First, there was Steven Smith. At Edgbaston and Lord's, through three consecutive innings after his return from the Newlands scandal ban, he drove England's bowlers to distraction. They tried all manner of plans, filed placings lines, too many really, without much at all in the way of success. Two centuries went by and a third beckoned, even as Jofra Archer cranked up his pace on an up-and-down pitch, angling the ball back down the slope.

Watching, waiting, anticipating and perhaps dreaming a little, was Marnus Labuschagne. No-one in the Australian squad more closely resembled Smith's voracious pursuit of batting knowledge, skill and method, with both as likely as each other to keep teammates awake in the middle of the night with the sound of their bats tapping on hotel room carpet, miming shots for the next day. Labuschagne was watching closely when Archer homed in on Smith, felt the jolt alongside 28,000 spectators, and rushed for a vantage point to see if he was ok.

Struck down but not out, Smith returned briefly, distractedly, having passed concussion tests in the immediate aftermath of the blow. He did not fare as well the following morning, and as he netted in reserve on the Nursery Ground ahead of the final day's play, Labuschagne was given the word from the captain, Tim Paine: he was in as Smith's substitute. Having removed one obstacle, England found another immediately. Labuschagne, too, was hit by Archer, but only on the helmet grille. His resultant half-century scrounged a draw.

More was to come at Headingley, in two innings from Smith's customary post at No. 4. Thrice Labuschagne passed 50, runs that could have, indeed should have, been enough to secure an Australian victory at Leeds and retained the Ashes there and then. If he was the beneficiary of several dropped chances in a second innings of 80, his first-day contribution of 74 out of 179, when conditions were at their hardest, more than compensated for this good fortune. At the end, cruelly, one of Ben Stokes' match-winning sixes floated a matter of centimetres beyond Labuschagne's hands on the boundary.

Watching it all was Smith, leavening his pain at the result with appreciation of its extraordinary circumstances. Each day of the Leeds Test he gradually increased his level of activity, batting under the studied eye of the team doctor Richard Saw, before facing pace bowlers and taking part in a tour match against Derbyshire. Throughout, he tried to get used to the addition of a protective stem guard to the back of his helmet, even though it wade him so claustrophobic as to feel as though his head was inside an MRI machine. Nets against throwdowns were deemed, subconsciously, as more useful preparation than match batting against Derbyshire spin.

In Derby, Smith and Labuschagne played together and did not bat together, but they did not have long to wait. Chosen and Nos. 3 and 4, displacing Usman Khawaja, they trained together pre-match, Smith sidearming balls down at Labuschagne, who also enjoyed the rare sensation of having Steve Waugh clean mud out of his spikes. "A bit surreal, I had Steve Smith throwing sidearms to me for 30 minutes," he said. "I love talking to him about the game and learning off him, obviously a great experience and a great player. I'm taking it all in as much as I can."

For all the shuffling of Australia's top order to try to secure a better start, none could be found at Manchester. Again, the openers were separated before the score was into double figures, David Warner edging Stuart Broad when trying to leave him alone for the second time in the series. Marcus Harris, looking a little more comfortable, was nonetheless figured out pretty quickly by Broad, who quite obviously targeted the line of the stumps and won an lbw verdict before the score had reached 30.

Also read: The key to Broad's edge over Warner

Labuschagne had looked comfortable once more from the moment he arrived, leaving the length ball well outside off stump and scoring from anything that drifted either full and wide or too straight onto his stumps and pads. He had spoken before the series of sculpting a game very much around making lots of adjustments within lots of plans for every bowler in every set of conditions, eschewing the time-honoured Australian line of "playing my natural game" for something more scientific.

Smith, of course, had rather pioneered this method among contemporary Australian batsmen, keeping at least one step ahead of the world's bowlers for most of the last six years. Together, they were a hive mind of ideas, adjustments and tweaks, all done within the context of a moving ball and an English pitch. They have one inbuilt advantage, that of being right-handed and so denying Broad and Archer the chance to bend the ball away from them from around the wicket in the manner Warner, Harris and Khawaja have had to contend with, but the rest is skill and forethought.

Perhaps the most obvious counter offered up by Smith was in how he played Archer's bouncers, choosing to ensure he took evasive action to the off side of the ball, to eradicate the chance of him being hit by a delivery that follows him as he tries to sway back away from it. If the Old Trafford pitch was not yet a speedy one, and Archer was somewhat short of his best, the bouncer caused Smith zero trouble at all, leaving Joe Root and company with yet more thinking to do. At the other end, Labuschagne could only admire it.

"One thing he's very good at [is problem solving], I see that at the other end but I think you can see that as a spectator," he said. "When different guys come on, how he changes, different guards, the way he bats, different pre-movements and I think that's what makes him the best in the world. He's always one step ahead and thinking ahead, not waiting, not being reactive, he's being proactive, which makes him very hard to bowl to because he's always thinking ahead.

"We were constantly talking out there about what the bowlers are trying to do, what he's trying to do and we're thinking similarly and trying to think about where they're trying to get us out and stuff like that. Always trying to learn off everyone really, it doesn't matter whether your'e a batter or bowler, just trying to learn different things off different people and trying to make sure you're always open to learning off anyone.

"It was good fun, good to have some time. I'd never batted with him before so it was a good experience to see how he goes about it and learn from him out there."

Late in the day, heavy winds swept through a shower that was intense enough to have the umpires virtually suspend play, only for the same wind to have it disappear so quickly that Craig Overton, having twice stopped in his run to the wicket due to the rain, ended up bowling uninterrupted. So stop - start was the day that it looked made to ruin a batsman's concentration, but Labuschagne's well is clearly deep. When Overton did finally bowl, he dabbed the resultant delivery neatly down through third man to the boundary, and at the end of the over walked down the pitch gesticulating repeatedly how the ball had skidded off the surface.

