The MLB All-Star Game has served disparate purposes over the years. It always has been a showcase for baseball’s top talent. Once upon a time, the outcome determined home field advantage in the World Series. In recent years, it has been a fashion runway for ridiculous uniforms.
This year, it will be an incubator.
The Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System will take its next measured step toward regular-season implementation when it is used in the All-Star Game on Tuesday in Atlanta.
Just as ABS was conducted during spring training, each team will get two challenges that can be made only by the pitcher, catcher or batter. Successful challenges are retained.
The player making a challenge taps his cap or helmet to let the plate umpire know that his ball or strike call will be reviewed. The ubiquitous Hawk-Eye system tracks the trajectory and location of the pitch and and a graphic of the pitch is displayed on the scoreboard while the call is being reviewed.
In the minor leagues, ABS has been tested since 2021 and the ABS challenge was implemented in 2022. Major leaguers got their first taste during spring training.
Result? Not much difference from the calls made by human umpires. Strikeouts were reduced slightly and walks increased a tick.
“We have made a lot of progress in the way the system works,” MLB vice president of on-field strategy Joe Martinez said at a media-demonstration session during spring training, “and also the way we weave the system into the game play. And we’re at a point in triple-A where we have a system that the players like, the coaches like, the umpires like and the fans like.”
The shape of a major league strike zone as called by umpires isn’t the precise cube seen on television but takes a rounded form that bulges wider in the middle of the zone and tightens at the top and bottom.
Human umpires continue to improve, in no small part because pitch tracking puts every call under a microscope. MLB umpires have improved their accuracy in calling balls and strikes every year since pitch tracking technology was introduced in 2008, according to FanGraphs. Accuracy has spiked from 81.3% to 92.4%. Expressed another way, incorrect calls have been reduced by nearly 60% in 15 years.
Major League Baseball negotiated a change with the umpires association last offseason in how home-plate umpires are evaluated, effectively tightening the strike zone. The change decreased the margin of error for umpires in their evaluations, resulting in fewer called strikes off the edges of the plate.
Still, a handful of calls are missed in nearly every game, and the all-stars will have an opportunity to tap their caps and challenge at least two calls per team. Should the experiment be a hit with participants and fans, the next step will be for the 11-person MLB competition committee to consider implementing the challenge system for the 2026 regular season.
All-Star notes
— All-Stars will wear what they wear during regular-season games, meaning those unsightly uniforms that were uniformly panned by players and fans the last several years will remain in a closet somewhere. This will be the first year since 2019 that players wear the regular-season uniforms of their teams.
— Department of serendipity: The All-Star Game will take place on Tuesday (7/15) in Atlanta, the number and location of Hank Aaron’s historic home run in 1974 that vaulted him past Babe Ruth to become MLB’s all-time leader at the time. Hammerin’ Hank blasted No. 715 off the Dodgers’ Al Downing at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The tribute will re-create the moment through the use of projection mapping and custom pyrotechnics at the end of the sixth inning.
— MLB All-Star week begins Saturday with the Futures Game. The MLB draft will be held Sunday, the Home Run Derby is scheduled for Monday with the All-Star Game taking place Tuesday.
The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between players and donor-backed collectives formed over the past several years to funnel money to athletes or their schools.
Those arrangements hold no “valid business purpose,” the memo said, and don’t adhere to rules that call for outside NIL deals to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit.
The letter to Division I athletic directors could be the next step in shuttering today’s version of the collective, groups that are closely affiliated with schools and that, in the early days of NIL after July 2021, proved the most efficient way for schools to indirectly cut deals with players.
Since then, the landscape has changed yet again with the $2.8-billion House settlement that allows schools to pay the players directly as of July 1.
Already, collectives affiliated with Colorado, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia and others have announced they’re shutting down. Georgia, Ohio State and Illinois are among those that have announced plans with Learfield, a media and technology company with decades of licensing and other experience across college athletics, to help arrange NIL deals.
Outside deals between athlete and sponsor are still permitted, but any worth $600 or more have to be vetted by a clearinghouse called NIL Go that was established by the new College Sports Commission and is being run by the auditing group Deloitte.
In its letter to the ADs, the CSC said more than 1,500 deals have been cleared since NIL Go launched on June 11, “ranging in value from three figures to seven figures.” More than 12,000 athletes and 1,100 institutional users have registered to use the system.
But the bulk of the letter explained that many deals could not be cleared because they did not conform to an NCAA rule that sets a “valid business purpose” standard for deals to be approved.
The letter explained that if a collective reaches a deal with an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, the standard is not met because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.
The same would apply to a deal an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose” according to the NCAA rule.
Sports attorney Darren Heitner, who deals in NIL, said the guidance “could disproportionately burden collectives that are already committed to spending money on players for multiple years to come.”
“If a pattern of rejections results from collective deals submitted to Deloitte, it may invite legal scrutiny under antitrust principles,” he said.
On a separate track, some college sports leaders, including the NCAA, are seeking a limited form of antitrust protection from Congress.
The letter said a NIL deal could be approved if, for instance, the businesses paying the players had a broader purpose than simply acting as a collective. The letter uses a golf course or apparel company as examples.
“In other words, NIL collectives may act as marketing agencies that match student-athletes with businesses that have a valid business purpose and seek to use the student’s NIL to promote their businesses,” the letter said.
For fans, parents and sportswriters,Edison’s seven-on-seven passing tournament, known as the Battle at the Beach, on Saturday is a key moment in the summer passing season, leading to the start of official football practice at the end of the month.
It’s not about wins and losses on Saturday but seeing which teams and players have made progress in the offseason and getting a first look at transfer students to see how they might fit in. It’s also a sensitive time for coaches trying to keep players happy so they don’t transfer to another school just as the season is about to begin.
The opportunity to see top skill-position players performing for their teams before pads come on next month is always the attraction of the well-run Edison tournament. The 9 a.m. games offer perhaps the best matchups of the day: Edison vs. Santa Margarita, Cathedral vs. St. John Bosco and Servite vs. Mission Viejo. One of those teams almost certainly will be crowned champion by the end of the day.
Edison coach Jeff Grady understands players are fresh and focused at the start of a long day, so that’s the time you learn the most about a team.
4 more days away from our annual Battle at the Beach Tournament as the Pool Play and Bracket Schedules are officially set
— Edison Football ⚡️ (@EdisonChargerFB) July 9, 2025
Mission Viejo, having beaten Mater Dei to win its own tournament last month, gets the favorite’s role behind quarterback Luke Fahey, an Ohio State commit. Santa Margarita will receive lots of attention in its first appearance since Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer was named head coach. There will be lots of focus on quarterbacks, from St. John Bosco’s Koa Malau’ulu to Palos Verdes’ Ryan Rakowski.
Coaches invited to this event know their players are expected to act classy with no fights. The officials use the event to get into shape for the season ahead and try out new officials. Players get to high-five their friends after intense competitions knowing they’re still friends, win or lose.
No one wins an 11-man championship based on seven-on-seven success (linemen are important), but there are so many good receivers and defensive backs in this tournament that it‘s always entertaining to watch and check out if any new players are ready to make an impact.
Just such an opportunity comes in Kobe on Saturday, as Wales look to level the series in their final game of the season.
Wales are aiming to ensure they do not go a full international campaign without a win after suffering nine defeats in 2024-25.
“At the moment we’re in this big losing streak but that one win will give them a bit of confidence to kick on,” said Jones.
“It’s the last week of the season, which is always tough, but there’s a carrot at the end of it.
“They’ve got five weeks off after this now, so they’ve put everything into this last game and hopefully we’ll get the result we want.”
While the players get five weeks off, Jones will be straight back to the day job at Harlequins on Monday morning after having had two stints with Wales during the Six Nations and summer tour.
Jones was brought into the Wales set-up by Warren Gatland, who then left his role after defeat against Italy in Rome in February, with Matt Sherratt taking over as interim head coach.
Jones was retained for the summer tour, with his Harlequins head coach Danny Wilson also brought in on a temporary basis to look after the forwards.
Despite all the trauma, with six defeats and no wins so far while he has been involved, Jones has no regrets about his international return, after playing his final game for Wales in 2014.
“I’ve loved it, it’s been brilliant,” said Jones.
