Yahoo Sports AM: Ohtani is inevitable

Yahoo Sports AM is our each day e-newsletter that retains you updated on all issues sports activities. Sign up here to get it each weekday morning.

🚨 Headlines

🏒 Three. Objectives. Away: Alex Ovechkin can’t be stopped, scoring in his third straight sport to move within three goals of passing Wayne Gretzky.

Commercial

🏀 JuJu wins POY: USC’s JuJu Watkins was named the Naismith Player of the Year, beating out UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and UCLA’s Lauren Betts to develop into the primary Trojan to win the award since Lisa Leslie in 1994.

🎄 Merry Chiefsmas: The Chiefs have requested that the NFL make them a fixture on Christmas Day, very like the Lions and Cowboys play each Thanksgiving.

⚾️ Extensions galore: Padres CF Jackson Merrill (9 years, $135M), Diamondbacks 2B Ketel Marte (6 years, $116M), Crimson Sox 2B Kristian Campbell (8 years, $60M) and Crimson Sox LHP Garrett Crochet (6 years, $170M) all inked new offers.

🏀 Houston clinches: The Rockets won their 50th game of the season to clinch their first playoff berth in 5 years. Not unhealthy for a staff that received 22 video games simply two years in the past.

⚾️ Ohtani is inevitable

Shohei Ohtani hit a walk-off home run on his bobblehead night time to raise the Dodgers previous the Braves and into the file books: They’re now the primary defending World Sequence champions ever to begin the season 8-0. (Atlanta, in the meantime, falls to 0-7.)

Dodger Stadium rose to its collective ft when their beloved famous person stepped to the plate within the backside of the ninth with the rating tied 5-5. First pitch he sees: Gone. Recreation over.

🎙️ Joe Davis on the decision: “Ohtani! Inevitable!”

NL West dominance: The Dodgers (8-0), Padres (7-0), Giants (5-1) and Diamondbacks (4-2) are off to a mixed 24-3 begin, which is fairly ridiculous. The poor Rockies are already within the basement at 1-4.

🏀 Hoops Corridor: The latest member

Carmelo Anthony will enter the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame when the Class of 2025 is introduced this weekend on the Closing 4. He obtained in on his first poll because of a résumé that features an NCAA title, three Olympic gold medals and plenty and plenty of NBA buckets.

Commercial

From Yahoo Sports activities’ Dan Devine:

Over the previous quarter-century, the NBA sport has largely remodeled from a dirty, bodily, elbows-and-in slugfest right into a extra streamlined, faster-paced and immaculately spaced manufacturing unit for creating layups, 3-pointers and free throws.

This shift has generated essentially the most environment friendly and efficient offenses the game has ever seen. It has additionally generated no scarcity of arguments about whether or not mentioned sea change is, in and of itself, a superb factor — in regards to the scourge of stylistic homogeneity, about forsaking artwork for math, and about whether or not one thing may be misplaced within the relentless pursuit of elevated effectivity.

Cheap individuals can disagree on the relative deserves of back-in-the-day ball and the post-Moreyball mannequin. (Unreasonable individuals can, too. They usually do. Most hours of the day and night time. On just about each sports activities tv, radio and podcast outlet.)

Commercial

You’d wish to suppose, although, that even essentially the most ardent adherent of the fashionable sport can really feel stirred by watching a heavyweight ship knockouts in a cellphone sales space; can discover pleasure in watching a craftsman create one thing easy and efficient with instruments honed over numerous hours; can see the wonder in pristine and refined footwork, timing and type translate into factors.

Man, it was enjoyable to look at Carmelo Anthony cook dinner.

Read the full story.

🏀 Hoops Corridor: A obvious omission

Anthony shall be joined within the Class of 2025 by different gamers, coaches and contributors. Sonny Vacarro is not going to be amongst them, extending one of many puzzling omissions in sports activities, writes Yahoo Sports activities’ Dan Wetzel.

Commercial

Sole man: Vaccaro is most well-known for signing Michael Jordan to an endorsement at Nike (the plot of the 2023 film “Air”). However he additionally based the primary nationwide highschool all-star sport, created the favored ABCD Camp, and got here up with the concept of signing faculty athletic departments to shoe offers. And that was all earlier than Phil Knight fired him in 1991.

After a break up from Nike, Vaccaro introduced Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady to Adidas and commenced the so-called “shoe wars,” which led to large sponsorship {dollars} being poured into highschool and journey groups throughout the nation and finally the world.

To faux the sport of basketball — from metropolis playgrounds to the professional arenas — wasn’t considerably impacted by Vaccaro, that his “contributions” to it are by some means non-Corridor worthy is ludicrous. You merely cannot inform the story of the game with out him.

So what offers? The issue with Vaccaro’s candidacy seems to be the enemies he made alongside the way in which. Regardless of his job title, he was at all times a fierce and outspoken proponent of gamers’ rights, particularly towards the NCAA.

Commercial

Perhaps a nonetheless bitter faculty sports activities business is leaning on the method. Or possibly it’s Nike, who engaged in a long time of discord after firing Vaccaro. No matter it’s, he did not even make the finalist stage.

