waive

Myles Turner has agreed to a four-year deal to join the Milwaukee Bucks, who waived nine-time All-Star Damian Lillard to make the acquisition happen, a person with knowledge of the moves told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

Turner is agreeing to a deal that ends with a player option, after spending the entirety of his first 10 seasons with the Indiana Pacers, who went to the NBA Finals this past season. The remaining $112.6 million owed to Lillard will be paid out over the next five seasons via the NBA’s stretch provision, according to the person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because neither move was announced by the clubs.

ESPN, which first reported the plan by the Pacers and Bucks, said Turner agreed to a contract worth $107 million.

In both cases, Achilles tendon injuries played a role in the surprising moves.

Indiana expects to be without star guard Tyrese Haliburton for the entirety of next season because he ruptured his Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder while playing through what was diagnosed as a calf strain. Earlier in the playoffs, Lillard ruptured his Achilles tendon while playing for Milwaukee in Round 1 against Indiana.

Lillard is likely to miss most, if not all, of next season. He will be free to sign with anyone he chooses, and teams could simply sign him now, give him a chance to continue his recovery and do so with hope that the seven-time All-NBA selection is ready to go by the start of the 2026-27 season.

“This is an opportunity for Damian to stay home to continue his rehabilitation, take time to decide where he wants to play next, while still being paid his entire contract,” said Aaron Goodwin, Lillard’s agent.

Turner has averaged 14.1 points and 6.8 rebounds in his 10 seasons with the Pacers, who had to make a decision this summer about whether to surpass the luxury tax threshold with the knowledge that Haliburton likely will not play this coming season.

Lillard, who turns 35 this month, has averaged 25.1 points and 6.7 assists in 900 regular-season games over 13 seasons — the first 11 with Portland.

The Bucks lost Brook Lopez to the Clippers when free agency opened Monday.

SGA gets extension

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder have agreed on a record-setting four-year, $285-million contract extension that would give him the highest single-season average salary in NBA history, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Tuesday.

He is coming off a season when he became the fourth player in NBA history to win MVP, Finals MVP and a scoring title while playing for a champion in the same season. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it once, Michael Jordan then did it four times and Shaquille O’Neal was the last entrant into that fraternity until Gilgeous-Alexander joined the club.

Schröder to Kings

Veteran point guard and German Olympic team member Dennis Schröder has agreed to join the Sacramento Kings on a three-year deal, the third of which is not fully guaranteed, a person with knowledge of that agreement said Tuesday. ESPN reported the total value of the deal is $45 million.

Schröder, who is entering his 13th NBA season, is joining his 10th club — and ninth in the last seven years. He spent the first five seasons of his career with Atlanta, then has been with Oklahoma City, the Lakers (twice), Boston, Houston, Toronto, Brooklyn, Golden State and Detroit at various times over the last seven seasons.

He has averaged 13.9 points and 4.9 assists in 849 regular-season games.

Reynolds writes for the Associated Press.

The Rams made a move in their secondary, but it was not an addition.

Cornerback Derion Kendrick, sidelined last season after sustaining a torn anterior cruciate ligament during training camp, was waived, the team announced Friday.

Kendrick, a sixth-round draft pick in 2022, participated in the Rams’ offseason program and organized team activities. He was scheduled to earn $3.4 million this season, according to Overthecap.com.

The secondary is something of a question mark for a Rams team that is regarded as a potential Super Bowl contender.

After finishing 10-7 and advancing to the NFC divisional round last season, the Rams neither signed a cornerback during free agency nor drafted one.

Veterans Darious Williams, 32, and Ahkello Witherspoon, 32, are the projected starting cornerbacks. Cobie Durant, Emmanuel Forbes Jr. and Josh Wallace are among others expected to play.

When asked, coach Sean McVay has not ruled out the possibility of trading for Miami Dolphins cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who helped the Rams win Super Bowl LVI. But Ramsey is due to earn $24.2 million this season and will have a salary-cap number of at least $25 million in the following three seasons, according to Overthecap.com. McVay has repeatedly pointed to “a lot of layers” that would have to be addressed for a reunion with Ramsey to take place.

