Table of Contents
Yahoo Sports AM is our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. sign up here to receive it every weekday morning.
Headlines
Banned for life: MLB banned Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano for life for betting on baseball. The league also suspended four players for a year in a scandal that appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Djoker retires: Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the French Open (meniscus tear) and will undergo surgery, meaning he will likely miss Wimbledon next month.
Auriemma extended: UConn signed Geno Auriemma to a five-year, $18.7 million extension that will keep him in Storrs until 2029, when he will be 75 years old.
Tommy John for Javier: Astros starter Cristian Javier will reportedly undergo Tommy John surgery, further depleting Houston’s injury-plagued rotation.
Kyrie signs his dad: Kyrie Irving signed with his father, Drederick, an exclusive footwear deal with ANTA, the Chinese sportswear brand where he serves as creative director.
Yohannes, 16, scores in his USWNT debut
Lily Yohannes, 16 years old. She made her USWNT debut on Tuesday night and scored the team’s third goal in a 3-0 win over South Korea.
Historic night: Yohannes (16 years, 358 days) is the eighth youngest player to debut for the USWNT and the third youngest to score, behind only Kristine Lilly in 1987 (16 years, 22 days) and Tiffany Roberts in 1994 (16 years, 22 days). 340 days). days).
How it got here: Yohannes was born in Springfield, Virginia, and moved to Amsterdam at age 9 with his parents and two older brothers. At the age of 13 he began training at the most successful club in the country, Ajax, where he since then became a starter.
-
Her path is unique in that sense, as virtually all of her USWNT teammates spent their formative years playing for American clubs and universities.
-
But with women’s football on the rise in Europe, more players could follow Yohannes’ example in the future and choose to develop their game abroad.
From Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports:
While the United States men’s and women’s national teams have an extensive recent history of recruiting foreign-bred players, the women’s program has relied exclusively on players who spent their formative years in the United States.
And there is a very simple reason for this: while Europe has long boasted the best men’s soccer academies, on the women’s side, the United States was the standard bearer; Europe was left behind.
But that is changing. The same professional clubs that sought out Lily’s brothers are now seeking out (and tutoring) girls like her. They are leveraging existing infrastructure and methodologies.
Many experts would say that at least a dozen top European clubs, including Ajax, and perhaps many more, now offer a better soccer education than most or all of America’s youth clubs.
The doctrine of “the best player wins the series”
From Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports:
There’s an old saying in the NBA: most of the time, the team with the best player wins the series.
If this is the doctrine, Luka Dončić’s Mavericks will win the NBA Finals, even though Jayson Tatum’s Celtics won 14 more regular season games.
Dončić finished three places higher (third) in the MVP voting. Tatum may be the superior defensive player, but Dončić averaged more points (33.9), assists (9.8) and rebounds (9.2) per game and did so more efficiently. The advanced statistics clearly favor Dončić.
I think it’s almost universally accepted that Dončić is a better player than Tatum, although the gap isn’t that big between a five-time All-NBA first-team selection and a three-time All-NBA first-team honoree.
Using each season’s MVP race as the determining factor in determining who voters believed was the best player in that particular campaign, the best player has won 41 of 68 NBA Finals, or about 60%, since 1956.
Since the turn of the century, the player who finished highest in MVP voting has gone 12-11 in Finals matchups. Those are not overwhelming numbers. Hardly doctrine.
However, if you have a more general idea of who was the best player in each series (eliminating, for example, when Charles Barkley won the 1993 MVP, only to have his Suns lose to Michael Jordan’s Bulls), you could argue that the best player won 56 of 68 championships (82.4%).
It’s a pretty convincing figure. Enough to give some credence to that saying.
Read the full story.
In photos: Cosmic Baseball
The Tri-City Chili Peppers made history on Saturday when they turned out the lights and presented to the world Cosmic Baseball, Jeff writes.
The summer collegiate team. In the Coastal Plain League* they spent more than $100,000 to install a series of black lights in their stadium in Virginia. Every piece of equipment glowed in the dark during the Chili Peppers’ 9-4 victory over the Greenbrier Knights, believed to be the first sporting event ever played under black lights.