“It’s been just over a decade since I last played for Wales and I loved representing my country.
“Playing for them for 11 years changed my life. The chance to represent them as a coach has been just as special.
“It’s been frustrating. It’s been pretty strange with Gats bringing me in where I had god knows how many questions over whether we get on anymore.
“Next thing he’s gone, so that was strange.
“I have enjoyed it but then I just get straight back into it with Harlequins on Monday and I might be a bit jet-lagged.”
Tired, maybe, but Jones will hope he has the memory of that long-awaited Wales win to give him a boost.
Which, surprisingly, was partly the way coach Mauricio Pochettino wanted it. Because the monthlong tournament was never really about results for the U.S. It was about finding heart, grit, determination and dedication. It was about taking the pulse of his player pool a year before soccer’s biggest event returns to North America.
And those are things not easily measured by results alone.
So while Mexico deservedly won Sunday’s battle 2-1, the larger war, Pochettino believes, rages on.
U.S. defender Chris Richards celebrates with Alex Freeman, Patrick Agyemang, Malik Tillman and Diego Luna after Richards scored against Mexico in the Gold Cup final Sunday.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
“That,” he said after Sunday’s final, “is the way we want to build our journey into the World Cup.”
When Pochettino gathered his team for the tournament in early June, it was missing as many as six first-choice starters for a variety of reasons. Some had club duties, some were injured. Others preferred rest over the honor of playing for their country.
So Pochettino called up a roster that averaged just 25 years of age and 14 players with fewer than five international caps and challenged them to prove they belonged. That was the team that rolled into Sunday’s final unbeaten (barely) in five Gold Cup games. That was the team that entered the final 15 minutes against a veteran Mexico squad even on the scoreboard.
If this was Pochettino’s “C” team, nobody bothered to tell the players.
“It’s an honor,” midfielder Diego Luna, who had played for the U.S. just four times before the Gold Cup, told reporters about wearing the crest. “I think every single one of these players thinks about it the same way I do. It’s the No. 1 dream that we’ve had as kids and we’re going to fight for this to have as many chances to wear it was we can.”
Credit Pochettino for taking the lemons he was handed and turning them into lemonade. After the USMNT’s listless and uninspired performance in last March’s Nations League final four, where it scored just once in back-to-back losses to Panama and Canada, the coach learned the majority of his first-choice lineup planned to pass up the Gold Cup, the team’s final competition matches before the World Cup.
If the U.S. had lost its identity, had lost its way, by the end of the Nations League, the absences of veterans Yunus Musah, Gio Reyna, Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie this summer gave Pochettino an unexpected opportunity to redefine what it meant to be a national team player. He pushed his young, inexperienced roster of fringe national team players to show how much they cared, to show they really wanted to be part of the program.
And it worked.
United States players pose for a team photo before the team’s CONCACAF Gold Cup final soccer match against Mexico in Houston on Sunday.
(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)
Luna thrust himself into contention for a World Cup roster spot through grit and hunger alone. Others such as goalkeeper Matt Freese, midfielders Sebastian Berhalter and Malik Tillman and forward Patrick Agyemang also shone brightly enough that the coach said his roster for his team’s September friendlies with South Korea and Japan, much less the World Cup, is wide open.
“All the American players have the possibility for September to be on the roster,” he said Sunday. “It’s still one year from the World Cup. But now we need to build a roster for September. We need to analyze every single player, see the circumstances, the situations, performance, fitness level.
“Don’t worry. We are people that are very open, and not closed. And who deserves to be [there] will be [there.]”
Pochettino’s message is that desire and national pride are as much a requirement to play for the national team as talent. It’s partly a bluff, of course. He won’t go far in the World Cup with Luna and Berhalter playing in place of Pulisic and McKennie because all the star-spangled celebrations in the world can’t hide the fact the team Pochettino fielded this summer was deeply flawed.
It prepared for the Gold Cup by getting outscored 6-1 in losses to Turkey and Switzerland, running the team’s losing streak to four games, its longest since 2007. The U.S. rebounded with narrow wins over Saudi Arabia and Haiti to advance out of the tournament’s group stage and in the knockout stage it beat Costa Rica on penalty kicks, then had to hold off Guatemala for a one-goal win to reach the final.
Of those six opponents, only Switzerland ranks in the world’s top 20, according to FIFA. Guatemala isn’t even in the top 100. And the loss to Mexico was the fifth in as many games against top 30 teams since Pochettino took over nine months ago.
That won’t get it done in the World Cup.
If heart, effort and belief really do matter, so does talent. That makes Pochettino’s task during the next year a simple one: he must find a way mesh the intangibles developed this summer with the talent he’ll need to win next summer.
As the players shuffled out of Houston’s NRG Stadium after Sunday’s loss, that fusion was already taking place.
“There’s a few non-negotiables now,” defender Chris Richards told reporters. “This was kind of a game-changer. … When the guys come back, these are some things that we have to hold each other accountable for. And hopefully moving forward we can add a little bit more quality to it, as well, and we’re going to be a really tough team to beat.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
MILWAUKEE — Clayton Kershaw has been an All-Star 10 times before.
But no selection surprised him quite like this year’s.
Included on the National League All-Star team as a “Legend Pick” by Commissioner Rob Manfred in recognition of his career accomplishments, Kershaw did not get any advance warning from Manfred or anyone in the league office that he would be in the “Midsummer Classic.”
When manager Dave Roberts gathered his Dodgers team to announce the club’s All-Star selections on Sunday, Kershaw forgot that the “Legend Pick” — which has been used in the past for players such as Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera — was even a thing.
Thus, when Roberts announced Kershaw’s name, the 37-year-old was caught more than a little off-guard — having made just nine starts this season since returning from offseason toe and knee surgeries.
“Obviously, I don’t deserve to get to go this season, haven’t pitched very much,” he deadpanned. “I don’t know if Doc was going for the surprise factor or not. But I had no idea until he said it.”
But by Monday, the meaningfulness of what he described as a “tremendous honor” had also set in, with Kershaw expressing gratitude for what will be his 11th career selection, tied for the most among active players with Mike Trout.
“You never take for granted getting to go to an All-Star Game, regardless of the circumstances,” Kershaw said. “At the end of the day, it’s weird but cool, so I’m just going to enjoy it.”
While Kershaw’s limited workload would normally not warrant an All-Star selection, his stats haven’t been too far off that pace this year: A 4-0 record, 3.43 ERA and 1.254 WHIP in what is the 18th season of his future Hall of Fame career.
“I think there’s some good and some bad,” Kershaw said of his season so far. “I wouldn’t say happy, but I wouldn’t say disappointed either. I would say kind of right in the middle.”
The highlight of the campaign, of course, came in Kershaw’s last start, when he became the 20th pitcher in MLB history to record 3,000 career strikeouts.
But at this stage of his career, Kershaw’s real satisfaction has been with his health — finally past the various back, elbow, shoulder, knee and toe injuries that had plagued him over the last several seasons.
“I think the biggest thing is just the mental toll [that takes on you],” Kershaw said. “Anyone that has been dealing with stuff, I think it’s always in the back of your head. You wake up and you test it and you move around and you test it to see if it hurts, see how bad it hurts. [Now], instead of wondering if you can pitch, it’s just a matter of how you’re going to pitch. I don’t think I took into appreciation the mental toll that takes over time. So to just worry about pitching is nice, for sure.”
It has also allowed Kershaw “to get the reps and go back out and be able to feel OK in between starts to work on some stuff,” he said. “Figure out some different things mechanically and pitch-wise and stuff.”
Long-term, Kershaw still hasn’t decided if this will be his final season.
“I don’t know what is going to happen in the future,” he said. “I really have no idea when it comes to the years beyond this one. So I’m just trying to enjoy it, be part of a really good team this year.”
When it comes to next week’s All-Star Game, he isn’t even sure if he’ll pitch in the showcase exhibition, which will be held at Truist Park in Atlanta.
“I’d love to pitch but I don’t want to take an inning away from somebody who’s never done it before or this is their first year or whatever,” he said. “I’ll enjoy just to hang or pitch or whatever.”
On Monday, Kershaw’s focus was instead on his final start of the first half: A scheduled Tuesday outing against the Milwaukee Brewers and their 23-year-old rookie starlet, Jacob Misiorowski.
