MIAMI -- The United States will open the Concacaf Gold Cup against Trinidad and Tobago on June 15 at San Jose, California, play Saudi Arabia four days later at Austin, Texas, and close first-round play in Group D against Haiti on June 22 at Arlington, Texas.

Concacaf announced the match schedule on Friday, a day after the draw.

The U.S. has won its group in 16 of 17 Gold Cups, along with a second-place finish to Panama in 2011. Its group stage record is 40 wins, one loss and five draws.

These will be the last competitive matches for U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino's team before its World Cup opener on June 12, 2026.

Sending a second-string team for the second straight Gold Cup, the U.S. lost a 2023 semifinal to Panama on penalty kicks.

Defending Gold Cup champion Mexico will play the opener of the biennial championship of North and Central America and Caribbean against the Dominican Republic on June 14 at Inglewood, California, meet Suriname four days later at Arlington and close its Group A play against Costa Rica on June 22 at Las Vegas.

Canada will start Group B against Honduras on June 17 at Vancouver, British Columbia, play Curaçao four days later at Houston and close the first round against El Salvador on June 24 at Houston.

Panama will begin Group C against Guadeloupe on June 16 at Carson, California, face Guatemala four days later at Austin and close the first round against Jamaica on June 24 at Austin.

The tournament will be played at the same time as the FIFA Club World Cup, which has been given priority for players by FIFA. Gold Cup matches will be played at 14 stadiums in 11 areas, avoiding the Eastern seaboard.

Mexico has won nine Gold Cups and the U.S. seven. Canada won in 2000.

Still reassessing and rebuilding the remnants left from a stormy 2024, new San Diego Wave coach Jonas Eidevall was honest after suffering his first loss in the NWSL.

"Like I said before the season, I think we need to have a really developing mentality. We need to grow stronger every week physically, technically, mentally, and this is no exception to that," Eidevall told ESPN following a 2-1 away defeat against defending champions Orlando Pride on Mar. 29.

"We know that: that's the story, that's the journey of our season here. We have lots of things left to develop, to grow and mature into, that's natural for us where we are at."

Hired in January, the former Arsenal coach is one of many fresh faces who have stepped into the organization that is seeking to move beyond the nightmares of the previous campaign. On and off the field, last year was a disaster for the 2023 NWSL Shield winners that were once one of the vanguards of the league. Through a rebuild with new owners, staff, and players, San Diego are hoping to leave behind the rocky waters of 2024 and find familiar sunny skies in a new spring.

And despite that latest loss on the pitch, there is reason to feel optimism.

To the credit of Eidevall and his squad, it was easy to spot a number of silver linings from the latest narrow defeat that featured a majority of the possession, a clear style of play, and standout moments for promising young players. Coupled with a win and draw in their two previous matches to kick off 2025, the Wave appear to be on the cusp of a turnaround. Nevertheless, it's far too early to make assumptions about how things will go for the team after just 270+ minutes of play.

With plenty still to prove on the pitch and beyond, can San Diego get back on track?

"It was a tough year for the club, there's no kind of sugar coating that," sporting director and general manager Camille Ashton told ESPN about 2024. "This is a club that has always had a lot of ambition and expectations to do well and be successful."

Months after finishing at the top of the table in 2023, San Diego endured a disastrous season that involved three different managers (Casey Stoney, Paul Buckle, Landon Donovan) and a 10th-place finish, which left them outside the playoff picture. Key figures and U.S. women's national team stars such as Naomi Girma and Jaedyn Shaw headed for the exits, eventually leaving the club (for Chelsea and North Carolina Courage respectively) after the conclusion of 2024.

"On the field, that's always tough to get out there and cheer all the time, to get as excited as you want to be when the team isn't coming through the way that you're trying to will them to be," said Sean Dreusike, a member of the Sirens supporters group.

Behind the scenes, the team also made negative headlines after former employees sued the club and the NWSL, citing allegations of discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. The suit followed accusations in the summer that president Jill Ellis, who has since left after being hired by FIFA, had led a toxic workplace environment.

By January, a sixth former employee also joined the lawsuit, alleging sexual harassment by a male supervisor at the time.