“I do not know what it takes,” mentioned Vaccaro, 85, from his dwelling in California. “However I am not going to dwell on it. It isn’t some slight, as a result of I’ve lived a fairly rattling good life.”

Read the full story.

⚽️ The U.S. Open Cup: 48 groups stay

The second spherical of the U.S. Open Cup concluded on Wednesday, leaving 48 groups nonetheless contending within the nation’s oldest ongoing nationwide soccer competitors.

Commercial

The way it works: The event options groups from every level of the U.S. soccer pyramid, which incorporates three skilled divisions and quite a few novice and semi-pro leagues.

• Division II: USL Championship

• Division III: USL League One, MLS Subsequent Professional

Additional down: Different notable leagues embody the Nationwide Premier Soccer League, United Premier Soccer League and USL League Two.

The place it stands: 16 golf equipment from 13 completely different states punched tickets to the third spherical this week, with 4 hailing from USLC, 9 from USL1 and two from MLS Subsequent Professional. Then there’s El Farolito of the NPSL, an novice aspect that received the 1993 U.S. Open Cup and are named after the owner’s San Francisco burrito shop. They made it to the third spherical final 12 months, too.

• Florida (2): Miami FC (USLC), FC Naples (USL1)

• Georgia: Tormenta FC (USL1)

• North Carolina: Charlotte Independence (USL1)

• California (2): AV Alta FC (USL1), El Farolito SC (NPSL)

• Maine: Portland Hearts of Pine (USL1)

• Nebraska: Union Omaha (USL1)

• New York: Westchester SC (USL1)

• Ohio: Columbus Crew 2 (MLS Subsequent Professional)

• Oklahoma: FC Tulsa (USLC)

• Tennessee (2): Chattanooga Crimson Wolves (USL1), One Knoxville SC (USL1)

• Texas: El Paso Locomotive (USLC)

• Virginia: Loudoun United (USLC)

• Washington: Tacoma Defiance (MLS Subsequent Professional)

What’s subsequent: These 16 groups shall be joined within the third spherical by the 16 highest-seeded USLC golf equipment (together with 2024 quarterfinalists Indy Eleven, New Mexico United and Sacramento Republic). 16 MLS groups will then enter the event within the Spherical of 32.

📺 Watchlist: NIT championship

The 87th NIT championship sport is tonight in Indianapolis (9pm ET, ESPN), the place the UC Irvine Anteaters will tackle the Chattanooga Mocs.

Commercial

The previous massive brother: The NIT (based in 1938) predates the NCAA event (1939), and for many years it was college basketball’s most prestigious national championship. However by the Seventies, the event now referred to as March Insanity had develop into the game’s premier occasion.

Extra to look at:

• 🏀 NBA: Grizzlies at Warmth (7:30pm, TNT); Warriors at Lakers (10pm, TNT) … Los Angeles goes for its first season sweep over Golden State since 2019-20.

• 🏒 NHL: Jets at Golden Knights (10pm, ESPN+) … First place within the Central vs. first place within the Pacific. Winnipeg leads the league in factors (106).

Plus: PFL World Event (7:30pm, ESPN+; 10pm, ESPN2); Spherical 1 of the PGA Tour’s Texas Open (8:15am, ESPN+; 4pm, Golf); Spherical 2 of the Faculty Basketball Crown (7-9:30pm, FS1); Spherical of 16 on the WTA’s Charleston Open (11am, Tennis)

🏀 NBA trivia

Carmelo Anthony is tenth on the NBA’s all-time scoring checklist, with 28,289 profession factors.

Commercial

Query: Are you able to identify the 9 guys forward of him, within the appropriate order?

Trace: 4 of their names begin with a “Ok”.

Reply on the backside.

⚾️ O’s revive the Phiten necklace

Phiten necklaces had been virtually a part of the baseball uniform within the early 2000s. A long time later, the Orioles are bringing them back.

The Phiten revival: Randy Johnson is credited with bringing the braided necklaces to the U.S. after discovering them in Japan in 2001. The declare is that the nylon is coated in a titanium answer that improves steadiness and efficiency, however there is not any medical proof to again that up. In actuality, the necklaces had been a trend pattern — and so they had been all over the place.

Commercial

The Phiten necklaces had been all the fad when Adley Rutschman and his teammates had been rising up — a standing image, nearly, on journey baseball circuits — however solely now are they coming again into fashion. They usually’re solely coming again in fashion, it appears, as a result of this group of knuckleheads who populate the Orioles clubhouse determined to convey them again.

Group bonding: A number of Orioles purchased necklaces throughout spring coaching and the pattern rapidly unfold all through the clubhouse. Per week into the season, there are few gamers with out one. It is foolish — however foolish is nice, says beginning pitcher Zach Eflin. “It is a actually lengthy season, and lots of it’s monotonous. Little issues like this hold everybody pulling the rope in the identical route.”

Trivia reply: LeBron James (42,036 factors), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387), Karl Malone (36,928), Kobe Bryant (33,643), Michael Jordan (32,292), Dirk Nowitzki (31,560), Wilt Chamberlain (31,419), Kevin Durant (30,571), Shaquille O’Neal (28,596)

We hope you loved this version of Yahoo Sports AM, our each day e-newsletter that retains you updated on all issues sports activities. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday morning.