Portland’s Robert Williams III scores in front of Laker Ziaire Williams at Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
One day after being retroactively fined for flopping on a play against Utah, forward Ziaire Williams was whistled for the violation again during the fourth quarter Tuesday.
Avdija drove on Williams with 3:38 remaining in the fourth quarter and bumped his left shoulder and arm into Williams’ body. Williams stumbled backward and circled both arms backward as Avdija kicked the ball out to Lillard for a three-pointer. Lillard nailed the shot from the wing and tacked on a technical free throw when play was stopped for Williams’ flopping call.
Williams’ violation was one of three called Tuesday by the crew led by Scott Foster. Portland’s Toumani Camara and Morant were also whistled for flops, and all of the calls came in the fourth quarter of a tight game that saw 52 total personal fouls and 71 free throws.
NBA officials have placed a larger emphasis on flopping this season, along with limiting use of off-arm force against defenders, reckless closeouts and time wasting on free throws. Flops are characterized by “exaggerated and theatrical” movements in an attempt to get a call, according to the NBA. Redick said he didn’t believe Williams’ movements rose to that level against Utah, at least.
With 4:44 left in the fourth quarter against Utah and the Lakers trailing by one, Utah’s Keyonte George switched onto Williams. The Jazz guard drove on Williams and was called for a push-off foul as Williams stumbled backward. It was only until the next day that Williams was fined $2,000 for a flop.
“That’s just the way his body naturally moves,” Redick said.
Williams said Tuesday he had not received feedback about the call he thought was a good defensive play against the Jazz.
“I’ll pay my fine,” Williams said before Tuesday’s game, “and if I got to flop again to get a win, then that’s what I’ll do.”
The Lakers turned the ball over on the next possession, but pieced together a 8-1 run during the fourth quarter to pull away for a thrilling nine-point win after trailing by 18 during the second quarter.
Despite Wrexham’s slow start to the campaign, they have the same number of points now as they did at the same stage last term.
Parkinson’s team are bidding to respond to last weekend’s 2-0 loss at Blackburn Rovers when they return to action against Sheffield United at Bramall Lane on Friday (20:00 GMT).
The Blades fixture comes almost exactly five years on from the day co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac attended their first Wrexham match.
The Hollywood pair watched on as Parkinson’s side – then in the National League – were beaten 3-2 at Maidenhead United in October 2021.
Having masterminded three promotions and the club’s highest-ever league finish since being appointed in the summer of 2021, Parkinson stated that Wrexham’s upcoming opponents serve as a reminder of the immense progress made during his tenure.
“I think this week alone, it’s Sheffield United, Middlesbrough and Wolves – what a week for everyone connected with the club to look forward to,” he added.
“Five years ago, when Rob and Ryan came to Maidenhead away, that was an eventful game to say the least.
“It was a great introduction for them into the world of the National League. Then they came up at the weekend [for a draw with Torquay], which was a fantastic occasion for them to be at the Racecourse.”
“Having a target on your back means that you’re worried about what someone else is going to do,” she added. “That’s an outcome-based [way of] thinking, and we have to be obsessed with our process, obsessed with our standards.”
As the Bruins prepare to open the season at Pauley Pavilion against Lehigh on Monday, they are focused on getting better every day and following the championship-level process the program established. It’s not their job to worry about what others think about them, forward Sienna Betts said.
“I don’t really care what the media has to say or whatever,” Betts said. “It really is just a matter of what is in these four walls and what we know we’re putting into practice every day.”
UCLA forward Sienna Betts shoots under pressure from Texas’ Breya Cunningham at H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, Texas, on Sunday.
(Scott Wachter / Getty Images)
While the Bruins are maintaining the same championship standards as last year, the group tasked with meeting them looks considerably different than last season.
UCLA will begin the 2026-27 season with five players returning from the championship team, Betts being one of them. None of the returning players were starters, with the top six performers getting selected in the 2026 WNBA draft. The rest of this season’s Bruins consists of seven newcomers, including two freshmen and five transfers.
