There has not been a player like Kylian Mbappe -- at least, not since the turn of the decade.

According to TruMedia data, which goes back to the 2010-11 season, Mbappe's 33 Ligue 1 goals last season were the most of any player age 20 or under in Europe's big five leagues in that time period. When they were in the same age bracket, Lionel Messi topped out at 14 goals, while Cristiano Ronaldo never got above nine.

More recently, Romelu Lukaku's 2012-13 season with West Bromwich Albion and Kai Havertz with Bayer Leverkusen this past year are tied for second behind Mbappe, with 17. So, among goalscorers in his age bracket, Mbappe is nearly 100 percent better than anyone else, but his impact goes beyond goals and, indeed, his age bracket.

After registering eight assists in 2017-18, he had seven more last year; in terms of attacking production -- defined as "non-penalty goals plus assists per 90 minutes" -- there is him (1.50) and Messi (1.49) and then there is everyone else (with 1.04, Dries Mertens was the only other player above 1 NPG+A per 90). Sure, it's easier to score in France than in Spain or England, but Mbappe also produced at an elite level (1.16 NPG+A per 90) in the Champions League.

Mbappe, then, is a singular prospect and one of the two best attackers in the world. Moreover, he does not turn 21 until Dec. 20. If he stays healthy, it is easy to imagine a world in which he improves further and spends at least the next 10 years at the top of the game. Even if he does not get any better, his place atop the hierarchy is secure.

Given all that, he is by far the most valuable player out there. Transfermarkt pegs his market value at €200 million, while the CIES Football Observatory's algorithm lists it at €252m. Whatever the exact number, were Mbappe to switch teams -- and with Paris Saint-Germain in a perpetual state of flux, who knows! -- it seems likely that a buyer would at least have to come close to breaking the world transfer record to acquire him.

But what if the middleman was cut out? Mbappe's contract expires at the end of the 2021-22 season; if he ran it down, he could negotiate with teams of his choosing, play them against each other, then sign a deal with no transfer fee attached. He would only be 23 years old, so prospective employers would likely be paying for his entire prime. The scenario probably will not happen, but imagine if it did, in a global sport with no salary cap? The bidding war would be unlike anything seen before.

From an American-sports perspective, the development of the soccer labor market in Europe is difficult to comprehend. In the middle of the 20th century, clubs could allow contracts to expire, while retaining control of players' rights. Affected individuals needed permission to leave and if clubs refused, they could essentially prevent the player from moving to another team... while also not paying him.

That situation was eventually struck down in court -- how could it not be? -- with teams at least required to pay those they were not allowing to leave. However, they would still get a transfer fee if an out-of-contract player wanted to move on.

In 1995, Belgian midfielder Jean-Marc Bosman challenged the structure when his club, RFC Liege, cut his wages by 75 percent after his contract expired and refused to allow him to leave. The European Court of Justice ruled in Bosman's favor -- again, how could they not? -- and players were suddenly allowed to go wherever they wanted, without a transfer fee, once their deals ran out.

Despite fears of a world with constant player movement and disappearing transfer-fee revenue, not much changed at the top of the game. Juventus have made free agents like Andrea Pirlo and Aaron Ramsey a team-building priority, but most players move with a fee attached that gets split among agents and the clubs said player has previously represented.

"Whilst no transfer fee is being paid, Juventus are still paying significant salaries," said Daniel Geey, a sports lawyer and author of "Done Deal: An Insider's Guide to Football Contracts, Multi-Million Pound Transfers and Premier League Big Business." "The positive side is that the club may make huge transfer profit if they sell a player they signed on a free transfer. Conversely, not many other clubs could afford such salaries should they want to sign such players in the future, due to the additional transfer cost having to be factored in to any transfer."

Although it is called a "free" transfer, the term is misleading. When Juventus signed midfielder Emre Can last summer, they paid out €16m in fees. As that approach shows, players who enter the open market and sign contracts without a fee attached will typically make more money than when a multi-million-dollar sum essentially buys the right to pay that player a salary. However, despite the option of individually customized insurance policies that protect against injury and minimize risk, most are not willing to run down their deals.

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Part of it has to do with the strange function of agents. In American sports, it is in their best interests to get clients the best deals because they will get a percentage of it. In soccer, agents often serve as intermediaries between clubs and players. While they can get commissions from clubs when their players move outside the market, most get them as a chunk of transfer fees.

According to UEFA, the average commission is 12.6 percent, though it can be higher: Paul Pogba's agent, Mino Raiola, reportedly earned £24m on his player's £89m move from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016. However, according to Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist and a co-author of "Soccernomics," the market exists in its current form because it is what the clubs want.

"What's really happening here is that because of the transfer system, the economic rents that are generated by players' services are being distributed amongst the clubs," Szymanski told me. "And whenever that happens, you get middlemen who come in. That's who the agents are. They facilitate the transaction. They're a manifestation of the problem in some ways, but they're not the source of the problem."

There is only one Mbappe. Way beyond his level, almost 75 percent of the global soccer-playing workforce makes less than $4,000 a month, according to a 2016 FIFPro report, the worldwide players' union. The average playing career, according to the Professional Footballers' Association in England, lasts eight years.

Those players are not in a position to go against the institutional inertia; they cannot afford to refuse a transfer or run down their deals because their clubs can just make them go train with the youth team or reserves and then they lose a year in what is already likely to be a short career. On top of that, if a lost season comes at the wrong time, it could also mean that a player doesn't get selected by his national team for the World Cup or a continental competition.

There are other ways players can exert control. Eden Hazard gained leverage by running his contract down to its final year, and Chelsea ultimately decided to sell him to Real Madrid, rather than risk losing him for nothing.

Outside Spain, where every contract is legally required to include a buyout clause, players could start negotiating automatic release clauses into their deals, which would allow them to enter into personal negotiations if a given club meets the asking price. But in both cases, players are still likely to earn less than they would on the open market.

Unlike the NFL or NBA, there is no collective bargaining agreement among players and the leagues, in part because there are so many professional teams and players scattered across the world, in different countries with different labor laws. When the current transfer regulations were agreed upon in 2001, it was a deal between the European Commission and FIFA, not FIFPro.

For various structural reasons, soccer players will likely never have the kind of negotiating power exercised in the NBA during the most recent free-agency period.

"There's a handful of stars who basically are the NBA. If those handful of stars decide to leave and form their own league, the NBA would more or less drop dead," Szymanski said. "Global soccer is a different proposition. It's hundreds of clubs with incredibly strong loyalties, most of whom would survive a mass walkout by the top hundred players."

Individual players are more important in a sport with five players rather than 11, and thanks to their historical importance as societal institutions, most soccer fans still identify with clubs ahead of players. Perhaps a high-profile star like Mbappe hitting the open market would start to shift the balance.

