In the aftermath of DeMarcus Cousins' knee injury, the Los Angeles Lakers are bringing in two former All-Star centers -- Joakim Noah and Dwight Howard -- to evaluate in individual workouts in Los Angeles, league sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

The workouts will also include veteran Mo Speights, league sources said.

Another center under consideration, per sources: Marcin Gortat, who is currently overseas in Europe.

Howard is under contract with the Memphis Grizzlies, but the team has given him permission to explore opportunities elsewhere in the NBA. He has a $5.6 million expiring contract that could be useful as a trade asset, or he could work out a contract buyout with the Grizzlies. It is unlikely that he will play a game for the franchise, league sources said.

Cousins suffered a torn left ACL in a workout last week, likely leaving the Lakers without him for the duration of his one-year, $3.5 million deal with the franchise.

The Lakers have JaVale McGee and will try to cobble together a center rotation that will include Anthony Davis, with the organization still preferring that he play a majority of his minutes at power forward and not center.

ATLANTA -- Braves reliever Jacob Webb is likely done for the season after being placed on the 60-day injured list with an ailing right elbow.

Webb, 26, had been one of the most effective pitchers in Atlanta's bullpen, with a 4-0 record, 2 saves and a 1.39 ERA in 36 appearances. But he had not pitched in the big leagues since going on the 10-day IL with an elbow impingement July 13.

Webb began a rehab assignment at Triple-A Gwinnett on July 31, but he struggled in 10 appearances, posting a 6.97 ERA.

He was recalled from Gwinnett and shifted to the 60-day IL to make room on the 40-man roster for outfielder Billy Hamilton, who was claimed off waivers Monday from Kansas City.

The New York Yankees have become the latest team to attempt to revive the career of reliever Trevor Rosenthal, reaching a minor league deal with the former All-Star, sources told ESPN's Buster Olney, confirming multiple reports.

After missing all of last season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, Rosenthal signed a deal with the Nationals that could have been worth up to $30 million over two years.

But Rosenthal struggled with Washington, going 0-1 with a 22.74 ERA in 12 games before being released on June 23. The right-hander joined the Tigers six days later on a minor league deal and returned to the majors with Detroit on July 15.

Rosenthal also struggled with the Tigers, however, posting a 7.00 ERA in 10 appearances before being released Aug. 11. He has allowed 23 earned runs, 11 hits and 26 walks in 15 1/3 innings combined this season with Washington and Detroit.

The 29-year-old had 121 saves in six seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals from 2012 to 2017 and was an All-Star in 2015. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2017.

Rosenthal is the latest veteran reliever added after the July 31 trade deadline by the Yankees, who also have signed right-hander David Hernandez and claimed right-hander Ryan Dull off waivers from the Giants in the past week.

The incredible story of the 2019 Yankees has been told and retold, because it just keeps happening: A star-laden roster that was projected, before Opening Day, to win as many as 100 games has seen star after star get injured, yet has somehow gotten better.

Injuries hit early and often and to many of the best players. At various points this season, they've set records for most players unavailable at one time, as well as best players unavailable at one time (as measured by previous season's WAR on the injured list). They've spent more money on injured players this year than the Rays have spent on players, by some accounting. When star players have returned from rehab, others have promptly replaced them. That was true in April, in May, in June and in July, and it's true today: This month, they've activated Gary Sanchez and Brett Gardner, while losing Edwin Encarnacion and Aaron Hicks. There are 16 players currently injured, including the first-, second- and third-string first basemen. And the Yankees are on pace to win 107 games.

Undeniably, this has been a triumphant season for the Yankees organization as a whole. That's the plot. What's the theme, though? Is this incredible story one of depth -- a roster Brian Cashman & Co. built before the season that was astoundingly deep and able to win a war of attrition? Or is it one of surprise, of overachievement, of player development -- a roster of nobodies who became heroes when the moment called upon them?

To answer that, let's spin the dial back four months and consider what the Yankees' preseason previews would have looked like if we'd gotten the playing time estimates exactly right.

Here is a list that we'll be referring back to as we go. The first number for each position is Projected WAR followed by Projected WAR, If We'd Known and Actual WAR (prorated):

• Catcher: 2.8 | 3.7 | 2.5

• First base: 1.9 | 2.3 | 1.9

• Second base: 3.1 | 1.2 | 3.7

• Shortstop: 2.0 | 3.3 | 4.1

• Third base: 2.2 | 1.1 | 5.8

• Left field: 2.6 | 1.8 | 6.2

• Center field: 4.0 | 3.1 | 4.3

• Right field: 5.3 | 3.9 | 3.0

• DH: 2.7 | 0.5 | 1.1

Projected WAR is what the ZiPS projection system forecast for the Yankees at each position, given the best estimates at the time of Yankees playing time. For example, at left field the Yankees projected to produce 2.6 wins. That was assuming Gardner would play around three-quarters of the time and Giancarlo Stanton would play one-quarter (while spending most of his time at DH).

Projected WAR, If We'd Known is what the projection would have been had ZiPS known with perfect accuracy who would actually play, and how much. (But not knowing how well they'd play; you can't predict baseball.) The If We'd Known projection for left field would include some Gardner -- he has played about a third of the Yankees' games there -- and almost no Stanton. It would also include weighted shares of the projections for Mike Tauchman, Clint Frazier and Cameron Maybin, who have collectively started most of the Yankees' games in left, but who projected to be not great.