Extensive testing was carried out to make sure they could play a real game in these conditions, and even though it was dark, “it’s not as dark as you think,” catcher Jacob Lee said. he told MLB.com. “I was actually very surprised.”
More to come: The Chili Peppers have three more Cosmic Baseball games scheduled this summer on June 15, June 28 and July 20.
*Famous Alumni: The Summer Wood Bat League features 15 teams in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and has produced numerous MLB playersincluding stars like Justin Verlander and Ryan Zimmerman.
NBA Mock Draft 8.0
The 2024 NBA Draft It’s three weeks away and there’s a new name at the top of our latest mock draft: French wing Zaccharie Risacher.
Where are the things: Here’s Yahoo Sports’ Krysten Peek…
Some prospects are traveling around the country working for teams and meeting with executives, while others are still finishing their seasons in Europe, where many scouts are heading to Italy this week for the adidas Eurocamp to get more eyes on those eligible for the draft. players.
Meanwhile, the Lakers now have two draft picks and the Pelicans are holding off on the 17th pick in 2024 for a first-round pick in 2025. Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul has made it clear that Bronny James will only train for a select number of teams. , including the Lakers and Suns, all but solidifying Bronny as a lock for the Lakers in the second round.
June 5, 1977: Blazers win the title
47 years ago today, the Trail Blazers beat the 76ers in six games to win his first and only NBA title and become the league’s first champion after the NBA-ABA merger, Jeff writes.
RIP, Big Red: Bill Walton, 24, exploded for 20 points, 23 rebounds, 7 assists and 8 blocks in Game 6 to win Finals MVP.
“I’ve never coached a better player. I’ve never coached a better competitor. And I’ve never coached a better person than Bill Walton.” — Jack Ramsay, Blazers coach
More about this day:
*Sign of the times: To give you an idea of the popularity of the NBA back then, Game 6 was originally scheduled for 10:30 a.m. to accommodate the final day of a mid-level golf tournament called the Kemper Open. CBS ended up taking a noon tip-off, then moved on to golf immediately after the final buzzer, skipping the trophy presentation entirely.
Watchlist: Quarterfinals in Paris
The quarterfinals of the French Open will conclude today, with two women’s matches and one men’s match, Jeff writes.
-
Women: Number 4 Elena Rybakina against number 12 Jasmine Paolini (8:15 a.m. ET, tennis); No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka vs. Mirra Andreeva* (09:30, tennis)
-
Men: No. 4 Alexander Zverev vs. No. 11 Alex de Minaur (14:15, tennis); No. 7 Casper Ruud defeated. No. 1 Novak Djokovic (bypass)
More to see:
-
WCWS Finals: No. 1 Texas vs. No. 2 Oklahoma (8:00 p.m., ESPN) … The Big 12 foes meet in the best-of-three championship in their final season before moving on to the SEC.
-
Big leagues: Parents in Angeles (21:38, FS1)
*Teenage phenomenon: Andreeva, 17, is the youngest woman to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open since Sesil Karatantcheva in 2005. She is also the youngest to reach the round of 16 at Grand Slam events in each surface since Anna Kournikova in 1998.
Curiosities about the NBA Finals
This year’s NBA champion. He will be just the third in this century without a current or former MVP on the roster.
Reply at the bottom.
Croatia’s newest citizen: Bill Belichick
For the first time since 1975, Bill Belichick is not a coach in the NFL. That freed him up to do other things, like explore your Croatian roots.
Man of the hour: Belichick, who wore a Croatian pin at news conferences in recent years, became a Croatian citizen on Monday and was honored during Tuesday’s Croatia-North Macedonia soccer game, where he addressed the team.
“My grandparents came from Draganić to the United States in 1910 and had a difficult life, but that’s why my father (Steve), also an American football coach, managed to live his American dream… Yesterday I became a Croatian citizen. Now I am one from you.”
Trivia answer: Pistons (2004) and Raptors (2019)
We hope you have enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AMour daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. sign up here to receive it in your inbox every weekday morning.