Kershaw, 14 years Misiorowski’s senior, laughed when asked what it’s like to be the elder statesman in such high-profile matchups now.
“I saw a couple highlights [of him], know he throws hard,” Kershaw said. “But so does everybody. Except me.”
What would a baseball team in Los Angeles want from a retired artist and designer in New York?
Janet Bennett wasn’t sure.
Generations of Angelenos are familiar with her signature project. You probably have walked right past it. Those colorful tile mosaics that decorate the long corridors toward baggage claim in five terminals at Los Angeles International Airport? She designed them.
You might have memorized the trivia: When you passed the red tiles, you were halfway down the corridor. “Red means halfway” was shorthand for locals in the know, just like “E Ticket” or “the #19 sandwich.”
“It just says L.A. in so many ways,” said Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development.
For the clubhouse walkway, Dodgers executive vice president of planning and development Janet Marie Smith and architect Brenda Levin opted for multiple shades of blue tiles.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers wanted to get in touch with Bennett because they were about to install a similar tile wall at Dodger Stadium. Smith could not find Bennett, but she reached out to someone who had liked an article about Bennett that had been posted on LinkedIn. Same last name, same spelling. Smith crossed her fingers.
Turned out to be a relative of Bennett. The Dodgers sent some sketches of their project and asked Bennett for her thoughts.
“I was a little disappointed I didn’t work the project,” Bennett said over the telephone, chuckling, “but I don’t think I could have done it at this stage.”
“Once we got tile in our head, how could you not think of the LAX walls?” said Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Bennett is 96, happily living one block from Central Park. The LAX project was completed in 1961 — the year before Dodger Stadium opened.
What the Dodgers really were offering was the recognition denied to Bennett six decades ago.
“I realized they just wanted my blessing,” Bennett said. “They wanted the connection. And that was very satisfying.”
And, yes, she had some thoughts for the Dodgers. She wrote them a letter by hand, the old-fashioned way. The letter got lost in the old-fashioned mail, but Bennett’s daughter had thought to take a picture of the letter, and she sent it to the Dodgers via email.
Bennett’s advice for the colors of the tiles?
“Don’t limit it,” she wrote, “to the Dodger blue.”
On game days, Dodgers players take an elevator to the lowest level of Dodger Stadium. As they exit, they look to their right to see the Dodgers’ World Series championship trophies and most valuable player awards, to their left to see the Gold Glove awards.
When they turn toward the clubhouse, they see Cy Young and Silver Slugger and manager of the year awards on the right, rookie of the year awards and then the Dodgers’ retired numbers on the left.
“It’s meant to be uplifting and motivating, and a reminder to everyone — our players included, who take that path — of what a storied franchise this is,” Smith said.
The fans in the fanciest seats, the ones you see on television right behind home plate, can take that path too — but only until they reach the double doors, the ones with “DODGERS CLUBHOUSE” painted above them.
Pass through those doors, and you used to see a gray wall decorated with signage pulled from storage — signs from events held at Dodger Stadium long ago, and others commemorating milestone seasons. As part of the clubhouse renovations last winter, Smith and her team imagined how to freshen up that walkway.
“We wanted to try to get it out of its funk of just being a concrete wall,” she said. “And, once we got tile in our head, how could you not think of the LAX walls?”
Tile mosaic wall designs line departure halls in various LAX terminals.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers’ clubhouse features a tile wall “in the hydrotherapy area,” Smith said. The tiles there are all Dodger blue.
For the clubhouse walkway, Smith and architect Brenda Levin opted for multiple shades of blue tiles, interspersed with white tiles — a decision reinforced when they received Bennett’s suggestion to go beyond Dodger blue. The wall includes more than 714,000 individual tiles, Smith said.
“I think they did an excellent job,” Bennett said. “They got the rhythm of vertical stripes, which has a very athletic look.”
To Smith, a fierce advocate of sports venues reflecting their host cities, the tile wall reflects home.
“In many ways, that is a symbol: not just of L.A., but of ‘Welcome to L.A.’ ” she said. “That felt right to us.
“It’s not screaming at you. But, if you know, you know. We’ve always wanted that area to feel like a ‘Welcome to L.A.’ to our players.”
If you know, you know, but the players may not know. Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, said he did not know the story behind the wall until Smith explained it to him.
“It’s a great little touch,” Roberts said.
Smith said players and team executives have asked about the wall. Many of them did not know about the LAX walls, but she understood why.
“They don’t fly commercial,” she said.
If you merit an obituary in the newspaper, the first sentence generally includes your claim to fame. In 2007, The Times published an obituary with this first sentence: “Charles D. Kratka, an interior designer and graphic artist whose Modernist projects included the mosaic walls in tunnels at Los Angeles International Airport, has died.”
Said Bennett: “I just about freaked out.”
After Bennett had finished the LAX mosaics, she left town. By the time the airport unveiled them, she said, she was in Latin America. Until she saw that Times obituary, it had not occurred to her that anyone else might have gotten the credit for the LAX project.
In the obituary, the airport historian credited Kratka with the design, and so did the director of volunteers at the airport museum. In 2017, so did an official LAX document: “Completed in 1961, Charles Kratka’s mosaic murals have become iconic symbols of Los Angeles International Airport.”
At the start of the Jet Age, when airplane travel was a glamorous affair and even passengers in the cheaper seats enjoyed in-flight meals served with silverware, Bennett said the murals were designed to evoke the wonder of a cross-country trip: blue for the ocean at each end of the corridor, and in between green for the forests, and yellows, oranges and browns for farmland, prairies and deserts.
Tile mosaic wall designs line departure halls in various LAX terminals.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Bennett freely admits that Kratka was involved in the project. The city hired Pereira and Luckman as architects for the LAX expansion, and Kratka was the firm’s head of interior design.
“He was my boss,” Bennett said.
Bennett said the mosaic design was hers, although she said she did not recall whether she had chosen to use glass for the tiles.
“Everything from that point on was mine,” she said.
Bennett and her family have pushed for LAX to recognize her as the designer. Airport officials acknowledge Bennett’s participation in the project but, amid a search for records from six decades ago and without Kratka to provide his version of events, they believe a conclusive determination would be difficult. And, back in the day, credit was more commonly attributed to a firm rather than to an individual designer.
When I asked for a statement saying whom LAX currently credits with the design, an airport spokeswoman said, “LAX has no official comment.”
At LAX, there is no sign crediting anyone — not Bennett, not Kratka, not Pereira and Luckman, not anyone else — for the murals. However, the Dodgers have given Bennett her due at Dodger Stadium, on a sign directly across from their tile wall.
“This mosaic wall draws inspiration from architect Janet Bennett’s iconic mosaic murals at Los Angeles International Airport,” the text begins, “that transformed a transit space into a work of art.”
As players continue to ask the Grand Slams for more prize money, the chair of the All England Club has suggested those questions would be better directed to the regular tour events.
Representatives of top 10 players met officials at Wimbledon last week to discuss increasing prize money and having a greater say in the running of the Grand Slams.
The Professional Tennis Players’ Association, meanwhile, has begun legal action against the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation and the International Tennis Integrity Agency.
It claims prize money is artificially restricted and the 11-month season is “unsustainable”.
Players have frequently pointed to the vast revenues generated by the Grand Slams, and feel they deserve a significantly larger return.
“For a lot of players, it’s playing for Slams that provides the income for [financing a year on] the whole tour – so the sport needs to look at itself,” Debbie Jevans, chair of the All England Club, told BBC Sport.
“Something like golf, where they earn the majority of money on the tour and less at the majors, is flipped over in tennis.
“As much as we’re asked to look at ourselves, I do think the tour events need to look at themselves as well.”
Edson Álvarez scored a tiebreaking goal in the 77th minute after a video review reversed an offside call, and Mexico beat the United States 2-1 on Sunday night for its record 10th CONCACAF Gold Cup title.
Chris Richards put the U.S. ahead in the fourth minute, heading in a Sebastian Berhalter free kick for the second time in the tournament, but Raúl Jiménez tied the score in the 27th with his third goal of this Gold Cup.
