Chelsea are leading the race to sign San Diego Wave centre-back Naomi Girma, while Arsenal and Lyon are also interested in the United States women's national team star, sources have told ESPN.

Girma, 24, is under contract until 2026 with the NWSL side, so any deal will need a sizeable transfer fee. One source told ESPN it could become the first $1 million transfer in women's football.

Girma is one of the highest-rated defenders of this current generation and was instrumental in helping the USWNT achieve gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Manager Emma Hayes said Girma is "the best defender I've ever seen. Ever. I've never seen a player as good as her in the back."

Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has admitted she is looking to bolster their options at centre-back following an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury to Canadian defender Kadeisha Buchanan, and several sources have told ESPN Girma is top of their wish list.

Bompastor's former club Lyon, owned by businesswoman Michele Kang, has also expressed interest in the centre-half despite penning a deal with Swedish defender Elma Junttila Nelhage earlier in the transfer window.

Meanwhile, Arsenal, who've had their eye on Girma for quite some time, have also expressed interest in bringing the centre-back on board, another source told ESPN.

There will be several stumbling blocks, though, not least the transfer fee required to prize one of the world's best players away from San Diego Wave. Former Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall, San Diego Wave's incoming manager, would be reluctant to lose a player of Girma's calibre while the team are under new ownership, after the franchise was taken over by the Leichtman-Levine Family in October.

Wave have already parted ways with Jaedyn Shaw since Eidevall's tenure began last week. The 20-year-old forward moved to North Carolina Courage in exchange for $300,000 in allocation money and $150,000 in intraleague transfer fees, along with a 2025 and 2026 international slot to San Diego.

The current world record transfer fee in women's football is held by Racheal Kundananji who transferred to Bay FC from Madrid CFF for $860,000. Given Girma's talent, it is likely her transfer fee would need to surpass the current record to make it worthwhile for the franchise.

Girma won NWSL Defender of the Year for both 2022 and 2023, but missed out in 2024 to Emily Sans.

LIV Golf has reached a multiyear broadcast agreement with Fox Sports, which will show each of the three rounds of the events live in the U.S. on one of its network's channels and streaming app starting this season.

LIV Golf announced Thursday that more than half of its 14 tournaments would air live on Fox or FS1, while select rounds will be broadcast on FS2, Fox Business Network or the Fox Sports App. Every round will be streamed on the Fox Sports App and LIV Golf+, the circuit said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it wasn't clear whether Fox Sports would pay a rights fee to the Saudi Arabian-financed tour.

"We are thrilled to partner with FOX Sports, one of the preeminent broadcast networks in the world," new LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil said in a statement. "LIV Golf is getting bigger and bolder, and this relationship signals the next phase of growth as our league joins the company of the nation's premier sports leagues and conferences.

"I want to thank the FOX Sports team who share our vision for the future of golf, a new model that is redefining how the sport is experienced. LIV Golf is drawing a younger, more active and tech-savvy fan base, and as our players and teams prepare for LIV Golf's biggest season yet, this agreement will take our broadcast to new heights."

O'Neil, the former top executive at Merlin Entertainments, was officially named LIV Golf's new CEO on Wednesday. The circuit said former CEO and commissioner Greg Norman will be handing over day-to-day operations but will remain involved in an undisclosed capacity.

LIV's third season tees off Feb. 6-8 at Riyadh Golf Club in Saudi Arabia, followed by tournaments in Australia (Feb. 14-16), Hong Kong (March 7-9) and Singapore (March 14-16).

The first LIV Golf tournament in the U.S. will be played at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami and is slated for April 4-6, the week before the Masters.

The Fox Sports deal should increase exposure in the U.S. for LIV Golf, which struggled to gain viewership in in its first two seasons on The CW network. According to Golfweek, fewer than 100,000 people watched Jon Rahm win the 2024 individual championship.

"FOX Sports is excited to broadcast the LIV Golf League, showcasing athletes at the top of their game competing at an elite level for viewers across the nation," Jordan Bazant, a Fox Sports executive vice president, said in a statement. "The addition of LIV Golf is a natural fit for FOX Sports' prominent slate of big events, world-class names and premium sports coverage."

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A 22-year-old American amateur making his debut on the European tour upstaged Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and many of the world's top players at the Dubai Desert Classic for a share of the first-round lead on Thursday.

David Ford, a senior at North Carolina, holed a 40-foot eagle putt at his first hole, ran off five straight birdies midway through the round and signed for a 7-under 65 at Emirates Golf Club.