Or maybe someone else could try it even sooner: David De Gea, Christian Eriksen and Timo Werner, for example, have one year left on their contracts...

For the longest time - the first day if you like - it did look like New Zealand had fallen behind and India had the edge in their World Cup semi-final at Old Trafford. It turned out that the 239 for 8 they got was 18 runs too many for India, a target that Ross Taylor said his team were quietly confident about. "We thought 240 was a target that we wanted to get to, and be very competitive," he said.

It was a tricky pitch to bat on right through the 99.3 overs of action, with only Ravindra Jadeja getting the better of the conditions in his 59-ball 77.

"We fell a little bit short (of 240) and we knew we needed early wickets and the way the two opening bowlers set the tone, 240 looked a long way away," Taylor told newspersons after New Zealand had made the World Cup final for the second edition in a row. "We all knew in ourselves that we deserved to be here and we wanted to … not to prove anyone wrong, but to prove it to ourselves that we were good enough.

Watch on Hotstar (India only): Ross Taylor's crucial innings of 74

"We were quietly confident, I think. When our backs are against the ball, quite often we have played our best. We talked about that, we have nothing to lose, just go out there and sum up the situation. We have obviously got quite a few level heads, from playing the semi-final and winning at home [in 2015]. We trusted ourselves, we trusted ourselves yesterday - strange to play over two days - but we got the right result."

With rain pushing the semi-final into the reserve day, a lot of focus was on Taylor, who came into the match on the back of middling form in the tournament. He looked scratchy during his innings in the semi-final too, but he hung in, and was on 67 not out when play was called off on Tuesday. He carried on to 74 and New Zealand got from 211 for 5 to 239 for 8.

"Hopefully that's a bit of luck that he takes from his fielding to his batting and maybe he can have a bit of luck and make the most of it" Ross Taylor on Martin Guptill

"I woke up at 3 o'clock this morning, wondering how I was going to bat these last 23 balls. I texted my wife at about five saying I still can't go to bed. She said, 'Oh dear.' So I just turned my phone off because there were a lot of messages from back home. So in terms of my sleep, I had terrible sleep," Taylor said with a laugh. "But my main focus, everyone kept saying, 'come on, get to 250', my mind set was to get to 240, as Kane and I discussed yesterday. I get to go to sleep now, though."

Once New Zealand had got their competitive total, the bowlers took over. In 3.1 overs, India were 5 for 3, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul all back in the hut. Man of the match Matt Henry picked up two of the wickets and Trent Boult accounted for Kohli, with the umpire's lbw decision upheld despite an India review.

"Starting up with the ball, we just wanted to put as much pressure on the opposition as we can. And yeah, to nudge him [Kohli] in the pads and see the finger go up, yeah, it was pretty exciting," Boult said. "But obviously you're always nervous if the decision goes upstairs. So it was good to see the bails just falling off. It was good fun.

"I don't want to say I am a magician against the best player in the world, but yeah, it was nice to see everything line up and I think we saw them at 3 for 6 [5] at one stage. So yeah, we bowled extremely well, it was good pressure from both ends, and it was nice to come out on the right side."

From 5 for 3, India got to 24 for 4 and then 71 for 5 and 92 for 6 before MS Dhoni and Jadeja added 116 for the seventh wicket, Jadeja, especially, taking the fight to the opposition - he hit four of the six sixes hit in the entire match.

"We know for a fact that if we can get sides three down inside the first ten, and put pressure on the middle order, it's going to be challenging for anyone," Boult said. "It was about keeping it simple and nice to put a bit of pressure on those guys. I thought they absorbed it very nicely to get into a position to need 25 [31] off a couple of overs. The end was … it was a great game, great fun, we're in another final, and we can't wait."

The moment that turned a fast-swinging game decisively in New Zealand's favour was Martin Guptill's direct hit to run Dhoni out in the 49th over. With Bhuvneshwar Kumar at the other end, Dhoni wanted to keep the strike and took on Guptill, who threw down the stumps from around the 30-yard circle after running in from the deep. The wicketkeeper had chased after the ball, so it had to be a direct hit, and it was. It was a spot of redemption for Guptill, who has had a horror run with the bat at the World Cup. After hitting 73 not out against Sri Lanka in New Zealand's first game, he has totalled just 94 runs in eight innings.

"He is down on confidence, we talked about it after he missed out yesterday, and this morning, he was going to go out there do something brilliant," Taylor said. "Jimmy Neesham's catch [to send back Dinesh Karthik off Henry] was fantastic, and Dhoni has won from that situation many times. Once we did break that partnership - Jadeja and Dhoni - we weren't still out of the woods yet, but once we got Dhoni… Brilliant run out, no keeper, if the keeper had been there, he [Dhoni] would have been safe by the time he took the bails off.

"But to have the confidence to do that, in a semi-final... hopefully that's a bit of luck that he takes from his fielding to his batting and maybe he can have a bit of luck and make the most of it.

"Cricket's about small margins. When we came in to the huddle, the boys were joking that Gup always misses the stumps. When there's a run out on, he always missed the stumps," Taylor smiled. "All those misses over the years, he only hits when there's nothing to worry about, but he did it now, and we celebrated accordingly and we're very happy for him."

Lewis Gregory, the Somerset allrounder, will captain the England Lions in their four-day game against Australia A which starts at Canterbury this Sunday.

Gregory, who was called into England's first ODI squad after the 2015 World Cup but did not make the final XI in the one-off game against Ireland, is the leading wicket-taker among Division One seamers this year, with 44 wickets at 13.88 in his eight games.

He has some captaincy experience, having skippered England's under-19s back in 2011, and will again lead Somerset in their upcoming Vitality Blast campaign after taking over from Jim Allenby last year.

Gregory is realistically an outside bet for Ashes selection given England's catalogue of seam-bowling allrounders, but can hope to force his way into their T20I plans ahead of this winter's tours to New Zealand and South Africa.

There are also late call-ups for Sam Curran and Sam Hain.

Curran, who has taken 18 wickets in his four Championship games for Surrey since returning from the IPL, replaces Saqib Mahmood, after the Lancashire fast bowler suffered an abdominal problem during their game at Northampton this week.

Hain's call-up comes immediately after his twin hundreds for Warwickshire secured a draw against Hampshire. He is included after Ben Duckett's groin injury in Nottinghamshire's defeat at Somerset.

Jack Leach, Ben Foakes, and Curran are the three Test players in the squad, and all will look to press cases for Ashes selection.

Australia A warmed up for this game with a ten-wicket thrashing of Sussex at Arundel, in which both openers - Marcus Harris and Joe Burns - made centuries. Both men are in contention to open the batting with David Warner this summer.