"The off field stuff, being a fan, leaves questions that need to be answered by the team and fans are some of the right people along with media and whatnot to ask those questions and try to get either answers or change," said Dreusike. The Sirens released a statement in October in which the group announced they "no longer trust the front office's decision-making nor do we believe in the current leadership's ability to oversee the positive changes that are desperately needed."

As part of broader front office alterations, Ellis' December exit marked a significant pivot in direction for the Wave, as did the completed purchase of the club late last year by the Levine Leichtman family.

Looking back on the pitch, Ashton, who was hired last summer, was tasked with rebuilding the squad that not only had Girma and Shaw soon heading out the door, but also superstar Alex Morgan hanging up her boots in September.

"When you're new in an environment, you want to be able to not take too much time, but take time to really understand where things are at, evaluate how things are working, where there are development areas, what are the things that are most important to sort of tackle, and take a little bit of time to digest all of that before you start to implement and make changes," said Ashton.

"We had a very busy off season."

The first major step of business? Bringing in Eidevall. According to Ashton, the Swedish coach won over the Wave due to his tactical knowledge, ability to win titles, experience in a high-pressure league in England, know-how with building teams, and ambition. Importantly, there was a sense he could translate those skills into the NWSL and create sustainability with the Wave.

For goalkeeper and captain Kailen Sheridan, the hiring of Eidevall and his staff was the most vital piece of the team's new puzzle for 2025.

"The coaching change is going to be huge," Sheridan told ESPN during the preseason when asked which modification at the club will be the most impactful. "It's a complete new staff, which kind of is an opportunity to start over. Obviously, players is massive as well, but with the coaching change, that's a whole tactical change."

"If we had some staff that stayed with us [from 2024], the players obviously would be a big difference. They would have to come in and adapt to the style. But now we're starting with a new style, so it's an opportunity for the staff to kind of make their mark, and the players to learn and to grow together."

Part of that process has also meant reinforcing the roster. Along with a list of intriguing up-and-coming names, ownership hasn't wasted time with the incorporation of noteworthy figures like France international Kenza Dali, Canada international Adriana Leon, and Colombia international Daniela Arias.

Another key aspect of Eidevall in this rebuild is his ability to influence the players with a move to San Diego. Dali, recently with Aston Villa, wasn't sure at first if she wanted to leave England, but was swayed after a conversation with the coach.

"I had a call with Jonas. I know Jonas, I played against him a lot," Dali told ESPN. "I know what he is trying to do in terms of football, and that's what really attracted me is the way he plays, his philosophy. That was [what] convinced me."

With reinforcements in tow and new players from last season stepping up, the change in the starting XI from the season openers in 2024 and 2025 was a dramatic one. Of the XI that took the field for last season's first game, only three returned to the starting lineup for 2025's opener.

Looking back at the old formation, it's impossible to miss marquee stars and leaders such as Girma and Morgan. And while it's near-impossible to replace what some of those names represented beyond the confines of Snapdragon Stadium, the Wave's latest additions have notably boosted the team this season.

"Those players [who left] obviously leave their mark and I think they're the type of players where you feel when they're gone," midfielder Makenzy Robbe told ESPN. "But I think at the same time we've really been able to kind of keep the intensity and the standard high."

It's a small sample size, but the underlying numbers look decent for the team that has kicked the season off with a 1W-1D-1L record that has included just one match at home. With the aim of dominating the ball and building out from the back, the team has averaged 57.3% possession per game, creating 18 chances along the way, scoring five times, and accumulating a total xG of 3.59. When regaining the ball, they're currently averaging a success rate of 56% in tackles.

Against Orlando, in what Eidevall claimed to be his biggest challenge to date with the team, there was much to like from the squad that was at first able to keep the title-holders silent. Through a high press and using possession as the best form of defense, the Wave appeared ready to snap Orlando's 21-game unbeaten streak at home.

"There [are] a lot of things in our performance we can be pleased with and I think we can be a little bit angry and irritated that we don't get any points away with us from this game," said Eidevall post-game.

By the second half, Orlando figured out the San Diego press and were given a lifeline through a goal in the 50th minute from Haley McCutcheon off a corner. Although youthful substitutions helped level things out for the Wave, with a goal from 19-year-old Chiamaka Okwuchukwu less than two minutes into her debut, Orlando would eventually take back the lead with a dramatic game-winning penalty from Marta in the 76th minute.