Ford is a lefty, a triplet, No. 6 in the world amateur rankings and playing outside the United States for the first time. He earned an exemption for the Dubai Desert Classic, one of the most prestigious events on the European tour, as a reward for finishing the autumn section of the collegiate golf schedule at No. 1 in the PGA Tour's university ranking.

Asked if he was expecting to contend in Dubai, where six of the world's top 20 are competing, Ford said: "I try to keep my expectations low. I know where my game is at right now and I have got a lot of people around me believing in me, which is really helpful going into this week.

"I just tried to have fun. Just come out here and do the preparation that I do for college events and just keep everything really simple and keep having fun."

Ford was tied for the lead with Ricardo Gouveia of Portugal and David Micheluzzi of Australia -- and five shots clear of defending champion McIlroy, who said he felt "a little uncomfortable" in shooting 70 in his first competitive round of 2025.

The No.3-ranked Northern Irishman was 1 over after eight holes before playing his final 10 holes in 3 under -- including a chip-in at No. 7, his 16th hole.

"Definitely not as comfortable as I was in practice and coming in here," McIlroy said. "But it's nice to get a card in your hand. It sort of exposes the things that you need to work on.

"I got it around and got it in in a couple under, which is nice, and didn't put myself out of the tournament, which is the main thing."

Preston Summerhays, another top American amateur who played at the Walker Cup with Ford in 2023, shot 70 and was alongside McIlroy at 2 under.

Rahm, who plays on the Saudi breakaway LIV Golf circuit, shot 69 on his debut at the tournament. No. 8-ranked Viktor Hovland, who acknowledged this week he was going through a challenging time after tinkering with his swing, shot 75.

Ford, who is planning to turn pro in May, has played three times on the PGA Tour -- at the RSM Classic and Barbasol Championship across 2022-23 and the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year.

At Bay Hill, he shot 1-under 71 in his first round but followed it with an 83 to miss the cut.

The 2024 NFL season marks the fifth year of the 14-team playoff bracket. The league's decision to expand the playoffs from 12 teams to 14 was designed, of course, to generate more money. Adding a team in each conference and removing the first-round bye that had previously been afforded to the No. 2 seed meant two extra playoff games, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars for the league's owners.

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With five seasons of wild-card rounds under our belts and the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams this season, this is a natural time to take the temperature of the NFL postseason. What is it accomplishing beyond the money? Are the playoffs more entertaining for fans? With nearly half of the league's teams making it to the postseason, has the postseason been diluted? Should the NFL change the format again? (Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown certainly thinks so.)

Starting with lessons from the first five years of the 14-team era, let's evaluate how the league could tweak things, for better or worse.

Jump to: Six proposed format changes

How has the 14-team bracket affected the NFL?

1. The No. 7 seed has mostly been cannon fodder. Facing a No. 2 seed that would have previously enjoyed a first-round bye, the 10 No. 7 seeds teams since 2020 have collectively gone 1-9. The only 7-seed to win was in 2023, when the Packers stomped the Cowboys 48-32. This season, the Packers lost by 12 points to the Eagles as the 7-seed over the weekend, while the 7-seed Broncos gave up 31 unanswered points to the Bills after an early touchdown.

It was exciting to see Jordan Love and the Packers in last season's bracket, but most 7-seeds haven't exactly looked like Super Bowl contenders. Were Bears fans excited about the chances of Mitchell Trubisky and their 8-8 team in 2020? Did a Dolphins team limping to the finish with Skylar Thompson under center have high hopes in 2022? Probably not. The 7-seed has mostly given flawed teams the right to get stomped on the road.

By play-by-play metric DVOA, though, the 7-seed hasn't advanced terrible teams into the postseason. More often, it has added a team that deserved to get in based on pure performance. The average seventh seed, by DVOA, has been the league's 11th-best team in football entering the playoffs. That includes two top-six teams from 2024 -- Packers (fourth) and Broncos (sixth).

The only team that had no business getting in was the 2021 Steelers, who were outscored by 55 points and ranked 24th in the league by DVOA. ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) pegged them as the 20th-best team that season. They won two regular-season games against playoff teams all season, and then Patrick Mahomes threw for 404 yards with five touchdowns against them in a 42-21 Chiefs wild-card victory.

2. The top seeds are still reaching the Super Bowl at the same rate. With only one team in each conference earning a bye under the 14-team format, teams have been more incentivized to land the No. 1 seed. Theoretically, it should pave a clearer path to a Super Bowl, as those teams are the only ones that can't be upset in the wild-card round and get to face the easiest opponent left in their bracket at home until the Super Bowl.