England Lions: Lewis Gregory (captain), Jack Leach (both Somerset), Sam Hain, Dom Sibley (both Warwickshire), Sam Curran, Ben Foakes (both Surrey), Sam Northeast (Hampshire), Jamie Porter (Essex), Zak Crawley (Kent), James Bracey (Gloucestershire), Ollie Robinson (Sussex).

"Baffling."

That was the word former India captain Sunil Gavaskar used to express his disappointment with the Indian team management's decisions ahead of, and during, their World Cup 2019 campaign. India had topped the league stage of the tournament, but lost by 18 runs against fourth-placed New Zealand in a thrilling semi-final.

Matt Henry and Trent Boult had reduced India to 5 for 3 in their chase of 240, but there was some surprise about MS Dhoni's batting position, with the most experienced member of the team coming in at No.7, with all of Rishabh Pant, Dinesh Karthik and Hardik Pandya sent in ahead of Dhoni.

Dhoni didn't walk out even when India became 24 for 4 in 10 overs, with Jimmy Neesham taking a spectacular one-handed catch to send back Karthik. The general expectation was that the situation was ideal for Dhoni's experience and calm, but it was Pandya who came out to join Pant.

Both young players put their heads down in a 47-run stand for the fifth wicket, playing with confidence and composure. However, Pant went for the slog-sweep against Mitchell Santner, with the bowler having built up pressure through tight bowling, and was caught at deep midwicket. Pandya was out to a similar shot, as the asking rate mounted.

Gavaskar felt that Dhoni should have been the one to join Pant when the fourth wicket fell, since he could have settled any nerves that Pant, as a rookie, might have felt.

"At that stage (24 for 4) you did not need two players playing in the same mould," Gavaskar told Star Sports on Thursday, the day after India's defeat. "Both (Pant and Pandya) are attacking players. It could have been an MS Dhoni coming in at this stage and talking to Rishabh every second delivery.

"He would have assessed from the non-striker's end what exactly Rishabh Pant is feeling: is he getting a little impatient? You have sent two people whose natural game is to go bang-bang, and at that stage, with the ball doing all kinds of things and the pressure being there, four wickets gone - you wanted somebody to hang in there. That was baffling."

"The Indian public is entitled to answers. It is not the selection committee's decision. It is the team management... At the moment what we are seeing didn't work out, so we need to know." Sunil Gavaskar

When India's captain Virat Kohli was asked why Dhoni walked in at No. 7, the lowest he has batted in the tournament, he said the role Dhoni had been given some games into the tournament was to be there at the end. "Well, he's been given that role after the first few games of being in a situation where he can, if the situation's bad, control one end, like he did today," Kohli said. "Or if there is a scenario where there are six or seven overs left, he can go and strike."

Gavaskar pointed to Ambati Rayudu as one batsman who would have had the ability and experience to handle the situation following the top order collapse. Rayudu had been on the list of standbys for India's World Cup squad, but wasn't called up despite two men being rendered unavailable through injuries, following which he announced his retirement from all cricket.

Rayudu had batted 14 times at No.4 since his return to the Indian ODI squad last year in the Asia Cup, but he wasn't called up to the team, with Pant flown in when Shikhar Dhawan was ruled out and Mayank Agarwal included when Vijay Shankar had to exit.

"Let's face, there have been a lot of baffling decisions over the last couple of years. Ambati Rayudu for example - he should have been brought here," Gavaskar said. "Why and how can you explain to me you bring in a Mayank Agarwal? He hasn't played a single ODI as yet. He just came before the Sri Lanka game, the last league game, (so) you want to him to make his debut in a semifinals or a final in case a slot was open? Why not bring in an Ambati Rayudu, who is your standby? Very disappointing to see what happened yesterday."

VVS Laxman, too, was critical of the selectors and the Indian team management for preferring Vijay Shankar over Rayudu in the original squad. "Yes, Vijay Shankar can contribute with the ball (too), but what about the experience the Indian middle order required?" Laxman said. "Who is that batsman at No. 4? It has been musical chairs: 13 players have been tried and tested, but they have not been given enough opportunities. In a semi-final ultimately, those kind of decisions will affect the team, which it did."

Gavaskar said the Indian fans deserved answers to some of the rationale behind the decision-making. "Last year you say we found our No. 4," he said, referring to when Kohli had anointed Rayudu as the man to fill that spot. "So what happens to that No. 4? He is now left out of the original squad. Then when you have the opportunity when Vijay Shankar gets unfortunately injured, you bring somebody else in. This is something nobody can understand. The Indian public is entitled to answers - what is the thinking behind this (selections).

"It is not the selection committee's decision. It is the team management which has been asking these things. We are not saying you are wrong but at the moment what we are seeing didn't work out, so we need to know."

Gavaskar said even someone like Ajinkya Rahane could have been an option at No.4, given his sound technique. Rahane had been tried at that position earlier, but was dropped, and Gavaskar felt the batsman was given confusing messages.

"You have tried Ajinkya Rahane. He was your middle order batsman for such a long time. Suddenly you are only going to consider him as an opening batsman because in the middle overs he is not a finisher, he does not take runs, whatever, whatever excuses we heard," Gavaskar said.

"In those conditions in Manchester, what did you need? Somebody with technique. Somebody who could have been around to see that period off and then eventually leave the field open for a Hardik Pandya or even a MS Dhoni."

England (Roy 85) beat Australia 223 (Smith 85, Woakes 3-20) by eight wickets

How does that old song go again? Thirty years of hurt? Make that 44 and counting (and contrary to the lyrics, England's cricketers certainly gave up dreaming for at least 20 of those). But suddenly it's all up for grabs. On home soil, with the wind behind their backs and the fates screaming in their favour. Is it coming home this time? If you don't believe it now, you truly never will.

One thing is for sure. New Zealand await in the World Cup final at Lord's on Sunday, where for the first time since Sri Lanka at Lahore in 1996, a brand-new team is sure to be crowned as champions. But after the jitters and the wobbles, the niggles and the doubts, today was the day when England banished the angst and restored the roar that had carried the side to the top of the world ODI rankings.

Put simply, Australia are not meant to suffer beatings this comprehensive in World Cup knock-out matches. They had not lost any of their previous seven visits to the semi-finals, and yet a massive 107 deliveries still remained when victory, fittingly, was sealed with a swipe over long-on from England's captain, Eoin Morgan, the man in whose image this team has been remoulded since the misery of 2015.

After adapting their gung-ho attitudes to haul themselves into the last four, this was a throwback performance of a more recent genre from England, on a day that had dawned fraught with the sort of anticipation not truly witnessed in an England v Australia contest since that seismic Ashes Test at Edgbaston in 2005. Then as now, England knew they had their opponents' measure after a generation of subjugation, but the weight of history isn't something that can be cast off at a whim.

