rigors of NBA life for this long.

    James’ workout regimen is legendary, yet still not invincible — he’ll miss the start of this season while dealing with sciatica and there’s no firm timetable for when he’ll actually take the floor with the Los Angeles Lakers to start Year 23.

    Lowry, at least since the NBA began tracking such stats, is the NBA’s all-time leader in charges taken, which means he’s probably taken more hard falls than anybody. And last season with San Antonio, Paul became the first player in NBA history to play 82 games in a 20th year of a career — and he started all of them, too.

    “I’ve always believed in ‘keep stacking days’ and that you just have to show up every single day, every single day,” said Paul, who rejoined the Los Angeles Clippers this summer. “So, that’s what I plan on bringing to this team. … My role on this team is obviously different than it’s been the past 20 years of being in the NBA, but showing up every day, if I can show some of the guys what it looks like every day to clock in and clock out, I’m excited for it.”

    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the first player in the 20-season club, getting there in 1988-89. Robert Parish followed in 1995-96 (and played a 21st season as well). Kevin Willis played 21 seasons, his career ending in 2006-07.

    The rest of the entrants into the club have all come in the last decade: Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Vince Carter (the league’s first 22-year player before James tied that mark last year), Jamal Crawford, Udonis Haslem, James, Paul and soon, Lowry.

    What the likes of James, Paul and Lowry have done, and how they’ve done it, has been noticed by everyone — veteran and younger players alike.

    “I’m asking and taking advice from these guys and I want to take even more advice from them in the future,” said San Antonio center Victor Wembanyama, who is going into his third season. “They’re definitely examples.”

    Milwaukee forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is entering his 13th season, pointed out that constant innovation in medicine, recovery, technology and more has made it possible for players to extend their careers if they choose to put in the effort.

    “At this point, if you don’t follow the blueprint that guys like Vince Carter, Dirk, LeBron … if you don’t follow that blueprint, I don’t know what blueprint you should follow,” Antetokounmpo said. “Those guys have been playing at a high level for so many years, they’ve been taking such good care of their body. They have their own physio, they have their chef. You know how you sit down with your financial advisor four times a year and you go through your finances? I think you should sit down with your doctors and your physios four times a year, minimum, to talk about what you want from your body.”

    Lowry is back with the Philadelphia 76ers this season, though he has signed with another team as well — Amazon Prime, which he’s joining as an analyst this season, even while still playing. It’s a multiyear deal with one of the NBA’s new broadcast partners, with the assumption that when he stops playing he’ll simply slide into a bigger analysis role.

    He’ll debut on Amazon next week. But his mind is fully on Year 20 as a player, not Year 1 of TV.

    “I love the game of basketball and I have had the ability to play professional basketball for 20 years and basketball my whole life,” Lowry said. “When you wake up every day you should still be motivated to play basketball. … And I have some unbelievable teammates, unbelievable teammates. That’s my motivation. I just want to continue to give what I’ve learned for as long as I can.”

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  • It’s called automated officiating. The NBA is utilizing it to get even more calls right

    The play, in real time to the naked eye, might have looked very close to a violation. LeBron James leaped, got his right hand on the ball with a few tenths of the game’s final second remaining and tapped it through the basket to give the Los Angeles Lakers a buzzer-beating win last season.

    Referees on the floor called it correctly. Video replay backed up their call, and the Lakers got a victory over the Indiana Pacers.

    Turns out, it wasn’t close at all.

    The NBA has a relatively new tool called “automated officiating,” and the robotic eyes that are now tracking just about everything on basketball courts showed that James was nowhere near committing offensive basket interference on that play. It wasn’t needed to decide matters in that case — again, the humans got it right — but the NBA is tapping into technology more and more to ensure that plays like those get adjudicated correctly.

    “Turns out, computers are really good at this,” said Evan Wasch, an NBA executive vice president overseeing basketball strategy and analytics. “So, if we can invest in this technology to get more calls right on the objective ones, we do two things.

    “One, the accuracy on those calls, by definition, goes up. But we also free up the human referees to not have to focus on those calls and in turn allow them to focus more closely on the really difficult judgment plays that they’re so adept at and actually increase accuracy there, too. We think there’s what we call double bottom-line benefit to doing this from an accuracy perspective.”

    Basketball, of course, is not alone in veering toward higher-tech officiating.

    Robot umpires are getting called up to Major League Baseball next season; humans will still make the calls, but teams can challenge ball or strike calls and an automated system will determine if those challenges were successful. Many major tennis tournaments, even Wimbledon, have replaced line judges with electronic line-calling. Soccer has technology to tell referees if a ball fully crossed a goal line or if someone was offsides, calls that in real time might just be guesswork.

    It’s important to note that NBA referees are not being replaced. Technology is just helping; instead of six human eyes on a court, it’s now six human eyes and a whole lot of camera lenses that are there to collect as much data as the league can think of.

    “Let’s get it right,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers said. “And let’s get right quicker.”

    Those are the goals, the NBA insists. Using technology helps with game flow thanks to shorter review times, helps with the accuracy and also provides transparency in the ability to show fans and players computer-generated images to explain how calls were made.

    Cameras in arenas are helping to precisely make calls such as the ones along sidelines and baselines — who was a ball off, was it out of bounds, that sort of thing — as well as determining if blocked shots were good or was goaltending committed on those plays.

