Detroit Pistons big man Isaiah Stewart is out for Monday's Game 2 against the New York Knicks due to right knee inflammation.

Stewart sat out the final two games of the regular season due to inflammation in the knee and appeared to be struggling with the injury throughout Saturday's loss in Game 1. He finished with two points and five fouls in 19 minutes.

When Stewart was taken out of the game for the final time early in the fourth quarter, the Pistons were holding onto a 98-92 lead. They proceeded to give up a 21-0 run to the Knicks, who ran away with the game.

Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff said "there's a lot going on" with Stewart's injury after the game.

Stewart, 23, has been a key reserve for Detroit this year, averaging 6 points and 1.4 blocks in just under 20 minutes per game in the regular season.

The Athletics are calling up power-hitting first baseman Nick Kurtz after only 32 minor league games, sources told ESPN on Monday.

Kurtz, the No. 4 overall pick in last year's draft, is expected to be activated Wednesday, a source said. The A's face a left-hander, Patrick Corbin, in their next game Tuesday and would prefer to give Kurtz additional time to get acclimated to the big leagues via their taxi squad.

Upon activation, the A's lineup will be bolstered by one of the most gifted hitters in the minor leagues. The left-handed-hitting Kurtz was taken early in the first round last summer after displaying an advanced feel for hitting during a three-year stint at Wake Forest and immediately translated that into the professional ranks.

Kurtz went 14-for-38 with four home runs in a dozen games for the Athletics' Single-A and Double-A affiliates after the draft, then batted .353 in the Arizona Fall League and came into the season as the 52nd-ranked prospect by ESPN's Kiley McDaniel. Kurtz then proceeded to dominate Triple-A pitching, posting a 1.040 OPS with seven home runs in 20 games for the Las Vegas Aviators, triggering a lightning-fast promotion.

Kurtz will become the third player from the 2024 draft to make his major league debut, following Cam Smith (14th overall) and Ryan Johnson (74th overall), who cracked Opening Day rosters for the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels, respectively. He's also the fifth-youngest A's position player to debut since 2000, according to ESPN Research.

The only question now is where Kurtz, listed at 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, will play.

A's first baseman Tyler Soderstrom, 23, is enjoying a breakout season, tying for the major league lead with nine home runs while posting a 1.005 OPS. Brent Rooker is arguably the most important player of the team's lineup and takes up most of the time at designated hitter. But Rooker can also play left field. And A's manager Mark Kotsay told reporters earlier this month that he could envision a rotation at first base, DH and left field between Kurtz, Soderstrom and Rooker.

MLB.com first reported Kurtz's promotion.

BOSTON -- Walker Buehler wasn't taking any chances with the early start.

Instead of getting up and figuring out what roads might have been closed along the Boston Marathon route, he took his family to a nearby hotel to get ready for his Monday morning start.

"I stayed at a hotel last night, just so that I kind of didn't have to worry too much about it," he said after Boston's 4-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox in its annual Patriots' Day game.

"My wife and kids stayed with me and everything was kind of normal for us," he said. "We're all kind of used to sleeping in hotels, so we're all good."

Wearing a white home jersey with red letters spelling out "Boston" across the front -- a jersey inspired after the city rallied in the Red Sox's first game following the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 -- Buehler threw his first pitch at 11:11 a.m. on a chilly morning at Fenway Park.

"I had all my stuff done," he said of the move from his nearby Newton home. "I took an iPad home and read it last night, where I typically do. I scouted their whole lineup and every guy on the bench."

Buehler gave up a run in the first inning before going the next six scoreless, holding Chicago to four hits while striking out nine and walking three in his 100-pitch outing.

He said he set his alarm for 6:45 a.m. and got to the park at 7:15. It was the earliest game he had pitched in since Double-A in 2017, he recalled, when he was in the Los Angeles Dodgers' farm system.

"Against Jack Flaherty, SpongeBob SquarePants Day, that we faced each other in," he said, smiling. "I was thinking about that earlier."

Jelena Ostapenko beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka to win the Stuttgart Open in stunning fashion.

Ostapenko, who had failed to win in three previous meetings against Sabalenka, took the match 6-4 6-1.

The Latvian set the tone with a break of serve in the opening game and kept the pressure on throughout.

Sabalenka was broken again in the first game of the second set before dropping serve on a further two occasions in an uncharacteristically error-strewn performance.

Ostapenko raced to victory in emphatic style by reeling off five games in a row.

"I'm really happy today," Ostapenko said.

She said to her opponent: "It is great to share the court with you, you are such a great champion."

As the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs began, a number of storylines dominated the conversation: Can Connor Hellebuyck turn his historic regular season into a Dominik Hašek-esque postseason run for the ages for the Winnipeg Jets? Will the Colorado Avalanche-Dallas Stars showdown be a quasi-Cup Final right away in Round 1? Is it finally the year for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to win it all, after the Edmonton Oilers came so close last season?

But beyond the matchups and narratives, it's also a good time to take stock of which players bring the most value into the postseason.

That's where goals above replacement (GAR) comes in -- my evolved spin on earlier all-in-one value stats like Tom Awad's goals versus threshold and Hockey-Reference's point shares. The core idea of GAR is to measure a player's total impact -- in offense, defense or goaltending -- above what a generic "replacement-level" player might provide at the same position. It also strives to ensure the league's value is better balanced by position: 60% of leaguewide GAR is distributed to forwards, 30% to defensemen and 10% to goaltenders.

To then assess who might be most valuable on the eve of this year's playoffs, I plugged GAR into a system inspired by Bill James' concept of an "established level" of performance; in this case, a weighted average of each player's GAR over the past three regular seasons, with more emphasis on 2024-25. And to keep the metric from undervaluing recent risers, we also apply a safeguard: no player's established level can be lower than 75% of his most recent season's GAR.