Or so we might have assumed. Instead, England tapped into the same mindset that had crushed Australia 5-0 in their bilateral series a mere 12 months ago, and produced a performance that had far more in common with that 481-run pasting at Trent Bridge than the rather timid, confused surrender at Lord's a fortnight ago that had left their tournament in such jeopardy.

Ferocity was England's watchword from the outset, and with ball and bat alike. Not even the loss of an apparently crucial toss could unhinge them, as Chris Woakes and Jofra Archer contrived in the space of 16 balls to blow away Australia's totemic openers, Aaron Finch and David Warner, before Adil Rashid produced the spell of his tournament to undermine a doughty fightback from Steve Smith and Alex Carey, who batted on gamely after a savage blow to the chin from Archer had left him bleeding profusely and requiring stitches.

And thereafter it was over to Jason Roy - the man of England's tournament, whatever the final may bring - who climbed into a sub-par target of 224 with a hugely intelligent blend of caution and mounting arrogance. He and Jonny Bairstow displayed the wisdom gleaned from earlier tournament hiccups to see off a briefly threatening Mitchell Starc, but retained the right to flog allcomers with impunity wherever their lines strayed from the straight and narrow.

At the end of the Powerplay, England were 50 for 0 and cruising, and Roy began to turn on the afterburners. Nathan Lyon, a scourge of English batsman in Ashes battles gone by, was pumped for six first-ball as he entered the fray for the 11th over. And when Australia, in desperation, tossed the ball to Smith in a bid for any sort of a breakthrough, Roy responded with three consecutive sixes - the third of which, into the fourth tier of the new stand, was surely the largest on this ground since Andrew Flintoff's iconic smoking of Brett Lee into what was then a building site during that 2005 Test.

Only accident or injury seemed capable of dampening England's day, and both did briefly flare up - first when Bairstow had to receive treatment after tweaking his groin while turning for a second run. He was never quite as fluent again before falling lbw to Starc for 34 - a dismissal which, in using up England's review, had a major bearing on the second flashpoint of England's chase.

On 85, Roy climbed into a pull at a bouncer from Pat Cummins - and was left utterly bewildered as umpire Kumar Dharmasena first began to single a wide, but then rather apologetically raised his finger, seemingly swayed at the last second by the vehemence of Australia's appeals. Roy signalled for the review, was reminded he had none left, and then launched into an apoplectic rant that betrayed the enormity of the task still at hand.

A demerit point or two may await Roy for his wrath, although it is not thought that his place in the final will be at jeopardy - but nor was it in his absence from the crease either, as Joe Root - with typical gap-finding aplomb - and Morgan - with mounting confidence in spite of a few more awkward moments against the short ball - eased England over the line in an unbroken stand of 79.

England have endured some absolute towellings in the 27 years since they last set foot in a World Cup final, from Faisalabad 1996 to Colombo 2011 to Wellington 2015. But this was a performance that deserves to resonate in a similar manner.

Australia were ahead in the contest for, at best, a solitary delivery, when David Warner - pumped to the gunwales with adrenalin but eerily calm as the boos rang around him - leaned effortlessly into a first-ball loosener from Chris Woakes and stroked a cover-driven four that evoked memories of Phil DeFreitas to Michael Slater at the Gabba in 1994-95 - a four that allegedly lost the Ashes there and then.

But England, to their credit, adapted collectively and quickly. They'd been guilty, in the group-stage defeat at Lord's, of bowling too short when the conditions had favoured swing. But Woakes hauled himself back half a yard to join the dots for the rest of the over, and hand the baton to Jofra Archer, for a rather more effective first-baller.

After making 496 runs in first seven World Cup innings, Finch's campaign has now finished with scores of 8, 3, 0 - the first time in his ODI career that he's collected three consecutive single-figure scores - and what a time to do it. There was always a suspicion that he'd be susceptible to the one that shaped back into his pads, but Archer utterly nailed his length, a perfect jag-backer that would have crashed into middle and leg, and a review burnt as well.

Watch on Hotstar: Jason Roy's belligerent innings of 85

Warner wasn't about to be cowed. An extraordinary belligerent launch over Woakes' head for another four confirmed he was still pumped for the contest. But Woakes' response was emphatic and brilliant. Back of a length, leaping into the splice, a proper Test-match dismissal as Bairstow second slip clung onto a flyer.

It might have been two in two for Woakes, as Peter Handscomb - nervy and shuffling - was pinned on the crease and survived a reviewed lbw only on umpire's call. But instead Woakes bagged him 11 balls later, bowled off a tentative inside-edge after a World Cup debut to forget.

Inevitably, Australia found the resolve to dig their way back into the game, as Smith - with his fourth half-century in as many World Cup knock-out appearances - found an ally in Carey, whose entire head required swaddling to cope with the gash in his chin after Archer's vicious lifter.

The pair had just begun to cause England's fans a few jitters with a fourth-wicket stand of 103 when Rashid - his shoulder clearly bothering him all tournament - produced the impactful over for which his captain had been priming him for pretty much the past four years. If Carey's dismissal was careless, a loose swipe to cow corner where James Vince was lurking on the rope, then Marcus Stoinis' was brilliant - the biggest ripping googly of Rashid's World Cup to date, the perfect welcoming gift for a batsman who played hopelessly down the wrong line to be pinned on off stump for a second-ball duck.

Smith, again, redoubled his efforts, but his support cast was found wanting. Glenn Maxwell was suckered by a genius knuckleball from Archer, a few 20kph of pace lost with no discernible change of action as Morgan collected a lob in the covers, before Cummins poked another googly to slip. And when Smith himself was run out by an extraordinary shy that wriggled through a gap in his groin and beat him to the crease, the resistance was as good as over. Seventeen overs of the Jason and Jonny show later, there was truly no recourse.

And now it's off to Lord's where - with the respect that is due to Kane Williamson and Co. after their own stage-seizing performance against India - England will stride into the contest with the swagger of a side that has already ripped the crown clean off the defeated king's head. And if that sort of attitude happens to be exactly the type that will play into their unsung opponents' hands, then so be it. It is hard to see how England could possibly take a backwards step after this sort of statement victory.

The first appearance by the England men's cricket team in a World Cup final since 1992 will be shown on free-to-air TV in the UK. Sky and Channel 4 announced an agreement to share live coverage following England's victory over Australia at Edgbaston.

The subject of the World Cup's visibility has been much discussed, with the tournament being broadcast behind a paywall in its host country. However, Sky had previously indicated it would be willing to share the feed if England beat Australia in their semi-final at Edgbaston.

Sunday's final at Lord's will also be broadcast free-to-air on Prime TV in New Zealand. Kane Williamson's side shocked India in the first semi-final, which was concluded on Wednesday after rain forced the game into a reserve day.