Soft penalty or not, which was retaken due to Sheridan stepping off her line, the reality of the match was that Orlando's second-half tactical changes helped wrestle back the momentum San Diego once had. Indicative of how Eidevall's side is still a work in progress, the result also marked the second match in a row in which the Wave ran into obstacles after half-time.

It's far from perfect soccer, but Eidevall's willingness to maintain his possession-heavy style of play -- especially against the reigning champions -- was a commendable decision. With teenage prospects like Melanie Barcenas, Kimmi Ascanio, and Okwuchukwu putting on a show once coming off the bench, there's also reason to feel hopeful that the club already has the next generation of game-changers in the mix.

"I'm pleased with the mentality that we have in the squad. [Chiamaka] is a great example of that," said Eidevall post-game. "Haven't being fielded at all for the first two games, now she had a good opportunity coming in here for the third. I definitely think that we have a lot of good players in the squad. We have healthy competition and I'm really pleased with a lot of players' contributions at the moment."

Whether those contributions include more minutes for prospects, the next step for Eidevall & Co. is finding the right balance for a roster that's struggled in the second halves of games. Of course, that's only the sporting aspect of the new era for the Wave.

Behind the scenes and in the front office, there's nothing that has yet to bring negative attention in 2025, but it's still incumbent on the organization to learn from last season and prove to their supporters that they can be trusted once again. Given that Eidevall, Ashton and others represent the start of a different era, there's an opportunity to showcase that the detrimental problems of the past won't return, and doing so will only benefit the sporting side for the former Shield-holders, who are eager for much more than just a regular season trophy.

"Expectations for us, we wanna be competing in [the playoffs of] November this year. That's something that I think everyone across the organization would say and feel strongly about. So for us, that's our goal," said Ashton.

"It's constantly evolving and growing and trying to get better and that's on and off the field here."

Kent State has fired football coach Kenni Burns, the school said in a statement Friday.

Offensive coordinator Mark Carney will serve as interim coach, and the school will conduct a search for a new coach "at the conclusion of the 2025 season," according to the statement.

Burns issued a statement on social media:

My family and I are saddened by the news today. We are thankful for the relationships and connections we have made with the players, coaches, and staff over the past few years. The team bond we have is not transactional but that of a family. Kent G.R.I.T. will bind us forever,... pic.twitter.com/EPH7SwPHy1

Kenni Burns (@CoachKenniBurns) April 11, 2025

Burns was placed on administrative leave with pay last month, but the school did not provide details about why Burns was put on leave. Burns has a 1-23 record in two seasons with the Golden Flashes. They were 0-12 last season, the fifth time in school history they went winless.

"At this time, our focus will be to support our student-athletes and provide them with the best opportunity to have a positive and competitive experience," Kent State said in the statement Friday.

Kent State referred ESPN to previous "news articles" about Burns when asked for more information.

"Coach Kenni Burns has recently learned of the meritless termination of his position as head coach at Kent State University. Needless to say, Coach Burns has met all the challenges that a head coach must face including but not limited to reducing off-the-field problems with his players and securing the highest GPA in school history for his football team," Burn's lawyer Lee Hutton told ESPN.

"Coach Burns has authorized me as lead counsel of his litigation team to pursue all remedies available to him under the law and to recapture his reputation."

Hutton said his client plans to file a lawsuit against the university.

A source close to Burns said that Kent State recently made Coach Burns a buyout offer that was rejected.

Projected No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers of UConn is one of 16 players who have been invited to attend the Monday's WNBA draft, the league announced Friday.

The draft will be held at The Shed at Hudson Yards in New York City. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert will begin announcing picks of the three-round draft at 7:30 p.m. ET following a draft countdown show starting at 7, both on ESPN.

Bueckers, coming off a national championship with the Huskies, is expected to be taken first by the Dallas Wings. The Seattle Storm have the second pick, and the Washington Mystics have Nos. 3, 4 and 6.

The expansion Golden State Valkyries will participate in their first draft, picking No. 5 in the first round, as they prepare for their inaugural season this year. The WNBA begins play May 16.

Joining Bueckers at the draft, six players from the SEC, including South Carolina teammates Sania Feagin and Te-Hina Paopao, LSU's Aneesah Morrow, Kentucky's Georgia Amoore, Alabama's Sarah Ashlee Barker and Ole Miss' Madison Scott.

