The Portland Trail Blazers say an MRI on star guard Damian Lillard confirmed a right groin strain, and he will be re-evaluated in one week.

Lillard suffered the injury on a drive to the basket in Thursday night's loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. He attempted a tough shot around Memphis big man Jonas Valanciunas, then landed awkwardly with about 3:22 left and didn't return.

After the game, Lillard said the injury would keep him out of this weekend's All-Star Game and 3-point contest. The NBA on Thursday named the Phoenix Suns' Devin Booker his replacement for both.

Due to the All-Star break, the Trail Blazers aren't back in action until Feb. 21, against the New Orleans Pelicans (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).

CHICAGO -- Chants of "M-V-P" echoed throughout the University of Illinois-Chicago on Thursday, just as they have in Derrick Rose's recent returns to the United Center, as he appeared on stage inside Dorin Forum for an intimate panel discussion.

In the lead-up to NBA All-Star Weekend, the Chicago native and Detroit Pistons guard used his platform to normalize the conversation around mental wellness in the city, particularly within black and brown communities.

He opened up about childhood trauma he will never forget.

"When I was younger, we used to have a lot of things that used to happen in my house and on my block to where I kind of got PTSD in a way. I'll be downstairs in the basement doing something and I'd hear somebody playing upstairs and I'd run up there thinking somebody was bursting in our house about to attack my cousin ... this girl," Rose described. "She used to beat up everybody in the neighborhood, like she would beat up somebody and I would think they were coming back for revenge. So any little bumps or sounds in the house, I'm scared, or at night I would hear something and get scared because I was thinking that these people came back."

An emotional Rose allowed himself to appear vulnerable with candid stories like those, in which he touched on his love for basketball, growing up in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago's South Side, protecting his mental health and nearly quitting the game while overcoming injuries and trades in New York and Cleveland.

Despite dropping out of Saturday's Skills Challenge due to an adductor strain, Rose still wanted to connect with Chicago as it hosts its first All-Star event since 1988, and hosted a signing for his book "I'll Show You" with Bulls reporter Sam Smith.

"I wanted to be around my son, my kids. I know it sounds crazy, I wanted to feel the cold weather and to be a part of that in a way where I'm not involved in none of it, but people will feel my presence here so that's what it's about," said Rose, who is averaging 18.2 points and 5.8 assists on a career-best 49.0% shooting for the Pistons.

"I'm enjoying the city, [the activities are] all propaganda," he added. "Don't get me wrong, for everybody that's being a part of events, that's a great honor and achievement and great accolades, but in the grand scheme of things, all of this is propaganda. It's man-made, so me knowing that, I feel like I have a better understanding of what I want out of certain things in life and who I'm becoming to give and spread that the way that I want to."

Rose also went into how his relationship with Chicago has improved since leaving the Bulls, when he initially felt like the city "basically turned [its] back on me" following his trade to the Knicks in 2016.

"I think it's repaired well. I just know the Chi. My vibrations were low," Rose told ESPN. "When your vibrations are low, you hear everything, you seek everything and me seeking or hearing everything. That was just me being attracted to how I was feeling at the time, and that's negative, so when I changed my vibrations and matured as a person and as a man, that's when I started to grow and develop who I was as a person and individual and change my character."

Joining Rose on the stage for #TheRightConversation panel, hosted by the Everyone Has a Story (EHAS) non-profit organization, was founder and Pistons development coach JD DuBois. Among others were Chicago barber Drew Henderson, Detroit Lions linebacker Christian Jones, Yoga Pilates Instructor Adria Moses and Cindy Mori, VP of Global Talent Management & Corporate Talent Development for Discovery and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. Dr. Corey Yeager served as the moderator.

Rose left the room with a message for his 16-year-old self in closing.

"I would say, 'watch what you pray for' because when I was younger, my goals used to be crazy, but at the same time, the older I got, I wasn't ready for it," Rose said. "I knew I wasn't ready for a goal like that. I wasn't ready for a championship. I knew I wasn't ready because I used to say to myself numerous times like when I go out in public now, I can barely go places. So, what happened if I did win a championship? How would that be? How would I be boxed in even more? How would I live and have to move around?

"I hate living with boundaries. It kills me when I go on vacation and I just know people are chilling there as a dentist or somebody with a regular job," he continued. "They're able to live the life to just walk around freely and I'm jealous of that because deep down I want that, but I can't have it, so be careful for what you pray for because you'll never know how it'll turn out."