“We’re not trying to repeat an outcome, we’re repeating a process,” Betts said. “We’re our own group and I don’t think it’s fair to put the weight of last year on this group.”
Close’s roster includes the No. 5 transfer portal class in the nation, according to ESPN. The group includes Donovyn Hunter, who transferred from TCU and described the process of transferring as uncomfortable. She also said adjusting to a new system is difficult.
“We’re going to mess up, we’re going to make mistakes, we’re not going to get it on the first try, but knowing that there’s a coach that’s behind you, that knows you’re going to get to that level has been the most important thing for all of those transfers and the freshmen,” Hunter said.
Three of the five transfers are international players learning English, including Elina Aarnisalo, who returned to Westwood after spending a season at North Carolina.
UCLA guard Donovyn Hunter drives to the basket in front of Texas’ Breya Cunningham in Cedar Park, Texas, on Sunday.
(Scott Wachter / Getty Images)
“We spent a lot of time together … so that’s helped us on court and obviously practicing every day,” Aarnisalo said. “… Even though there might be a language barrier, sometimes we’re just spending time together and learning [from] each other so that relationship part comes pretty naturally for all of us.”
Regardless of the language barriers, Betts said building the team’s chemistry is a good start and a work in progress as they enter the start of the season.
“I think our connection on the court, it’s really showing and we’re still just learning how to play with each other. … It takes time,” she said. “The team last year, they were playing with each other for four years and over.”
Even with the added pressure that comes with last year’s championship run, Aarnisalo isn’t worried about the expectations. She’s enjoying the kind of media attention the Bruins are getting.
She’s happy the returning players were able to lift the trophy last year and says the exposure that goes with it is an opportunity to show off the newly reloaded UCLA team.
“We’re making our own process out of this,” she said. “Obviously, the standards are the same, like it’s championship standards, but it’s completely new people, new personalities. [We’re] just trying to create our own storyline for this year.”
Quinn brings new perspective to UCLA
Breeze coach Noelle Quinn directs players during an Unrivaled game against the Laces on Feb. 27 in Medley, Fla.
(Leonardo Fernandez / Getty Images)
After spending 12 years as a professional player and six years coaching in the WNBA, Noelle Quinn has returned to Westwood. She is a two-time WNBA champion, winning a title as a player and a coach.
“I have not been able to find anyone else that has won a conference championship in college, a WNBA championship as a player and as a coach,” Close said. “You don’t think when she talks, they listen?”
The fourth overall pick in the 2007 WNBA draft has had an influence among the UCLA coaches, with Close noting associate head coach Tony Newnan told Quinn during a staff meeting that she was making him a better coach.
On the court, Quinn’s defensive expertise is creating an environment that has helped Bonnie Deas get excited about playing defense.
“I love defense and she brings so much energy to our defensive side of the game,” Deas said. “She’s so switched on with our scout and film, she makes defense really, really exciting.”
Betts describes her defensive presence as calming.
“I love the way she just talks and the way she talks about defense and just the game,” she said. “She brings such warmth to this gym.”
England’s preparations have also been affected by the Prem schedule, with players involved in Sunday’s fixtures having less time for full squad training.
“We had a session today really that was affected obviously by the fact that we had a Sunday game in Prem Rugby,” Borthwick explained.
“Fortunately, we don’t have any Sunday games this coming week in Prem Rugby, which I’m pleased about.
“So that should allow players to be recovered in a proper run into the Test match.”
Borthwick acknowledged the challenge of balancing club and international commitments, but said playing at the weekend could benefit England.
“They’ll go back and play the rugby and in so many ways that will be a positive for us for next weekend,” he said.
“The players are match fit at club level, playing regularly at club level, and as long as they don’t get injured, then they’re all available for selection next week, then that will be positive.
“I’d say on one side, I think it’s a real strength of English rugby that the players have such great loyalty and passion for their clubs as we saw very evidently in this last round with the derbies that went on.
