Celtics

TORONTO — Beneath his feet, confetti decorated the turf. Behind him, the video boards congratulated his team on its latest championship.

The Dodgers owner who lives and breathes championships smiled broadly. Magic Johnson always does, of course. This time, he had an impish twinkle in his eye.

“They said we ruined baseball,” Johnson said. “Well, I guess we didn’t.”

If you are not in Los Angeles, you might be screaming in frustration. The team with all the gold makes the rules, and the new rule is that the Dodgers win every year, and now their most famous owner is mocking you?

He is not.

He is, however, issuing a subtle warning to all of baseball’s owners: Don’t let your desperation for a salary cap destroy a sport on the rise — in no small part thanks to the Dodgers.

The NBA was not much more than a minor league 45 years ago. This is crazy to imagine now, but the NBA Finals aired on tape delay, on late-night television, most often at 11:30 p.m. The NBA audience was so small that advertisers would not pay prime-time rates for those commercials, so the games were not broadcast in prime time.

Johnson helped change that. The rivalry between his Lakers and Larry Bird’s Celtics revived the NBA, and then Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became global sporting icons.

From 1980-88, either the Lakers or the Celtics won the NBA title in every year but one. From 1991-98, the Bulls won six titles.

The Celtics and Lakers and Bulls did not ruin the NBA.

“What the Celtics and Lakers were able to do, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls, was to bring in new fans — fans that were, ‘Oh, I don’t know about the NBA,’” Johnson said, “but the play was so good, and the Celtics and Lakers and Bulls were so dominant, people said, ‘Oh man, I want to watch them.’

“It’s the same thing happening here.”

The NBA leadership could not believe its good fortune. Baseball’s leadership appears intent on lighting its good fortune on fire.

“My phone was blowing up with people who hadn’t watched baseball for a long time,” Johnson said. “They were watching this series.

“This was good for baseball around the world.”

The World Baseball Classic is four months away. The World Series most valuable player, the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is from Japan.

So is the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, the closest baseball has ever had to its own Jordan. The Dodgers rescued him from purgatory in Anaheim and surrounded him with a star-studded roster, and now he makes more money from pitching products than pitching baseballs. To the Dodgers, he doubles as an All-Star and cash machine.

The league — and all the owners complaining about the Dodgers and their spending — happily profited from this traveling road show. The Dodgers get the same share of international merchandise and broadcast revenue every other team does.

The Dodgers led the major leagues in road attendance, again. The league sent the Dodgers to Seoul last spring and Tokyo this spring, meaning that, for two years running, they were one of the first two teams to report to spring training and one of the last two playing at season’s end. The league’s television partners rushed to book the Dodgers, even for games at times inconvenient to the team.

“MLB put us in every hard situation you can think about,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “We never complained. We were trying to come through for the fans, for baseball, and everybody should be recognizing what we are doing.”

With the Blue Jays in the World Series, Canadian ratings for the World Series increased tenfold. The Dodgers did not destroy the Jays. They survived them, and barely at that.

The Dodgers have not ruined competition, despite the spotlight.

“They have a great team,” Toronto infielder Ernie Clement said. “There’s no denying it. They’re one of the best teams probably ever put together, and we’ve taken ‘em to seven games, so that’s got to say something about us.”

Toronto manager John Schneider said his team, which won more games than the Dodgers this season, had chances to sweep the World Series.

“People were calling it David versus Goliath,” Schneider said, shaking his head from side to side. “It’s not even… close.”

The Dodgers make a lot of money, pour the money back into the team, and win. They give the people what they want.

“People want the best,” co-owner Todd Boehly said.

Granted, not every team can spend like the Dodgers. Most cannot, and baseball should be able to find ways to share the wealth without risking its tenuous but growing popularity by locking out players in pursuit of a salary cap.

After all, isn’t a compelling product with stars from home and abroad good for baseball?

“You bet,” controlling owner Mark Walter said. “I think they think so, too.”

It was time to go. The parade was 36 hours away, and Johnson had to rest his throat.