The result is a blend of peak, recent, and sustained performance -- the players on playoff-bound teams who have been great, are currently great or are still trending upward -- in a format that gives us a sense of who could define this year's postseason.

One final note: Injured players who were expected to miss all or substantial parts of the playoffs were excluded from the ranking. Sorry, Jack Hughes.

With that in mind, here are the top 50 skaters and goaltenders on teams in the 2025 playoff field, according to their three-year established level of value, ranked by the numbers:

Pep Guardiola has branded Manchester City's clash with Aston Villa as "a final" in the race for the Champions League and called on the club's fans to help them against Unai Emery's side.

City and Villa meet at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday with just a point separating the two teams.

Newcastle, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest are also fighting for a place in next season's Champions League and Guardiola has asked the City supporters to back them during what could be a dramatic end to the campaign.

"We we need our people, hopefully they can help us for the minute one," Guardiola said.

"Don't wait, because sometimes we're sloppy, sometimes we're not playing well, but it's now that we need them.

"We need them desperately, to support us, to make noise and be there all the time, because it's a final, absolutely it's a final for us. And after Aston Villa, it will be the game against Wolves and it will be a final again. Then Southampton, because every point, every game, counts."

Villa bounced back from the Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain with an impressive 4-1 win over Newcastle on Saturday.

Emery's team have won 11 of their last 13 games in all competitions but haven't won a league game at the Etihad since 2007.

"They're a contender to qualify for the Champions League and you see both games they played against my friend Luis Enrique, against Paris Saint-Germain -- wow! I was really, really impressed," Guardiola said.

"They can play in a low block or not, but when they decide to go forward, with the weapons they have, with the speed they have, the set-pieces, and the way they organise, it's a final."

LEICESTER, England -- The Liverpool fans did not want to go home. Long after the final whistle had blown to signal their team's 1-0 victory over Leicester City on Sunday, supporters of Arne Slot's side stayed in the thousands to serenade the club that could, within a matter of days, be crowned Premier League champion.

It had not been the most convincing of performances from Liverpool, but those who had made the trip from Merseyside to the East Midlands did not care one bit.

And why should they? Having been denied the chance to celebrate the club's last title win in 2020 owing to the coronavirus pandemic, Liverpool fans now seem determined to soak up every second of this extraordinary season, with only one win now required to mathematically confirm the Reds' coronation.

Of course, publicly, Slot and his players will insist there is still work to be done. Leicester's battling display Sunday -- on an afternoon when they were officially relegated to the Championship -- is proof enough of the levels required to win a Premier League game.

However, Liverpool are now undeniably on the cusp of something special, and the image of Mohamed Salah holding aloft one finger to the traveling supporters as he basked in their postmatch applause shows the players, too, know they are close to making history.

Hours before kickoff Sunday, vendors selling scarves that read "Liverpool Champions 2024-25" lined the streets to the stadium. Arsenal's comfortable 4-0 win over Ipswich Town earlier in the day ensured Liverpool would not be able to seal the title against Leicester, but that didn't deter those in the away end from launching into of a fervent chorus of "We're gonna win the league" long before a ball was even kicked at King Power Stadium.

The afternoon almost got off to a perfect start for Liverpool when Salah found space inside the penalty area, only to see his curling strike rattle both posts before bouncing to safety. It was the first of several good chances for the visitors in the first half, with Leicester goalkeeper Mads Hermansen making a string of brilliant saves and Salah blazing one effort over the bar from close range after an inch-perfect cross from Kostas Tsimikas.

Leicester had their moments too, though, and were unlucky not to score when Wilfred Ndidi hit the post with a fine low drive from the edge of the area. And the sense that this might just not be Liverpool's day only continued to grow after the break, when Luis Díaz and substitute Diogo Jota spurned good chances to give the visitors the lead, while Conor Coady's disallowed goal -- ruled out for an earlier foul by Patson Daka on Alisson Becker -- raised the decibel level inside the stadium.

However, one of Liverpool's most impressive traits this term has been the ability to find a way to win, and this time it fell to Trent Alexander-Arnold to deliver the decisive moment, rifling the ball home just five minutes after being introduced from the bench.

It has been a challenging few time for the defender, who was sidelined since March with an ankle injury. His rehabilitation has been underscored by growing noise over his future, with sources having told ESPN that Real Madrid are confident of signing the player on a free transfer when his Liverpool contract expires at the end of the season.

But, if this summer is to be the end of Alexander-Arnold's time at Anfield, then his match-winning turn against Leicester proved there are still a few more chapters left for him to write in his Liverpool story. Regardless of what he does this summer, the image of him tearing off his shirt and sliding across the turf in celebration will go down as one of the defining moments of this momentous campaign.

"The headline today should be the goal he scored and not about his contract, but it would be ridiculous if someone argues his commitment for this club," Slot said after the match. "The work rate he puts in, no one can argue his commitment to this club, but the headlines should be his great goal and not his contract."

From a Liverpool perspective, the headline is now that this team is just three points away from writing its name into the record books. Assuming Arsenal avoid defeat against Crystal Palace in midweek, the visit of Tottenham Hotspur to Anfield next Sunday will provide Slot's side with the chance to secure the club's 20th league title.

"The only thing the fans want is us winning the game," Slot said. "After one league title in 35 years, with them not being involved because of Covid, every moment that it happens it would be special for them."

Certainly, for the Liverpool fans in attendance Sunday, the celebrations have already started. This time next week, Slot and his players just might have joined the party.