It's an even smaller sample than the one I'm using elsewhere in this piece, since it's unknown which team will make it to the title game, but things haven't shifted dramatically. So far, 50% of the 1-seeds in the 14-game format have made it to the Super Bowl. The only championship game in which both top seeds advanced through the bracket was Super Bowl LVII, when the Chiefs beat the Eagles.

From 2002 (when the league expanded to 32 teams and evolved into its current divisional structure) to 2019 (the final year of the 12-team playoff), guess what percentage of No. 1 seeds made it to the Super Bowl? Exactly 50%. Five of those 18 seasons ended with 1-seeds dueling in the championship. In the one-team bye format, there's no evidence top seeds have been any more successful than they were in the past.

3. The value proposition of the 2-seed has changed. If No. 7 seeds are 1-9 since 2020, that means No. 2 seeds are 9-1 in the wild-card round under the new format. Facing seemingly overmatched teams feels like a benefit to pushing for the No. 2 seed, but it's also a step down from the previous 12-team playoff, when the No. 2 seed earned a bye to the divisional round.

Before, the difference between the 1- and 2-seeds wasn't as significant. Though teams would rather play the lowest-seeded team in the divisional round and host a potential 1-2 matchup in the conference title game, both franchises got to take off for the wild-card round. Now, the 2-seed doesn't get that extra week to rest.

Will teams stop caring about the No. 2 seed? There's only one example of a team concretely passing up an opportunity to compete for that spot. In 2020, the Steelers sat Ben Roethlisberger and several other stars in the final game of the season, even though a win and a Bills loss could have given them the 2-seed. (The Bills won, so it wouldn't have mattered.) The 2022 Vikings rotated their starters out in the second half of a Week 18 game against the Bears to keep alive their chances of claiming the 2-seed, but they were already ahead by multiple scores.

What changes could the league consider? Time to put on our thinking caps. The league doesn't necessarily have to make any changes to the postseason, but is there anything it could do to improve the quality of play and/or make the end of the regular season more meaningful? Let's run through some options and weigh the pros, cons and plausibility of each:

Option No. 1: Go back to a 12-team playoff

Pros: There would be fewer teams perceived to be hopeless entering the postseason, although as I mentioned above, those 7-seeds are better than most think. There hasn't been a 7-seed make a deep run yet, but given that 6-seeds such as the 2010 Packers won a Super Bowl, a 7-seed running the table probably will happen eventually. A 12-team playoff would presumably go back to the two-bye system, which would make the 2-seed more valuable, albeit at the expense of the 1-seed.

Cons: There would be two fewer playoff games. The NFL would lose the $140 million in television rights fees it receives on a yearly basis from those deals, plus the revenue generated from those games. And as a result ...

Plausibility: Nil. There's no way the league would return to the 12-team playoff. And while the No. 2 vs. No. 7 games have mostly been uncompetitive, I was surprised to see that teams making it into the playoffs as the 7-seed have been mostly good, according to DVOA. I'm not sure there should be a push to reduce the playoff size, even if it were possible.

Option No. 2: Move to a 16-team playoff

Pros: What about going in the opposite direction? Adding two more teams would mean half the league makes it into the postseason, which would theoretically create more meaningful action in the final weeks of the regular season. More playoff spots means more teams having something to play for in early January, which would probably mean fewer games in which a team that definitely isn't tanking trots out its third-string quarterback down the stretch.

And while it's easy to imagine undeserving sub-.500 teams sneaking into the postseason by virtue of adding an 8-seed, that isn't the case. The 9-8 Bengals and 10-7 Seahawks would have gotten into an expanded field this season. Joe Burrow in the wild-card round is fun, right? Remember how exciting it was when the 2022 Lions knocked the Packers out of the playoffs in the final game of the season? In the 16-team world, that win would have been a play-in game and pushed Dan Campbell's team into the postseason.

It would also make the league more money by virtue of adding playoff games. Though NFL revenue doesn't matter to me or you, this option would be more appealing to NFL owners than the idea of removing two playoff games.

Cons: The only realistic way to do a 16-team playoff would be to do an eight-team bracket in each conference, which would mean no bye for the first seed. Leaving play-in games aside, the NBA and NHL have managed to do a 16-team playoff bracket without any byes for many years, and the NCAA tournament is four 16-team brackets without any teams getting a week off. But football is understandably a different animal.