It was a mannerism instantly familiar - not from Labuschagne, but from the man at the other end. Amid the broken nature of this wet and windy day, Labuschagne and Smith were the ideal men for Australia to have in the middle, not only as their leading run-makers this series but as two cricketers never happier than when cocooned at the batting crease. And even though Labuschagne did allow one through his guard in the closing overs, granting Overton access to the top of the off stump, Australia had the platform for the 300-plus score coach Justin Langer has so craved this week.

A deal reportedly struck between Labuschagne and Smith after Edgbaston - for the younger man to clean up Smith's bag at the end of each Test in return for a couple of the former captain's bats - may need revision should this century stand be the bulwark of the victory Australia need. There will be a few other members of the Australian top six who, on the basis of their runs together, might do well to clean up the bags of Smith and Labuschagne both.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- With just days left before the Arizona Cardinals unveil their secretive offense against the Detroit Lions on Sunday, first-year coach Kliff Kingsbury still can't get a read on how his star quarterback, No. 1 pick Kyler Murray, is handling the moment.

No one can.

Murray is quiet by nature, and has been since he was a child growing up in Lewisville, Texas, but he has yet to open up now that he's in the NFL and playing for a coach he has known since he was 15.

"Y'all have interviewed him, right?" Kingsbury asked. "What does he usually give y'all?"

Not much.

"It's the same," Kingsbury said. "That's what he is and who he is. I guess he thought he was going to be here his entire life, so it's just the next step for him. I've said it all along: He's a rookie quarterback in the NFL starting Week 1. There's going to be some ups and downs. We're going to make some mistakes. We'll work through those and try to continue to improve together."

Kingsbury can't even get Murray to tell him which plays he wants to run this week.

"It's like pulling teeth with him trying to [get him to] tell me that 'I don't like a play' because he wants to make them all work and that's his attitude," Kingsbury said. "But there's good conversations and after today, walking off the practice field, I'll try to get, 'Hey, what don't you like?' and he'll say, 'I love it all' and we'll move forward. That's how he is.

"He's competitive, and he wants to make it all work. But, yeah, there's definitely those conversations going on. We want to make sure he's as comfortable as possible because it will be a tough challenge. It's hard to step in as a rookie Day 1 and win a football game, and we understand that, so we're going to try to help him as much as possible."

Kingsbury said he might have been "overstating" Murray's quietness a little, but it wasn't by much. And he expects Murray to open up a bit, be more opinionated on plays and start talking more as the season goes on.

"What you see is what you get," Kingsbury said. "He's not going to be over the top, rainbows and sunshine with you, and I like that because that's how he carries himself. He's very confident, very competitive. I like where he's at. I don't ever see him bringing me cupcakes on game day or anything like that. I think he's going to be who he is and we'll continue our relationship."

Murray's confidence that he can run every play stems from his familiarity with Kingsbury's system, which he was first introduced to in eighth grade. From the day he arrived in Arizona, Murray understood some of the operation, execution, reads and terminology, Kingsbury said.

And it has helped Murray adapt to NFL football quicker than most rookie quarterbacks.

"It's not like he's coming in here trying to learn Chinese as a lot of those first-year quarterbacks are," Kingsbury said "Therein lies a little bit of comfort level that maybe some of those other guys didn't have going into Week 1 having to be starters."

All that familiarity will help Murray on Sunday, when he runs the Cardinals' offense for the first time in a game. Kingsbury kept it tightly under wraps during the preseason -- maybe even a bit to the extreme, he admitted Wednesday.

Kingsbury did not run all of his base plays during the preseason, he said, but it won't matter.

"You just rep it in practice, and you make those situations as game-like as possible and take advantage of your practice reps," he said.

But Kingsbury has a strong belief that his version of the Air Raid will work in the NFL because of one primary reason.

"Because it's never been used before in the NFL," Kingsbury said. "I know Chip [Kelly] did a version of what he does, but yeah, there's only one way to find out and it's never been used. Nobody really knows what we're going to do or what it's going to look like and so, we'll kind of take it one game at a time."

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- New York Jets running back Le'Veon Bell will play a football game Sunday for the first time in 20 months -- 601 days, to be exact -- but he's not interested in easing into the regular-season flow.

"Don't hold back," Bell told coach Adam Gase, the playcaller.

In other words, Bell believes he's ready for a full workload in what could be the Jets' most anticipated debut by a veteran player since Brett Favre in 2008.

Bell, their prized free-agent addition, was held out of the preseason for precautionary reasons, but he didn't miss a single day of practice and insisted he's ready for heavy duty.

"I can carry 50 [times] if you ask me," Bell said Wednesday after practice. "When I say, 'Don't hold back,' I mean literally that. I don't want to go out there and try to sprinkle me in or anything like that. I'm ready to play football.

"I've been waiting a long time for this moment. A lot of people are excited to see me play. Quadruple that, and that's how I feel."

The Jets will open against the Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium. Bell has faced the Bills only twice in his career -- most recently on Dec. 11, 2016, when he rushed for 236 yards and three touchdowns and added 62 receiving yards.

Bell sat out the 2018 season in a contract dispute with the Pittsburgh Steelers, as he refused to sign the franchise tender for $14.5 million. Because of the extended layoff, his return has attracted a lot of attention.

"I'm not trying to prove anybody wrong," said Bell, who signed a four-year, $52.5 million contract with the Jets. "I'm not trying to prove the Steelers wrong. Everybody is trying to format me with the Steelers. I'm not talking about the Steelers anymore. I'm done talking about the Steelers. I want to worry about the Bills, and I want to worry about the Jets. That's it.

"I'm going to go out there and prove to myself I'm the same player, if not better. I want to prove to my teammates I'm the same player, if not better -- and the Bills."

In five seasons with the Steelers, Bell averaged 129 yards from scrimmage per game, the highest average in NFL history among players with at least 50 games played.