Channel 4 has been showing highlights of the competition in the UK, and will now broadcast the final - while managing to also fit in coverage of the Formula One British Grand Prix. Cricket coverage will begin at 9am BST on Channel 4, move to More 4 at 1.15pm while the Grand Prix is on, and then return after the race is over.

England's last appearance in the cricket World Cup final came in 1992, when they lost to Pakistan. They have never won the tournament but were one of the favourites this time around having risen to the No. 1 ODI ranking under Eoin Morgan's captaincy.

"This is fantastic news for cricket fans and the nation," Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon said. "This Sunday is a massive day for British sport with England tantalisingly close to lifting the Cricket World Cup for the first time and Lewis Hamilton setting his sights on his seventh season win at Silverstone - all live on Channel 4.

"The big winners of this strong partnership between Channel 4 and Sky are sports fans and viewers who want to come together for these big sporting occasions."

Cricket has largely been absent from free-to-air TV in the UK since 2005, with some blaming the ECB's decision to sell the rights to Sky for recent declines in participation.

"England in the Final on home soil is a huge moment for sport in this country and we are proud to be the host broadcaster," Sky UK and Ireland Chief Executive Stephen van Rooyen said. "Thanks to our strong relationship with Channel 4, we are partnering to make the game available to everyone, so the whole country can get behind England, and be part of a special national sporting event."

As well as showing the game on its sports channels, Sky will broadcast the World Cup final on Sky One.

Running back Melvin Gordon has informed the Los Angeles Chargers that unless he receives a new contract, he will not report to training camp and he will demand a trade, his agent Fletcher Smith told ESPN.

Smith said he and Gordon did not want to go this route, but because of the lack of progress in negotiations and the offers the Chargers made this offseason, they felt it necessary to voice their displeasure in an effort to reach a more satisfying outcome, whether with a new contract or a trade.

Gordon, 26, is scheduled to be heading into the last year of his contract, a fifth-year option worth $5.6 million.

Other top running backs -- Todd Gurley, David Johnson, Le'Veon Bell -- recently have received new deals, and Gordon wants to be the next one added to that illustrious list. He is unwilling to take a Chargers offer that does not put him near the salaries of those top running backs.

Gordon has been voted to two Pro Bowls and rushed for an average of 5.1 yards per carry and recorded 14 total touchdowns in 2018. He also averaged 114.6 scrimmage yards per game last season, the best by any Chargers player since LaDainian Tomlinson (121.8 in 2007), according to ESPN Stats & Information.

Gordon skipped most of the offseason but attended mandatory minicamp. Last month he said, "I don't know" when asked if he would report to training camp without a new deal. The Chargers have solid depth at running back behind Gordon in Austin Ekeler, Justin Jackson and Detrez Newsome and went 4-0 last season when Gordon missed time with a knee injury.

Unless the two sides can resolve their differences before the Chargers' training camp, slated to open July 24 in Costa Mesa, California, this will be a contentious issue that shadows the team, much as the Chargers had to deal with an unsigned Joey Bosa in the summer of 2016.

Smith said Gordon is dug in and discouraged with the lack of progress in the talks.

ESPN's Eric D. Williams contributed to this report.

New York City police say they are investigating a possible hate crime directed toward Megan Rapinoe after posters featuring the U.S. soccer star were defaced with derogatory slurs.

Police said the vandalism, which was discovered inside the Bryant Park subway station in midtown Manhattan on Monday, was being investigated by the New York Police Department's Hate Crime Task Force.

The posters have since been scrubbed clean. Rapinoe, who is gay, has been an outspoken advocate for gender equity and LGBTQ inclusion.

The U.S. women's national team was honored with a ticker tape parade Wednesday up New York City's Canyon of Heroes for winning the World Cup.

After the parade, Rapinoe urged Americans to "love more" and "hate less."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

STAPLES CENTER FALLS graveyard silent and still, a sellout crowd staring at the rookie beneath the basket, surrounded by medical personnel. His eyes are wet with tears. His head coach tells him to stay strong. It's Oct. 28, 2014, the Lakers' regular-season opener and the NBA debut for Julius Randle, a 6-foot-9 forward and the Lakers' first first-round pick in seven years, a foundation of their post-Kobe Bryant future.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the 19-year-old had driven to the hoop, leaped ... and collapsed. Now, seconds stretch into eternity before his right leg is stabilized in an air cast and teammates load him onto a stretcher, which disappears into a tunnel. Randle's leg is broken. His rookie season is over, 14 NBA minutes after it began.

As Randle is wheeled away on that October night, Lakers head strength and conditioning coach Tim DiFrancesco sits at a high-top table inside the players' lounge adjoining the Lakers' locker room, studying the replay on a large flat-screen television. DiFrancesco notices that Randle's takeoff and landing appear normal, that he suffered no mid-air collision in between. There is no clear culprit. No explanation. Randle's leg simply snapped.

Before he joined the Lakers, DiFrancesco worked at an outpatient physical therapy clinic outside Boston. While there, he saw scores of young athletes who had suffered serious injuries -- back, knee, hip -- that one might expect to find in those who worked for decades in hard-labor jobs. Later, at NBA pre-draft combines and individual workouts, he evaluated high-level college players who consistently couldn't perform basic movements, such as squats, lunges or balancing on one leg. There were players he'd evaluated who moved so poorly that he says he "absolutely" expected them to suffer injury. In every instance, DiFrancesco thought of time: Did he have enough before that player's first NBA game to potentially repair the issues that he had noticed? He'd calculate potential weight-room hours and hope there were enough to build up a tolerance to prevent an injury.

An X-ray would later find that Randle had suffered a "stress reaction," a precursor to a stress fracture but without the break. Repetitive impacts to that bone had led its structure to break down, and a team spokesman later said that the stress reaction is "likely what contributed to the break."

Back in the players' lounge, DiFrancesco studies the replay again and again, stopping, rewinding and playing again.

These kids, he thinks to himself, are ticking time bombs.

"AND, AGAIN, I understand I shouldn't use a broad brush to criticize the entire AAU system, because parts of it are excellent. But also parts of it are very broken, especially [as it] relates to injuries in the league. What we're seeing is a rash of injuries among young players."

NBA commissioner Adam Silver is standing before a lectern prior to Game 1 of the 2017 NBA Finals between the Warriors and Cavaliers. He's upholding a Finals tradition for the commissioner to field questions on issues facing the league. The seventh question, at first, sounds boilerplate: It focuses on the NBA's newly branded G League and whether Silver believes it might become a pipeline for NBA hopefuls to skip college. Silver says it's an issue the league is looking into. But then he takes a detour and begins addressing something else: youth basketball and injuries -- almost as if he has something he wants to get off his chest. "What our orthopedics are telling us," Silver says, "is they're seeing wear-and-tear issues in young players that they didn't used to see until players were much older."