Plausibility: Slim. The league would undoubtedly love more revenue, but there would be significant pushback from teams that want to earn the right to rest for the wild-card round. It could also remove incentive from teams to play hard late in the season, given that the benefit of landing the 1-seed would be reduced to home-field advantage and potentially easier opponents within their bracket. This might seem more realistic down the line, perhaps in a universe in which the NFL has 18 regular-season games and adds a few expansion teams.

Option No. 3: Reseed the playoffs based on record, regardless of where each team finished within its division

Pros: This has come up more often in 2024, as the Vikings became the first 14-win wild-card team in league history. While teams in the NFC South spent Week 18 seemingly sputtering in their attempts to clinch the division, I can understand why people felt the Vikings deserved a home game more than the Buccaneers or Falcons.

Guaranteeing a team a playoff spot for winning its division makes sense, and there would be some truly ugly end-of-season scenarios if all four teams in a division have no hope of making the postseason. But guaranteeing those teams a matchup against a much better team at home? It's not wild to imagine a scenario in which that doesn't need to occur. There would also be an incentive for teams that have won their divisions before Week 18, like this season's Texans, to keep competing for a home playoff game.

In this reseeded scenario, the only change in the AFC this season would have been the Chargers hosting the Texans. The NFC would have an entirely different postseason picture. The Eagles would have played the Rams in the wild-card round as opposed to the divisional round. The Vikings would have hosted the Bucs. The Commanders would have played the Packers at home. Doesn't that feel more like the best teams are rewarded?

Cons: NFL schedules are mostly defined by the division in which teams play, which would give good teams an opportunity to rack up a gaudy record in a weaker division. In 2012, for example, the Ravens finished as the 4-seed when they won the AFC North with a 10-6 record while facing the second-toughest schedule in the AFC. In this scenario, the 5-seed Colts would have jumped them for a home game, having gone 11-5 against the league's easiest schedule, including only three wins over teams with winning records. Is that a fairer system?

It took going back over a decade to find an example when a schedule-induced flip would have created an unfair scenario, so maybe it wouldn't happen all that often if the league shifted to this format. Then again, the 14-3 Vikings also were dominated on a neutral field in Arizona by the 10-7 Rams, so maybe we're overly concerned about what's fair in terms of home playoff games.

Plausibility: Reasonable. I suspect there will be conversation about this during the offseason, though I'd be surprised if the league actually changed the format so soon. History tells us there won't be as many 13- or 14-win wild-card teams, so the sort of extreme example that cries out for a structural switch probably will not happen often.

Option No. 4: Take away home playoff games from divisional champs without winning records

Pros: OK, this one seems more realistic. Hosting a playoff game would become the NFL's equivalent of becoming bowl-eligible -- a team needing nine wins to qualify. If it wins its division with a sub-.500 record, as the 2022 Buccaneers (8-9) and 2020 Commanders (7-9) did, its first-round matchup would be on the road at the best wild-card team. Given that those teams both lost badly at home to the Cowboys and Bucs, respectively, it's tough to make the argument they deserved to play at home.

Cons: Things don't always go that way. In 2010, a 6-9 Seahawks team clinched the division with a win over the Rams in Week 17. Instead of playing an 11-5 Saints team in New Orleans, they hosted Drew Brees & Co. in Seattle. What happened next registered on the Richter Scale. Those Seahawks rode home-field advantage to one of the biggest postseason upsets in recent memory.

Plausibility: This could happen! No NFL team wants to win its division and miss out on the revenue of hosting a playoff game, but for every 8-9 team that would lose its right to a home game, there's another 12-5 team that would benefit from getting its game at home. It's theoretically possible a sub-.500 team could be stuck in a brutal division and win eight games against a tough schedule, but I don't see any recent examples. This one seems like a winner, even if it wouldn't play out often.

Option No. 5: Only reseed the wild cards across conferences

Pros: Keeping the AFC and NFC separated until the Super Bowl felt meaningful right after the merger, but in 1971, the eventual champion Cowboys played only three games against AFC competition before the Super Bowl. With the move to the 17-game schedule, the 2024 champion will have played five games against teams from the other conference.

Under this proposal, the four division champions in the AFC and NFC would stay on their respective sides of the brackets, but the six wild-card teams would be seeded by reverse order in the standings against the toughest overall competition. Tiebreakers would become trickier since they would cross conferences, but the league could use the NFL draft order tiebreakers as a basis for deciding ties.