Actual WAR is what the Yankees have actually gotten at each position. Which, for left field, has been both expectedly (because we figured it would be Gardner and Stanton) and unexpectedly (because we didn't figure it'd be Maybin/Tauchman/Frazier) great:

• Frazier, as LF: .390/.409/.732

• Tauchman, as LF: .298/.378/.626

• Maybin, as LF: .337/.413/.500

So in the case of left field, we get:

Step 1: The Yankees project to be pretty good (2.6 WAR). Step 2: The Yankees get hurt, and project to be worse -- but not too bad (1.8 WAR). They had pretty good depth there. Step 3: The replacements end up being way better than expected, and in fact considerably better than even the original plan (6.2 WAR). The replacements got better as ballplayers, and they overachieved.

There are nine positions on the offensive side. In three of these, the Yankees' projections would have either stayed about the same or gotten better had we known how playing time would really be distributed.

At first base, this is a testament to their depth: They went into the season with two seemingly qualified first basemen fighting for playing time (and, indeed, each homered on Opening Day). When Greg Bird was injured in mid-April, it didn't hurt the collective projection. And with Luke Voit having mostly escaped the carnage this year -- although he's on the IL now with a sports hernia -- the Yankees have been about as good as expected.

At catcher, this is a testament to their depth and the lack of any real surprises. Sanchez has twice gone on the IL, but for short stints, and he'll actually play a little bit more this year than ZiPS had projected. His backup (Austin Romine), meanwhile, is one of the best backups in baseball. Together (and individually), they've done about what would have been expected of them.

At shortstop, this is a testament to overall infield depth. ZiPS didn't think Troy Tulowitzki would be very good but did think he'd play until Didi Gregorius returned midseason from Tommy John surgery. When Tulowitzki was injured a week into the season, Gleyber Torres -- who projected to be much better than Tulowitzki, but as the second baseman -- moved over, actually boosting the shortstop projection (but weakening the second base projection). This was possible because the Yankees had a very qualified major league starter in DJ LeMahieu as a backup infielder; and because they had a second baseman (Torres) who could capably move up the defensive spectrum.

So those are three positions where things went either as expected or where injuries weren't too frequent or too harmful. Everywhere else has been gutted ... and, yet, everywhere else (other than DH) has ended up actually better than the pre-gutting expectations:

At second base, LeMahieu mostly took over in the first half, with Torres having gone to shortstop. LeMahieu, who began the year as a superutility backup, projected to be about three-quarters as good as Torres.

At third base, Gio Urshela mostly took over when Miguel Andujar was hurt on March 31, and then when he was hurt for good on May 12. Urshela, who began the year in Triple-A, projected to be about 40% as good as Andujar.

In center field, Gardner frequently slid over from left field to replace Hicks, who has missed 63 days. Gardner projected to be about half as good as Hicks. More important, when he was playing center field, the Yankees had to backfill left field.

In left field, the aforementioned combo of Frazier, Maybin and Tauchman took over for Gardner. Tauchman and Frazier both had fairly strong projections, at least relative to Gardner, and the trio collectively projected to be about 90% as good as Gardner.

The drop-off was larger in right field, where Frazier, Maybin and Tauchman also filled in for Aaron Judge, who missed 62 days. The trio collectively projected to be about one-third as valuable as Judge.

And at DH, they neither had a great replacement for Stanton nor had anybody (including trade acquisition Encarnacion, who was injured early this month) overperform.

One could applaud the Yankees for their depth: LeMahieu and Frazier would have slotted in as starters on many teams' rosters this spring, and Tauchman's projections suggested he could have, too. The Yankees could have been caught completely flat-footed at four positions -- center field, right field, third base and second base -- but they had credible (if seemingly inferior) replacements at three of them. That's pretty good depth.

At the same time, Urshela and Maybin were more desperation plays -- Maybin having been "purchased" in April from Cleveland, Urshela a seeming afterthought who had been "purchased" last summer. You wouldn't have called either one of them depth, knowing what you knew at the time. Every team has random names ready to replicate replacement level, or whom they pick up for almost nothing when everybody gets hurt.

But the names we just put in bold -- the primary replacements -- share something in common: They've all performed far, far better than expected. Pretty much every player who had to take on a bigger role because of injuries has outperformed expectations:

LeMahieu

• Projected .274/.332/.393, 2.6 WAR

• Actual .338/.386/.538, 4.7 WAR

Urshela

• Projected .243/.280/.349, 0.5 WAR

• Actual .338/.379/.580, 3.1 WAR

Tauchman

• Projected .281/.344/.438, 1.9 WAR

• Actual .290/.372/.551, 2.4 WAR

Maybin

• Projected .255/.329/.368, 0.8 WAR

• Actual .309/.391/.522, 1.4 WAR

Gardner

• Projected .246/.333/.380, 1.8 WAR

• Actual .251/.333/.478, 2.8 WAR

Torres, who was pushed into a bigger role by Tulowitzki's injury, also outperformed his projections. Frazier outhit his, although he also got injured, his defense wasn't very good and he has since spent about half the season in Triple-A.

The pitching staff hasn't been so blessed. Their pitchers have collectively underperformed preseason projections, even accounting for injuries:

• Pitchers: 24.5 (Projected WAR) | 20.7 (If We'd Known) | 17.5 (Actual WAR)

But their dominant bullpen has been both mostly healthy -- with the exception of Dellin Betances -- and fantastic, with the most relief WAR in baseball. As a pitching staff they have the highest "clutch" score in the AL, which for team pitching mostly reflects the ability to successfully leverage the best pitchers in the biggest situations (and to pitch well in those situations).