    “What we’re doing is tracking a bunch of objects in space with incredible precision,” Wasch said. “We are tracking a basketball, fingers, feet, heads, hands, all the parts of the body. We’re tracking them in space with cameras and sensors. And there’s an element of machine learning and artificial intelligence to build those algorithms on top of that to then know what in fact happened from a basketball perspective based on the movement of all those things.”

    The technology isn’t limited to calls or non-calls.

    Some referees have been wearing earpieces during this preseason as the league tinkers with ways for better communication methods. There’s been talk at the league of sending alerts to smartwatches about decisions on calls. And at summer league this year, there was even a sensor placed inside the ball to help collect data. The sensor weighs about the same as a raisin does. Hundreds of players used the ball, which typically weighs somewhere around 600 grams; nobody noticed that it was about a gram heavier than usual.

    In the end, it’s all about making the product better.

    “There’s actually been a ton of openness from the referees and the referee union on implementing this technology,” Wasch said. “It lets them focus on the things that they train for this job to do.”

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  • The latest idea to save the NBA All-Star Game: US vs. the World. And there’s no shortage of intrigue

    Imagine this lineup: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic and Victor Wembanyama, all on the floor at the same time as teammates.

    MVPs. Scoring champions. NBA champions. Triple-double machines. Defensive wizards. International players, all together in one highly decorated, incredibly accomplished, flat-out-scary lineup the likes of which probably has not been seen too many times in basketball history.

    The NBA seems on the brink of making it possible.

    Changes to the All-Star format are most certainly coming, once again, and the plan that the NBA has settled on is one that has U.S. players going up against players from the rest of the world in a tournament setting. Think Ryder Cup golf or 4 Nations Face-Off hockey, and it just so happens that this season’s All-Star weekend at Inglewood, California, is smack in the middle of another national-pride sporting event — the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

    “I talk to a lot of fans, and All-Star Games for whatever reason take on particular interest around basketball,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “I think we should be able to create something that’s fun, exciting, engaging. Not expecting guys to play the way they would in the finals necessarily or even in a playoff game, but yet to go out, play hard, put on a good show for the fans.”

    The plan, which isn’t yet finalized, calls for a three-team tournament: two American teams and one international team, all with eight-man rosters. The reason: Roughly two-thirds of NBA players are American and one-third are not, which is why the NBA thinks it’d be fair to give Americans two-thirds of the roster spots.

    “Hopefully, it’s going to be better,” said Jokic, the Denver star.

    It has become almost an annual exercise for the NBA: fixing the All-Star Game. Silver and other league officials — and to be fair, some players as well — desperately want the product to be better and more competitive. They tried having captains like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Antetokounmpo pick the teams for a few years, and not much changed. They tried go back to the standard Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference format, and it wasn’t great either. Having a final score of 211-186 in Indianapolis in 2024 was the last straw in many respects, so the NBA last year tried a mini-tournament on for size and few people cared for that.

    Golden State’s Stephen Curry was MVP of that All-Star event, a four-teams-of-eight competition that had a 41-25 final score in the title matchup and saw the final game stopped for about 20 minutes for a tribute to TNT and its run as a league broadcaster.

    “I honestly thought last year went great until it dragged on for a long time,” Curry said. “We all know that All-Star has changed over the years, but there has to be some type of solution for keeping the players fresh and loose and keeping the action going. Last year it came to a screeching halt. But whatever the format is, I know we’re going to keep taking swings at the plate to figure it out, and that’s what the league is supposed to do.”

    International players have said they love the idea of a U.S. vs. The World concept. Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee star, has talked about it previously and playfully said that the league should give him credit for the idea.

    “The NBA’s going to take all the credit. But I love it, man,” Antetokounmpo said.

    “I think it’s going to be exciting for people to watch. I’m going to play hard. I’ve always been playing hard, but I think it’s going to put a little bit more juice to the game. … All players have ego. Nobody wants to be embarrassed. Guys will play harder because they don’t want to become — I don’t know how you say this — they don’t want to become viral. I’m excited for this format.”

    The league has been working on the plan for a few months, and Silver has said he hopes that it can be formally announced by the start of the season. The season begins Oct. 21.

    “The World vs. U.S.? We’ll see how it goes. I think it’s interesting,” said Detroit’s Cade Cunningham, who was a first-time All-Star last season. “I wanted to play in the East vs. West game, me personally, but I think I will have my opportunity to do that one day. … Playing for the U.S., I know we’re going to be playing hard. I think it will be good.”

    Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning MVP and scoring champion from the champion Oklahoma City Thunder, knows the league wants a more competitive All-Star event. He isn’t sure if the format is a reason why someone would play hard or not.

    Like everyone else, he’s interested to see how it plays out.

    “Guys that make it are grown men and they’re going to compete if they want or not compete if they don’t want to. And I think that’s what it’s going to come down to,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “So, the change in the format, it’s good, it’s fun. It keeps the fans engaged. It could be interesting. It’s what the league is supposed to do. They do a great job of that. But I think it’s just going to come down to if the players want to play or not.”

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    AP Sports Writers Larry Lage in Detroit, Cliff Brunt in Oklahoma City, Arnie Stapleton in Denver, Steve Megargee in Toronto and Associated Press Writers Ian Harrison in Toronto and Michael Wagaman in Sacramento, California contributed.

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