What Silver could not have known was just how steeply injuries -- and especially injuries to young players -- would impact the NBA the very next season. In 2017-18, the number of NBA games lost to injury or illness surpassed the 5,000 mark for the first time since the league stopped using the injured reserve list prior to the 2005-06 campaign, per certified athletic trainer Jeff Stotts, who has cataloged the careers of more than 1,100 players since that point and is considered the most authoritative public resource for tracking injuries in the NBA. This past season, in 2018-19, the league topped the 5,000 mark again.

In 2017-18, players who had been named to multiple All-Star teams missed an average of 14.63 games due to injury, the second-highest such figure that Stotts had recorded. That figure jumped this past season to 17.02.

And according to Stotts' database, the four highest tallies of games missed by young players in their first two seasons have occurred in the past four seasons. Players picked in the 2014 first round missed 838 games to injury during their first two seasons, the highest figure Stotts has ever recorded; in 2015, 637, the third-highest tally; in 2016, there were 548 missed games; and in 2017, 751 games, the second-highest.

The question is why.

Through dozens of interviews over the past two years with NBA team and league officials, current and former players, AAU coaches, parents, youth players, researchers, medical and athletic training officials in and around the NBA, as well as those intimately involved with youth basketball, one possible answer repeatedly emerged: Players, they say, are physically broken down by the time they reach the NBA.

"It is grave," says one NBA general manager, who says his team's injury databases on players entering the draft, dating back decades, leave "no question" that there are more orthopedic issues among young players in recent years. "It's very sad, where a kid has an NBA body, he's got NBA talent, he's got even an NBA mentality, but he doesn't have a body that can withstand the rigors of the training and the actual games, whether it's to get to the NBA or just to hold up. It's a tough deal."

Silver, in an interview with ESPN, calls the issue "the highest priority for the league -- and I think both in terms of the health and wellness of the players in the NBA, but also the larger category of millions of players, boys and girls, not just in the United States, but globally."

"It's an epidemic," says Leo Papile, who founded and has coached the Boston Amateur Basketball Club on Nike's Elite Youth Basketball League circuit -- arguably the most prestigious grassroots circuit -- for four decades.

"I have many kids who are going to go play in college next year," says Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, the Director of Sports Medicine Research and Education at Emory Healthcare in the Atlanta area and one of the leading researchers on youth sports, "and this whole year has just been about trying to get healthy so they can step on that doorstep as a freshman and actually have a chance to participate."

Says Jayanthi: "Kids are broken by the time they get to college."

THE MOST COMMON explanation is as lazy as it is popular: Players today just aren't as tough as their NBA forefathers. They're soft. Chip Schaefer, the Bulls' director of performance health, refers to this trope as "millennial bashing" -- and this from the man who served as the head athletic trainer during the Bulls' 1990-98 heyday, when they were led by the standard-bearer for NBA toughness: Michael Jordan.

In his career, Jordan battled the hard-hitting "Bad Boys" Pistons and legendarily played through most any injury. In Jordan's day, the gold standard for durability was simple: start all 82 NBA regular-season games, which he did in eight of his 13 seasons in Chicago.

But it's not as if Jordan was a relentless baller all year long.

"When the season ended, Michael left and played golf and didn't pick up a basketball again until probably a little bit before training camp [in September]," says Wally Blase, a Bulls athletic trainer from 1993-2000. "He might have played pickup ball with some friends, but he wasn't working eight hours a day at some gym with some shooting coach." (And in contrast to the myth that has grown around him, Jordan, Blase notes, didn't treat every practice as if it were Game 7: "There were days when Michael would show up, put ice on his knees, go smoke a cigar and then go play 18 holes of golf.")

Jordan wasn't unique in this regard. Former Lakers head athletic trainer Gary Vitti, who spent 32 years with the team, says the Showtime Lakers "hardly played any basketball" when the season ended: "As soon as the season was over, everybody would take at least minimum two weeks, two to three weeks off, give their bodies a rest, let them recover, and then slowly we would do either some jogging or biking and some strength training."

As the Orlando Magic's strength and conditioning coach from 2006-12, Joe Rogowski saw young players struggle with simple movement patterns. So to help, he'd have players participate in different sports during the summers, like boxing, swimming and beach volleyball. It broke up the monotony, but also cross-trained them after years of hyperfocus on basketball.

What Rogowski was attempting to counteract was specialization -- the growing tendency for parents and kids to focus on one sport, year-round, to the exclusion of all others.

In a series of studies in 2017 and 2018, a team of researchers working with the University of Wisconsin's David Bell, a professor in its Department of Kinesiology's Athletic Training Program and the director of the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory, found that while most youth athletes today believe specialization increases their performance and chances of making a college team, the majority of those who reached Division I level didn't classify as highly specialized at the high school level. Jayanthi and a team of fellow researchers had reached a similar conclusion in a separate 2013 study. (The classification of "highly specialized" was granted to athletes who answered "yes" to the following three questions: Can you identify your primary sport? Do you play or train in that sport for more than eight months of the year? Have you ever quit one sport to focus on a primary sport?)

But while the upsides of specialization are unclear, there are few doubts about the downsides.

A separate 2016 study from Bell and his team found that 36% of high school athletes classified as highly specialized, training in one sport for more than eight months a year -- and that those athletes were two to three times more likely to suffer a hip or knee injury.

PLAYERS KEPT DROPPING out -- that's all Jayanthi knew for sure. It was happening at four prestigious national tournaments for elite tennis players ages 12-18. There, players who played more than four matches -- often at least one per day over a span of four consecutive days -- were more than twice as likely to pull out of the tournament before their fifth match for medical reasons than those who didn't advance that far.

Soon thereafter, they examined about 530 high-level tennis players aged 12 to 18 in the Midwest. One of the first findings was the majority of these athletes -- about 70% -- had specialized in tennis, and the average age that they'd begun doing so was 10 years old. They also found that those who had begun specializing in tennis at a young age were 1.5 times more likely to report an injury than those who hadn't specialized. One year later, they began what would become the largest clinical study of its kind, following about 1,200 young athletes -- the average age was 13 and a half -- across all sports in the Chicago area for up to three years. Roughly two-thirds of that group had visited local sports medicine clinics with injuries; the other third were uninjured and attended primary care clinics, largely for annual sports physicals. The goal: compare the injured to the uninjured, over a period of three years, and see what the numbers revealed.

Their conclusion: Those who were highly specialized in one sport (at the exclusion of other sports) and played it year-round were at a significantly higher risk for serious overuse injuries, such as bone and cartilage injuries and ligament injuries. How much higher of a risk? About 125%.