The ACC will be represented by three players: Notre Dame's Sonia Citron and NC State teammates Aziaha James and Saniya Rivers. USC's Kiki Iriafen and Maryland's Shyanne Sellers will represent the Big Ten. TCU's Hailey Van Lith and Kansas State's Serena Sundell will carry the flag for the Big 12.

Two international players also have been invited to the draft: Dominique Malonga of France and Ajša Sivka of Slovenia.

AUGUSTA, Georgia -- Ángel Cabrera's controversial return to the Masters this week for the first time since serving a 30-month prison sentence for domestic abuse came to a close Friday as the former champion missed the cut at Augusta National Golf Club.

The 55-year-old Argentine, who was imprisoned for threats and harassment against two of his ex-girlfriends, opened the tournament with a 3-over-par 75 and returned an 8-over 80 in Friday's second round to sit at 11 over on the week.

That left Cabrera, who was released from prison in August 2023, near the bottom of the 95-player starting field in his 21st Masters start.

Augusta National gives a lifetime Masters exemption to past champions, an honor Cabrera earned in 2009 when his playoff win over Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell made him South America's first winner of the tournament.

Cabrera missed the cut in his last Masters appearance in 2019, skipped the next two during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and was unable to play last year due to visa issues.

But the two-time major champion came into the 2025 Masters with pep in his step having earned his first triumph on the PGA Champions Tour last week, which put him back in the winner's circle for the first time since being released from prison.

Cabrera's presence at this week's Masters has drawn some criticism, including from women's rights groups. Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley defended the club's decision in his pre-tournament news conference.

"Well, we certainly abhor domestic violence of any type," Ridley told reporters. "As it relates to Angel, Angel has served the sentence that was prescribed by the Argentine courts, and he is the past champion, and so he was invited."

MiLaysia Fulwiley, a key guard for South Carolina's Final Four women's basketball teams the past two seasons, intends to enter the transfer portal, sources told ESPN.

Fulwiley was the No. 13 recruit as ranked by ESPN HoopGurlz in 2023 and chose to stay in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, to start college. She was the SEC tournament MVP as a freshman and helped the Gamecocks to a 38-0 season and the national championship last year.

This season, she was the SEC Sixth Player of the Year as the Gamecocks went 35-4, won the SEC tournament again and were national runners-up to UConn at the Final Four in Tampa, Florida.

Fulwiley, who is 5-foot-10, came off the bench in all but three of her 77 games at South Carolina, averaging 11.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.6 steals in her two seasons.

The Greenville News earlier reported news of Fulwiley's intention to enter the portal.

SEATTLE -- Backup quarterback Drew Lock is expected to sign with the Seahawks for a second stint with the team, a source confirmed to ESPN on Friday.

Lock is set to sign a two-year, $5 million contract, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Lock, 28, returns to Seattle after spending last season with the New York Giants. He spent the two seasons before that in Seattle backing up Geno Smith after being acquired from the Denver Broncos in the Russell Wilson trade in 2022.

Lock's return as a potential backup to newly acquired Sam Darnold brings into question Sam Howell's future with the Seahawks. Seattle acquired Howell via trade from the Washington Commanders in March 2024 after losing Lock in free agency. Howell struggled over the offseason and in a disastrous relief appearance in December.

The Seahawks have also been doing homework on quarterback prospects in this year's draft. Their list of 30 visits includes one with Louisville's Tyler Shough, a source told ESPN, while Bleacher Report reported they also have a visit lined up with Alabama's Jalen Milroe. Both quarterbacks are in the top five at the position on Mel Kiper Jr.'s Big Board.

Lock went 1-4 in five starts with the Giants last season, throwing six touchdowns and five interceptions. He also rushed for a pair of touchdowns as the team won just once in his eight appearances.

The inconsistency of the situation in New York played into some of the struggles. Lock was declared the backup to Daniel Jones the moment he signed. He was the backup all summer and through the first 10 games of the season. But when the Giants benched and eventually cut Jones, they skipped Lock and went to third-stringer Tommy DeVito in hope of a spark.

The team jumped back and forth between Lock and DeVito for much of the rest of its 3-14 season. The highlight was Lock's Week 16 win over the Indianapolis Colts, when he had five total touchdowns.