Mexico was awarded the free kick when Diego Luna fouled Alexis Vega on a flank. Johan Vásquez flicked the restart across the goal mouth and Álvarez burst past the defense, redirecting the ball from three yards just inside Matt Freese’s far post. While the play was initially called offside, the goal was awarded by the VAR, and Mexico defended its title from 2023 while improving to 6-2 in Gold Cup finals against the U.S.
Patrick Agyemang had a chance two minutes into stoppage time but he didn’t make good contact on his short-range shot that was blocked by goalkeeper Luis Malagón.
“We’re disappointed obviously to not come away with a win,” U.S. captain Tim Ream said.
A sellout crowd of 70,925 at NRG Stadium was about 70% pro-Mexico and booed U.S. players when they walked out for pregame warmups. Mexico dominated with 60% possession and had 12 corner kicks to none for the Americans.
This was the last competitive match for the U.S. and Mexico before co-hosting next year’s World Cup with Canada.
The U.S., which has seven Gold Cup titles but none since 2021, used a starting lineup with only a handful of players currently projected as World Cup starters, missing regulars because of vacation, injuries and the Club World Cup.
Coach Mauricio Pochettino used their absence to evaluate players who could push for starting jobs during the friendlies this fall and next spring, and Luna, Agyemang and Freese emerged as contenders for World Cup roster spots.
Richards put the U.S. in front when he headed Berhalter’s free kick from about 40 yards off the crossbar. The ball bounced straight down and just crossed the goal line.
Jiménez scored his 42nd international goal, third-most in Mexican history. He burst past the defense and one-timed the pass from Marcel Ruiz, beating Freese from about 10 yards on a shot that might have nicked Ream.
Jiménez celebrated by grabbing a Mexico No. 20 jersey with “DIOGO J” in honor of Diogo Jota, his former Wolverhampton teammate who died in a car crash Thursday in Spain. Jiménez ran to a corner, sat down with the jersey and mimicked playing a video game.
It was 7 a.m., and Fremont High’s Andrew Williams was sleeping at his grandmother’s house in South Los Angeles when she woke him up to tell him a USC football coach wanted to speak to him on her cellphone before he went to school.
Williams will never forget that moment on Feb. 12. Defensive line coach Eric Henderson was calling to officially offer him a scholarship to play for the Trojans.
“You don’t believe it until you see it,” he said. “When he told me in his tone and how serious he was, I knew it was real. It was destiny calling. It took me a couple hours to reflect what was going on. I was stunned.”
By lunch time in the school quad, while surrounded by friends and classmates, the 6-foot-5, 220-pound Williams was calling Henderson to tell him, “I’m ready to become a Trojan.”
Henderson replied, “Hold on. I have someone who wants to speak to you.”
Coach Lincoln Riley joined the called.
“He said, ‘We’re so excited to have you here.’ It was genuine,” he said.
Fremont High senior Andrew Williams has shown his versatility as a defensive end, tight end and fullback.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
Williams was so unknown in the recruiting world before committing to USC last February that he said, “I wasn’t mentioned by any recruiting sites. I had no stars. Honestly it didn’t make me feel any different. I was the same player before the stars and without the stars. Most people still don’t know about me.”
He said a three-touchdown, 10-tackle performance as a junior against L.A. Jordan last fall while playing fullback, defensive end and receiver caught the attention of Colorado State assistant Chad Savage, who later joined USC as an assistant.
Recruiting players from inner city Los Angeles used to be a priority for USC and UCLA. Fremont grad Ricky Bell, a star running back for USC, has his name on the Pathfinders’ stadium. Fremont grad Mark Bradford was a star receiver at Stanford. Crenshaw has sent numerous players to USC and UCLA. Dorsey’s head coach, Stafon Johnson, was a standout running back for the Trojans.
But a drop in talent in the City Section has made identifying potential success stories more difficult. Williams, who has a 3.8 grade point average and plans to graduate in December, said he hopes to be part of the start of a rebirth in championing players from the inner city.
“I’m comfortable with people looking up to me,” he said. “Somebody in the city is actually doing it. Just as I can do it, so can you.”
He doesn’t doubt the road ahead remains difficult.
“I feel I was one of the least privileged kids,” he said. “To have the opportunity I’m doing now. … If I was another 6-5 kid that wasn’t from South Central, I would have been known. They would have shot me up the rankings. They don’t show that in the city I love. That’s cool. That’s for them to keep sleeping on us.”
Living 10 blocks from Fremont with his grandmother since he was 7, Williams said he didn’t discover football until his freshman year. He said he had too much free time until reaching high school and finding something to focus on.
“Have you heard the saying, ‘People get stuck and lost in the system?’ People become a product of their environment,” he said. “I needed time to figure my way out. I came to a realization when I came to high school that something was going to have to happen.”
With his height, athleticism — he can dunk — and agility — he also ran track — USC will watch him this fall to see whether his position will be tight end or defensive end. He’s a raw, intriguing prospect with lots of room to become stronger.
First-year Fremont coach Derek Benton was the coach at Jordan last season when Williams had his big game.
“He made his mark against me, then I knew and heard about him and it was one of the attractions coming here,” he said. “I’m very impressed with Andrew as a person.”
All Williams wanted was an opportunity to get a degree in college. He wants to study communications and learn about sports broadcasting. He said he didn’t need to visit multiple colleges or seek attention from social media. The USC offer was enough.
“Football teaches you can’t expect results without work,” he said. “People expect things in life, but they don’t put the work in. That’s a lesson football teaches you. It teaches unity, leadership, how to treat others.”
He has been rewarded for making good decisions and surrounding himself with people who want to see him succeed. All he’s ever wanted was a chance to prove himself.
Glenavon’s 16-year-old forward Chris Atherton has left Mourneview Park to join Chelsea.
The Northern Ireland Under-17 international made headlines in September 2022 when he became the youngest senior footballer in the United Kingdom at 13 years and 329 days old.
The teenager, who joined the Glenavon academy at four years old, broke the senior record when he came on as a second-half substitute for the Lurgan Blues during a 6-0 win over Dollingstown in the BetMcLean Cup.
Atherton beat the record set by Jordan Allan, who played for Airdrie aged 14 years and 191 days.
He was a first-team regular for Glenavon throughout the 2024-25 season, scoring his first Irish Premiership goal against Loughgall in March, as Paddy McLaughlin’s side finished 10th in the table.
Glenavon announced his exit on X, with a post stating: “Chris Atherton – blue still the colour.
“We can confirm that academy product Chris Atherton has left the club to sign for Chelsea We wish him the best in his career & hope he and his family won’t be strangers at MVP.”
Poised to set a record for player popularity and elite production, the Dodgers had eight finalists for the National League starting lineup in the 2025 All-Star Game as voted by fans.
Voters had 48 hours to choose between the two players at each position who had accumulated the most votes over the last month in what MLB called Phase 1. Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani already was in the starting lineup because he led NL players in Phase 1 votes.
The record of five starting players held by the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, the 1956 and 1957 Cincinnati Redlegs, and the 1939 New York Yankees still stands. The Dodgers fell short, despite the bevy of finalists.
It is the ninth All-Star berth for Freeman, who is batting .308 with 21 doubles, and the third for Smith, who leads the NL with a .320 batting average and .419 on-base percentage. Both players have 10 home runs.
Eleven-time All-Star Mike Trout was the only Angels player among the American League finalists, and he did not finish among the top three outfielders in Phase 2. Thousand Oaks High product and Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson was voted the AL starter at shortstop, beating out Bobby Witt Jr.
Finalists not voted as starters have no guarantee of making the All-Star Game as a reserve. Pitchers and reserves for the 32-man rosters will be determined by a vote of MLB players and the commissioner’s office.
Complete rosters of 20 position players and 12 pitchers will be announced at 2 p.m. PDT Sunday on ESPN. The All-Star Game will take place July 15 at Truist Park in Atlanta. Managers Dave Roberts of the Dodgers and Aaron Boone of the Yankees have no say in the selections.
The teams that boasted five starters included Hall of Famers and also lesser-known players.
The ’39 Yankees had All-Star starters Joe DiMaggio, George Selkirk, Bill Dickey, Red Rolfe and Joe Gordon. Red Ruffing was named the starting pitcher by manager Joe McCarthy, making the ’39 Yankees the only team with six starting players.