"Kids are broken by the time they get to college." Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, the director of sports medicine research and education at Emory

That figure would establish one of the first strong and independent links between injuries and sports specialization. It would spark headlines. And that issue would become among the highest priorities for two leading sports medicine organizations -- the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, which held a research summit on this topic with leaders from around the country; and the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine.

Meanwhile, key institutions in the sports science community would begin to see the effects. It was noticed in Santa Barbara, California, where teenagers now head into the P3 Applied Sports Science Lab, a training center that specializes in advanced athlete assessment, and P3 officials are alarmed by what they see. P3 founder Dr. Marcus Elliott calls basketball "the hardest sport on the human body, where issues -- biomechanical problems -- manifest as injuries, manifest as shortened careers, more so than any other the other sports that we work in." It is so taxing that when discussing today's youth basketball culture, Elliott calls some of the players who emerge from it "survivors." He adds, "What they put their bodies through is so rigorous. It's so extreme. And a lot of them don't make it out to the other side." It was noticed in Los Angeles, where teenagers now make up the majority of the injured population that files into the Movement Performance Institute, a sports science laboratory focused on injury prevention and recovery.

"They just march in here and out -- knee pain, ankle pain, head pain, back pain," says Dr. Chris Powers, a USC professor and the director of its biokinesiology program. "We see kids all the time that are 10, 11 years old with really bad tendinitis and overuse injuries all the time. I've seen ACL tears in 11-year-olds."

It was noticed in the Atlanta-based offices of Dr. Mike Clark, who founded a program widely used across the NBA that focuses on movement efficiency and injury recovery/prevention: Fusionetics. But, as is the case with P3, Fusionetics officials are working more with high school athletes to help stem issues that Clark saw during his 14 seasons as a team physical therapist for the Phoenix Suns. "It's getting significantly worse," Clark says, "because kids are specializing at such a young age and they're not recovering."

And still, despite these collective efforts, the NBA continues to receive players who are broken down by the time they get there.

IN 1984, AT the age of 21, Jordan joined the Bulls after spending three years in college, typical of players at that time. A decade later, in 1995, Kevin Garnett would make the leap straight from high school, at the age of 19, setting off what would be a wave of others on the prep-to-pro path. In 2005, Andrew Bynum would make the same jump, to the Lakers, at the age of 17.

Though that gap in ages -- from 17 or 19 to, say, 21 -- might not seem large, Schaefer, the Bulls' director of performance health, calls it critical for the development of musculoskeletal and support systems that help young players withstand an NBA workload. And that transition is a steep one: In his first NBA season, a rookie might play in as many as 100 games, including exhibition, regular-season and postseason, after playing a third of that in a college or high school season. "You throw in the travel and all the other things that are involved, it is a lot of demand as opposed to allowing your body to mature in your early 20s," Schaefer says.

Taken together, these factors are cited by specialists who describe what they refer to as the start of "The Shift" -- and several say they started noticing it in the early 2000s.

At that point, prep players were declaring for the draft in droves, and the NBA's allure -- its riches and fame -- helped fuel the rise of single-sport specialization, as players (and their parents) began to focus on the one sport they sought for a lucrative career. This, in turn, helped fuel the surge of club basketball; if teenagers needed more repetitions to make that leap to the NBA, and more exposure to gain the attention of NBA talent-evaluators, they would need more places to get those repetitions. They would need more exposure to have access to those opportunities earlier, and as young as possible, as many times as possible, with no time to recover, because there's no time to fall behind.

"It's a vicious cycle," Vitti says.

Basketball is now the most popular youth team sport in America, with more than 10 million boys and girls aged 6 to 17 playing it in 2017, according to the latest figures from the Sports Fitness Industry Association. There is a seemingly endless number of organized youth leagues, even though many commonly refer to just one of them: the Amateur Athletic Union. Today, "AAU" is a catch-all term for grassroots leagues and also the largest multisports organization in the country, with more than 700,000 members. Basketball is its biggest sport, with thousands of leagues, tournaments and showcases.

And just as there is a new basketball culture, there is a new type of basketball player. Ask Clark to describe what that player looks like, biomechanically, and he offers an analogy: Imagine a car with a powerful engine, one carefully engineered and maintained for years. But as powerful as that engine has become, the car's brakes and suspension are equally poor. So the car can't handle the stress that its engine puts upon it -- all akin to placing Ferrari's top racing motor inside a hybrid while making no adjustments to the car's frame.

Simply put: Today's players are faster, stronger and more athletic, the product of years of weight training, speed training, vertical jump training, skills training. But the brakes, the suspension -- their ankles, hips and core -- while often neglected, remain tasked with enduring the brunt of the body's force. "We would joke that half of these athletes are so good that they could almost out-jump their ability to land," says Blase, who is now Fusionetics' director of professional and collegiate team services. Says Clark, "All the specialization is helping the player become more skillful and more powerful and more athletic, but at the same time they're not working on the things that prevent injuries and help them recover."

Clark calls it "the performance paradox."

"Think about it as the tip of the iceberg. What you see on the top of the water is really skillful, very athletic kids, especially now even in high school. You get a sophomore that can do a 360-degree dunk whereas 20 years ago you never saw that. You see kind of the good outcome, which is improved skill, improved athleticism. But down below, their movement quality is suffering, and a lot of these kids just move absolutely terrible. You're like, 'How can a kid jump 38 inches when they can't even stand on one leg?'"

ADAM SILVER IS quick to note that what orthopedics and other medical professionals have informed him regarding injuries and youth basketball remains largely anecdotal.

But even that anecdotal information is alarming enough that the NBA and USA Basketball, in October 2016, unveiled its first-ever guidelines for youth basketball, which recommend, among other strictures, delaying specialization for young players in basketball until they're 14 or older; limiting high-density scheduling based on age-appropriate guidelines through high school; and ensuring rest from organized basketball at least one day a week and extended time away each year. For example: that 7- to 8-year-olds play only one game a week (length: 20-28 minutes), one practice per week (30-60 minutes), and no more than three hours per week of organized basketball. For grades 9 through 12, the recommendations are two to three games per week; 90-120 minutes per practice; and three to four practices per week. These guidelines were influenced by a group led by Dr. John DiFiori, chief of the Primary Care Sports Medicine Service and attending physician at New York City's Hospital for Special Surgery. The NBA brought DiFiori aboard in 2015 as its director of sports medicine; he'd been studying youth sports and overuse injuries for more than 25 years and was the lead author and led the working group that published Overuse Injuries and Burnout in Youth Sports: A Position Statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

The issues, DiFiori says, have only grown more pervasive in the age of specialization. In basketball, as well as volleyball (both jumping sports, he notes), overuse can lead to chronic ankle injuries, development of joint and cartilage problems, even spine problems. "I don't think people realize how common back problems are, among NBA athletes," he says. "That sort of accumulation of the injuries, or the development of asymmetries, muscle tendon dysfunction, etc. That certainly can shorten a career span."