So to add it all up: Had we known before the season exactly how much playing time the Yankees would distribute to the Urshelas and Tauchmans and Mike Fords and Thairo Estradas and the rest, ZiPS would have projected the Yankees to win somewhere around 84 games -- around where the A's, the Rays and the Twins were before the season. The Yankees' front office built a team that, even with $60 million to $80 million of talent on the IL, projected to be a competitive team in the American League. If you told almost any other team in baseball that a dozen high-impact players would miss a couple thousand games, they would probably conclude they had no chance; they might conclude they were better off using the season to rebuild. The Yankees, though, were still, even on paper, contenders. What an incredible roster.

But ultimately, the bigger story is less the depth than the projection-busting performances. The Yankees will outperform their "true" projection by 15 to 20 games this year. That's incredible. Only the Twins will compare for unexpectedness.

There have been a lot of great Yankees teams in our lifetimes. There's sometimes a tendency to think about great Yankees teams as "because they're so rich" or "because they're so smart." The homegrown 1990s Yankees get more credit for smart, and the purchased early-2000s Yankees are dismissed a bit as just rich. If these Yankees were able to withstand injuries without wavering merely because of depth -- if they'd signed every player in baseball, as that old Onion article proposed -- then maybe we'd talk about the advantage of playing in a big market.

What actually happened is more like what we typically file under "because they're smart." They identified players who were about to dramatically outperform expectations, perhaps, or they developed new skills, swings and approaches to help those players dramatically outperform expectations, or they set up a culture and environment where players would flourish. Of course, that's because they're rich, too: Few teams have bigger staffs, a larger analytics department and more tools to help their players (along with $24 million to spend on a seemingly redundant infielder like LeMahieu).

But none of this happens by accident. As Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik write in "The MVP Machine":

Between the springs of 2011 and 2018, the average size of the staffs assigned to player development by MLB teams increased by 51%, from an average of 51 in 2011 to an average of 77 in 2018. (The deep-pocketed Yankees led all teams in 2018 with 102 PD personnel.)

And, they continue,

Some of the early practitioners of progressive development were also the teams with the greatest resources, including MLB's bicoastal behemoths, the Yankees and Dodgers.

In other words: It's a lot easier to be smart when you're rich. If you resent the Yankees for their constant financial advantage over your favorite team, by all means, indulge that. But ultimately, this Yankees story really is what you thought it was: A bunch of second-stringers, some pretty good, some just OK, some barely hanging on in the sport, got their chance to save the most first-string franchise in baseball -- and they did it! They made themselves better, and they became heroes. Really, what could be a cooler story than that?

SPEEDWAY, Ind. – Kyle Busch, the 2015 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion, has been named the honorary grand marshal for the USAC.25 Series event at Darlington Raceway, Aug. 29-Sept. 1.

He is scheduled to visit the USAC.25 track across from Darlington Raceway at the Manheim Auction lot on Saturday, Aug. 31.

The driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing has accomplished incredible feats in his 16-year NASCAR career. Busch currently has 55 NASCAR Cup Series wins, including the prestigious Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway twice (2015-16). He has also collected 95 NASCAR Xfinity Series victories and 56 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series wins. He has more than 200 wins across NASCAR’s top three national series.

“I know there are a lot of talented young racers in quarter midget racing, so I appreciate being asked to be a part of the Darlington event as Grand Marshal,” said Busch. “Quar-ter midget racing is a great way to get started out in racing and I’m sure it’s going to be fun for them to be a part of the Throwback weekend at Darlington. I’m looking forward to seeing what the USAC.25 Series is all about.”

Busch adds his name to the list of USAC.25 Honorary Grand Marshals. Within the past year, iconic and legendary drivers like Jeff Gordon, Mario Andretti, Josef Newgarden, Arie Luyendyk, James Hinchcliffe, Chase Elliott, Graham Rahal, Joey Logano and Alexander Rossi have all spent time with the young drivers.

With at least 45 USAC.25 clubs located all across the country, thousands of kids ages five and up, along with their families, participate in USAC-sanctioned quarter midget series events. Some notable graduates of quarter midget include Jeff Gordon, Joey Logano, Ed Carpenter, Sarah Fisher, Ryan Newman and Alex Bowman.

After the 2009-10 season, Ryan Miller won the Vezina Trophy in Buffalo, the Canucks' Henrik Sedin won the Hart Trophy as league MVP while Pavel Datsyuk took home his third straight Selke Trophy.

A lot has changed in the past decade. Then again, a lot hasn't.

As the 2010s come to a close, we identified the players who would take home trophies for their bodies of work over the course of the past 10 seasons. Since the decade was dominated by the Blackhawks, Penguins and Kings each winning multiple Stanley Cups, a lot of the individual nominees reflect that success. Interestingly, that didn't apply to the goalies -- our decade-long Vezina nominees are a bunch of guys who carried the load for their team in regular seasons but couldn't win that elusive championship ... yet.