Lock spent his first three seasons with the Broncos after they drafted him in the second round in 2019. He has started 28 games in his six professional seasons and has completed 59.6% of his passes for 6,354 yards with 34 touchdowns and 28 interceptions.

Fox Sports first reported on the Seahawks' reunion with Lock.

ESPN's Jordan Raanan contributed to this report.

FOR THE PAST 10 years, Michael Malone had been the lead narrator of the Denver Nuggets' story. He played the tough guy when his team needed it during its championship run. He was the empathetic loyalist when Jamal Murray suffered a devastating knee injury in 2021. He became Nikola Jokic's hype man during each of his three MVP seasons, chiding anyone who didn't appreciate or vote for the Serbian superstar.

Sunday night, after the Nuggets lost their fourth straight game for the first time since March 2023, Malone was at his acerbic best in assessing the team's issues and just how urgent Denver's predicament had become.

"We haven't lost four in a row in a long time," Malone said after a 125-120 loss to the Indiana Pacers. "It's really easy to be together and say 'family' when you win. But when you're losing games, can you stay together? Do you have the balls, do you have the courage to go home and look in the mirror and say, 'What can I be doing better to help this team?'

"I'll start with me. ... How about me, as a head coach? Not doing my job to the best of my ability."

Little did Malone or anyone in the Denver locker room suspect that team president Josh Kroenke had for months been asking the same questions.

Malone's message wasn't landing. Three weeks earlier, after a blowout loss to a Portland Trail Blazers team missing four rotation players, he sat in front of the postgame lectern and lit into his team.

"That was embarrassing. That was just a joke," he said. "Who are we kidding? Eleven games to go, and that's the effort we put forth?"

He talked about rebounding -- the Nuggets had given up 26 points on the offensive glass -- and turnovers, off of which the Blazers had scored 25.

"I don't think we played with any pride tonight," Malone said.

Asked how the team received that message, the longtime coach was blunt.

"I don't really care," he said. "My job is to be honest, sometimes brutally honest. And the guys that are full of s--- won't hear it. They'll say, 'Coach is trippin.' And the guys who maybe do really care will ... they're not going to go back and watch their minutes. Nobody watches their minutes. Nobody watches film. So we'll have to show them the film. And I said, 'If somebody disagrees with me, please speak up.'

"Nobody said a word. I'm not concerned with how they took that message. My thing is, be honest with how we just played."

The Nuggets are a tepid 12-13 since the All-Star break and have lost some of what made them so dynamic just two years ago, even though they remain in fourth place in the West following Wednesday's win against the Sacramento Kings.

There has been more infighting on the bench and the court than Kroenke had ever seen. And every clip of those arguments seemed to go viral, whether it was Jokic's frustration at the team's defense, a heated exchange between Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson, or Gordon attempting to huddle on the court and Murray ignoring him.

Moreso, the cold war between Malone and general manager Calvin Booth had become toxic for everyone in the organization.

Coaches, front office staffers and support staff felt compelled to choose sides, multiple team sources said. Instead of focusing on how to get the most out of a team with a three-time MVP having arguably his best season as a professional, energy was being spent on determining which side people were on -- and whether they could be trusted.

"Everybody in the organization was miserable," a team source said. "That's what Josh felt. It's a bad vibe. You can't operate like that. He felt that if he removed those two people, everybody could just focus on doing their job. Change needed to happen."

In interviews with more than a dozen team and league insiders, a theme quickly emerged: Not only was this war between Malone and Booth toxic for the two men, but it had infected the entire organization. For the better part of two years, winning had hidden the toxins coursing through the Nuggets. Then they started losing.

Kroenke made the decision to fire Malone and Booth late Sunday night, sources told ESPN. It wasn't the first time this season that Kroenke seriously pondered parting ways with the winningest coach in franchise history and the executive who had put together the final pieces of the Nuggets' championship puzzle. Kroenke wanted to clean house at the All-Star break, sources said, but an eight-game winning streak spared Malone and Booth.

"There were certain trends that were very worrisome to me at certain points in time, but they would get masked by a few wins here and there," Kroenke said during an in-house interview released Tuesday afternoon. "In the world of professional sports, where winning and losing is your currency, winning can mask a lot of things."