The most recent team to land five All-Star starters was the ’76 Cincinnati Reds, known as the Big Red Machine, led by future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan. Pete Rose, Dave Concepción and George Foster also started.
The Reds were called the Redlegs from 1953 to 1959 because of a period of intense anti-communism in the U.S. To distance themselves from the Red Scare, the Reds temporarily changed their name.
Cincinnati fans loved their team by any name, casting a deluge of last-minute votes two years in a row that eventually required intervention from MLB commissioner Ford Frick and caused MLB to eliminate fan voting for more than a decade.
Frick stood by the voting in ’56 despite complaints that five Redlegs were voted in, saying, “Everybody had a chance to vote, so there should be no squawks.”
A year later he changed his tune when last-minute voting — remember, all votes were handwritten and manually tabulated — resulted in an all-Redlegs lineup. Frick swiftly stepped in and replaced three Redlegs with future Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.
Redlegs fans were incensed, some making an effigy of the commissioner and driving it through Cincinnati tied to a truck. The reaction from players was more muted, with Redlegs center fielder Gus Bell saying, “I’m not exactly burned up about being replaced by Willie.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (8-6, 2.51 earned-run average) of the Dodgers is a strong candidate to make the NL pitching staff. At least one Angels player must be chosen as a reserve or pitcher, and the nod could go to Trout, who has 13 home runs but is batting .230.
Other possibilities for the resurgent Angels are catcher Logan O’Hoppe (17 home runs), shortstop Zach Neto (12 home runs, team-high 2.7 WAR), outfielder Jo Adell (18 homers, 44 runs batted in) and starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi (2.79 ERA in 96.2 innings).
MLB All-Star Starting Lineups
National League C: Will Smith, Dodgers 1B: Freddie Freeman, Dodgers 2B: Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks SS: Francisco Lindor, Mets 3B: Manny Machado, Padres OF: Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cubs OF: Kyle Tucker, Cubs OF: Ronald Acuña Jr., Atlanta Braves DH: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers
American League C: Cal Raleigh, Mariners 1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays 2B: Gleyber Torres, Tigers SS: Jacob Wilson, Athletics 3B: Jose Ramirez, Guardians OF: Aaron Judge, Yankees OF: Riley Greene, Tigers OF: Javier Baez, Tigers DH: Ryan O’Hearn, Orioles
The Galaxy continued to stumble through their terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season last week, taking just a point from two games against teams on the fringe of the playoff race.
That left the reigning MLS champions with just one win and nine points from 20 games. If they continue at this pace, they’ll set modern-era league records for most losses and fewest points while shattering virtually every team record for futility.
The team has done little to help itself off the pitch either. While LAFC and Angel City, Southern California’s two other pro soccer teams, were quick to issue statements standing with fans during last month’s heavy-handed immigration raids, the Galaxy’s silence was deafening.
That timidity angered two of the team’s main supporters groups, who canceled viewing parties, travel to road matches and other game-related events. The average attendance of 21,594, according to worldfootball.net, is off more than 17% from last year and is the Galaxy’s lowest for a non-COVID season since 2014.
Then there’s the coach, Greg Vanney, who took the team to a title after one of the worst seasons in franchise history in 2023, but is digging well below those depths this season.
It’s a plunge from grace with just one precedent in the history of U.S. pro sports: the 1998 Florida Marlins, who won just a third of their games and finished a distant last a year after winning their first World Series. Yet in many ways the Galaxy’s demise is much worse.
In 1998, the Marlins surrendered before the season started, returning just two starters from their championship team. The Galaxy still have 10 of the 14 players they used in December’s MLS Cup final.
The Galaxy have offered various excuses…er, explanations…for their humiliating demise, none of which hold much water.
Before the season had ever started, the team was saying bonuses and other costs associated with the championship had made the price of victory too high under the stingy MLS salary cap. To get under the cap, the Galaxy had to trade MLS Cup MVP Gastón Brugman, midfielder Mark Delgado, defender Jalen Neal and forward Dejan Joveljic, the leading scorer in the playoffs.
But every MLS Cup winner has had to make similar changes and three of the previous eight champions returned to the title game the following year. All but one of the eight posted a winning record.
Next the Galaxy blamed injuries, especially the torn anterior cruciate ligament that has kept midfielder Riqui Puig, the team’s best player, out all season. But Puig was injured in last November’s Western Conference final and the team won the MLS Cup without him. The Galaxy also had the whole offseason to replace him.
It’s true that a rash of injuries early in the season sidelined more than half a dozen starters at one time or another. But other teams had injuries too and even when the Galaxy have been at full strength, as they have been for most of the schedule, they haven’t won.
So when went wrong and how can it be fixed? The first question is easier to answer than the second.
The Galaxy had a magical year in 2024, going unbeaten at Dignity Health Sports Park and matching a modern-era franchise records for wins with 19. Every key player had arguably the best season of his career. Four of them — Joveljic, Puig, Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil — finished in double digits for goals. That had never happened in MLS.
Nor had it ever happened for two of the four players. Before last season, only Paintsil and Joveljic had scored more than eight goals in a season. In fact, Pec’s 16 goals in 2024 was double his previous best and his 12 assists were three times better.
This season Pec and Paintsil have combined for four scores and three assists, as many goals as they scored together in one playoff game last fall.
And they weren’t the only ones far exceeding expectations.
Captain Maya Yoshida started all 39 MLS matches, including playoffs, last year and led the league in minutes played. Both figures were career highs; he’s missed five starts already this season.
Goalkeeper John McCarthy started a career-high 37 games, stopped nearly 74% of the shots he faced — his best mark in a season with more than 11 MLS starts — and had a 1.41 goals-against average.
He’s lost his starting job this season.
It’s not unusual for a championship team to see multiple players have breakout seasons at the same time. What is unusual is the Galaxy have seen multiple important players have career-worst seasons at the same time.
McCarthy’s save percentage is under 60% for the first time in a decade and his goals-against average of 2.36 is a career worst. Pec and Paintsil are on pace for their fewest goal contributions since 2021-22. And Colombian center back Emiro Garcés has become more a liability than an asset.
As a result, the team has the fewest wins, has given up the most goals and has the worst goal differential in the league.
Then there’s Vanney. A defender on the Galaxy’s original team in 1996, Vanney coached Toronto FC to the only treble in MLS history in 2017, then returned to L.A. in 2021 charged with reviving a team that had made one playoff appearance in five seasons. Instead he has a losing record in four-plus seasons and in 2023 he had the worst full season for a Galaxy coach, winning just eight games, a record he figures to shatter this season.
Yet the team rewarded him with a multiyear contract extension in mid-May, when the Galaxy were 0-10-3. It’s hard to imagine another team in a first-tier league anywhere in the world giving a coach with a winless record a three-year contract extension.
In many ways this season is reminiscent of 2023, when the supporters organized boycotts and paid to have banners flown over the stadium calling for the sacking of president Chris Klein and technical director Jovan Kirovski. Amid the turmoil, the Galaxy matched a full-season franchise low in wins but they also replaced Klein and Kirovski with general manager Will Kuntz, who won an MLS Cup in his first full season with the club. It was the biggest one-season turnaround in MLS history.
So what can be done to fix that this time? Apparently very little because Kuntz has much less room to maneuver now than he did then.
The Galaxy payroll of $22.9 million is fifth-highest in MLS and all three of his designated players — Puig, Pec and Paintsil — are signed through the 2027 season, as is Julian Aude, an under-22 initiative signing.
The Galaxy are hoping Puig’s expected return late this summer sparks at least a modest revival but that won’t be enough since Paintsil increasingly seems lost, his confidence shattered, and newcomers Matheus Nascimento and Lucas Sanabria have so far failed to live up to their promise.
If the Galaxy had a magic season in 2024, this one has been cursed. And it’s a spell that shows no sign of lifting.
At least that’s what the public seems to think. The Indiana Fever superstar received a record 1,293,526 fan votes for the 2025 WNBA All-Star game.
Her fellow players, however, don’t seem to agree. Clark finished in ninth place among WNBA guards in player voting.
Nonetheless, Clark will serve as a team captain for the July 19 event that will take place at her team’s home arena, Gainbridge Fieldhouse. That honor is determined solely by fan votes, with Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx named as the other team captain after receiving 1,176,020 votes.