“They are team-mates and best of mates the next day for a couple of days [with England] and then they go back to being rivals again until they come back into camp next week.”
Borthwick also identified the breakdown as an area where England need to adapt to the demands of international rugby.
He pointed to the recent European fixtures, in which English clubs collectively lost more of their own breakdown ball and won less opposition breakdown ball than teams from other competing nations.
“Part of my job is identify those bits of where I need to bridge from where the players are in Prem rugby to where they are in Test rugby,” he said.
“The level of competition [at the breakdown] is at a different level in Test rugby.”
Murphy lamented his team’s indiscipline in the first half, highlighting that as a contributory factor in leaving them with a mountain to climb.
“Our scrum held up reasonably well. Everyone knows when you come to South Africa your scrum is going to be under pressure so it’s an area we need to get better at.
“We had a way we wanted to play. We probably went away from that early on in the game but we got more towards what we were trying to do towards the back end of the half and in the second half.
“You have to stick in the fight here. Plenty of teams come here and kind of roll over.
“I don’t think we did that, which I’m really proud about, the way the lads stuck to the task.”
A Stuart McCloskey pass looked to have set James McKillop galloping clear on the wing to put Ulster in with a chance of what at one stage appeared a very unlikely victory but the Ireland centre was adjudged to have had part of his foot in touch.
“Stu’s foot was probably just in touch but if he gets that away earlier we’re going into the last two minutes with a lead. But that’s the breaks,” bemoaned the Ulster coach.
Murphy highlighted the breakdown as another area his side could improve on before next week’s meeting with the Stormers in Cape Town.
“We have to learn lessons but we will benefit from these tight battles come the end of the season,” he added.
The province’s Ireland internationals will return home to join up with Andy Farrell’s international squad, which assembles on Monday, while Murphy revealed that seven squad reinforcements would be arriving in Cape Town to bolster his side’s ranks ahead of the game with Stormers.
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee is going absolutely nuts. The Brewers have sold out Game 3 and Game 4 of the World Series.
The Tampa Bay Rays will host those games, but the Brewers invited fans to come to their stadium and watch on the big screen. The Brewers sold more than 31,000 tickets to each of their watch parties at $15 apiece. On Friday morning, StubHub offered them for resale, starting at $168.
There is nothing quite like a city uniting behind a team that never has won a World Series. Ask Logan Henderson.
Henderson, the Brewers’ starting pitcher Saturday in Milwaukee, grew up a huge fan of the Houston Astros. He was 15 when he saw his first World Series game.
“My parents had always said, if we were fortunate enough to be able to watch them go to the World Series, we’re going to do everything we can to get there,” Henderson said. “I was blessed that my parents got tickets to go to the games.
“There’s nothing like it. I’m on the other side of it now. I was a spectator and a fan, now I’m a player. It’s definitely surreal.”
Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Logan Henderson follows through on a pitch during Game 2 of the NLCS against the Dodgers in Milwaukee on Oct. 12.
“I went to the one before the crazy one,” he said. “L.A. ended up winning that game.”
In the crazy one, the Dodgers blew two four-run leads, tied the score with three runs in the ninth inning and lost in the 10th.
If we knew then what we know now, Game 4 would be the crazy one: Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood constantly changing his signs, suspicious that the Astros might be up to something, whatever that might be.
Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood delivers from the mound during Game 4 of the World Series against the Astros on Oct. 28, 2017, in Houston.
(Pool / Getty Images)
Wood was vindicated three years later, when a league investigation revealed the Astros had been cheating in 2017, stealing signs from a television monitor next to the dugout and relaying them to batters by banging on trash cans. The practice, according to the report issued by commissioner Rob Manfred, was refined during the regular season and extended “throughout the postseason.”
The scandal outraged the Dodgers and their fans. The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to demand Manfred award the 2017 championship to the Dodgers. Their players wanted nothing to do with that. A real championship, after all, would come with champagne and beer in the clubhouse and a parade through the streets.