In this season's playoffs, that would have meant an entirely different set of matchups. The Eagles would have hosted the Broncos. The Bills would have landed the Steelers, keeping things in the AFC. There would have been another Harbaugh Bowl with the Ravens facing the Chargers. The Rams would have hosted the Packers, the Buccaneers-Commanders matchup would have stayed the same and the Vikings would have faced the Texans, the weakest of the eight division winners.

Even in a season in which four of the six games would have been AFC-AFC and NFC-NFC matchups, doesn't that bracket feel more fresh and fun? There's an actual reward for being the best wild-card team, and there are matchups that wouldn't normally happen in the postseason. There will be years in which both AFC and NFC teams would compete for the same playoff spot at the end of the season. The Seahawks, for example, would have missed out on a playoff berth to the 10-7 Steelers and Broncos by virtue of two wins in the strength of schedule calculations.

In seasons in which team quality is heavily weighted toward one conference or the other, worthy teams wouldn't miss out at the expense of lesser teams on the other side. In 2020, a 10-6 Dolphins team didn't make the playoffs in the AFC, while the 8-8 Bears got in on the other side of the bracket.

After the wild-card round, the bracket would be reseeded again each week. In the 2024 bracket, that would mean ... the exact same matchups that are happening in reality. It wouldn't always produce some out-of-nowhere AFC-NFC battles, but the playoffs would feel fresher and deliver newer games.

Cons: Well, not everybody likes new matchups. There wouldn't be as many scenarios in which the Ravens and Steelers play each other for the third time in a season. That didn't exactly lead to a thrilling matchup in this season's wild-card round, but those third games between divisional rivals can be fun. I'm also just not sure there's a huge appetite for cross-conference playoff matchups among everyone, even if they're fun to me.

Plausibility: Probably not. This would seem like more work than it's worth, and owners would probably prefer the familiarity of facing a longtime rival than a team they see once every four years. With so many potential opponents in each round, scouting would also be a nightmare, which could lead to sloppier games.

Option No. 6: Let teams choose their opponents in the wild-card round

Pros: This would be incredible, offering a real benefit for finishing as the 2-seed in each conference. In this scenario, immediately after the final regular-season game Sunday night, there would be a live show where the higher-seeded teams chose their opponent for wild-card weekend. The 2-seed would have its pick of the 5-, 6- or 7-seed. The 3-seed would then choose between the two remaining options, and the 4-seed would end up with whatever matchup remains.

The NFC might have played out as it did in real life with this rule in place, but the AFC might have gone differently. Would the No. 2 seed Bills have picked the Broncos, or would they have preferred to face a flailing Steelers team? Would the No. 3 seed Ravens have gone for the Broncos, or would they have picked a Texans team they blew out twice a year ago?

From there, the league could choose to reseed matchups, play out the bracket as it looked after the initial votes or let the top seeds pick again for the divisional round. (Would the Lions pick the Commanders or the Rams?) This would reward teams that played better in the regular season by giving them more control over their postseason opponent. The Professional Women's Hockey League adopted this method for determining its four-team playoff bracket, and I'd love to see it in the NFL.

Cons: I'm hardly the first person to come up with this idea, and everyone else who brought it up for their respective sports has the same critique: Coaches would never go for this. Teams are usually terrified of giving their opponents anything resembling bulletin-board material before the playoffs. The Rams used Lions coach Dan Campbell saying he would see Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell in two weeks as a rallying cry before their blowout win over Minnesota. Imagine an NFL coach going on camera and saying he wants to play a certain team. The first upset would get somebody fired.

Plausibility: Never happening. It would be fun, though.

PHILADELPHIA -- New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns has a bone chip in his right thumb to go along with the sprain he sustained in Monday's loss to the Detroit Pistons, sources confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday, though those same sources also said Towns was expected to play through the injury.

Towns hurt his thumb in the first half of Monday's game, when he smacked his shooting hand on the backboard on a drive. He played the rest of the game -- finishing with 26 points and 12 rebounds in 43 minutes -- though he grabbed at his hand several times as the game progressed.

Afterward, Towns said the thumb injury "is what it is," and after initially being listed as questionable to play Wednesday against the reeling Philadelphia 76ers, he was eventually ruled out before the game, with the swelling in his thumb needing to subside before he can return.

"We'll see where he is [Thursday]," Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of Towns' status during his pregame news conference.

Towns, who was acquired by the Knicks in a blockbuster trade on the eve of training camp in September, has had a brilliant season for his hometown team, averaging 25.4 points and a league-leading 13.9 rebounds while shooting 55% from the field and 44.9% from 3-point range.