Here's how our ballot for all of the decade-long major awards would shake out, as well as some fun, made-up awards like best and worst trade of the decade, best goal, and best ambassador for NHL hockey:

Hart Trophy

Winner: Sidney Crosby
Runners-up: Alex Ovechkin, Patrick Kane

No player has accumulated more points since 2009-10 than Sidney Crosby's 922 (Alex Ovechkin is second, with 901). Perhaps more impressive is Crosby's 1.26 points per game, which is topped by only Connor McDavid's 1.30. McDavid's smaller sample (just 287 games) keeps him off the list. Ovechkin has 100 more goals than any other player in this time, and it could be argued that he is perhaps the single player who helped buoy his team through this decade -- through President Trophies, playoff disappointments and, finally, a Stanley Cup.

Vezina Trophy

Winner: Henrik Lundqvist
Runners-up: Sergei Bobrovsky, Carey Price, Pekka Rinne

Henrik Lundqvist has started more games (654) and faced more shots (19,492) than any other goalie in this span. Among all goalies who have played at least 300 games, Lundqvist has the second-best save percentage (.919). The trio of Bobrovsky, Price and Rinne is so close in stats -- with .918, .918 and .919 save percentages, respectively, though Rinne leads with 55 shutouts -- that it was hard to differentiate our pick for No. 2 on the list.

Norris Trophy

Winner: Erik Karlsson
Runners-up: Duncan Keith, Drew Doughty

We have a pair of two-time Norris winners here: Chicago's Keith and (then) Ottawa's Karlsson. Keith -- with a 53.61 Corsi for percentage -- has played significantly more minutes (roughly 21,000 to 17,500) while leading Chicago to three first-place Central Division finishes and, of course, two Stanley Cups. Doughty, the 2016 Norris winner, was consistently excellent while putting up monster minutes for Los Angeles. But Karlsson embodies the shift in this decade toward smaller, puck-moving defensemen, so we'll give him the nod.

Selke Trophy

Winner: Patrice Bergeron
Runners-up: Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Toews

This one is a no-brainer. Boston's Bergeron has won four out of 10 awards this decade and has set the standard for the elite two-way forward in the game. Heck, he's even mentioned for the award when he misses significant time in a season. Bergeron owned this decade. Kopitar (two Selkes in three years) is a natural runner-up, and Toews gets the nod for third.

Best rookie season

Winner: Mathew Barzal
Runners-up: Artemi Panarin, Auston Matthews

It's going to be hard to match Barzal's production (87 points in 85 games) for the Islanders in 2017-18. Both McDavid and Elias Petterson were on similar paces, though injuries derailed their freshman campaigns. Matthews is the only rookie 40-goal scorer, and his four-goal debut for a thirsty Toronto franchise was perhaps the best single game by a rookie this decade. Panarin's 30-goal, 77-point debut with the Blackhawks -- his first season in North America -- was spectacular.

Jack Adams

Winner: Barry Trotz
Runners-up: Joel Quenneville, John Tortorella

Trotz began the decade in Nashville but did his best work guiding the Capitals to unprecedented regular-season success and a long-awaited Stanley Cup. His one-year turnaround for the New York Islanders in 2018-19 (specifically installing sound defensive structure with limited personnel) gives him the edge for our Jack Adams award of the decade.

And now, for some fun ...

Biggest trade: P.K. Subban for Shea Weber

This one sent shockwaves through the NHL: Two All-Star, top-pairing defensemen swapped in a one-for-one trade for a change of scenery. Nashville won the trade early, making the Stanley Cup Final in 2017. Subban has since been traded again (to New Jersey), while Weber remains with the Canadiens.

Worst trade: Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson

Somehow, this trade happened on ... the same day: June 29, 2016, will live on in NHL infamy.

Trade is one for one: Adam Larsson for Taylor Hall.

— Bobby Margarita (@TSNBobMcKenzie) June 29, 2016

This deal was also one-for-one and was absolutely one-sided. A disgruntled Hall of course blossomed into an MVP for the Devils. Larsson, meanwhile, is toiling for an Oilers team that has spiraled. A shout-out to 2013's Filip Forsberg-for-Martin Erat and Michael Latta as a very close runner-up in this category.

Best goal: Crosby's golden goal

The most memorable goal scored by an NHL player this decade was Sidney Crosby's gold-medal overtime winner in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. It capped an epic game between Canada and the U.S. with a spectacular finish. We're not trying to troll the NHL here -- it no longer sends players to the Olympics -- but it was a really big goal.

Highest Q rating: Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin

This has to be a tie between Crosby and Ovechkin -- no coincidence since the NHL and NBC marketing machine liked to play up their rivalry. Ask any random stranger over the past 10 years to name an NHL player, and these two guys had the best chances of being identified. Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews should surpass the duo over the next decade, but it doesn't help that they play in Canadian markets.

Best third jersey: Ottawa Senators

The Bruins' jerseys are by far the most improved (from the weird Winnie the Pooh thing from the turn of the millennium to the current retro-style crest and more distinguished bear on the prowl). Colorado's are consistently nice, but the winner here is Ottawa. Yes, this is one of the things the Senators have done right lately: a stately, throwback, striped look inspired by their original jerseys. The sharp look debuted in 2011 and got a tweak for 2018.

Worst third jersey: New York Islanders (2011-14) and Buffalo Sabres (2013-15)

While the trend of a blue jersey with a circle in the center featuring the logo became a bit tired -- looking at you, Blues, Blue Jackets and Panthers -- those are actually fine jerseys and definitely not the worst. That distinction should go to the Islanders from 2011-14 or Buffalo's yellow disaster.

Best ambassador for NHL hockey: Gritty

How could a mascot who debuted in late 2018 make such an impact that he lands on a "best of the decade" list? Witness the power of Gritty.