When the Astros’ team buses arrived at Dodger Stadium for games during the pandemic season of 2020, when ballparks were closed to the public, Dodgers fans gathered outside to boo.
Dodgers fans boo Jose Altuve of the Astros after he struck out in a game on Aug. 3, 2001, at Dodger Stadium.
“That meant absolutely everything to the city. I hope that means what it did for me to the fans in Milwaukee here.”
The Rays also are trying to bring their first championship home to Tampa Bay. In 2017, hard as this might be to believe today, the mighty Dodgers had not won a championship in 29 years.
And now, as a major leaguer, Henderson has an acute appreciation of the little things that can mean the difference between victory and defeat, between a parade and another plaintive chorus of “wait ‘til next year.”
“I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming,” Wood tweeted after Manfred’s report on the Astros’ cheating.
Henderson knows how hard this is to do. The Brewers haven’t appeared in the World Series in 44 years, and owner Mark Attanasio said nervous fans already are wondering whether their next appearance will be 44 years away.
So I asked Henderson if, all these years later, the scandal changed how he felt about those Astros.
He paused.
He exhaled.
He paused again.
“Maybe a little bit,” Henderson said. “It’s unfortunate. I try not to think about it or talk on it too much. I think now, being in the game, my perspective on it is a little different.
“I think for the kid in me — and the huge baseball fan I was — that team will always have a special place in my heart.”
Kim Huybrechts will come in as a replacement as the Belgian is the highest-ranked player from the 2026 European Tour rankings who had not qualified.
Huybrechts will face Ryan Searle when the European Championship starts in Dortmund on Thursday, while Gerwyn Price will play Rob Cross and defending champion Gian van Veen will take on Andrew Gilding among the night’s eight matches.
World number one and PDC world champion Luke Littler will start his challenge on Friday with a match against William O’Connor.
Filo Tiatia’s men have made a strong start to the season but that might not necessarily translate into a bigger contingent in Tandy’s squad.
Lock Ben Carter is a shoo-in, tight-head prop Dillon Lewis will hope to pick up where he left off in the summer and in-form hooker Elliot Dee would love to battle Dewi Lake and Ryan Elias for action.
The Perpignan fixture highlighted the qualities of Dragons’ grafters with blind-side flanker Shane Lewis-Hughes, who won three caps in 2020, continuing his strong start to the season.
Wales contact coach Dan Lydiate was a guest at Dragons training last week and would have been impressed as Lewis-Hughes put in 27 tackles against the French side’s big carriers.
But the forward, like team-mate Harri Keddie, is competing in a position of real depth.
The same applies for wing Rio Dyer, who is yet to score this season but has been lively with ball in hand and impressive in the aerial game.
Dragons’ man of the match against Perpignan was Aneurin Owen, so often the side’s glue from inside centre.
He carried strongly to go with his distribution skills, while he was strong in defence and came up with two turnovers.
Owen, who turns 26 the day before Tuesday’s squad announcement, was a member of the Wales squad under Wayne Pivac in the summer of 2021 but remains uncapped.
There might be an opening at 12 due to Ben Thomas’ injury should Tandy look to see if a quality operator at club level can take the next step.
“Aneurin knows I love him,” said Dragons boss Filo Tiatia. “He has outstanding leadership and there is lots more to come from him.
“He wants to improve, is coachable and is strong at challenging the coaches.”
Great Britain’s Joe Truman said team-mate Matt Richardson’s withdrawal was “not ideal” and they had started “on the back foot” as they exited in the first round of the men’s team sprint at the World Track Cycling Championships.
The 27-year-old, who had also been expected to contend for medals in the individual sprint and keirin, said he would co-operate with a British Cycling investigation into the allegations.
His withdrawal overshadowed preparations for the event in Shanghai, though Britain’s women did secure silver in the team sprint.