BOSTON -- The LA Clippers limp into the All-Star break with injury concerns after Paul George suffered a strained left hamstring again and was ruled out of Thursday night's 141-133 double-overtime loss to the Boston Celtics.

The Clippers announced George was out at halftime because of the same injury that cost him nine straight games in January and a total of 10 games.

"He just told me that he felt his hamstring again," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said about when George hurt himself in the first half. "He said it wasn't bad. I said you shouldn't have told me that. I don't think he wanted to come out. But once you tell me your hamstring, you feel anything, we have an All-Star break coming up, it's a no brainer for us."

Rivers admitted he is worried about his guard, who had tightness in his left hamstring and missed a game against Memphis on Jan. 4. After returning and playing in a game, George strained his left hamstring during a practice on Jan. 8 and then sat out the next nine games.

He returned and played in the next seven games before straining the hamstring again in Boston after playing 15 minutes and scoring four points.

"Yeah I am," Rivers said when asked if he's worried about George's injury. "I'm a little concerned about that one because that's the second time now, maybe third. Listen, I don't know what to do but I know rest you have to do and we'll see."

The Clippers return from the All-Star break and play next on Feb. 22 against Sacramento. Health has been an issue for the Clippers all season long. Kawhi Leonard has been managing a knee issue that keeps him out of the second of back-to-back games. George didn't start the season until Nov. 14, after offseason surgeries on both of his shoulders.

Patrick Beverley missed his fourth straight game with a sore right groin injury but is still scheduled to compete in the Skills Challenge at All-Star weekend in Chicago.

Rivers said he likes what he has seen from the Clippers (37-18) despite having to use several starting lineups due to injuries and having a full roster available for only four games this season. But he knows the team needs a stretch of games where it is fully healthy.

"We had a first half of the season where we basically had more starting lineups than probably anybody in the league," Rivers said. "Our record is pretty solid.

"We got to get healthy. That's going to be the key for us. And then we got to play multiple games in a row as a group so we can kind of get some continuity. But other than that, I love our spirit, I love how we are. We're good."

Los Angeles Angels right-hander Justin Anderson will be sidelined for four to six weeks after injuring his oblique muscle while playing catch, manager Joe Maddon said Thursday.

Anderson said he got hurt Tuesday. He only had a few throws left when he abruptly felt pain "like somebody stabbed me in my side,'' he said.

Anderson, a former 14th-round pick who made his major league debut in 2018, missed a chunk of last season with an injured trapezius muscle in his neck and back. He had spent the offseason strengthening his core and diligently working back from that injury, only to find out he essentially will miss spring training this year.

Anderson went 3-0 with a 5.55 ERA last season in 54 appearances with the Angels. He is fighting for a spot in Los Angeles' bullpen again this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Max Scherzer grunted and cursed his way to 56 pitches during his first formal bullpen session of spring training -- about 20 more throws than other Washington Nationals starters Thursday, but "standard" for him, the righty said -- and then was asked about ... the Houston Astros cheating scandal.

Manager Dave Martinez began camp in the final season for which his contract is guaranteed at the moment -- the Nationals hold an option for 2021 -- and then was prompted to talk about, well, another team entirely.

Nationals players could look around their clubhouse at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and see the new locker nameplates or new red-and-blue clocks on the walls or patches stitched to the sleeves of their new jerseys, all festooned with some sort of logo proclaiming the club to be the 2019 World Series champions ... and then were queried about the club that was the runner-up last season.

It was an odd dynamic: The Nationals and Astros were foes last October; Dusty Baker, hired to replace the fired AJ Hinch as Houston's skipper, was Martinez's predecessor in Washington; the teams share a complex in Florida; they will open their Grapefruit League schedule against each other on Feb. 22.

And so Martinez jutted his thumb over his right shoulder, in the direction of Houston's half of the facility, when he said, "I don't focus on none of that stuff."

If it takes a lot to render the reigning champs' first official workout of the spring a non-story, well, Houston managed to do just that.

"They crossed the moral line and cheated, but they've got to answer to it. It's not really for us to speak for them, they need to speak for themselves," Scherzer said. "They need to talk to the fans of baseball and explain what happened."

The Astros were punished by Major League Baseball for a sign-stealing scheme that an investigation determined was used during their 2017 run to the title and in 2018, too. They addressed the matter during a news conference that included their owner, Jim Crane, on Thursday, and two players; other players spoke in the team's clubhouse.