“I’m hoarse,” he said. “I’ve never been hoarse.”

So we’ll leave you with one bit of sports trivia, in response to the mistaken notion that a salary cap assures competitive balance: In the Magic, Bird and Jordan years, the ones that lifted the NBA into popular culture, did the NBA have a salary cap?

It did then. It does now. Onto the quest for a three-peat.

Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-4 win in 11 innings over the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series.

A theme of Celtic’s season has been Rodgers bemoaning their transfer business and a perceived lack of quality brought into the club.

He has regularly been asked about and pointed out the goals that have been taken out of his squad with the sales of Kyogo Furuhashi last January and Nicolas Kuhn in the summer, in addition to Jota’s long-term injury absence.

Sebastian Tounekti and Michel-Ange Balikwisha arrived to bolster Rodgers’ attacking options after they had already been dumped out of Champions League qualifying by Kazakh champions Kairat, while Kelechi Iheanacho arrived on a free after the window had closed.

And after they failed to fire in attack once again, Rodgers appeared to criticise the quality within his squad.

“I think the challenge from the summer, now leading into here, where we lost a lot of firepower, a lot of goals out on the team,” he said.

“And there’s no way you’ll go into a race and be given the keys to a Honda Civic and say, ‘I want you to drive it like a Ferrari’. It’s not going to happen.”

He insists it is up to him to find “solutions” to their goal-scoring issues, be it through changes to personnel or formation.

“Until something changes, I have to find the solutions,” he added.

“Because like I said, goals, speed, everything has come out of the team and we need to find a way to be better.

“We had the opportunities to do what we needed to do. It didn’t happen, so now it’s finding ways, whether it’s 4-3-3, whether it’s 3-4-3, whether it’s 3-5-2. We’re trying to look at all these different permutations within the team.”

Lorenzo: Celtic cannot progress while the same faces run the show with their regular-managed decline.

Kenny: Low-ball bids, gambling on a play off. The disgust in Brendan Rodgers is the same as every fan. Signing projects hoping one out of five sells for £20m. Shocking.

Rufus: Teflon Brendan – no matter what happens, it’s always someone else’s fault. Either the board of the players.

Graham: The usual from Rodgers…blah blah blah.

Andy: The issue with signings is not fees, it’s timing. Jota is out long term, Kuhn was sold weeks ago. So the club are presumably signing two wingers. And yet we can’t get one signed before the important games have started. It’s the same for years.

Tony: The transfer dealings aren’t good enough but maybe we also need to look at Rodgers’ failure to evolve in terms of set up. A team of players who go side to side with no one willing to try something different to create space for a forward pass.

Rory: That one is on Rodgers and the players. Should have beaten them with what we had.

Dave: Rodgers has the perfect excuse to leave after this season, lack of urgency and quality about this team. The board have rolled the dice and failed, this is on them.

Ivor: Brendan working his ticket again? Fans going to hound out Peter Lawwell again? Just lucky Rangers haven’t got their act together. Sack the board.

Michelle: Not nearly good enough. Kyogo and Kuhn are long gone and Idah is not anywhere near the standard we need.

Wullie: “Sack the board”? Absolutely hilarious. The Celtic board is to blame for the failure of a team of millionaires and its millionaire manager to beat a team from Kazakhstan?

Eric: You get what you pay for!

John: Lack of re investment of the transfer revenue clearly demonstrates the lack of ambition of the club.

Jrue Holiday’s acquisition from Portland helped spark the Boston Celtics to their NBA-record 18th championship last season.

Holiday is being sent back to the Trail Blazers by a Boston team that could now be in transition, a person with knowledge of the details said early Tuesday.

The Celtics will get Anfernee Simons and two second-round draft picks from the Trail Blazers.

The departure of Holiday, who made his sixth career All-Defensive team selection in his first season in Boston, was confirmed to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal is not yet official.

Holiday was traded by the Milwaukee Bucks to Portland in September 2023 when the Bucks acquired perennial All-Star Damian Lillard. Holiday was then dealt days later to the Celtics, eventually earning his second career title last June.

