Young leads Hawks’ rally past Sixers
ATLANTA – Trae Young overcame a cold start to score 25 points, including a floater that gave Atlanta the lead with 1:17 remaining, and the Hawks rallied to beat the Philadelphia 76ers 103-100 on Monday night, tying the Eastern Conference semifinal at 2-2.
Philly blew an 18-point lead and may have bigger concerns: Big man Joel Embiid spent time in the locker room in the second quarter and didn’t make a field goal in the second half. Embiid has been playing with torn cartilage in his right knee.
Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 22 points for the Hawks, and John Collins had 14 points and 12 rebounds. Young made only 8 of 26 shots but had 18 assists.
Game 5 is Wednesday night in Philadelphia.
Embiid finished with 17 points and 21 rebounds. Tobias Harris scored 20 points for the Sixers, and Seth Curry had 17, missing a potential tying 3pointer at the buzzer.
The Sixers led 60-42 late in the first half but Atlanta chipped away in the third quarter. Bogdanovic opened the final period with a 3-pointer to give Atlanta its first lead of the half, 83-82.
Philadelphia led 98-94 before Collins’ 3-pointer cut the lead to one point. Young’s floater with 1:17 remaining gave Atlanta a 99-98 lead, and his two free throws when fouled by Embiid pushed the advantage to three.
The Hawks hung on from there, catching a break when Embiid missed a layup and the Sixers knocked the ball out of bounds with 7.8 seconds remaining.
Clippers 118, Jazz 104
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George each scored 31 points – the second straight game they have both had over 30 points – and the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Utah Jazz 118-104 on Monday night to even their Western Conference second-round series at two games apiece.
Leonard provided the highlight of the night with his dunk late in the second quarter. He got the ball just beyond the 3-point line, drove past Royce O’neale in the lane and then slammed it over Derrick Favors to give the Clippers a 62-38 lead with 1:24 remaining in the second quarter.
Leonard and George have each scored at least 20 points in all 11 games this postseason. They are just the third duo in NBA history to do that in a team’s first 11 playoff games and the first since Shaquille O’neal and Kobe Bryant with the Lakers in 2003.
Jerry West, who watched Monday’s game from courtside, and Elgin Baylor were the other duo with the 1962 Lakers.
Marcus Morris added 24 points and went 5 of 6 on 3-pointers for fourthseeded Los Angeles.
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that every pitcher caught using or possessing foreign substances will be given an automatic 10-game suspension beginning Monday, June 21, and team employees can also be suspended or fined for substances found in their clubhouse or dugout.
Starting pitchers will be checked more than once per game for foreign substances while relievers will be checked at least once.
“After an extensive process of repeated warnings without effect, gathering information from current and former players and others across the sport, two months of comprehensive data collection, listening to our fans and thoughtful deliberation,'' Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a release, “I have determined that new enforcement of foreign substances is needed to level the playing field.
"I understand there's a history of foreign substances being used on the ball, but what we are seeing today is objectively far different, with much tackier substances being used more frequently than ever before. It has become clear that the use of foreign substance has generally morphed from trying to get a better grip on the ball into something else – an unfair competitive advantage that is creating a lack of action and an uneven playing field.''
The only substance permitted by pitchers to assist their grip will be a rosin bag, while disputing the theory that eliminating foreign substances would hurt pitchers' control and increase the number of batters hit by pitches.
“MLB recently completed extensive testing, including testing by third-party researchers, to determine whether the use of foreign substances has a material impact on performance,'' MLB said in a statement. “That research concluded that foreign substances significantly increase the spin rate and movement of the baseball, providing pitchers who use these substances with an unfair competitive advantage over hitters and pitchers who do not use foreign substances, and results in less action on the field.
“In addition, the foreign substance use appears to contribute to a style of pitching in which pitchers sacrifice location in favor of spin and velocity, particularly with respect to elevated fastballs. The evidence does not suggest a correlation between improved hitter safety and the use of foreign substances. In fact, the hit-by-pitch ratio has increased along with the prevalence of foreign substance use – through May 31st, the 2021 season has the highest rate of hit-by-pitches of any season in the past 100 years.''
MLB believes that the crackdown should boost offense based on the offensive surge simply in the last two weeks once MLB told owners that a crackdown would soon start.
Hitters are batting a season-high .247
with a .318 on-base percentage and .419 slugging percentage in June compared to .236./.312/.395 the first two months.
The spin rate by pitchers last week was the lowest of the season. There have been several noticeable decreases in spin-rates in recent weeks involving starts from Trevor Bauer and Kenley Jansen of the Los Angeles Dodgers to Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees to closer Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers.
“This is not about any individual player or club, or placing blame,'' Manfred said, “it is about a collective shift that has changed the game and needs to be addressed. We have a responsibility to our fans and the generational talent competing on the field to eliminate these substances and improve the game.”
This will be the first time that umpires will automatically check pitchers for using foreign substances without being asked by managers. Position players may also be checked for foreign substances, preventing them from putting the foreign substances on the baseball to protect their pitchers.