"One day of having to answer questions is not going to make this go away," said Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle, who also spoke about the effect Houston's cheating had on pitchers who fared poorly against the Astros. "This is going to be something that they're going to have to work really hard at to show baseball, to show other players, to show fans, that they are remorseful and they do want to move on from this."

One current Nationals player was on the Astros team that engaged in the sign stealing: Will Harris, a reliever who switched teams as a free agent this offseason.

"I was on that team. I take responsibility for it just like every other man that was in there," Harris said. "I'm not going to try to separate myself in any way."

The Boston Red Sox have agreed to a deal with free-agent outfielder Kevin Pillar, according to The Boston Globe.

The newspaper reports it's a one-year, $4 million deal that could become official as soon as this weekend if Pillar passes his physical.

Pillar will provide Boston with some outfielder depth with Mookie Betts now gone via trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Alex Verdugo, whom the Red Sox acquired in the deal, no certainty to be ready for Opening Day. Verdugo missed the end of last season with a back/oblique injury, and while he said in December that his goal was to be ready for the opener, he told MLB.com then that he'd have to wait and see how the injuries were progressing.

Red Sox position players aren't mandated to report to spring training until Sunday.

Pillar began last season with the Toronto Blue Jays and moved to the San Francisco Giants as part of a four-player trade in early April. The slugging outfielder had the best season of his career, leading the Giants in several offensive categories, including homers (21), RBIs (87), hits (157) and on-base percentage (.339).

Pillar, who made $5.8 million in 2019, was not tendered a contract by the Giants after the season, as he would have become eligible for arbitration and likely would have commanded approximately $10 million.

A right-handed bat, Pillar had been Toronto's longest-tenured player before being traded in his seventh season with the team. Known for stellar defense in center field, the 30-year-old has a .261 average with 76 home runs and 318 RBIs in 851 games. The Blue Jays selected Pillar in the 32nd round of the 2011 amateur draft, giving him a $1,000 signing bonus.

Pillar's time in Toronto was not always smooth. In May 2017, he was suspended two games after yelling a homophobic slur at Atlanta Braves reliever Jason Motte. Pillar later apologized to fans, Major League Baseball and the LGBTQ community.

Mitch Haniger is recovering from a second surgery in three weeks, meaning the Seattle Mariners won't have the veteran outfielder for Opening Day and beyond.

"2nd surgery today in the last 3 weeks," Haniger wrote on Instagram Thursday night. "Not how I imagined heading into the 2020 season but I'm really excited to start this recovery process and build myself back up. I'll do whatever it takes to come back even better than I've ever been!"

It wasn't immediately clear how long Haniger will be sidelined. General manager Jerry Dipoto had said last month that Haniger likely needed an initial surgery on a core muscle injury and wasn't expected to be ready for Opening Day -- but that was before he had the second procedure.

Haniger suffered a core injury during an offseason workout in January. Dipoto had said the setback was tied to Haniger's injury issues from last year, when he missed the final 3½ months of the season after suffering a ruptured testicle and then experienced back and core issues during his recovery. Haniger was limited to 63 games and batted .220 with 15 homers and 32 RBIs.

A year earlier, Haniger was an All-Star after hitting .285 with 26 homers and 93 RBIs and an OPS of .859.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Houston Astros owner Jim Crane's latest attempt at damage control blew up in spectacular fashion Thursday. Over 27 minutes at a press conference, he claimed his team's routine cheating during its 2017 championship-winning season didn't impact the game, declared he shouldn't be held accountable for the organization he runs, used commissioner Rob Manfred's report on the Astros' malfeasance as a binky and so often repeated talking points that the Apology.exe program he tried to install in his head looked like it was glitching. The entire charade devolved into a glorious conflagration, Crane's mouth a veritable fountain of lighter fluid.

It didn't have to go this way. It wouldn't with most other organizations. But these are the Astros, and they make Everests out of molehills. Their fall is so spectacular because their pride was always outsized, and the latest example unfolded at their spring training complex on a day that should have been more about healing than hubris.

Crane cannot help himself. He hired a crisis PR firm, according to sources, but seemed to forget the PR part. Amid his attempts at apologizing were clear signals that his contrition went only as far as his ability to absolve himself of wrongdoing. And the more Crane spoke, the more his words served as a spade, digging a hole from which he couldn't rescue himself.