Clark finished third among guards in media All-Star voting. Her cumulative weighted score (determined by 50% fan voting, 25% player voting and 25% media voting) was 3.5.
That tied her for second among guards with New York’s Sabrina Ionescu (fifth in fan voting, second in media voting, second in player voting). Dallas Wings rookie Paige Bueckers received the top weighted score among guards (3.25) after finishing second in fan voting, fifth in media voting and fourth in player voting.
Although Clark’s ranking in the players’ poll might seem shockingly low, some perspective might be necessary. Each WNBA player receives one All-Star ballot on which they are allowed to cast a vote for up to four guards and six frontcourt players.
That means that no one wrote on a ballot — or even had the opportunity to do so — that Clark is the league’s ninth best guard; instead, she was left out of enough players’ top four that her cumulative score was the ninth-highest among guards.
In addition, it is unknown how many players even cast their ballots or how seriously those who did took the matter.
Still, some people have taken the results from the player voting as evidence of the ongoing narrative that many WNBA players are jealous of Clark and the credit she often receives for the league’s massive surge in popularity over the last two seasons.
“Absolutely PURE JEALOUSY that @WNBA players voted Caitlin Clark the 9th best guard,” legendary basketball announcer Dick Vitale wrote on X. “Some day they will realize what she Has done for ALL of the players in the WNBA. Charted planes – increase in salaries-sold out crowds – improved TV Ratings.”
Vitale added in another post, “No doubt she is THE BEST – thing to happen to the WNBA.”
Former NFL quarterback and current sports commentator Robert Griffin III wrote a lengthy post on X about the matter.
“Players are supposed to get it right more than the fans and the media because they know what it takes and what it looks like,” Griffin wrote. “Not all WNBA Players are to blame and not all of them hate or are jealous of Caitlin Clark. But, the players that voted her low got it wrong in this case and some WNBA players are letting their jealously of Caitlin Clark get in the way of greatness for the entire WNBA.”
Clark has struggled with injuries in her second WNBA season, having sat out five games because of a left quadriceps strain and Indiana’s last two games because of a groin strain. She will also miss the Fever’s game against the Lynx in the Commissioner’s Cup final Tuesday night.
Having played in nine games so far in 2025, Clark is averaging 18.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 8.9 assists with a league-high 5.9 turnovers.
The top 10 guards and top 10 frontcourt players in the weighted scores were announced as All-Star starters on Monday. Sparks guard Kelsey Plum made the cut after finishing sixth in the fan vote, sixth in the media vote and 16th in the player vote. Clark’s longtime on-court rival Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky will start in the frontcourt after finishing fifth in the fan vote, 12th in the media vote and 12th in the player vote.
Clark and Collier will draft their respective All-Star teams from that group of starters plus 13 reserves who will be chosen by the WNBA coaches and announced Sunday.
The Lakers lost a key role player when forward Dorian Finney-Smith agreed to a deal with the Houston Rockets, but they quickly moved onward by agreeing to a deal with forward Jake LaRavia when NBA free agency opened Monday afternoon.
According to people not authorized to speak on the matter, Finney-Smith agreed to a four-year, $53-million deal with the Rockets. Finney-Smith had opted out of his $15.3-million deal with the Lakers.
The Lakers kept moving forward by getting wing player LaRavia to agree to a deal for two years and $12 million. The 6-7 LaRavia averaged 6.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists and shot 47.5% from the field, 42.3% from three-point range with Memphis and Sacramento last season.
The Lakers acquired Finney-Smith from the Brooklyn Nets in December for three second-round picks and players. He was close to Luka Doncic from their time together in Dallas and Finney-Smith was a big contributor for the Lakers during the season, someone Lakers coach JJ Redick leaned on to play multiple positions and to be a defensive stopper.
Lakers superstar LeBron James will once again make NBA history by playing in his 23rd NBA season.
James exercised his player option for $52.6 million to play for the Lakers during the 2025-26 season, his agent and CEO of Klutch Sports Rich Paul told The Times on Sunday morning.
James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, had been tied with Vince Carter for the most seasons played in the NBA at 22. This will be James’ eighth season with the Lakers.
James, 40, is 50 games away from breaking Hall of Famer Robert Parish’s record for the most games played in the regular season.
James averaged 24.4 points per game last season, 8.2 assists and 7.8 rebounds.
Fellow Laker Dorian Finney-Smith reportedly declined his $15.3-million player option and will pursue free agency, a person with knowledge of his decision told The Times. Finney-Smith, who is coming off a strong season with the Lakers, is expected to be pursued by multiple teams. He could still return to the Lakers. ESPN was first to report Finney-Smith’s decision.
Last week, Austin Reaves declined the team’s maximum offer of four years for $89 million, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
Reaves, 27, still has two years left on his deal, for $13.9 million next season and $14.9 million in the 2026-27 season, and he holds a player option for the last year of his deal.
Lakers forward LeBron James (23) and teammate Austin Reaves react to a referee’s call during a 2025 NBA playoff game against Minnesota.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
He was third on the Lakers in scoring last season, averaging career-highs in scoring (20.2), assists (5.8), rebounds (4.5) and minutes per game (34.9). He shot 46% from the field and 37.7% from three-point range.
With the James and Smith player option questions resolved Sunday, the Lakers are focused on filling out their roster. They added an athletic wing player when they acquired Adou Thiero in a trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who drafted him with the 36th pick in the second round.
The most pressing need for the Lakers remains a center, and they’ll have to look into free agency or via trade to acquire one.
The Lakers have the taxpayer mid-level exception of about $5.65 million to spend.
“As I said at the end of the year, we know one of the things we have to address is the center position and that’s clearly going to be one of our focuses as we begin the free-agency period,” Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ president of basketball operations, told Spectrum SportsNet after the second round of the draft Thursday. “… “So, we’re looking forward to just putting in the hard work and making sure we take care of all the needs on the roster to give [Lakers coach] JJ [Redick] the tools he needs for this team to be great next season.”
The message was loud and clear when Netflix‘s Korean thriller “Squid Game” arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children’s games to the death while uber-wealthy spectators bet on their odds of survival. The show’s masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, concealed spectator box, chomping on cigars and chortling as player after player met a gruesome death. The Korean-language show became the streamer’s most watched series ever.
Comeuppance for the hideously affluent seemed imminent and likely at the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). The winner of Season 1’s “Squid Game” deserved vengeance after surviving a series of horrific scenarios — a hopscotch-type match played on a fragile glass bridge above a deadly chasm, a red light-green light contest where players who moved at the wrong time were “eliminated” by machine gun fire. He watched as good people were killed by pink guards, other contestants and their own stupid actions.
But no. The last six “Squid Game” episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did something entirely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of timely, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the rest of us, the other 99% who aren’t Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a lethal game of double dutch with two giant mechanical children swinging a 10-ton metal rod in place of a jump rope? A lot, apparently.
“Squid Game” shows that under the right circumstances, regular folks are just as greedy and morally corrupt as the obscenely prosperous, no matter if their money problems stem from unforeseen medical bills, wanton gambling or generational poverty. Press the little guy or gal hard enough and they’re just as ruthless as the mogul that’s suppressing them.
The VIPs in “Squid Game” Season 3, who watch as the contestants trample one another.
(Dong-won Han / NohJu Han / Netflix)
Season 3 picks up exactly where 2 left off. Gi-hun, who’d found his way back in the clandestine gaming complex (situated inside a mountain on a remote island), is Player 456 again among a new round of contestants. He’d planned to infiltrate the operation from inside, staging a coup against the VIPs and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) who run the games. But now it’s clear he’s failed. He’s cornered by guards, the players who fought alongside him are dead, and he’s thrown back in with the remaining players, many of whom survived because they’re the most craven of the group.
Free and fair elections are at the heart of every democracy, or so “Squid Game” reminds us each time the bedraggled players are asked for their vote regarding the next round: Continue to compete and thin the herd for a larger reward or stop and split their winnings with their fellow contestants? Majority rules, and each time the group opt to sacrifice their lives — and everyone else’s — in pursuit of money. Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has spoken about his dwindling faith in humanity as it relates to his concerns about South Korea’s democracy, and you’ll hear him loud and clear in Season 3: Voting is power, but look what happens when the population increasingly puts its own self-interest above that of the greater good. It’s a scenario that should be recognizable to Americans by now.