Initially, Gase wasn't enamored with the idea of signing Bell because of the cost, sources said. On Wednesday, he was upbeat about his new running back.

"I love it, it's going to be fun," said Gase, adding that he rewatched old Pittsburgh tape "to remind ourselves who that is back there."

Bell said he will have "a lot of butterflies, anxiety and nerves, and all types of things will be hitting me before I hit the field."

The Jets are planning to capitalize on Bell's versatility, making him a key component in the passing attack. Gase said "the whole playbook opens up" with Bell on the field. He called him the best running back he's ever coached.

"Not even close," said Gase, who coached Frank Gore -- the NFL's fourth all-time leading rusher -- last season with the Miami Dolphins. "There's a reason why the guy has been what he's been since he's been in the league."

Oakland Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown posted on social media a letter he received from the team that detailed about $54,000 in fines for missing time during training camp.

Brown's response: WHEN YOUR OWN TEAM WANT TO HATE BUT THERE'S NO STOPPING ME NOW DEVIL IS A LIE. EVERYONE GOT TO PAY THIS YEAR SO WE CLEAR."

The letter, posted by Brown on Instagram on Wednesday, was from Raiders general manager Mike Mayock, who informed Brown that he was being fined $13,950 for missing a walk-through on Aug. 22, an unexcused absence. Brown was with the team in Winnipeg for a preseason game that day, and although he may have missed the walk-through, he did participate in pregame warm-ups and ran routes and caught passes from quarterback Derek Carr.

The letter also mentions that the team previously had fined Brown $40,000 for missing camp on Aug. 18 -- the day the GM issued his ultimatum to Brown, saying, "It's time for him to be all-in or all-out, OK?"

Mayock also advised Brown that should he continue to miss mandatory team activities, including practices and games, the Raiders reserved the right to impose additional fines and discipline.

ICYMI, here's what Antonio Brown posted this morning on his Instagram story, showing displeasure with being fined by the Raiders for missing part of training camp. https://t.co/Jb2Va3cBt6 pic.twitter.com/OCzB2CFyOF

— Paul Gutierrez (@PGutierrezESPN) September 4, 2019

Brown, who usually stretches on his own during the team stretch period, was not on the field during stretching on Wednesday. He appeared during individual drills and, after catching a pass from Carr, ran to the end zone and fired the football into the fence.

Antonio Brown fires the football into the fence after catching a pass from Derek Carr at #Raiders practice. pic.twitter.com/TmWu6A9tYI

— Paul Gutierrez (@PGutierrezESPN) September 4, 2019

Brown was acquired from Pittsburgh in a March trade for a third- and a fifth-round draft pick. After being a mainstay during the Raiders' offseason program, Brown began camp on the non-football injury list because of frostbite on the soles of his feet after a cryotherapy mishap in France in early July.

He left camp for two weeks seeking therapy for the feet, which included laser treatments.

Brown was also upset with the league for not allowing him to wear his Schutt Air Advantage helmet, the only helmet he has worn in his NFL career, because it is older than 10 years, thus no longer certified. He lost two appeals to use the old helmet.

On Wednesday, Brown announced he will wear the Xenith Shadow helmet this season, believing it makes him feel more agile and comfortable while allowing for better visibility.

While Raiders coach Jon Gruden would not discuss specifics of Brown during his two-week absence, he later talked of his support for the player while saying Brown had been in contact via technology.

"I think that's what needs to be said," Gruden said after the preseason opener on Aug. 10.

"Is this foot injury his fault? This was a total accident," Gruden said. "It wasn't his fault. It's a serious injury. I know some people were smarting at it, but it really is a serious matter. It's a guy who's hurting, who's innocent, who didn't do anything wrong. The helmet thing is a personal matter to him. He has a strong feeling about what he's worn on his head. We're supporting him. We understand the league's position as well, so we're in a tough spot. We hope Antonio is back here soon because he's exciting to be around. I'm excited, I have some plays for him. I hope I can start calling them."

MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee city officials have offered $400,000 to Bucks guard Sterling Brown to settle his lawsuit accusing police of using excessive force and targeting him because he's black when they confronted him over a parking violation.

However, an attorney for Brown said the offer is insufficient because it doesn't include an admission of guilt.

Attorney Mark Thomsen said Wednesday that any settlement would have to include such an admission.

The city's Common Council authorized the offer Wednesday during a closed session. Brown has 14 days to accept or decline it.

Brown illegally parked in a disabled spot outside a Walgreens on Jan. 26, 2018, and was talking with a group of officers while waiting for his citation when the situation escalated. Officers took him down and used a stun gun because he didn't immediately remove his hands from his pockets, as ordered.

SHANGHAI -- Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum will miss at least the next two World Cup games for Team USA with a sprained left ankle.

Tatum turned the ankle in the final seconds of overtime in Team USA's 93-92 win over Turkey on Tuesday night. He was examined Wednesday and was declared out at least five days. He will get reevaluated on Monday.

Team USA plays Japan in its final pool play game Thursday. There is nothing at stake for either team; the U.S. has already advanced to the next round, and Japan has already been eliminated.

The U.S. will open second-round play Saturday in Shenzhen, but that is not an elimination game. The first time the Americans could face elimination is Monday, the day Tatum will be reevaluated.

Tatum is averaging 10.5 points in two games. He had 11 points and 11 rebounds against Turkey, including two clutch free throws that forced overtime.

LOS ANGELES -- Before signing with the Lakers in one of the more surprising reunions in NBA history, Dwight Howard said his life away from the court hit rock bottom this summer.

"It didn't have anything to do with basketball," Howard said Wednesday during an introductory phone call with reporters. "It was just stuff going [on] in my personal life. Mentally, physically and spiritually. It had nothing to do with me as a basketball player or anything like that. It was just personal things that I had to deal with which made me stronger."