But the Celtics now have lost a second member of that starting lineup for at least part of next season, with All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum having surgery after an Achilles tendon injury in the loss to the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Simons could provide some of the scoring punch the Celtics have lost, having averaged 19.3 points last season after going for a career-best 22.6 per game in 2023-24.

But the Celtics will miss the defense and leadership that Holiday provided. The two-time Olympic gold medalist’s scoring was down, though, with the 11.1 points he averaged last season his lowest since his rookie season in 2009-10, and more than eight points lower than the 19.3 he put up in 2022-23 with the Bucks, when he was an All-Star.

More than that, the Celtics were likely motivated to trade Holiday because of the $104.4 million owed to him over the remaining three seasons of the contract extension they gave him last year, on top of the huge deals for Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Holiday, who helped the Bucks win the 2021 NBA title, has averaged 15.8 points in a 16-year career that also includes stints with Philadelphia and New Orleans.

Before trading Holiday, the Celtics’ payroll next year was slated to be around $225 million, creating a tax bill of almost $280 million. The combined potential $500 million total price tag would have been a league record.

The larger concern was that figure would have exceeded not only the projected luxury tax threshold of $155 million, but also the first penalty apron projected of around $196 million and the second penalty apron of around $208 million. Both barriers carry restrictive penalties including limits on trades and what teams are allowed to do via free agency.

And that was all on top of the lack of clarity on if the team’s incoming ownership would want to keep paying such hefty penalties to maintain the current roster after agreeing to a purchase in March that is expected to have a final price of a minimum of $6.1 billion.

Trading Holiday suggests that new ownership wants at least some reduced spending before the start of next season. That’s especially true with Tatum out for at least a huge portion of next season and Brown coming off knee surgery.

Tatum signed an NBA-record five-year, $314-million contract last July that will begin next season and pay him $54 million. Brown is playing under a five-year, $304-million deal that kicked in this past season. He will make $53 million next season. That is followed by Kristaps Porzingis ($30 million), Derrick White ($28 million) and Sam Hauser ($10 million).

Porzingis seemingly would be the next potential player the Celtics would consider moving, with $60 million total left in his deal before he is eligible for free agency again in the summer of 2026. But there are questions about his health after he missed a significant number of games in the second half of the regular season and was limited in the playoffs because of a nagging respiratory illness.

No matter which direction the Celtics decide to go, Boston president of basketball operations Brad Stevens acknowledged last month after his team was eliminated from the playoffs that it’s unclear whether so-called championship windows are becoming smaller because of the current rules governing the salary cap.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” Stevens said. “I think certainly it is more challenging in certain circumstances for sure.”

Pelicans-Wizards trade

New Orleans has agreed to trade veteran guard CJ McCollum, center Kelly Olynyk and a future second-round pick to Washington for guard Jordan Poole, wing Saddiq Bey and the 40th overall pick in Thursday’s second round of the NBA draft, a person with knowledge of the agreement said.

New York’s 38-point victory against Boston Celtics in Game 6 was the largest win in Knicks playoff history.

Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby each scored 23 points as the New York Knicks reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000 by steamrolling the visiting Boston Celtics 119-81 in Game 6 of their second-round series.

Mikal Bridges had 22 points and Karl-Anthony Towns added 21 points and 12 rebounds for third-seeded New York, which led by as many as 41 points on Friday. The Knicks wrapped up the best-of-seven series with the largest winning playoff margin in franchise history.

“There’s more to go,” Bridges said. “We’re not done. We came out there tonight and played hard and handled business. But our season is not over. We have much more to go.”

New York surpassed a 36-point playoff victory over the Milwaukee Bucks in the decisive Game 5 of the 1970 Eastern Division finals.

Josh Hart contributed 10 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists to record New York’s first postseason triple-double since Walt Frazier accomplished the feat in 1972.

“I want to congratulate the Celtics on a terrific season,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Unfortunate injury to Jayson Tatum. They’re a terrific organisation, ownership, front office, Joe Mazzulla is a terrific coach, great players.