“Squid Game” Season 3 takes that idea to the extreme, and quite fearlessly, Hwang puts the series to bed without punishing the rich. Instead he dares to lay bare a truth that’s become all too apparent of late: Wealth wins over morality and money trumps accountability. Nice guys not only finish last, they wind up pulverized like everyone else below a certain tax bracket, no matter their dedication toward humanity.
The Korean show’s run has ended, but not before a finale that alludes to a Hollywood sequel. The episode, set in Los Angeles, shows a familiar scene. A down-and-out man is approached by a mysterious, well-dressed figure who uses a simple kid’s game to test his want of money against his tolerance for pain and humiliation.
Those who’ve watched “Squid Game” will recognize it as the beginning of Gi-hun’s journey, which ended with a sliver of redemption in an abyss of darkness. The mysterious figure appears to be a recruiter for a new, English-language “Squid Game.” She’s played by an A-list celebrity — Cate Blanchett — operating in a city renowned for its self-involvement and privilege. “Squid Game” has a whole new playing field.
For Ken Holland, the Kings’ decidedly old-school general manager, new isn’t necessarily better. Take the NHL draft, for example.
Holland presided over more than a quarter-century of drafts with the Detroit Red Wings and Edmonton Oilers, and they were generally held in one place, with everyone from the executives doing the drafting to the players being drafted on site.
On Friday, for the first time in a non-pandemic environment, the draft was conducted semi-remotely, with the top 93 draft-eligible players and their families filling some of the seats in the half-empty Peacock Theater in Los Angeles while team representatives made their selections from their home markets.
And whatever the league was attempting to accomplish with the decentralized format, other than saving on travel, it didn’t work.
After each pick was announced on a giant video board that took up two-thirds of the theater’s massive stage, players made their way up the aisle to be greeted by Commissioner Gary Bettman. They then pulled on a team jersey and hat before being led into the “Draft House” — a small virtual reality room in the center of the stage — for what amounted to a congratulatory Zoom call with the club’s brass.
The Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles hosts the NHL draft.
(Juan Ocampo / NHLI via Getty Images)
The young men were celebrating the biggest moment of their lives yet they came off like Dorothy speaking to the Wizard of Oz. Much of it was awkward, especially when James Hagens, the eighth selection, was left waving at Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney after the audio in the Bruins’ war room in Boston went mute. That was just one of multiple technical glitches that included echoes and timing delays that left players and executives talking over one another.
When it became obvious the painfully slow-paced event would plod past 4½ hours, the Draft House was closed to some teams.
Brady Martin, the fifth pick, didn’t even bother to come to L.A. So when Nashville announced his selection — via a celebrity video taped at a golf course — the NHL showed a video of Martin working on his family’s farm. Russian goaltender Pyotr Andreyanov wouldn’t even get that treatment. When he was announced as the 20th overall pick, the NHL had nothing to show, making Andreyanov the first no-show of the no-show draft.
Matthew Schaefer, a 17-year-old defenseman from Hamilton, Canada,, who was taken with the No. 1 pick by the New York Islanders, said being part of video draft did not spoil his big day.
Matthew Schaefer stands between Michael Misa, left, and Anton Frondell after being selected 1-2-3, respectively, in the NHL draft at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
“I’m just honored to be picked,” said Schaefer who cried, alongside his dad and brother, when his name was called. “I dreamt about it my whole life. It’s such an honor. Especially the first pick overall.”
For Holland, however, none of that counts as progress.
“I’m old and I’m old fashioned. So I like the old way,” said the Kings general manager, whose view was shared by other GMs around the league. “You draft some player in the sixth round and all of a sudden you hear ‘yay!’ way up in the corner. It’s him, it’s his family, and they’re all excited to hear [his] name announced by an NHL team.
“This weekend, to me, is about the young players.”
Aside from the technical difficulties, the actual draft went largely to form. The Ducks, as expected, took Roger McQueen, an 18-year-old forward from Saskatchewan, with their top pick, the 10th overall selection. The Kings, meanwhile, traded their first pick, No. 24 overall, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. After moving down seven spots they took right-handed-shooting defenseman Henry Brzustewicz, 18, a Michigan native, with the penultimate pick of the first day.
Round two through seven of the draft will be conducted Saturday.
Roger McQueen, second from right, poses for photos with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, right, and actors Joshua Jackson, left, and Marguerite Moreau, second from left, after being drafted by the Ducks at No. 10 overall.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
The Ducks, who had a top-10 pick for a seventh straight year, see the 6-foot-5 McQueen as a raw talent who can develop into a top-line center.
“He has a big body. But what goes along with that is his skill and skating ability,” said general manager Pat Verbeek, whose team has 10 picks this weekend.
For the Kings, this draft was the first public move in what could be an intense couple of weeks. Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and winger Andrei Kuzmenko are unrestricted free agents and the team would like to re-sign both before they hit the open market Tuesday.
“If we re-sign Gavrikov, there’s not going to be a ton of change,” Holland said. “If we don’t, then there’s going to be change.”
Gavrikov, 29, emerged as a solid presence on the blue line, playing a career-high 82 games and posting the best goals-against average of the 17 defensemen to play at least 1,500 minutes. Former Kings GM Rob Blake made Gavrikov a contract offer last March, said Holland, who has since sweetened the deal twice. Replacing him, the GM said, could require a couple of signings.
Kuzmenko, 29, reenergized the offense after coming over from Philadelphia at the trade deadline, with the Kings going 17-5 and averaging nearly four goals a game down the stretch.
Kings fans cheer after Henry Brzustewicz is drafted by the team at No. 31 overall.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
“We like Kuzmenko. Kuzmenko likes it here; he likes his role,” Holland said. “I’m talking to him. I talked two, three, four times this week with his agent. So we’ll see.”
Signing both players would put a big dent in the Kings’ $21.7 million in salary-cap space.
“We have a lot of cap space but it doesn’t take much and it’s gone,” Holland said. “We’ve got to figure out how we want to spend our money and they need to figure out how much money they can get.”
Aside from Gavrikov and Kuzmenko, the Kings don’t have many loose ends to tie up. The team is confident it can get forward Alex Laferriere, a restricted free agent, to agree to a short-term deal and it has to decide whether to re-sign David Rittich, an unrestricted free agent, as the backup to starting goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper.
Two players who could be moving on are forward Tanner Jeannot and defenseman Jordan Spence, both of whom are looking for more ice time and may have to leave to get it.
Olivier Giroud is parting ways with LAFC after one disappointing year with the club.
The 38-year-old Giroud and LAFC announced the decision Friday on social media. He will play in his final match Sunday night at home against Vancouver.
After scoring only five goals in 37 matches for LAFC, Giroud will become a free agent after his departure. He is widely expected to join Lille, which finished fifth in the French league last season, on a free transfer.
“I want to thank all of the fans, my teammates and the staff at LAFC for making this an enjoyable stop in my career,” Giroud said in a statement. “I am happy to have played a part in the success of LAFC. From winning a trophy last season to participating in the Club World Cup, this has been a great experience in LA for me and my family.”
Giroud joined LAFC in July 2024 as a designated player after a long European career highlighted by prolific tenures with Arsenal and Chelsea. The top goal-scorer in the history of France’s national team was expected to provide dynamic offense alongside MLS stars and fellow Frenchmen Denis Bouanga and Hugo Lloris.
Instead, Giroud clearly struggled to adapt to the MLS game and to LAFC’s counter-attacking style under coach Steve Cherundolo. LAFC also failed to figure out ways to involve Giroud in the offense consistently, unable to provide service to one of the sport’s most dangerous finishers earlier in his career.
Giroud usually played as a substitute for LAFC, and he didn’t score his first MLS goal until last April 19. He did find the net in big moments, scoring in the U.S. Open Cup final last season and in the Leagues Cup final.
“Olivier has been an exemplary professional during his time at LAFC,” general manager John Thorrington said. “He brought humility and a winning mentality that helped elevate everyone around him. Olivier has been a tremendous ambassador for the club on and off the field. We are grateful for his contributions.”
LAFC is suddenly a team in full transition after a winless three-game run at the Club World Cup earlier this month. Cherundolo already has announced he will leave the club to move back to Germany after the season, and LAFC could be down to Bouanga as its only designated player by next month.