The Lakers are banking on Howard, 33, strengthening their interior defense and plugging the void left from DeMarcus Cousins' torn left ACL that the big man suffered during offseason workouts.

Howard has already played one season in L.A. -- the disastrous 2012-13 campaign marred by in-fighting, injuries and the death of longtime Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss -- before spurning the franchise to sign with the Houston Rockets as a free agent.

He said that the chance to come back -- he tweeted to fans in April 2013 after the Lakers were eliminated from the playoffs that "I hope I get the chance to make it up to you" -- is "a very big blessing" and an "awesome experience."

"I never had any ill will toward any of the fans here in L.A.," Howard said. "I loved this city from the first moment I've been here and started playing in the NBA. It was never nothing against anybody here [on] the team or anything like that, it was just a decision I made. I love this city. I love playing in L.A. I'm back here so none of that stuff in the past even really matters to me anymore. I think we all have a fresh start."

"It's been six years, in 2020 it'll be seven years. ... I'm big on numbers. Seven is for new beginnings ... I'm looking forward to having a fresh start with the fans and stuff like that. Show them my only dedication is to putting another banner up here in Los Angeles."

Of course, that was the same song he sang when he left for Houston all those years ago, telling ESPN at the time he was "betting $30 million" -- the amount of money he left on the table from the Lakers' offer versus the Rockets' offer he accepted -- that he would win a championship in the Bayou City.

He busted on the bet -- the Rockets went 13-16 in three postseason appearances with Howard -- before bouncing around the league, playing one-off seasons for the Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards. He was bought out by the Memphis Grizzlies before ever playing a game, facilitating the move back to the Lakers on a non-guaranteed contract, as earlier reported by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

Howard said he tackled his personal strife this summer through reading and meditation exercises to center himself.

"This summer was very important to me as an individual," he said. "Got a chance to really isolate myself. Not from people but just really isolate, really try to get alone and become one with myself and become more balanced. This summer was really, really important for me."

But he also made sure to immerse himself in conversation with new teammates -- he name checked Anthony Davis, Rajon Rondo and JaVale McGee -- to let them know how serious he is about helping the group.

"Everybody here wants to win, and I want to win, too," Howard said. "It wasn't about selling myself. It was just letting them know everything I'm about, and what we're trying to accomplish."

Several times on the call, Howard, who will wear No. 39 in L.A., was reluctant to make any kind of statement that would cause any eyebrows to raise. "I've always said a lot of words but I'd just rather show you guys," he said at one point.

He kept that same tact when asked about former Lakers Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant trolling him on Twitter last week while they were squashing their latest beef.

"Shaq and Kobe are some of the greatest players to ever play this game of basketball. I have nothing but love and respect for both of those guys and I think what they've been able to accomplish in their lives after basketball has been amazing," he said. "My job is to come here and help this team win. It's not to get into any arguments or fights with Shaq or Kobe or anybody. I don't plan to allow anything to distract me from helping this team win a championship."

It was heralded as the summer of the Big Two. In spurning a galactic Big Three with the Los Angeles Lakers, Kawhi Leonard perhaps unknowingly realigned the NBA's distribution of star power in a way that promised more parity -- and left the league without a bona fide Big Three for the first time since Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen joined Paul Pierce in Boston 12 years ago.

Leonard's power play, plus the subsequent trade of Russell Westbrook to the Houston Rockets, created (arguably) four pairings of top-15 players: LeBron James and Anthony Davis with the Lakers; Leonard and Paul George across Staples Center; Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in Brooklyn; and Westbrook and James Harden, reunited in Houston.

Other collections of star talent are harder to classify. Golden State has something like a Big Three with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, but Thompson is out for an extended period. Green does not fit the traditional conception of a top-15 star. Those who value defense more might argue Utah has a chance to form a real Big Two with Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell -- before factoring in Mike Conley -- if Mitchell springboards out of Team USA. Philadelphia has four max or near-max players in Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Al Horford and Tobias Harris, but Embiid is the only consensus top-15 guy among them.

But there is nothing at present precisely like the Big Threes (and one Big Four) that dominated the league for a decade-plus in Boston, Miami, Cleveland and Oakland.

Is this a thing? Will more teams choose two stars and legit depth over a real Big Three? Should they? The question is especially relevant for the Clippers, Lakers, Nets and Mavericks.

The Clippers and Nets surround two stars with real depth that mostly skews young or toward guys in their primes. There is power and longevity in that model. Teams strip to the studs to fit three superstars. They trade away quality depth and the draft picks that would help replenish that depth. They trawl for minimum-salaried graybeards and ring-chasers. The centerpiece stars can't count on those guys for long.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn and the Clippers have about a dozen combined supporting rotation players and recent draft picks age 28 or younger. The Big Three model has won a lot of championships, but there are other paths. The Lakers (Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant) and Bulls (Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen) won with historically great Big Twos. (Your mileage will vary in deciding whether Horace Grant -- a one-time All-Star -- and then Dennis Rodman shove either iteration of the three-peat Bulls into true Big Three territory.)

The league just watched the Raptors complete an improbable championship run with something like a Big One structure -- one top-five (at worst) superstar surrounded by seven starter-quality players. The 2019 Raptors have drawn a lot of comparisons to the 2011 Mavericks -- with Dirk Nowitzki in the Leonard role. The 2004 Pistons are perhaps the most famous outlier champion.

A few executives suggested that classifying the Raptors as a pure Big One underrates their star power. Kyle Lowry has made the past five All-Star Games. (I am a card-carrying member of the Kyle Lowry Is A Real Star, Damn It! club.) Marc Gasol is a three-time All-Star who made the team as recently as 2017. Pascal Siakam almost made it last season. Fine. They are hard to categorize. But they are not a Big Three team.