“They’re not going to hand you anything. You have to earn it.”

The Knicks will open the conference finals at home against the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers on Wednesday.

Defending NBA champion Boston was led by Jaylen Brown, who had 20 points, six rebounds and six assists before fouling out late in the third quarter. The Celtics were again short-handed after losing Tatum to a ruptured right Achilles during Game 4 on Monday.

“Upset or not, we beat a great team,” Brunson said. “They obviously lost a huge piece (in Tatum). The way they came out in Game 5, they’re still a good team. Regardless of what anyone thinks – upset or not – we’re just happy to come out of the series with a win and now we’ll prepare for another team.”

New York shot 46.2 percent from the field, including 16 of 45 (35.6 percent) from 3-point range. The Knicks held a 55-36 rebounding advantage.

Payton Pritchard scored 11 points and Al Horford added 10 for Boston, which shot 36 percent and was 12 of 40 (30 percent) from 3-point range.

The score was tied at 16 before the Knicks began pulling away.

New York led 26-20 at the end of the first quarter and then opened the second with a 16-4 surge to open up an 18-point lead midway through the period.

After Boston’s Luke Kornet interrupted the burst with a three-point play, the Knicks rattled off 16 of the next 21 points to take a 58-32 lead on a putback dunk by Miles “Deuce” McBride with 1:31 left.

McBride buried a 3-pointer as time expired in the half for a 64-37 lead at the break. That marked New York’s largest halftime advantage at the break since leading the Los Angeles Lakers 69-42 in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals, won by the Knicks.

“You win a championship and you have that target on your back from Day 1,” Celtics guard Derrick White said of falling well short of winning back-to-back NBA titles. “There’s ups and downs through every season. This part sucks and we didn’t complete the goal that we set out to get.”

The contest was effectively over when Brown fouled out with 2:50 left in the third quarter and Boston down by 33. Anunoby poured it on with consecutive 3-pointers to end a 10-0 push as the margin went above 40 at 92-51 with 1:51 remaining in the third.

“They played better than we did,” Mazzulla said. “I’m happy for Thibs [Thibodeau]. He’s been coaching for a long time. That’s the biggest thing. You pay your dues, you put forth everything. That guy is a lifer. He’s what a coach is all about and he deserves it. And they deserve it as a team. You got to take your hat off to them.”

New York Knicks take a 3-1 series lead after winning Game 4 against the reigning NBA champions Boston Celtics, who lost Jayson Tatum to injury.

Jalen Brunson scored 26 of his 39 points in the second half, and the New York Knicks became the first home team to win in the series by defeating the Boston Celtics 121-113 to take a 3-1 series lead in their Eastern Conference second-round matchup.

Karl-Anthony Towns added 23 points and 11 rebounds, and Mikal Bridges also scored 23 for the Knicks, who recovered from a 14-point third-quarter deficit on Monday night. OG Anunoby made some key plays late while contributing 20 points.

“They hit us early, and obviously we got into a hole,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I love the way we fought back, and we showed a lot of toughness and more discipline in the second half and timely plays. Everybody worked together on both ends of the floor.”

Boston star Jayson Tatum sustained a possible serious right ankle injury late in the contest. Tatum had 42 points, eight rebounds, four assists and four steals. He knocked down seven 3-pointers for the second-seeded Celtics, who squandered 20-point leads while dropping the first two games in the series.

Tatum was helped off the floor with his right foot kept in the air and was later seen being pushed to the locker room while sitting in a rolling chair.

“I got back there, talked to the medical staff, and they told me it’s a lower-body injury for Jayson Tatum and we’ll get an MRI in the morning,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said.

Derrick White made six 3-pointers and scored 23 points, and Jaylen Brown added 20 points and seven rebounds for Boston. Payton Pritchard added 12 points off the bench.

The Knicks can clinch the best-of-seven series with a win in Game 5 at Boston on Wednesday night.