LAFC added Dutch winger Javairô Dilrosun on loan from Club América earlier this month, but the loan is only through July 24. Dilrosun replaced Cengiz Ünder, whose disappointing MLS tenure ended this month.
LAFC’s lengthy pursuit of Antoine Griezmann also came up fruitless earlier this month when the French star extended his contract with Atlético Madrid through 2027.
LAFC (7-4-5) still sits sixth in the Western Conference standings with two or three games in hand on every club above it, and it has an infusion of cash from beating América in a play-in match to reach the Club World Cup.
This article contains many spoilers for Season 3 of Netflix’s “Squid Game.”
“Squid Game” is a twisty, twisted thriller, with ordinary, financially stressed people playing children’s games to the death for the amusement of the hidden wealthy. Beneath that surface, creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk has been embedding sociopolitical commentary amid the shock and awe of protagonist Gi-hun’s (Lee Jung-jae) personal roller-coaster ride; the characters’ desperation as the saga ends forces those messages to poke through the slick, candy-colored exterior.
“It was a result of elevation of the themes and stories,” said Hwang of those ideas becoming more clearly voiced. They “became more upfront and intense just as a natural course of the story unfolding.”
The global phenomenon, still Netflix’s most-watched non-English show ever (its first two seasons are No. 1 and 2 on the streamer’s all-time list, with nearly 600 million views to date, according to Netflix), ends on its own terms with the release of its third and final season Friday. And what an arc everyman Gi-hun will have completed. How better to represent Hwang’s themes of end-stage, winners-and-losers capitalism, with its warping, destructive power, and how the ill-intentioned can exploit democracy’s flaws, than to depict an ordinary person buffeted by the unseen hand of pain for profit?
“You can say this is a story of those who have become losers of the game, and also those of us who are shaken to our core because of the chaotic political landscape,” said Hwang, who with Lee, spoke via an interpreter on a video call earlier this month from New York. “I wanted to focus in Season 3 on how in this world, where incessant greed is always fueled, it’s like a jungle — the strong eating the weak, where people climb higher by stepping on other people’s heads.”
Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun in final season of Netflix’s “Squid Game.”
(No Ju-han / Netflix)
Gi-hun’s hands become bloodied in the competition in Season 3, Hwang said. “That’s the first time he kills someone [in the games]. This person who symbolized goodness, the original sin is now on him because of what society has done to him,” he said. “How does he pick himself up from that? That’s the heart of Season 3. In a way, we’re all put in this situation due to the capitalist society and chaotic political situation. Gi-hun symbolizes what all of us go through these days.”
When we meet him in Season 1, Gi-hun is down and out, an inveterate gambler. Through Season 1’s horrific gantlet of murderous kids’ games, his exterior is scraped away with a rusty edge until all that’s left is a flawed but good man. Gi-hun is someone who sees what he believes with clarity, while becoming the suddenly rich champion of the games.
But after he reaches that peak, Season 2 plunges him back down the roller coaster as he becomes obsessed with vengeance against the elite voyeurs who fund the game and the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who oversees it. Righteous anger carries Gi-hun to the brink of his goal of destroying the games, only to see it all brutally dashed. Season 3 finds him a broken man, near catatonic with guilt. Without him to guide the less bloodthirsty players, the games will enter a fearsome phase of all-out mayhem, from which unexpectedly emerges a chance at redemption for the battered protagonist.
“All of those changes within Gi-hun are depicted in such minute detail” in Hwang’s writing, said Lee, “so nuanced and with so many layers. You’ll see Gi-hun have a change of heart. Sometimes his beliefs will be shaken. But despite all of that, he will continue to struggle to find hope and his will.
“All of those changes within Gi-hun are depicted in such minute detail, so nuanced and with so many layers,” Lee Jung-jae said of his character and Hwang Dong-hyuk’s writing.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
“All I can say is, I’m a very lucky man. You don’t come by characters like Gi-hun every day. It’s been a true honor,” he adds.
Lee’s public appearances in support of “Squid Game” have provided an almost comic contrast with Gi-hun. He’s movie-star handsome, elegant, always sharply dressed. On the show, especially as Gi-hun deteriorates in Season 3, he’s wrecked.
“Jung-jae went on this extremely harsh diet for over a year so he could really portray, externally, the pain and the brokenness, to really express how famished and barren he is, both mentally and physically,” Hwang said.
Gi-hun isn’t the only person the games destroy. Another hallmark of the show is its deft development of characters into fan favorites, coupled with its “Game of Thrones”-like willingness to unceremoniously kill them. Viewers will be sharpening their pitchforks when trans commando Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), a.k.a. Player 120, dies ignominiously in Season 3. Hwang is already braced for the backlash.
“It’s not me who did it! It was 333,” he exclaimed, blaming the murderer.
Hwang said when he watched the first assembly edit of that death, “I wrote and directed and everything, I knew it’s coming, but it was still painful. It was like, ‘Oh, come on, come on.’ ”
“For some characters, I would see them go and I’d feel really sad … I would think, ‘Director Hwang is such a cruel man,’” Lee said.
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1.Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) in Season 3 of “Squid Game.” “I wrote and directed and everything, I knew it’s coming, but it was still painful,” Hwang Dong-hyuk said.2.Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), a pregnant contestant in the games, was another casualty.(No Ju-han / Netflix)
When Hwang asks what death in particular made him feel that way, Lee doesn’t hesitate to cite another beloved character, pregnant contestant Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), calling that Season 3 death “heartbreaking.”
Lee’s sensitive, evolving turn as Gi-hun — deeply human amid the madness, paranoia and murder set in bright green and pink surroundings — has made the character the ideal litmus test for Hwang’s critique of an economic system designed to produce titanic winners and losers who face annihilation. He’s a living symbol of Hwang’s themes.
“I feel like Director Hwang is truly an artist,” Lee said. “I mean something akin to a concept artist. Because when he creates his visuals, not only are they extremely pleasing to the eye; he focuses on the meaning behind them. He [stacks] images on top of one another, almost as if building a Lego castle. Each little block has meaning: each dialogue, each editing flow and [each use of] the musical score.”
As Season 3 reaches a boil, some of Hwang’s symbolism becomes less subtle. In one game, contestants clutch keys suspiciously resembling crucifixes as one player leads others with fervor, for better or worse. One character’s moment of triumph occurs before a painted rainbow (rainbow flags are also associated with the LGBTQ+ community in Korea). And Hwang’s nuanced critique of democracy comes to the fore.
“I feel like Director Hwang is truly an artist,” said Lee Jung-jae of the show’s creator. “I mean something akin to a concept artist. Because when he creates his visuals, not only are they extremely pleasing to the eye; he focuses on the meaning behind them.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Unlike Season 1, in which contestants had one chance to vote to end the games, in Seasons 2 and 3, votes are taken after each contest; as more players die, the pot swells larger and larger. With only a score or so of participants left, a vote to quit means all would leave alive, and with substantial cash. Voting to continue means, explicitly, they will kill to become obscenely wealthy.
“In the past, at the time of elections, despite our differences, we all came together; there was more tolerance through the process of conflict,” Hwang said. “I don’t think that is anymore the case. Rather, elections [have only driven] societies into greater divides. I wanted to explore those themes in Seasons 2 and 3; that’s why I included the voting in each round.”
Hwang loudly calls out the flaw of democracy that allows the barest of majorities to subject all to nightmarish policies — even more nightmarish for those who voted against them. The ruthless winners keep reminding the others in Season 3 it was a “free and democratic vote.”
“That is not to say that I have a different answer,” he said. “I wanted to raise the question because I believe it is time for us to try to find the answer. In Season 1, I looked at the flaws of the economic system that creates so many losers due to this unlimited competition. In Season 2, I depicted the failure of the political system.
“Coming into Season 3, because the economic system has failed us, politics have failed us, it seems like we have no hope,” Hwang added. “What hope do we have as a human race when we can no longer control our own greed? I wanted to explore that. And in particular, I wanted to [pose] that question to myself.”
And what has he found? Does he still believe in humanity?
“Well, I don’t have the answer,” Hwang said. “But I have to admit, honestly, I think I’ve become more cynical, working on ‘Squid Game.’”