The existence of all these different sorts of champions is proof that the Big-Two-versus-Big-Three question is a little facile. There are blurry gradations of star power. Most teams don't get to pick how many stars they have. They acquire who is available and fill the roster as best they can. The Bucks and Nuggets are building toward teams like the 2018-19 Raptors and 2010-11 Mavericks because what else are they going to do?

The choice of going all-in for a third star also (duh) depends on the identity of all three players -- the two already in-house and the third who might be gettable. The Jordan/Pippen Bulls and Shaq/Kobe Lakers didn't just have two stars. They had two all-time players in their primes who complemented each other. When the two stars are at that level, it's easier to forsake star power for role players who fit.

The current Lakers might plausibly argue that they have such a pairing in Davis and James, though LeBron's age -- he will be third all time in minutes by the end of this season -- complicates that. They telegraphed their thoughts by chasing a third star in Leonard.

The Clippers' Leonard-George pairing approaches that level if George maintains his MVP-level play from last season after undergoing shoulder surgery.

Leonard played only 60 regular-season games in 2018-19 under Toronto's "load management" program. His presence on a Big Two raises a question: Is the best method of easing a star's burden to load up on depth or acquire an extra star who can really do the heavy lifting?

Both Los Angeles teams have traded away everything that would net a third star, anyway. If either gets one, it will probably be via free agency -- and will require clearing away almost all of their depth.

Brooklyn is different. The Nets have a bundle of young players and a cupboard full of picks. Durant is recovering from an Achilles tear. Depending on your taste (and your proximity to Boston), Irving is something like the 15th-best player in the league -- not on the "all-time" level, and a notch below both Clippers. The Nets might want more bankable star power.

They could have two first-rounders in the 2020 draft. They just signed Caris LeVert to a three-year, $52 million extension that came in lower than most executives expected. If he improves, LeVert on that deal is a trade asset.

LeVert's contract could instead lead the Nets toward the "Big Two and depth" direction. Most teams default to stars because their depth becomes too expensive. If you have to pay LeVert like a star, you might as well trade him -- and lots of other stuff -- for an actual star. The Nets, it turns out, are not quite paying LeVert like a star.

They could keep their entire core together for the 2020-21 season and end up about only $10 million above the tax line. That includes everyone important: the two stars, LeVert, Joe Harris (a free agent this summer, in line for a raise), Spencer Dinwiddie, Jarrett Allen, DeAndre Jordan (important assuming he actually tries this season), Taurean Prince (up for an extension now), Rodions Kurucs, Dzanan Musa, Nicolas Claxton and the draft picks the team is likely to receive. The Nets' new controlling owner, Joseph Tsai, is obscenely rich. He can afford a $15-20 million tax bill if the team is good enough to justify it.

But only one year later -- the 2021-22 season -- things get hairy. Allen's first veteran contract will kick in. Dinwiddie can decline a $12.3 million player option and reenter free agency in the summer of 2021 if he's confident he can get a fatter deal. LeVert's deal rises every season, per contract details obtained by ESPN.com. Deals for Harris and Prince might too if Brooklyn re-signs them. All of a sudden, the Nets could vault something like $25 million over the tax -- triggering a tax bill approaching $50 million. Even obscenely wealthy owners might blanch at that.

This is Bird rights prison. Sub-star rotation guys on good teams usually get raises during their primes. The sheen of winning lifts everyone. Teams are forced to choose between careening into the tax to overpay incumbent role players, or scrambling to replace them on the cheap.

Depth can get expensive enough that there is more bang for the buck from one great player earning $35 million than three good players earning $50 million. The Nets surely see this coming. They are deep enough to trade for a third star and still retain two or three of their young core -- though that would eventually result in the same kind of tax bill.

The trick is finding the right third star. Blake Griffin and Kevin Love are probably out of this conversation -- very good players who are 30 and working under huge contracts that carry some risk. We are probably years away from the next class of youngish disgruntled stars pushing their way out. There might not be any circumstance in which Milwaukee has even one conversation about Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The name that will come up over and over, in connection with every realistic destination, is Bradley Beal. Beal is really good. He just turned 26. He can thrive off the ball. Beal would bring minimal skill overlap to most preexisting star pairings.

Star power can overcome such overlap. Those "your turn, my turn" offenses that emerge on some super-teams can still win titles because that is what stars do. Depth becomes less important in the playoffs, when stars can play 40-plus minutes every game.

But there are diminishing returns. Love resembled a high-level role player at times next to Irving and James. Allen fit next to Garnett and Pierce because of his willingness to work as a roving catch-and-shoot specialist -- a pure finisher. Green is almost the inverse of Allen: a defensive savant who can initiate offense as Golden State's historic shooters orbit him.

Beal checks the age and fit boxes. Whether he has enough raw, supernova talent -- Beal has made one All-Star roster and zero All-NBA teams -- is something each suitor will have to decide based in part on who is already on its team (and if the Wizards ever make Beal available, which they have not, per sources).

He would mesh well with the wing-big Big Two rising in Dallas -- Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis -- if Dallas even chases the Big Three model. After years of whiffing on stars, the Mavs split one superstar cap slot among several solid players in their primes who fit with the team's young stars: Delon Wright, Seth Curry, Dwight Powell, Maxi Kleber and Dorian Finney-Smith. The Mavs are also short on trade ammo after sending out two first-round picks for Porzingis.

But they will have one summer of cap room to chase a third star -- the summer of 2021; i.e., the potential Summer of Giannis, Leonard, George, Gobert and Beal in unrestricted free agency -- before Doncic's rookie contract expires. Strike then, and Dallas could have a one-season window to carry three stars and some solid depth without dipping too far into the tax. That is the rare luxury of having a proven star on a rookie deal.

I would expect the Mavs to go star-hunting again if they get the chance. Even if all those supporting guys hit, the Mavs probably top out as a middling playoff team in the Western Conference over the next two-plus seasons. By that point, the Wright/Curry/Kleber crew won't have much upside left -- even if they have all earned the sort of salary bumps that could price them out of Dallas. A third star becomes more valuable than quality depth.