“Although the foreign substance prohibitions do not apply exclusively to pitchers,'' the memo sent to clubs says, “the pitcher ultimately will be responsible for any ball that is delivered with a foreign substance on it. If a player other than the pitcher is found to have applied a foreign substance to the baseball (e.g., the catcher applies a foreign substance to the baseball before throwing it back to the pitcher) both the position player and pitcher will be ejected and automatically suspended.''
MLB officials realized the current enforcement wasn't working, so now it's in the umpires' hands. They will check pitchers' uniforms, caps and gloves for foreign substances primarily in between innings or when they exit a game.
There has not been a major-league pitcher suspended for foreign substances since Will Smith of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2015 and Brian Matusz of the Baltimore Orioles.
While players will not lose pay if suspended, their team will be playing short-handed in their absence. No team can replace a suspended player on the active roster.
Bauer originally called attention to pitchers cheating in 2018, pointing out the Houston Astros' dramatically increased spin rate, says he's all for the enforcement, as long as everyone is treated equally.
“That's been the whole point this entire time,” Bauer said. “Let everyone compete on a fair playing field. So if you're going to enforce it, enforce it. And if you're not, then stop sweeping it under the rug, which is what they've done for four years now. …
“It would be nice as players to know what rules we're competing by and what rules are going to be enforced. As everyone knows, a rule that's written down that's never enforced is not a rule.''
Now, it will be enforced.
SAN DIEGO – Jon Rahm has accepted that he had no choice but to withdraw from the Memorial on June 5 after testing positive for COVID-19. How do we know he's moved on? Because he's already able to joke about it. Too soon? Not for Rahm.
“I got it all. I had it, I got the antibodies, got the vaccination. I feel invincible at this point,” he said at his U.S. Open prechampionship press conference on Tuesday.
The World No. 3 experienced one of the most stunning moments since the return of sports when after opening up a commanding six-stroke lead in his title defense at Jack's Place, he was told that he wouldn't be able to play on Sunday. “Not again,” Rahm said.
“For all those people wondering when I said, ‘Not again,' that's exactly what I mean, not again. Last year I put my heart out talking about one of my family members passing, and I get told, ‘Well, go sign your scorecard with a penalty stroke,' with no warning.
“Then this past year I put arguably the best performance of my life, and I get told again on live TV, ‘Hey, you're not playing tomorrow.' So, it could have been handled a little bit better, yeah, but it still doesn't change the fact of what really happened. Because it was the second time I got put on the spot on the same course why I was a little bit more hurt, but yeah. Again, it's tough.”
Rahm expressed regret that he didn't get vaccinated earlier, waiting until May 31, the Monday of the Memorial.
“Not early enough, that's all I can say. Looking back on it, yeah, I guess I wish I would have done it earlier, but thinking on scheduling purposes and having the PGA and defending Memorial, I was just to be honest, it wasn't in my mind. I'm not going to lie; I was trying to just get
ready for a golf tournament. If I had done it in a few days earlier, probably we wouldn't be having these conversations right now. It is what it is. We move on,” he said. “To all the people criticizing the PGA Tour, they shouldn't. We are in a pandemic, and even though this virus has very different forms of attacking people, you never know what reaction you're going to get. So PGA Tour did what they had to do.”
“I've heard a lot of different theories,” he added. “I should have played alone; I shouldn't have – that's nonsense. The rules are there, and it's clear… I was fully aware when I was in tracing protocol that that was a possibility. I knew that could happen. I was hoping it wouldn't. I was playing like it's not going to, but I support what the PGA Tour did.”
Rahm showed poise and an ability to look at the bigger picture in his classy tweet after the fact explaining his feelings on not being able to play the final round, and he sounded like a man with wisdom beyond his 27 years as he detailed the 10 days that have come and gone and his self-quarantine. Rahm did take another test right after being pulled off the golf course to confirm the Tour's result and it was positive again. He flew home to Scottsdale, Arizona and self-isolated away from his family.
“I was a little bit scared because, even though I was feeling fine, I didn't want to give the virus to anybody in my house. I didn't want to possibly give it to our young son. Yeah, I think the hardest part out of all this was for just over ten days not being able to even spend any time with my little one,” he explained.
But the hardest part may have been the timing of a visit from his parents, who arrived from Spain two days later and met Kepa, Jon and wife Kelley's first child, who was born shortly before the Masters in April, for the first time.
“Those are the hard parts about this virus in life,” he said. “Tuesday they met my son, and I wasn't there. That was truly, truly a hard thing.”
Rahm confirmed he watched some of the final round of the Memorial, which was won by Patrick Cantlay in a playoff over Collin Morikawa, who tied at 13 under. Rahm was 18 under for three rounds. “To be honest, I was kind of wondering how close they were going to get to 18-under,” he said.
Rahm used the time off to catch up on watching some TV shows, including Rick and Morty, and for some good old-fashioned self-reflection.
“Just tried to really spend as much time in the present as possible,” he said. “It was really easy when you're laying in your bed to go back and forth, what could be in the future, what could have been in the past. A lot of meditation and mindful reading and trying to stay in the present.”