He has ranked third among Eastern Conference frontcourt players in each of the first two rounds of All-Star voting, putting him on track to start in the game -- which would be a first for him after making four All-Star teams as a reserve during nine seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves to begin his career.

New York entered Wednesday's game with a 26-15 record, putting the Knicks on pace for a 52-win season -- which would rank among the 10 best records in the history of the franchise. They went on to beat the 76ers 125-119 in overtime.

Towns' bone chip was first reported by the New York Post.

ISAIAH HARTENSTEIN HAD done almost everything expected of him during his delayed debut for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

After missing this season's first 15 games due to a broken left hand, the center filled up the stat sheet with 13 points, 14 rebounds, three assists and four blocks in a Nov. 20 home win over the Portland Trail Blazers. It was the type of impact performance the Thunder anticipated when Hartenstein signed a three-year, $87 million deal in free agency over the summer.

But Hartenstein still needed to put the finishing touches on his first official outing in an Oklahoma City uniform.

"You know you gotta bark, right?" Thunder forward Jalen Williams said to Hartenstein seconds after the final buzzer sounded.

As is uniquely the norm with the Thunder, Hartenstein had plenty of company while he answered a few questions from the team's sideline reporter Nick Gallo.

"Nick, he's out of breath," Williams jokingly chimed in from behind Hartenstein, eager to get to the grand finale. As the interview ended, Hartenstein grabbed the microphone with both hands and released what he later termed "a solid, little bark" as a rite of initiation.

"Roo-roo-roo! Roo-roo-roo!"

It's a silly tradition that started midway through last season, when the Thunder were in the process of becoming the youngest No. 1 seed in NBA history. It began with an impromptu bark from Williams, known as "JDub" in Thunder parlance to avoid being confused with Jaylin "J-Will" Williams.

The barking became an audible expression of the group's mix of goofy personalities. The Thunder take their jobs extremely seriously. Themselves, not so much.

"Just assimilate into the culture, man," Alex Caruso told ESPN. "It's a long year. For us to get to where we want to be, we got to be one and together, and that's part of it."

The post-win interviews on the television broadcast, which always are group affairs and occasionally end with barking, display the bond of an ascending contender that has a collegial feel and a professional approach.

Oklahoma City -- only a few years removed from having one of the NBA's worst records -- has remained true to its core organizational philosophies even as the Thunder emerged as an elite team earlier than anticipated. Coach Mark Daigneault has managed to get one of the league's youngest teams to consistently embrace the mundane -- from skill work to game-plan detail -- even while experiencing success that often results in inflated egos.

"I think that's why we've been able to accelerate our development," Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. "All those little things that go into winning, they mean a lot to us because of our competitiveness and what our common goal is as a group."

The Thunder made jumps of 16 and 17 wins over the past two seasons, respectively, as 2022 lottery picks Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren proved themselves as star-caliber complements to Gilgeous-Alexander. Instead of trading for another star in the wake of last spring's second-round playoff exit, Thunder general manager Sam Presti targeted top-notch role players who fit the Thunder's culture and style of play, signing Hartenstein and trading for Caruso, who became the oldest player on the roster (30) when he was acquired in a summer trade with the Chicago Bulls.

As this season nears the midway point, Oklahoma City is on a 69-win pace despite Holmgren playing in only 10 games before suffering a fractured pelvis that has sidelined him since Nov. 11. The Thunder are especially dominant on the less glamorous end of the floor. They are allowing a league-low 102.9 points per 100 possessions, 3.8 fewer than any other team, entering Thursday's home against against the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, who snapped Oklahoma City's 15-game winning streak on Jan. 8.

The combination of what Caruso describes as "youthful energy" and "discipline" made an immediate impression on Oklahoma City's veteran offseason additions.

"I think a lot of young guys focus too much on what's going to happen in the future, but I feel like they're really good at making sure we're getting better each day," said Hartenstein, 26, the third-oldest player on the Oklahoma City roster behind Caruso and reserve forward/center Kenrich Williams. "If you want to be a great team in this league, you have to focus on the boring stuff, the details. They do a great job in that."

DAIGNEAULT COMPARES GILGEOUS-ALEXANDER'S evolution into one of the league's best players to investing in a mutual fund. It's not flashy, just steady gains compounding day after day.

It's an analogy that also applies to the Thunder's path from a rebuilding project to the clear-cut Western Conference favorite in the four and a half years since Presti promoted Daigneault from assistant to head coach as Oklahoma City was in the process of tearing down the roster around Gilgeous-Alexander.