The calculus can be close once you get beyond the league's top-10 players. I suspect the Nets would have a spirited debate about dealing, say, at least LeVert, Allen, Kurucs and two unprotected first-round picks for Beal. The Clippers don't have the draft assets for such a trade, but I wonder how they would feel about a theoretical package of Patrick Beverley, Montrezl Harrell, Landry Shamet and Mfiondu Kabengele -- leaving a thin and aging roster around Beal, Leonard and George. If stars in the player empowerment era are more or less permanent flight risks, then building around depth carries a little more appeal.

In a lot of cases, the trump card beyond dollars-per-production is that gathering stars is the best hedge against an ill-timed injury to one of them. With apologies to everyone in the greater Oklahoma City area, there might be no better recent example than the Thunder in the wake of the James Harden trade.

The Thunder spun Harden into four cost-controlled assets (plus Kevin Martin) they could, if things broke right, spin into more assets down the line. It ended up a huge bet on the sustainability the Big-Two-and-depth model promises.

It is revealing that such a model was probably not Plan A. In the lead-up to the Harden deal, the Thunder made calls on young players with star potential, including (according to reports and sources at the time) Beal, Thompson and Jonas Valanciunas. (I would be surprised if they did not call New Orleans about Davis.) They wanted a third star.

They didn't get one. They fielded championship-level teams anyway because their two remaining stars -- Durant and Westbrook -- were that good, particularly Durant, who was on pace to be one of the 10 greatest players ever before his Achilles tear. (Serge Ibaka was also a borderline All-Star in some of those seasons.)

But they never won it all, in part because they had no margin of error when Westbrook or Durant got hurt. Harden was the missing margin of error.

These are hard choices. There are lots of pathways to a championship. Each one is a long shot. Each requires luck. But hoarding three stars probably brings both the highest floor and the highest ceiling for most teams.

Most executives around the league think the Big Two trend was largely random and anticipate another Big Three soon. Some expect that the current Big Three vacuum might inspire something of a race -- one that could take multiple years, but still -- to create the next one.

They are probably right, even if it might cost some team depth they took great pride in building.

WASHINGTON -- Newly minted Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez made a point of watching rehabbing reliever Aaron Barrett throw a bullpen session early in spring training in 2018 and was amazed at how well the right-hander was throwing.

After all, Barrett already had missed two full seasons after undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2015 and fracturing his arm in 2016.

"He told me, 'I'm going to pitch in the big leagues again," Martinez recalled. "I said, 'Keep working, and I'll see you soon.'"

Barrett got back to the majors Wednesday when Washington purchased his contract from Double-A Harrisburg. He received hugs from longtime teammates as they trickled into the clubhouse before a matinee against the New York Mets.

"I said it all along: When I make it back, it's going to be a hell of a comeback story," Barrett said. "I'm pretty overwhelmed that I'm here, to be honest with you. It's crazy."

The moment Aaron Barrett found out he was going back to the bigs. Congratulations, Aaron!
cc: @Nationals @masnNationals @MLB @MiLB @aaronbarrett30 pic.twitter.com/RSxQ1b9dMT

— Harrisburg Senators (@HbgSenators) September 3, 2019

Barrett has not pitched in the majors since Aug. 5, 2015, and he thought there was a chance he might get summoned when rosters expanded for September. When that didn't happen on Sunday, he figured he would pitch in Harrisburg's postseason games and hope for a call later in the month.

Instead, he was surprised when Harrisburg manager Matt LeCroy told him Tuesday he would be heading back to Washington.

"I try to picture back when I first got called up in '14, making the team out of camp, kind of what that experience was compared to this," said Barrett, who made 90 relief appearances for the Nationals in 2014 and 2015. "I honestly think this one might be better than the first one."

After going 2-0 with a 1.74 ERA in 20 games for Class-A Auburn last season, Barrett was 0-2 with a 2.75 ERA and 31 saves for Harrisburg.

Martinez said Barrett's slider was especially effective against right-handers this season, and Washington, which holds the first NL wild card, plans to use him in the final weeks of the season.

"He's here because he pitched to be here," Martinez said. "He pitched really well, and I'm very proud for what he's gone through. What an amazing turnaround for him. We're glad that he's here -- but he's earned the right to be here with what he's done."

Barrett, whose longest outing of the season was two innings, joked he was willing to pitch five innings if asked. The most important thing to the 31-year-old is that after more than four years, he's back in the majors.

"I told you guys in camp that 'Yeah, I was glad to be in big league camp, but I still plan on going to the big leagues,'" Barrett said. "It's been my goal since day one. Now I'm here and now I have a job to do. It's great that I'm here, but it's now time to win and help these guys win a championship."

Mike Trout is squarely in the passing-Hall-of-Famers-in-career-WAR-every-few-days period of his career. He just turned 28.

If I tell you that 28-year-old Mike Trout has more career WAR than, say, Derek Jeter, you could hear it as an incredible tribute to Trout, but you could also hear it as a diminishment of Jeter -- and if we diminish Jeter, we diminish the power of the tribute. To really appreciate Trout, it helps to appreciate just how incredible were the Hall of Famers he is passing and to understand how it is plausible that Trout is already actually more valuable than they were.

Since we last performed this exercise, Trout has raised his career WAR to 72.6 and passed one more Hall of Famer and also Jeter. Jeter isn't yet a Hall of Famer, but he will be the second he's eligible. We will consider each of the all-time greats Trout surpassed since the end of July, but mostly we will consider Jeter, and whether the logic of this exercise holds up.