The orange fuzzy creature has done the late night circuit, amassed a strong social media presence, been reappropriated as a meme and generally done so much media that he has become ubiquitous. Some of the other 30 teams aren't crazy about Gritty's preferred treatment, but there's no question that he has helped everyone up their game.

India Blue 112 for 6 (Gaikwad 30, Porel 3-26) drew with India Green

The first match of the Duleep Trophy 2019-20 between India Blue and India Green was abandoned without Blue completing their first innings after being put in to bat. Persistent rain and a wet outfield at the Just Cricket Academy Ground on the outskirts of Bengaluru ensured that there was no play on the last three days. Both Blue and Green got one point each.

On a truncated first day, Blue had moved to a shaky 112 for 6 in 49 overs, but that was the only cricketing action in the match.

Opener Ruturaj Gaikwad, who has been among the runs recently, top-scored with 30 off 63 balls. Ankit Bawne was unbeaten on 21, having faced 103 balls. For Green, Rajasthan left-arm seamer Tanveer Ul-Haq continued the form he had shown in the last season - which netted him 51 wickets in the Ranji Trophy - prising out the opening duo of Gaikwad and Snell Patel, while Ishan Porel, the 20-year old Bengal seamer, tore through the middle order.

Porel's first wicket was that of Blue captain Shubman Gill, who was coming into this match on the back of a rich vein of form with India A on their tour of West Indies, caught behind for just 6. He later got Anmolpreet Singh and Jalaj Saxena to end with 3 for 26.

Ankit Rajpoot, who shared the new ball with Tanveer, took one wicket. The seamers bowled the majority of overs on the first day, and Rahul Chahar, fresh off a T20I debut for India, bowled just five overs with the conditions helping the quicker men.

Blue will now take on India Red in the next match at Alur from August 23.

Sreesanth, the one-time India fast bowler, can finally breathe a little easy after the BCCI ombudsman Justice (retd) DK Jain reduced his IPL 2013 spot-fixing ban to seven years, the sanction period coming to an end on September 13, 2020. This comes five months after the Supreme Court of India "set aside" the BCCI ban - originally for life - and asked the board to "reconsider" and "revisit" the length of any fresh ban, preferably within three months.

The sanction has been imposed retrospectively from September 13, 2013, when Sreesanth was slapped with the life ban by the BCCI's then disciplinary committee. Sreesanth was then found guilty of breaching the code of conduct for his alleged role in the IPL corruption and spot-fixing scandal that year.

The BCCI's decision had followed the arrest of Sreesanth and two other Rajasthan Royals players by Delhi Police for alleged promises made to bookmakers during the 2013 IPL. The charges against Sreesanth pertained to the match against Kings XI Punjab, played on May 9 in Mohali, that Royals won by eight wickets. The disciplinary committee charged Sreesanth guilty of: corruption, betting, bringing the game into disrepute and not informing the board's anti-corruption unit of being approached by bookies.

However, the Supreme Court pointed out the three-member disciplinary committee - comprising then BCCI president N Srinivasan and two vice-presidents Arun Jaitley and Niranjan Shah - had not considered the relevant provisions of the code before arriving at the length of the ban which ranges from a minimum of five years to a maximum of a life ban. The court said the BCCI disciplinary committee did not "advert to the aggravating and mitigating factors" listed under its code.

Consequently, the court asked the BCCI to set aside the life ban and review the "quantum of punishment/sanction" to be imposed on Sreesanth. That decision was left to the BCCI's ombudsman in the absence of a disciplinary committee which can only be formed post the board's elections.

Before arriving at his decision, Justice Jain heard both Sreesanth and BCCI, both of whom were represented by their lawyers. Sreesanth's legal counsel, Krishna Mohan K Menon, said that his client's conduct was fair throughout the inquiry conducted by then BCCI ACU head Ravi Sawani with the bowler not contesting any offence alleged against him and cooperating fully.

Menon said Sreesanth, who was 30 in 2013, had no knowledge of the "bookie nexus operating behind the scenes" during the IPL. Menon also said the alleged incident did not have any impact on the result of the IPL match which Royals, Sreesanth's team, won "comfortably". Menon added the spot-fixing scandal itself had no material or commercial impact on the tournament in 2013. According to him, Sreesanth had "maintained good conduct" throughout his playing career and was a committed family man and a philanthropist.

Menon also told the BCCI ombudsman that while determining the sanctions, he ought not to consider Sreesanth's "biological life" but his "sport life". Menon explained that Sreesanth, who is currently 36, has "only 3 years of active sporting life" and hence the ombudsman should consider all these factors.

"It was thus, pleaded by the Ld. Counsel that having regard to all these factors, Mr. Sreesanth has already suffered sufficient punishment for the alleged offences and therefore, he does not deserve further sanctions," Justice Jain noted in his order.

In response, the BCCI argued that a life ban was just for Sreesanth for the various aggravating factors. Among those listed were: the player showed no "remorse" at any point during the investigation process, that he had been "infamous for his uncontrolled presentation of negative temperament in the form of anger, frustration and scuffles on field" with other players, that he was mature enough to understand the consequences of his offence, that there was material evidence he had received a sum of INR 10 lacs "in lieu of the offence committed".

"The award of sentence, less than a life ban in a clear case of match fixing, can clearly impact public confidence in the game of Cricket," the BCCI is credited as saying in the order.