“It’s not like we planned to be in this situation,” White said. “But we are where we are. We have to find a way to win Game 5.”

Third-quarter explosion lifts Wolves over Warriors

In the other playoff game on Monday, Anthony Edwards poured 11 of his 30 points into a 17-0 third-quarter flurry as the Minnesota Timberwolves moved within one win of a second consecutive berth in the Western Conference finals with a 117-110 road win over the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 in San Francisco.

Julius Randle led the way with 31 points and Jaden McDaniels contributed 10 points and 13 rebounds for the sixth-seeded Timberwolves, who have rallied from a series-opening loss to win three straight from the Stephen Curry-less Warriors.

Minnesota could clinch the best-of-seven series in Game 5 on Wednesday in Minneapolis.

Jonathan Kuminga had a team-high 23 points for seventh-seeded Golden State, which lost Curry to a hamstring injury during its Game 1 win.

The Warriors previously announced that their standout point guard would be re-evaluated before Game 5, with the possibility of Curry returning at that point.

Golden State held a 60-58 halftime lead, and the game was tied 68-all in the fourth minute of the third period before Edwards turned a floater into a three-point play to ignite the decisive run.

Edwards also buried a pair of 3-pointers and a short jumper among his 11 points, while Mike Conley and Donte DiVincenzo drilled shots from deep as part of a burst that lasted more than four minutes.

Edwards finished 6-for-11 on 3-point attempts and Randle 4-for-8, helping the Timberwolves outscore the Warriors 48-24 from beyond the arc. Minnesota shot 16-for-34 (47.1 percent) from beyond the arc, while the Warriors were 8-for-27 (29.6 percent).

“The big third quarter was huge,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “I thought we came out at halftime with the type of focus and intensity and purpose on offence and attention to detail on defence is what we needed from the start. But for the most part, I thought we were lucky to be just down a bucket at halftime.

“[Edwards] was one of the guys that was most vocal at half time and realised what was going on out there and we needed to be better. It started with him, really, and setting the tone.”

Jimmy Butler III took just nine shots and totalled 14 points with a team-high-tying three assists for the Warriors. Draymond Green also had 14 points to go with seven rebounds, while Buddy Hield scored 13 and Brandin Podziemski had 11 to complement four steals.

“[The Timberwolves] played a great game and obviously took it to us, and we’ve got to bounce back,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “We’ve got a flight to Minneapolis tomorrow and a chance to extend the series, and that’s the plan.”

Jalen Brunson scored 39 points as the New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics 121-113 to leave the reigning NBA champions on the brink of elimination from the play-offs.

The Knicks stormed back from 14 points down in the third quarter to go 3-1 up in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semi-final and are in sight of the finals for the first time since 2000.

The Celtics also lost forward Jayson Tatum, who scored 42 points before being carried off in the fourth quarter with what coach Joe Mazzulla described as a “lower body injury”.

The six-time All Star, who was later seen being taken to the Madison Square Garden locker room in a wheelchair, will have a scan on Tuesday to assess the damage.

“He’ll get the MRI and we’ll see what it is,” said Mazzulla.

“Obviously you’re always concerned about someone’s health. It’s two-fold, we’re concerned about his health and where’s he’s at. And then we’re concerned what we’ve got to do better in game five.”

The Knicks can clinch the series with a win in Boston on Thursday (00:00 BST).

Boston, who won game three on Saturday, started strongly with Tatum and Payton Pritchard leading the charge.

A Derrick White three-pointer gave the Celtics their biggest lead of the night early in the third quarter (72-58) but from then on the Knicks took over, taking an 88-85 lead into the final quarter.

Brunson controlled matters and when OG Anunoby grabbed a steal off Tatum in the incident that left the Celtics star writhing in pain before making a dunk, the Knicks were 118-106 ahead.

“I was just in a flow and doing whatever. I wasn’t really trying to take over. It was just ‘whatever we’ve gotta do’,” Brunson said.

“We didn’t quit, kept fighting. And that’s what’s most important. Whenever you get in a hole you can’t quit.”