It's best to begin with the most absurd moment of the day, in which Crane -- endeavoring to explain away the Astros' illicit use of a center-field camera to decode catchers' signs that were then relayed via banging on a trash can to alert hitters as to the pitch type about to be thrown -- said with a straight face: "Our opinion is that this didn't impact the game."

When pressed on what exactly he meant by that, Crane said: "I didn't say it didn't impact the game." He had, of course -- 67 seconds earlier, for those curious about the capacity of Crane's short-term memory. And it did, clearly, as his team's shortstop, Carlos Correa, would later admit.

"It was definitely an advantage," Correa said, one of many honest decrees offered by Astros players to reporters after Crane spoke. Outfielder Josh Reddick, when asked about remorse, copped to not feeling it until The Athletic's November story that laid bare the Astros' scheme -- a real sort of admission that follows the logical path of this scandal: Houston thought nothing of its cheating until it was caught. Redemption starts with an honest self-assessment of damage done by one's actions, and Astros players are not irredeemable people. They cheated at a game. It is wrong, and it is disappointing, and it is unfortunate. It is a transgression with clear casualties -- those whose careers were ended, livelihoods altered and lives changed. It will chase them, and rightfully so. But it is no mortal sin.

What's indefensible is asking for forgiveness while not abiding by its path. Crane zig-zagged around his Thursday. His ruminations on accountability were particularly rich. He mused that Major League Baseball's suspension and his firing of general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch served as satisfactory pounds of flesh because, though neither was responsible for implementing the scheme, both were responsible for overseeing the team's baseball operations. Never mind that Crane, as the team's owner, was responsible for overseeing Luhnow and Hinch.

"No," Crane said, "I don't think I should be held accountable."

Such a bastion of accountability then suggested he was the one to keep the Astros on the straight and narrow going forward. Seven times he said: "This will never happen again." When asked why someone who wasn't taking responsibility for it happening on his watch the first time deserved the benefit of the doubt, Crane didn't outline a plan or offer the sort of transparent answer such a benefit demands. He did what the Astros always do, which is speak in platitudes, generalities, opacity.

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"I'll make sure I have someone that's accountable moving forward and will be checking constantly," he said. "We'll have controls in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. And again, if I'd have known about it, I'd have done something about it. But I'm not in the locker room. I'm not down in the dugout. So it was very difficult, and I didn't know about it until November, just like you guys."

I happened to be one of those guys, and I knew about it long before November. I first heard players accuse the Astros of cheating in mid-2017. For the next year, I tried to find someone who would speak about it on the record. Nobody would. The code of silence in baseball buries countless secrets.

Then came the 2018 postseason. During the American League Division Series, a man named Kyle McLaughlin, whom Crane brought into the Astros organization, was caught pointing a cell phone toward the Cleveland Indians' dugout from an on-field camera well. He was removed from the area. The Indians warned the Astros' AL Championship Series opponent, the Boston Red Sox, about McLaughlin, and during Game 1 of the ALCS, he was again removed from a camera well next to the dugout.

I wrote a story about the McLaughlin incidents, and in it, I reported that the Oakland A's had accused the Astros of relaying pitch types to batters during an August series. Further, I reported, two major league players had said they witnessed the Astros hitting a trash can in the dugout as a way to alert hitters.

Again: This was in 2018, more than a year before Crane claims he learned of the issue. The day after the story ran, Crane castigated another reporter, telling him to leave McLaughlin's name out of his story. Clearly Crane knew that a story about McLaughlin had been written. Either he learned of the story's details or avoided them altogether. The former would make him a liar. The latter would make him an owner who ignores potentially injurious information about his billion-dollar business.

For someone with such a commitment to doing things right going forward, Crane's lack of curiosity is quite curious. When asked when the Astros' cheating stopped, he said: "I didn't do the investigation." When asked about the culpability of Carlos Beltran, the player who alongside former Astros bench coach Alex Cora implemented the trash-can-banging scheme, he said: "Again, I didn't do the investigation." If Crane can't be bothered during the worst cheating scandal in a century to look beyond Manfred's report -- which he referenced nine times, as if it were some sacred scripture -- how, exactly, does he expect to fix the institutional rot in his organization? Crane, after all, still denies there's a problem with the Astros' culture. Perhaps his mirror is just broken.

The gap between words and actions is cavernous, and the Astros' history is big on offering the former and skimping on the latter. They said they had a zero-tolerance policy on domestic violence. Then they traded for closer Roberto Osuna as he was serving a suspension for a domestic incident. They tried to smear a Sports Illustrated reporter who wrote that their assistant GM, Brandon Taubman, had punctuated a pennant-winning celebration by yelling toward a group of female reporters: "I'm so f---ing glad we got Osuna!" Then they doubled down on it before realizing what was obvious from the beginning: The report was accurate.