Two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaire Alexander was recently released by the Green Bay Packers.

“Nothing but respect for the player but I don’t know if that’s a direction we would go,” McVay said this week about Alexander.

Kendrick played in 32 games for the Rams. He started six games as a rookie and 12 in 2023. He intercepted one pass.

SAN DIEGO — Major League Baseball does not have a mercy rule for ending games early.

On Tuesday night at Petco Park, the Dodgers could have used one.

In recent years, the club has punted on plenty of games in the interest of protecting their often injury-riddled and shorthanded pitching staffs. But in an 11-1 loss to the San Diego Padres, they took the act of de facto forfeiture to levels even they hadn’t previously pioneered.

First, they let minor league call-up Matt Sauer wear it — in every sense of the phrase — over a nine-run, 13-hit, 111-pitch outing.

Then, in the face of a nine-run deficit in the bottom of the sixth, they sent position player Kiké Hernández to the mound to pitch the rest of the game, the earliest a true position player had ever taken the mound in a contest in Dodgers franchise history.

“Very awkward,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

The Dodgers’ decision to pack, even before the seventh-inning stretch, it in was rooted in logic.

They are currently operating with only four healthy starting pitchers. Their equally banged-up bullpen is leading the majors in innings, and was coming off five frames of work in an extra-inning win the night before. And by the time Hernández took the mound in the sixth, the game had long been lost, the Padres (38-28) teeing off on Sauer with three runs two-out runs in the third inning, single scores in the fourth and fifth, and a four-spot in the sixth.

“I know that my job is just eat as many as I can,” said Sauer, who entered the game as a bulk man in the second inning after opener Lou Trivino tossed a scoreless first. “Obviously, today, didn’t have as good of stuff, but I felt like I was just out there pitching my ass off, trying to compete and trying to eat as many innings as I could for the bullpen.”

On the other side, Padres ace Dylan Cease mowed down the Dodgers, giving up three hits while striking out 11 batters over seven scoreless innings.

“We had a couple chances early,” Roberts said. “But I think when the game got away, you could just see things flip.”

Thus, the Dodgers (40-28) quickly turned their attention to Wednesday’s series rubber-match, one they will have to win to maintain sole possession of first place in the National League West.

Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández were removed from the game after the top of the sixth.

And knowing Wednesday’s starter will be left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who has a 7.20 ERA in three big-league outings this year and has spent much of the campaign in triple-A, Roberts decided not to waste any of his other available relievers on the latter innings either, inserting Hernández as pitcher the moment the Padres pushed their lead past eight runs with two out in the bottom of the frame (MLB rules prevent losing teams from using position players on the mound until they face an eight-run deficit).

“You just got to look at where our ‘pen is at, and appreciating what we have the next couple days, it wasn’t smart to chase and redline guys,” Roberts said. “A guy that was available tonight, [Michael] Kopech, I’m not going to pitch him down six or 7-0 in the sixth inning, to then not have him available tomorrow. As the rules are, we abided. That’s kind of what you do to essentially move forward and win the ensuing games.”

Still, a position player taking the mound in the sixth inning to finish off a blowout loss represented an almost unprecedented use of the tactic; one that has become so popular among MLB clubs in recent years that the league had to put in the eight-run restriction for when teams can do it.

Two years ago, the Cleveland Guardians had David Fry pitch four innings at the end of a rout against the Minnesota Twins, the first time a true position player had pitched at least three innings in a game since 1988, according to USA Today.

In 2018, the Arizona Diamondbacks used two position players for the final 4 ⅔ innings of a lopsided defeat at Coors Field to the Colorado Rockies.

Hernández’s 2 ⅓ innings (in which he gave up two runs, three hits and two walks) marked the longest pitching outing by a true position player in Dodgers history.

“Again, it’s about do you want to chase? And is it worth it versus [trying] to win tomorrow?” Roberts said. “I think those are things are part of the math … The goal was to come in here to win a series, and we got a really good chance to do that tomorrow.”

Given how Tuesday went, they better hope so. Because if not, their 10-run loss will be an embarrassment without much of a reward.