Emma Finucane, who is Richardson’s partner, Sophie Capewell and Rhianna Parris-Smith finished fastest in qualifying, and beat France but lost to hosts China in the gold-medal race.
The men’s team – Truman, Ed Lowe and Harry Ledingham-Horn – finished fifth in the qualifying stage but were beaten by fourth-placed Australia in the opening round of head-to-head races.
“We came with a bit of a last-minute change, obviously,” said Truman. “We all said this morning we’re here just to ride our bikes.
“We’re on the back foot a bit but let’s just put our best foot forward, put a time on the board at the start of Olympic quali and we got a time to be proud of.
“None of us are riding in ideal circumstances but we’re professional athletes and so it’s what we train to do – we train to race when it’s not perfect – so I think we did OK. We’re looking ahead to the next couple of years and think we’re in a great spot.”
Elsewhere on day one, Britain’s women and men progressed as first and second fastest respectively in qualifying for the team pursuit events.
Meanwhile, Abigail Miller finished 17th of 24 riders in the women’s scratch race.
Marco Bezzecchi triumphed at the Indonesian Grand Prix, while Jorge Martin finished third to retake the lead from Marc Marquez in the MotoGP world championship.
Italian Bezzecchi made his move on pole-sitter Raul Fernandez with nine laps to go at a sweltering Mandalika International Circuit.
Fernandez finished second ahead of compatriot Martin, with the Spanish duo locking out the podium for Italian manufacturer Aprilia.
Ducati’s reigning seven-time world champion Marquez finished sixth, losing the championship lead he had taken for the first time this season by winning Saturday’s sprint race.
Fernandez and Bezzecchi had clashed and crashed out in that race, with the Spaniard needing to brake with his middle finger for the whole of Sunday’s race after fracturing his index finger.
Starting at the front of the grid, the pair negotiated the first turn and then surged away from the chasing pack.
Having initially looked comfortable, Fernandez began to fade and Bezzecchi seized an opportunity on lap 19 before putting distance on his rival.
The result for 2024 world champion Martin moves him up to 355 points at the top of the championship standings, with Marquez second on 353 and Bezzecchi third with 309.
There are five grands prix remaining in the 2026 season, with the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island the next meeting in the calendar in a fortnight’s time.
A revamp of the points system for 2025 was welcomed by Evans; it also brought his tightest title race yet.
After second place to Ogier in the Monte Carlo curtain-raiser, the re-energised Welshman won in Sweden and Kenya – rallies the Frenchman sat out.
With a 36-point advantage, Evans had opened up the largest championship lead ever recorded after three rounds of a WRC campaign.
But he would not win again that season and though he never finished lower than sixth, Ogier gradually whittled away at his lead until it came down to just three points with one round to go.
That race was a brand new entry to the calendar, and there was uncertainty over what lay ahead at Rally Saudi Arabia.
The terrain proved brutal for all the drivers. Tyre problems galore saw the leaderboard shifting like the sand. It ended with Ogier in third and Evans in sixth.
The points-swing was seven. The Frenchman had won a record-equalling ninth WRC title by four points, and Evans had fallen just short for the fifth time in six years.
“We’ve done what we can, that’s it,” was his reaction.
“We’re competitors at the end of the day, we always want better, we always want more.”
Ulster will be without backs Michael Lowry, Aitzol Arenzana-King and Robert Baloucoune for Saturday’s United Rugby Championship game against Glasgow at Scotstoun (17:30 BST).
Full-back Lowry and wing Baloucoune suffered concussions in the Irish province’s 34-29 defeat by Edinburgh in their opening URC game of the 2026-27 campaign.
Winger Arenzana-King picked up a knee injury during the game in Belfast, from which Ulster emerged with two bonus points.
All three players started last weekend’s fixture, with Lowry captaining the side and scoring the first of Ulster’s four tries in a match which Richie Murphy’s side’s comeback fall short after they bounced back from a 34-5 deficit.
Glasgow began their season with an impressive 26-20 victory on the road at Munster.