Presti -- armed with a historic stockpile of draft picks that was built beginning with the 2019 blockbuster deal that sent Paul George to the LA Clippers and brought Gilgeous-Alexander (and eventually Jalen Williams) to Oklahoma City -- refrained from making splashy trades in an attempt to expedite the franchise's return to relevance. Instead, the Thunder leaned into patience and player development, enduring two seasons near the bottom of the Western Conference standings at the start of Daigneault's tenure before the progress became apparent.

"Those years when we weren't the greatest, he always made sure that we were playing the game the right way and doing the stuff that would transfer once we became a better team," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "And that's carried over obviously with the more talent we get and the better we get."

Gilgeous-Alexander worked his way from intriguing prospect to All-Star to arguably the NBA's most well-rounded superstar since arriving in Oklahoma City. Luguentz Dort, the only other player remaining from that 2019-20 roster, has transformed from an undrafted player with an ugly jumper to one of the league's premier 3-and-D players, a perimeter stopper who has shot 39.7% from 3-point range over the last season and a half. The rest of the roster has followed suit.

Rival executives and coaches widely believe that the Thunder are in the early stages of an extended window as a contender, but Oklahoma City's roster has been built without repeated swings in the upper half of the draft lottery.

Chet Holmgren, selected second in the 2022 draft, is the lone single-digit draft pick on the roster and one of only four first-rounders in the Oklahoma City rotation. It's a deep roster full of under-the-radar developmental success stories occupying key roles, the sort of team that is the result of tremendous scouting, which is still how Presti views himself at the core.

Isaiah Joe, a skinny, sharpshooting reserve guard whom Daigneault likes to refer to as one of the league's toughest players pound-for-pound, was a waiver-wire pickup. Aaron Wiggins, a backup forward, was the No. 55 pick in 2021. They both earned new four-year contracts over the summer.

This summer's major additions, Caruso and Hartenstein, fit into the ethos of grinders made good. Like Dort, they both had to toil in the G League to earn end-of-the-roster spots in the NBA and work their way into becoming essential role players. Caruso actually began his pro career with Oklahoma City Blue, the Thunder's G League affiliate, before leaving for a two-way deal with the Los Angeles Lakers. With a smile, Presti cited this as proof that he's made his share of talent evaluation errors.

Daigneault has attributed "an uncommon maturity" of a roster that still ranks as the league's fourth-youngest weighted by playing time, according to ESPN Research, as an essential element of Oklahoma City's success.

"They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves," Daigneault said. "I think that's one of the things that Sam's nailed in this process. The types of people that we've brought in the door, regardless of whether they're still here or they're not, by and large, have been committed professionals that are ambitious, but they're also willing to complete the team.

"So that's been a huge starting point. And then you take those people, you put 'em in a stable environment, you educate 'em on the value of all the invisible things, and you hammer that over and over again. You hammer that environment over and over again. You hammer those messages over and over again and then you double down on the people that you have and just allow that to grow and compound."

THE GROUP POSTGAME interviews are cute demonstrations of the Thunder's chemistry, but they have also been fodder for criticism from a four-time NBA champion.

Golden State Warriors power forward Draymond Green called the Thunder's group interviews "a little alarming" during an early-season edition of his podcast.

"There's a certain seriousness that it takes to win in this league, and there's a certain fear you have to instill in teams in order to win," Green said. "And I don't know if they're instilling that fear in teams with all of the bromance and stuff after the game."

Green's comments, whether serious concern or a trolling attempt to create controversy for a rival, went viral. But they didn't elicit much more than a shrug from the Thunder, a team that does not do drama.

"We're just concerned about what's going on here and everything else kind of takes care of itself," Jalen Williams said, claiming it was the first he'd heard of Green's comments when asked about them a few days later. "I feel like it's kind of weird to have a strong opinion on it, but we're just so locked in on what we have going on here."

The Thunder have a point differential of plus-12.8 points per game, which would break the record set by the 1971-72 Lakers (plus-12.3) for the best in NBA history. They have lost consecutive games just once this season and have yet to lose three in a row. That's a pretty convincing way to prevent questions about whether a team is serious enough.

"We all know it's a job and then it's a business, but at the end of the day, we're playing a game we love every day," Dort said. "Every time we wake up, we're doing something fun and we want to keep that in everything. I mean, this game brings a lot of stress and a lot of stuff outside, so whenever we're together, we want to have as much fun [as] we can have. That's just some of the goofiness that we started doing and it helps the team, honestly."