The board argued that the disciplinary committee was "merely" required to determine, after considering all the relevant factors, whether they aggravated or mitigated the offence. The quantum of punishment, the BCCI said, was a matter of discretion of the panel.

Justice Jain agreed with the BCCI's zero-tolerance approach towards corruption and any offence committed under its code could not be "ignored" and "dealt with leniently." However, he pointed out that the zero-tolerance approach "cannot dilute consideration of the relevant factors" while imposing sanctions.

More to follow…

Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson wrote on Twitter that his wife, Wendy, has died of cancer.

FINAL WENDY UPDATE 8/20#NotFightingAlone ❤️❤️❤️ there's a celebration in heaven today cause Wendy is Home pic.twitter.com/OYwh0fQLpU

— Blake Anderson (@CHbanderson) August 20, 2019

Arkansas State announced Monday that Anderson would be taking a leave of absence from the program as his wife dealt with cancer for the second time in three years.

Wendy Anderson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2017, and her husband took a brief leave before that season as well as she underwent treatment in Mexico. Further surgery to remove cancer cells allowed her to make a full recovery. However, the cancer returned within a year.

Blake Anderson announced in January that drug treatments had not been effective, and in July, the family was informed that her most recent rounds of chemotherapy had been unsuccessful.

The Red Wolves open their season at home on Aug. 31 against SMU. Defensive coordinator David Duggan will coach the team during Anderson's leave. Anderson has gone 39-25 over five seasons with Arkansas State.

ESPN's David M. Hale and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS president Rick Welts was in his old office up in Oakland when the call came in. Warriors general manager Bob Myers was checking in, as he often did, after the team's shootaround in Los Angeles.

It was the morning of Game 5 of the Warriors' 2014 first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Four days earlier, TMZ had published voice recordings of then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist statements to his mistress, V. Stiviano, throwing the NBA into a tailspin.

When Myers called his boss with a status report, he told him in no uncertain terms, "'These guys are going to walk off the floor,'" Welts recalled.

"He was with the team that morning and said the vibe around the team -- maybe both teams -- was that if this doesn't go the way the players want it to go that they could walk out on the floor and then walk right off and not play the game that night," Welts said.

Donald Sterling had been a blight on the NBA for three decades. There were dozens of incidents that could have been grounds to kick him out of the league, but this tape was something else.

"In your lousy f---ing Instagram, you don't have to have yourself walking with black people," Sterling told Stiviano. "It bothers me a lot that you want to promote, broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?"

At one point, Stiviano asks Sterling, "Do you know that you have a whole team that's black, that plays for you?"

He responds: "Do I know? I support them, and give them food and clothes and cars and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game?"

The NBA's players were appalled. They threatened to boycott playoff games if new NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn't get rid of Sterling quickly and definitively.

"There's no room for that in our game," LeBron James, then of the Miami Heat, said the morning after the tapes were released. "Can't have that from a player, we can't ever from an owner, we can't have it from a fan, and so on and so on. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic or whatever the case may be. We can't have that as part of our game."

Silver was less than 90 days into the job, and he had a full-fledged crisis on his hands. The players were on the verge of shutting down the league in protest. And the threat was far more credible than anyone knew at the time.

"I was all-in. Like shut down the whole season," then-Warriors forward Andre Iguodala said. "Maybe that was too far, but as far as that game that day, you can reschedule it, you gotta sort this thing out, because there's some deep-rooted stuff with him that had to be addressed."

The Clippers. The Warriors. The NBA. It was uncharted territory for everyone. No team had ever refused to start a game in the NBA before, never mind the playoffs. It would have been an incredible statement.

"If we didn't play," then-Clippers guard Jamal Crawford said, "I think that honestly it would have outlived us. They would be talking about that while we're not here anymore.

"It's never happened. At that magnitude, at that level."

And if the Clippers and Warriors boycotted one game, what would happen to the rest of the playoffs?

"If we didn't play the first game," Crawford said, "I don't think we would've played any games, to be honest with you. I think that just would've been that, until something happened."

Five years later, that what-if remains one of the great unanswered questions in league history. Because something did happen to turn that train around. And instead of shutting down the league, the moment turned the NBA into what it is today.

THERE ARE MANY REASONS why this tape caused Sterling's downfall. The world he had once ruled, all the people he had once had power over -- his players, his mistress, his wife, the NBA -- finally had a way of fighting back.

Stiviano wasn't the first woman who wanted revenge after a relationship with Sterling had gone awry. But she was the first who had the technology and platform to blackmail him.

"I think the organization knew, and I'm sure the NBA knew, like we have a bad apple," then-Clippers forward Matt Barnes said. "And he finally f---ed up. And we have proof now. I mean we have tape now."

The tapes were recorded on Stiviano's cell phone. The story was broken on a celebrity website, TMZ, which hadn't existed a decade earlier, by a reporter who had no background covering the NBA.

"The first thing I did was say, 'Who's Donald Sterling?'" said Mike Walters, the reporter who broke the story for TMZ and who now runs his own website, The Blast. "I had heard the name, I knew that Donald Sterling was important, but I had no idea that he owned the Clippers."

Would a mainstream media outlet have run the story in the same way TMZ did?

"I wasn't a sports reporter -- so I think right there changes the mentality of somebody who's going to run a story like this, period. Because there's politics in news gathering," Walters said. "There is a balance between privacy of people and the public's interest. And I think everyone will agree with me when I say this -- this had to be heard, period."