Derek Jeter, 72.4 WAR (58th all time among position players)

How good Jeter was:

1. When ESPN asked this year's Little League World Series players who their favorite baseball players were, Trout was second, behind Javier Baez. Immediately behind Trout was Jeter, who retired when these kids were 6 or 7, and who did The Flip a half-decade before they were born. There are reasons for this that go beyond his play, and Jeter's fame is partly a story of media management and the power of a personal narrative, but there probably isn't any player born after Ken Griffey Jr. who is as many people's favorite as Jeter -- and, perhaps, there might never be again. He was Mike Trout's favorite player. Also Cody Bellinger's, Corey Seager's, Christian Yelich's, Carlos Correa's, Xander Bogaerts', Mookie Betts', Anthony Rizzo's, Jason Heyward's, Trevor Story's, Alex Bregman's, Elvis Andrus', Troy Tulowitzki's, Hanley Ramirez's and Dellin Betances'. And quarterback Russell Wilson's. The football broadcaster John Madden calls Jeter his favorite athlete in any sport. Nolan Arenado and Baez list him among their favorites. The Marlins' first-round pick in 2018 noted that Jeter, one of the team's owners, had been his favorite player. Scores of others -- regulars and role players, prospects and indy leaguers -- would surely say the same. "Derek Jeter, I'm not going to lie to you, was one of my favorites," Pete Alonso said. "Everyone loved Derek Jeter. That's like saying 'Michael Jordan sucks.' Everyone loves Jordan."

That's "Jordan" and "Jeter" in the same breath, folks.

2. Jeter wasn't everybody's favorite because he was the best player in the world, of course. He never won an MVP award, and his career overlapped with players who were undeniably better, including his teammate 40 feet to his right, Alex Rodriguez. Rather, he inspired a sort of confidence in people who rooted for him, a feeling he was ultimately in control of it all. He wasn't invincible, but he somehow felt certain. This story was aided by admiring baseball writers, but the truth is Jeter inspired this sort of devotion long before he was famous. The best Derek Jeter story comes from before he'd been drafted, and it was told by Buster Olney way back in 1999.

It concerns Hal Newhouser, who had been a scout for the Houston Astros. The Astros had the first pick in the 1992 draft, the year Jeter became eligible; he scouted the heck out of Jeter and came away convinced Jeter was "a special player and a special kid... The anchor and the foundation of a winning club."

He was so certain that, when his supervisor called him before the draft with news that the Astros had decided on Phil Nevin instead of Jeter, Newhouser was disappointed. So disappointed he resigned from his job. Over a high school shortstop! "He liked Derek Jeter, everything about him," Olney wrote. He "quit baseball in disgust."

I was probably a little bit of a Jeter skeptic during his career, but that story almost makes me gasp for breath.

3. Jeter was a great ballplayer, and the debate over his image -- about words like "class" and "leader" that would become loaded over the years -- was always secondary to his actual play. His place in the Hall of Fame is obvious:

He had 3,400 hits and scored almost 2,000 runs. He's 23rd all-time in total bases, 11th in times reaching base, and he did it all while playing a premium position. He started more games at shortstop than any player in history; he has the second-highest win probability added as a shortstop (behind only A-Rod), along with the most total bases and most times on base. I don't know how many World Series titles the Yankees would have won between 1996 and 2009 if the Astros had picked Jeter in the 1992 draft -- probably a few -- but there is no doubt Jeter was "the anchor and the foundation of a winning club," to understate it.

How Trout is plausibly better, already: To believe Mike Trout has been as valuable in nine years as Jeter was in 20 means believing Trout is slightly more than twice as valuable, per game, as Jeter was. It means one Trout and one Triple-A shortstop would help a team, over the course of a season, more than two Derek Jeters. This isn't just something WAR can answer for us. It is, in many ways, the fundamental promise of WAR. So, can we believe it?

Let's say a player has 100 hits in 600 at-bats, and another has 200 hits in those same 600 at-bats. How much better is the 200-hits hitter? Is he twice as good?

Not really, practically speaking. Of the few hundred baseball players who are actually candidates to play full-time in the majors in a given year, the very worst might have 100 hits. The very best might have 200. The chasm between these two is big enough to span the whole sport, as we typically consume it.

And while only one or two humans alive can get 200 hits, there are scores of minor leaguers who can approximate the floor -- maybe 90, maybe 110, depending how things break, but around there. They're not scarce, and so having 100 hits adds virtually no value to a club. If a 100-hit hitter retired to open a bakery, his team would just claim or call up the next 100-hit hitter.

So defining the floor -- the worst you're likely to get if you lose a player -- is crucial. That's what the R in WAR does: It defines a floor of player performance that can be reasonably attained at nearly no cost and with little planning or notice.

In 1996, the year Jeter won the Rookie of the Year award, the worst team in baseball at the shortstop position was the Cubs. Everything went terribly for them: The starter, Rey Sanchez, had by far his worst offensive season, and when the Cubs tried to fix things by sliding part-time second baseman Jose Hernandez over, Hernandez was nearly as bad. They collectively hit .219/.274/.309. Every other team in baseball found a way to do better than that: Prospects flopped, veterans declined, players had season-ending injuries, and yet every team found, among the available players, fill-in shortstops who could hit better than the Cubs did.

If we look at the worst team at shortstop in every year since 1996, and combine them, we find that the very worst shortstops collectively hit .225/.272/.305. This is the floor, more or less. (Actual replacement level is much more nuanced than this, and isn't calculated this way; we're just trying to keep this exercise as non-abstract as possible.) If a year of Trout is twice as valuable as a year of Jeter, then Trout's stats + League-Worst Shortstop's stats should be about as good as two Jeters' stats.

And it's pretty close. Trout and League-Worst Shortstop combine for a .347 on-base percentage and a .446 slugging percentage, assuming they get the same number of plate appearances. (Which they wouldn't; the League-Worst Shortstop would hit eighth or ninth and bat less frequently than Trout, but no matter.) Jeter, meanwhile, had a .377 on-base percentage and a .440 slugging percentage.