Gilgeous-Alexander didn't bark after his Dec. 26 performance that Daigneault described as "a masterpiece," when he carried the Thunder to a road win over the Indiana Pacers by scoring 16 of his career-high-tying 45 points in the final seven minutes.

But Gilgeous-Alexander's final words of his on-court interview with Gallo did provide a glimpse of the Thunder's bond.

"All right, let's go to Charlotte!" Gilgeous-Alexander said with genuine enthusiasm before revealing why the next stop, and a meeting with one of the NBA's worst teams, had been circled on the Thunder's calendar for weeks.

"It's Wiggs' jersey retirement in Charlotte," Gilgeous-Alexander said, pointing his thumb behind him at Aaron Wiggins as Kenrich Williams playfully massaged the reserve forward's shoulders and Jaylin Williams jokingly smacked him in the chest. "Let's hurry up and get there!"

A day ahead of their game against the Hornets, the team's entire traveling party boarded a bus at their hotel in Charlotte for a 90-minute drive to High Point, N.C., to visit Wiggins' high school alma mater, Wesleyan Christian Academy. Wiggins was honored in a pregame ceremony, and the Thunder stayed for the first quarter to watch his younger brother, Zacch, play before getting back on the bus and making the journey back to the Charlotte hotel.

The Thunder made a similar trip -- 90 minutes each way from Dallas to Waco -- to celebrate Kenrich Williams when his high school retired his number the night before a December road game last season.

"This is my only team, but I don't think it's like that on every team," Jalen Williams said. "It's something that nobody on the squad takes for granted."

Longtime Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker has died at the age of 90, the team announced Thursday.

Uecker served as the Brewers' radio announcer since 1971, a job that earned him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the Ford C. Frick Award winner in 2003.

The Milwaukee native was so beloved in his hometown that when the Brewers reached the National League Championship Series in 2018, the team had him throw out the first pitch for Game 1.

We are heartbroken to announce that Brewers icon & Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Uecker passed away today at the age of 90 pic.twitter.com/EJRBC8Cjj4

Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) January 16, 2025

Uecker may be best known for his role in the 1989 movie "Major League." Playing Cleveland Indians announcer Harry Doyle, Uecker had some of the movie's most memorable lines, such as "Juuuust a bit outside." He reprised the role for two sequels.

He also made a number of appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," starred in the 1980s sitcom "Mr. Belvedere" and had a series of Miller Lite commercials in the 1970s and 1980s in which he played "Mr. Baseball," a nickname that stuck.

"The Tonight Shows and doing that stuff was easy," Uecker said in 2018 before his Game 1 pitch. "Doing play-by-play [was hard], because I kept thinking about my friends here in Milwaukee. Guys that I grew up with, listening to the game, and here I am doing play-by-play, you know. And what they were thinking? That's what I was thinking, what they thought of me."

Along with his famed broadcasting career, Uecker played six seasons in the majors as a catcher for the Braves, Cardinals and Phillies. He was a career .200 hitter -- his biggest hit being a home run off Sandy Koufax, a moment Uecker says he always apologized to the Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Famer for.

The Brewers have honored him with two statues, one that's outside American Family Field and another in the back row of the terrace level, a nod to the old Miller Lite commercial in which he said, "I must be in the front row!" as he was escorted to the back of a stadium.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Jabeur, 30, has dropped down to 39th in the world rankings after injury problems last year prevented her from competing at the US Open and Paris Olympics.

She ended her 2024 season in September, returning to action at the beginning of this year and suggested the long spell away had caused her asthma problems to resurface.

"Having taken off a lot [of time] didn't help. I think it provoked it even more," she said.

"I think I will have to find a way to feel better the next two days, which I am hoping to do because this started kind of two days or three days ago. I feel like it got worse for some reason."

Jabeur will face American eighth seed Emma Navarro, who beat China's Wang Xiyu 6-3 3-6 6-4, in the next round.

"I'm really just taking it one minute at a time and see how it's going to go, but definitely I'm doing everything that I can to be ready," said Jabeur.

"I don't want to be greedy just after coming back from an injury. Sometimes I get angry because I feel like I'm getting back there, but every time something happens."

Meanwhile, 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina beat 17-year-old American wildcard Iva Jovic 6-0 6-3 to seal her 50th Grand Slam match win.

Jovic was the youngest woman in the second round of the draw but struggled against 2023 Australian Open finalist Rybakina, who is ranked 184 places above Jovic.

The Kazakh will face Ukrainian 32nd seed Dayana Yastremska, who reached the semi-finals last year as a qualifier, in the third round.