And here they are now, desperately clinging to this notion that they aren't a dysfunctional mess, that Crane is indeed the person to shepherd the Astros through a period that even for the most stable organization would prove trying. He sat at a table out in the Florida sun and said that because Manfred offered players who participated in the scheme immunity from punishment by the league in exchange for the truth, they were, in his mind, absolved of wrongdoing. Those same players, minutes after Crane finished talking, conceded just how wrong they were.

"I think I've done just about everything I can," Crane said.

On a day of damning words, of self-owns, of the Houston Astros doing what the Houston Astros do, this was perhaps the gravest admission of all. The burning, raging mess around him is indeed everything Jim Crane can do.

Event information and live stream coverage of this weekend’s British universities and colleges action in Sheffield

BUCS Indoor Athletics Championships action returns to the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield this weekend, with competition taking place from Friday February 14 to Sunday February 16.

BUCS coverage will be shown via our Facebook page and also below on this page once each stream is available.

The men’s 60m heats and triple jump qualifying kicks things off at 13:00 on Friday, with the first day of competition also featuring the 60m and 60m hurdles finals.

Saturday includes the men’s pole vault final, while a busy Sunday programme features relays, the 3000m finals, high jump, long jump and more.

Click here to view the event timetable.

Entries include British pole vault record-holder Holly Bradshaw, British indoor under-20 1500m record-holder Tom Keen and Scottish 60m record-holder Alisha Rees.

Full entry lists can be downloaded here.

Former England Netball administrator Adams becomes governing body’s chief executive but Chris Clark resigns as chair after less than a year in the role

Best known for her recent roles at England Netball, Joanna Adams this week steps into the UK Athletics hot seat as the governing body’s chief executive officer.

The move follows the failed appointment of Zara Hyde Peters as CEO in November due to a safeguarding scandal with Adams succeeding Niels de Vos, who left the role in autumn 2018.

As one sports administrator starts her new job at UKA, another one is departing, or at least moving into a different role. Chris Clark, who was appointed as the governing body’s chair last year following the brief reign of Richard Bowker, has quit the post and will become an advisor to the UKA board, while Nic Coward, who was named interim CEO earlier this year, will slip into Clark’s position as chair.

It is understood Clark will focus on commercial deals such as the relationship with the BBC, which according to reports in the Guardian this week is in danger of not being renewed.

The news of Adams and Clark was broken by The Times on Thursday evening with UKA soon issuing a press release to confirm it.

The governing body says Adams “professionalised netball by bringing in major sponsors and television agreements whilst growing grassroots participation and media coverage including on digital channels, and led the expansion of the Vitality Superleague franchise system”.

Adams is currently the chief commercial officer at the London Legacy Development Corporation and has previously been commercial director for the Football Conference and a director at Notts County FC. However, there will be concerns within the athletics world that she appears to have little background in the No.1 Olympic sport. 

It is also further disruption at a governing body that has been reeling from not only the departures of De Vos and Bowker but also performance director Neil Black. In addition, the Hyde Peters episode and controversy surrounding UKA’s links with banned coach Alberto Salazar means that UK Sport has started a review into whether the organisation is fit for purpose.

Three former performance directors or head coaches – Malcolm Arnold, Frank Dick and Max Jones – have recently questioned UKA’s use of Lottery funding, too, with them pointing out that results at major championships for British athletes are no better now than during the pre-Lottery period, while there are concerns the grassroots of the sport has also declined in health.

In a UKA press release, Clark (pictured below) said: “The role of chair for UKA clearly now requires a huge time commitment during this crucial period. My other commitments to regulated businesses and public sector organisations have significantly increased since commencing the role and I have to concede that I cannot give it the time commitment it deserves right now.

“However I am delighted to have the opportunity to continue working with UK Athletics on the commercial strategy and with Joanna’s appointment and her track record of success in not only sports governance but also commercial, marketing and competition structures, this means we have excellent leadership to take the sport on in a positive future direction.

“Nic has already made a very positive impact and retaining his expertise for this transition period was an important consideration when the board debated the changes we needed to make. The focus now has to be the future and how we will apply the learnings and best practice from the ongoing reviews and ensure the sport has a hugely successful future.”