Once it was heard, it couldn't be unheard. A reckoning was coming. Within 48 hours, President Barack Obama was answering questions about Sterling.

"I suspect that the NBA is going to be deeply concerned in resolving this," Obama said. "The United States continues to wrestle with a legacy of race and slavery and segregation that's still there."

Within four days, the entire course of NBA history had changed. The tapes went viral and dominated the news cycle. Everything happened at warp speed. Giant decisions, such as whether to boycott playoff games, had to be made at the same time the players were still processing what Sterling had actually said on the tapes.

"We all have family, friends, people that we hadn't talked to in a while that were like, 'You guys cannot play!'" Crawford said. "I remember Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest hit me and was like, 'You guys cannot play. This is bigger than you. It's so much bigger than you. You guys can really send a message.'

"I was like, 'Man, I hear where you're coming from.' But at that time, I didn't know what we were going to do."

The Clippers players were genuinely torn. As much as they hated what Sterling had said, they hated the idea of him derailing their season even more.

"We were trying to decide what to do, and everybody was saying we should boycott, we shouldn't play," then-Clippers forward Blake Griffin said. "The idea was like, OK, we haven't been playing for him in the first place. We didn't gather up before jump ball and say, 'Donald Sterling on three! One, two, three!'"

Instead of boycotting Game 4, the Clippers players took off their warm-up jerseys, turned them inside out to cover up the team logo and threw them down in a pile at midcourt.

If the Clippers and Warriors didn't play as a form of protest, no one is quite sure of what would have happened next.

"You gotta do some game theory there," Welts said. "Would other teams have decided not to play? Would our teams decide not to play the rest of that series? I don't know."

Welts had worked in the NBA for decades, and he had never seen anything like this.

"I flew down and couldn't get very close to Staples Center because of the police barricades and cops in riot gear on horseback," he said.

Myers had talked to his players and thought about their position.

"I mean, if that is the decision our players had made," Myers said, "who am I to tell them not to do that?"

IT WASN'T IMMEDIATELY clear what Silver could do to make it right, but his instincts told him that he must work closely with the players to find the right answers.

They would be partners in this, not on opposite sides of the collective bargaining table. But to work with the players, Silver needed them to trust him. So he asked them for a bit of time -- days, not weeks -- for due process to take its course.

In his gut, he believed Sterling had to be expelled from the NBA forever.

"I believed that he had crossed a line that broke the essence of the contract of the moral fiber of this league," Silver said. "And I didn't think it could be repaired."

But how exactly do you remove an owner -- in four days? The NBA bylaws gave Silver authority to act unilaterally in the "best interests of the game." But there's no "banned for life" clause in the NBA constitution.

"Should we kick him out? Go outside of the constitution?" Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said at the time. "Should we start taking steps to really condemn people for what they say in the privacy of their own home? It just happens to be recorded. That's a slippery slope I don't want to get on."

Most believed Silver's powers were limited to suspending Sterling and fining him $1 million. And even that kind of punishment was fraught with risk. As everyone expected the famously litigious Sterling to sue the league, as he had previously, when he moved the Clippers from San Diego to L.A. without authorization.

"There is a balance between privacy of people and the public's interest. And I think everyone will agree with me when I say this -- this had to be heard, period." Former TMZ reporter Mike Walters

No, the only people who could revoke Sterling's ownership were the other owners, and it would take three-quarters of the NBA's 29 other owners to vote to kick out one of their own. And some of those owners had a problem with setting a precedent of taking away people's franchises because they were caught on tapes they never thought would become public?

Silver decided to do it anyway. He wrote his speech on a flight from Portland to New York and then later that night at his home.

"I will say that there was probably an advantage in my newness to the job in that it all happened so quickly," Silver said. "I didn't spend a lot of time putting my actions into a broader context of sports leagues or society because I had an immediate issue that required an immediate decision."

ON THE MONDAY before Game 5, the city of Los Angeles was anxious. Civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson had flown in. NBA players such as Steve Nash and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were planning to march on City Hall. Extra police were dispatched downtown.

The phones at the Clippers' offices had been ringing off the hook with calls from angry, hurt people: You're scum for supporting a racist like Donald Sterling. You're just as racist as he is. There were death threats. The whole situation was so traumatic that the NBA had to call in a crisis counselor.

Longtime Clippers broadcaster Ralph Lawler wishes he would've seen one.

"I remember my broadcast buddy Brian Sieman saying, 'You've got to go sit down with that person and talk to him. You're all messed up,'" Lawler said. "I did not do that. I perhaps should have; I might have shortened my period of shock and grief.

"It was such a terrible time for all of us. I may have handled it as poorly as anybody, because I'd been around for so long, 35 years in or something or other, and it just really rocked me."

Clippers coach Doc Rivers heard about what the team's employees had been experiencing and felt compelled to meet with them to try to help.

"The employees were threatening to walk out," Rivers said. "They were getting bombarded by people calling them Uncle Tom, racists -- and they didn't do it. Donald did it.

"Adam had texted me several times, 'Hey, you're doing great. Just keep doing it. I don't want to give you any guidance. Whatever you're doing is perfect. Just keep doing it. But here's my number.'

"I'm thinking, 'OK, great. I'm not going to call Adam Silver.' But when I went to that meeting and saw those employees with no one leading them -- that was the day I called Adam and said, 'Help.'"