Still, one issue remains: there are no means of enforcement for even the most well-intentioned of NBA guidelines. The lack of a national governing body for youth basketball makes a uniform system of rules all but impossible, says David Krichavsky, the NBA's vice president of youth basketball development: "Because the youth landscape has been so fragmented, you have other actors coming in and gobbling up the space that exists. A lot of them are profit-driven, and you end up with an ecosystem that has kids playing way too much basketball way too early."

Speaking for AAU, Rod Seaford, a longtime AAU coach and Boys Basketball Executive Committee member and AAU Board member, says, "The NCAA and the NBA loves to lay fault for their ills at the feet of youth sports or AAU. That's a pretty common thing. We've approached the NCAA and NBA with various proposals [only] to get lip service. We don't get much serious conversation. I don't doubt that it's a legitimate concern. But it's really easy to lay all those faults of the youth coach."

Silver says that the NBA and NCAA need to join together to help ensure that the guidelines DiFiori has helped outline are uniformly enforced so "young athletes and their parents and coaches don't think that we're putting them at a disadvantage by requiring them to adhere to proper health guidelines." It remains to be seen how and when such guidelines can be enforced. While there are pitch counts in Little League, there is no equivalent in AAU.

"We recognize that we're not going to be able to change the culture of youth basketball overnight," Silver says. But, he adds, "We are cautiously optimistic."

Seaford, who notes that millions of boys and girls play youth basketball in non-AAU leagues, cautions that the solutions are far from simple: "I don't think the NBA has the power, nor do I think they should have the power to declare what organization can play basketball or when they can play it. It's impossible to enforce. USA Basketball has no control. AAU has no control. I don't know what can be done."

In the meantime, what might Silver say to a parent who believes that less isn't more -- that less basketball and more playing of other sports might hinder their child's chances of reaching the NBA or WNBA?

"I would say that we understand your concern," Silver says, "because you're in essence responding to the system as it's been ... but you're jeopardizing your long-term career by not adhering to these guidelines." When asked what he'd tell a parent who wanted to their young child to hyperfocus on basketball in the pursuit of a scholarship or an NBA career, one NBA general manager puts his message in blunt terms:

"The chase for that is real," he says, "but at what cost? Do you really want to have your kid limping around the rest of his life?"

DR. DARIN PADUA, chairman of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina, has been studying sports-related injuries and athletic biomechanics for more than 15 years. And he, too, uses car analogies to describe today's young NBA players, referencing mileage. "They're 18, 19 years old when they get to the NBA," Padua says, "but they're starting their careers playing 90-plus games a year that much sooner. They have more miles at a younger age and then, when they get to the NBA, they're less mature structurally and physically. Even though they look like giants, they just can't tolerate as much."

It's difficult to tally how many hours of basketball today's athlete might play before he reaches the NBA. But consider that a parent could sign their child up for organized youth basketball as young as 7 years old -- and continue on that path all the way through high school. How many games might that equate to? Officials from one of the most prestigious teams on the Nike EYBL circuit estimate that someone who played consistently between 7 and 19 -- over a span of 13 years -- could easily play more than 1,000 organized games (which doesn't include club-team practices, or pickup games, or workouts with trainers).

Or, to put it another way: enough games to encompass more than 12 NBA seasons.

Regardless, it is unquestionably higher than at any point in history.

Now consider Kobe Bryant.

Think of Bryant, and you likely envision a man devoting countless hours honing his game from an early age, a living exemplar of specialization made good.

In truth, it wasn't until Bryant was about 15 or 16 -- a few years after having moved back to the U.S. from Italy, where his father had played professionally -- that the Lakers icon says he started playing AAU. Bryant estimates he played in maybe five tournaments in all, plus a handful of high school all-star games. "That was it," he says.

And if Bryant's path had been more typical, more mainstream, filled with basketball-packed summers, would he still have played for 20 NBA seasons, the most ever for an NBA guard? "Hmmm ... I'm not sure," he says. "I'd like to think I'd be able to figure something out, but the reality is, I'd have to figure something out, because I put so much on my body."

Now, at 40, Bryant is weighing these same questions with his own children: How much is too much? How young is too young?

Take his second daughter, Gianna, who's 13 and playing basketball all the time: "She's looking around at different stuff and you see there's a lot. They could literally play every single weekend in club organized basketball at 10 years old. It's like, why? I had to be like, 'No.'"

Bryant looks back on what he did at that age. "It wasn't like I was playing 10 games every week or some s--- like that," he says. "I didn't play any games. You shoot a little bit every day, and then, by the time you're 15 or something like that, you start kicking it up a little bit and that's when you start training harder. But before that, it's just skill s---. Can you dribble with your left? Can you shoot properly?"

"Keep in mind," he adds, "I grew up playing, like, no games. We just played a game once every two weeks before I came back to the States."

Throughout his career, Bryant has railed against American youth basketball for failing to develop players' skills, often noting that overseas players were far more advanced on the fundamentals. But for as much as he advocates skill development, Bryant preaches patience.

"You try to overload these kids and get them to be the best in one year," Bryant says. "It's just absolutely ridiculous."

Coming Friday: part two of our two-part series on youth basketball and how its cycle of constant competition threatens the NBA.

Batters in the Atlantic League will get the chance to steal first base in a new series of experimental rules announced Thursday.

As the independent minor league prepares to expand the use of "robot umpires" leaguewide, Major League Baseball and the Atlantic League added four more rules to the second half of the season.

Batters may try to steal first base on any pitch that was not caught in flight. It expands the traditional dropped third strike rule to all pitches, and batters can be thrown out if they try to run.

Other rules being added:

• One foul bunt is allowed with two strikes before it becomes a strikeout.

• Pitchers are required to step off the rubber to try a pickoff.

• A relaxation on check swings to be more batter-friendly.

In February, the Atlantic League and MLB announced a three-year partnership that allowed the league to serve as a testing ground for experimental playing rules and equipment. In March, they announced the first set of rules, including the TrackMan radar system for calling balls and strikes, the ban of the shift and a three-batter minimum for pitchers.

"We have seen a tremendous amount of interest in these initiatives from our players, coaches and fans throughout the first half of the season," Atlantic League president Rick White said in a statement. "We look forward to working further with Major League Baseball and observing these additional rule changes in action throughout the remainder of the year."

The TrackMan system was used for the first time in the Atlantic League all-star game Wednesday. Plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an earpiece connected to an iPhone in his pocket and relayed the call upon receiving it from a TrackMan computer system that uses Doppler radar.

White said the system will be implemented leaguewide over the next few weeks.

Umpires have the ability to override the computer decision.