Jeter wins, but it's fairly close, especially considering Jeter played in hitter-friendlier environments. The American League scored about 0.3 more runs per game more during Jeter's career than during Trout's. Further, both Yankee Stadiums allowed considerably more scoring than Angel Stadium.

Of course, WAR has already told us this. We're just testing it to see if it makes sense that Trout and a league-worst shortstop could be about as good as two Derek Jeters. Offensively, where the largest portion of WAR comes from, it makes sense. You can see it.

The rest of WAR comes from defense, baserunning and ever-so-slightly the ability to avoid double plays.

Mike Trout has added slightly more value in the double-plays category: 8 runs to 7, as Jeter gave a few runs back later in his career. Jeter played a little more than twice as long as Trout has, but hit into about five times as many double plays. A tiny thing.

Jeter was a fantastic baserunner, as Trout is. Through Jeter's first eight seasons he was about as valuable on the bases as Trout has been, but then he kept adding, and ended up with 56 baserunning runs added, to Trout's 34 and counting. (Did you know Trout ranks fourth all-time in stolen base success rate among players with at least 200 attempts? He does! Jeter's a quite-good 46th.)

And then there's defense. The endlessly litigated defense. Jeter won five Gold Gloves, made some iconic plays and managed to stay at the toughest position in the infield until he was older than almost any shortstop in history -- while advanced metrics routinely reported he was the worst defensive shortstop in the game. Trout, meanwhile, is about average, maybe a tick better, at the toughest position in the outfield.

That position favors Jeter, but the performance favors Trout. In all, his defense is credited at about 100 runs more valuable than Jeter's. In this case, Jeter's longevity hurts him in a comparison. Trout doesn't have to be twice as good as Jeter on defense, since the longer Jeter played, the greater the gap between them grew.

Maybe you don't buy this assessment of Jeter's defense. That's fine, though I do have some reading material for you. In that case, no, Trout hasn't yet been as valuable (in just nine years) as Jeter was in his 20. But that's a distinction that isn't all that important: so it'll take him 10 years to pass him? OK. It's undeniable Mike Trout is sprinting past the career standards of all-time greats, like Jeter, his childhood favorite.

That's not to say he's had a better career than Jeter, whose longevity is its own historical accomplishment and whose celebrity and team success puts him in the pantheon of baseball greats. Jeter did things Trout would certainly envy, and might well value above some of his own personal accomplishments. You might take Trout's career over Jeter's at this point, you might not.

At the same time, though, Trout is doing things Jeter never approached. He's already collected about twice as many MVP votes as Jeter did in his entire career -- and that's before his almost certain MVP victory this year, which will push him into the top five MVP vote-getters ever. He already has a higher Win Probability Added for his career -- that's a counting stat, incidentally. His WAR this year is already higher than Jeter's career high, with a month to go. Jeter's best season would be Trout's seventh best.

Harry Heilmann, 72.2 WAR (59th)

How good Heilmann was:

1. There has been a number of players in this series who played in the 1920s and early '30s, when offense was bananas and the massive celebrity of a few ballplayers (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby) seems to overshadow these guys. We're talking Al Simmons, Joe Cronin, Frankie Frisch -- and Heilmann, who batted over .390 four times and is the fourth-most-recent human being to hit .400 in the majors. Put it this way: If Heilmann's career were transported exactly 50 years forward, his WAR in the 1970s would have been the third-best in baseball -- barely behind Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench, ahead of Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt. Those are all legends; he'd be a legend, right?

In the 1920s, Harry Heilmann was third in WAR, with 56.8. But he was almost 50 WAR behind Ruth and almost 40 WAR behind Hornsby. Who canonizes somebody who was 50 wins worse than the best player in the game? (This question, actually, might be relevant to any number of Mike Trout's contemporaries.) In a sense, the best way for the superstars in Ruth's shadow to get attention was to appear in Babe Ruth stories, the way Simmons and Cronin were part of the "five straight strikeouts in the All-Star Game" lineup. Or the way Frisch was traded for the much-more-famous Hornsby (and then outperformed him). So here's one for Heilmann: In the offseason, he sold life insurance policies. He sold one to Ruth, and because everything Ruth did was a big story, it made the news. There are some later accounts that suggest this helped make life insurance policies common in the United States. Also, he hit over .390 four times.

2. Here's another "tangential to greatness" story, as told in Heilmann's SABR bio. It was 1921 and Heilmann was a Tiger. His teammate was Cobb, insufferable cuss. Heilmann had been in the majors four full seasons already, but this was his breakout season. OK, so:

He battled Cobb, who was now also Detroit's manager, in a neck-and-neck race for the American League batting title, eventually outlasting his tutor with a .394 average. Cobb finished at .389. "When he beat Ty Cobb out for the batting championship Ty didn't really talk with him again," daughter-in-law Marguerite Heilmann said. "He was kind of irrational about it and wasn't really dad's cup of tea."

There are more explosive, more disturbing Cobb-as-sociopath stories, but there probably isn't one as mundane and convincing than that one. Heilmann hit .394!

3. Finally, one last one, also from the SABR bio:

His most famous act during that time, however, was on July 25, 1916, when he dove into the Detroit River to save a woman from drowning. He received a thunderous ovation at the ballpark the following day.

The woman that he saved? Eleanor Roosevelt! OK, not really, but did you know that Heilmann really did hit over .390 four times? He was incredible.

How Trout is plausibly better, already: Heilmann was a pretty one-dimensional, batting-average superstar. That was valued highly back then, so you can't blame him, but in the original "launch angle" era of the 1920s, he hit 20 home runs only once. He also didn't run very well, and he played right field poorly. Trout already has more career homers, will pass him in walks early next season, and has even passed him in career postseason hits, with one. (Either Heilmann or Luke Appling is probably the best player never to appear in a postseason game.) His best season, by WAR, would have been Trout's fifth best.

Up next: Trout will likely pass three next week, starting with Paul Waner.