Silver couldn't tell Rivers exactly what he was planning to say at his news conference the following day, on that Tuesday morning of Game 5, but he tried to reassure him that justice would be served.

"He said, 'Doc, by tomorrow, you will never have to deal with him again,'" Rivers recalled. "I need you for 24 more hours.'"

SILVER HELD A NEWS CONFERENCE in the late morning to announce that Sterling had been banned from the NBA for life. The city erupted with joy. Cars driving by the Clippers' practice facility honked and the drivers waved flags out the window.

Instead of a shutdown, Game 5 turned into a celebration. The protests at City Hall were canceled. The stands were filled with fans wearing black. All the ads had been covered in black, as sponsors had begun to disassociate with anything connected to Sterling.

At game time, each NBA team turned its website to black, with a message: We Are One.

"I felt the energy," Rivers said. "It was the liveliest building I had ever been in as a Clipper. It was amazing."

It was a watershed moment in the league. The players had protested, and the league not only listened, but took their side against an owner.

"The only people that were going to really make a change were Adam Silver and the other owners," Griffin said. "They, to their credit, they did do that."

It validated the players' growing power in the league and signaled that Silver's leadership style would be far different than his predecessor, David Stern. Silver's NBA would be a partnership, in both growing the business and corporate governance.

"It's a fight that didn't begin with Donald Sterling," said Michele Roberts, who took over as director of the National Basketball Players Association later that year. "It's been happening historically, both in our game and other sports, for many, many, many years.

"The players I work for are men, and men don't tolerate the kind of ignorance that was Donald Sterling. You don't tolerate that in your space."

Five years later, during the 2019 NBA Finals, a minority investor in the Warriors was barred from the NBA for a year for putting his hands on Kyle Lowry as the Toronto Raptors player chased a loose ball into the stands.

The willingness of Lowry, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and LeBron James to publicly condemn the minority owners' actions shows just how much the league has changed because of the Sterling scandal. Players had never stood so strongly against those who have power over them. Now it happens all the time, across all sports.

Accusations of sexual misconduct have toppled industry titans. A racist tweet can end a career. Even the term owner has gone out of fashion. Adam Silver prefers the term "governor." Steve Ballmer paid $2 billion to buy the Clippers from the Sterlings but calls himself their chairman, not owner.

And this summer, in a delicious irony, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George flexed their power, essentially forcing their way from the franchises to join Ballmer's new-look Clippers.

This idea of player empowerment has received a lot of attention in the NBA over the past few years. Star players asking, sometimes demanding, to be traded with years left on their contracts can be incredibly destabilizing to a franchise. Owners do not like when players have that amount of power over their franchises. And so now they look to Silver to restore the power they once had over players.

"There's enormous respect, I find, by players for management and owners," Silver said. "And I think it's an ecosystem where everyone has leverage, everyone has rights, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't require an ongoing calibration of those rights."

RIVERS DOESN'T LIKE to spend much time reflecting on Donald Sterling and why it took 30 years of misbehavior to finally get him out of the league. Nobody with the Clippers likes to reflect much on their previous owner. They've moved on. If they could, they'd forget about him and his era forever.

But Rivers remembers exactly how it went down. They all do, even if they don't like to relive it.

About 10 days before TMZ released the tapes, then-Clippers team president Andy Roeser had told Rivers that an unflattering tape of Sterling might come out. Initially, Rivers didn't think it would be a big deal.

"Honestly, I thought it was a sex tape, because of Donald Sterling," Rivers said. "But then I had forgotten about it, because nothing happened."

The eccentric billionaire had certainly gotten himself into and out of unsavory situations in the past -- federal housing discrimination lawsuits, civil cases with women that produced lewd testimony that eventually went public, even a lawsuit in which Basketball Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor accused him of having a "plantation mentality."

"When you talk about a plantation mentality, you're talking about someone who believes that my only value is what I can do for you," Roberts said. "And not because I want to [do something for you], but because I have to. It obviously harkens back to slavery, which is the most painful period for an African-American in this country.

"That's exactly what Sterling was evidencing. He was evidencing that, for him, the only value that black men had in his world was on the court where they made him money and he did not otherwise want to have them in his space unless they were doing exactly that, unless they were performing and creating value for him. Other than that, don't bring them into my space."

Sterling was a brilliant personal injury lawyer in his day, and he loved a good fight. He knew how to win them too. Los Angeles is filled with people who came out on the wrong side of a legal confrontation or real estate negotiation with Sterling.

Then he was a real estate shark, a wizard at assessing a property's value just by knowing its location and specifications.

But his players were never his property. And maybe he learned that when they stood up to him and demanded he sell his team.

"It was a stand for respect," Griffin said. "At the end of the day, that's what this is all about. It's respect for humankind. That was just a somewhat small incident that was able to ignite a whole bigger thing and to bring understanding about this.

"I always go back to the thought that it takes a very educated and thoughtful person to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Donald Sterling was never able to entertain or accept the thought that he needed his players, more than they needed him.

He says it, over and over in the tapes with Stiviano.

"I support them, and give them food and clothes and cars and houses," Sterling said. "Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Who makes the game?

"Do I make the game, or do they make the game?"

After Sterling's reckoning, the answer is clear: The players make the game.

"We're going to have another [reckoning], and another one," Rivers said. "And we're going to keep getting better, but this was important. This was a group of guys that stood up, a league that stood up against something, a commissioner that stood up, coach stood up, players stood up. It was sensational.

"At the end of the day, it was a beautiful moment for our league."