On Monday, he talked it through with his father, Stan Kroenke, and Kevin Demoff, who has become a more influential voice in the organization since ascending to the role of president of team and media operations for Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, which also owns the Los Angeles Rams, Colorado Avalanche and Arsenal FC, a little over a year ago.

Tuesday was an optional day for players to report, but during a four-game losing streak, it is understood that the best "option" is to show up and put in some work.

Every player was there except veteran guard Russell Westbrook, who had flown to Los Angeles where his family lives, multiple sources said. Players and assistant coaches made their way to Ball Arena's practice court at 10:30 a.m. local time. At that point, unbeknownst to everyone but superstar center Nikola Jokic, who had a brief one-on-one discussion with Kroenke beforehand, Malone was packing some of his belongings in his office after being informed that his decade-long tenure in Denver was done.

"He told me, 'We made a decision.' So it was not a discussion. It was a decision," Jokic said Wednesday night. "He told me why. And so I listened. And I accepted it."

Instead of working out, the rest of the players were called to an 11 a.m. meeting with Kroenke, where they learned that the only coach many of them had ever played for had just been fired.

"It's just so disrespectful," one source close to the situation said. "That's not how you treat a championship coach."

It was a shock with just three games left in the regular season.

But that's exactly what Kroenke was going for. "We wanted to try to figure out a way to squeeze as much juice out of the rest of the season as possible," Kroenke said. "Let's try to shake this tree and squeeze as much out of it as we can."

THE NUGGETS HAVE long felt pressure to put Jokic in position to win championships -- plural. Not just the one they claimed in 2023. Booth told ESPN before the season that he felt the Nuggets were halfway through what he hoped would be a 10-year prime for Jokic and his job was to surround him with a roster that could contend in each of those remaining prime years, not simply load up with expensive veterans to contend for one or two more seasons.

In Booth's view, the way to do that was to draft and develop young, cost-controlled players like Christian Braun, Watson, Julian Strawther, Zeke Nnaji and Jalen Pickett.

In Malone's view, the way to do that was to keep as much of the core group -- Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green -- that had won the franchise's first title in 2023 together and slowly bring along those younger players.

Malone not only resented that Booth didn't retain those players in free agency, but also wondered whether Booth did so as a way to force him to play the younger players he had drafted, multiple sources said.

"They just saw the world completely differently," another team source said.

That tension manifested everywhere.

"The situation was just unsustainable," a team source said. "Coach Malone and Calvin couldn't fix it because they made the situation all about themselves."

Players even questioned whether their playing time was affected by the dysfunction between Malone and Booth, multiple team sources said.

"If you're one of Calvin's guys, Malone doesn't want to play you," a team source said, flatly.

Over time, players tuned out Malone, from the top of the roster down, multiple team sources said.

Said one, "The players were freakin' miserable, man. You could see it. The effort would come and go. I just wish it happened sooner. We wouldn't be in this mess."

Malone is hardly the first veteran coach to be reluctant to give big minutes to younger players. Legendary coach Phil Jackson used to refer to rookies as "lower than pond scum." Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn't play the organization's lottery picks as much as the front office and ownership would've liked.

When Malone was reluctant to play Nnaji at power forward, where analytics show he was resoundingly better than as a backup center, more than one staffer wondered whether there was an agenda behind it.

"The numbers are way better [with Nnaji] as a 4 than a 5," one team source said. "But if you play him as a 5, he gets exposed. Who does that make look bad?"

Nnaji was plus-100 when he played power forward and was paired with a center and minus-113 in 235 minutes when he played as a center, according to NBA Advanced Stats.

When Malone put Westbrook into the starting lineup early in the season, pushing Braun back to the bench, even Malone acknowledged it wasn't fair to Braun.

"Never an easy decision," Malone said after a 122-112 loss to the New York Knicks in which he had debuted the new lineup. "Christian Braun has been great for us this year. Not good. He's been great. And he's done everything that's been asked of him. But I just like keeping Russell out there."

In Malone's defense, at the time the Jokic-Westbrook duo had a plus-11.4 net rating on the floor together, fifth among all two-man duos. Jokic-Braun, at 11.3, ranked sixth.

"What else does CB have to do?" a team source said. "Malone even said he's done everything he was asked to do, and now he's being relegated for Russ?"

Jokic may not have sounded off publicly at any of this dysfunction. But he bore witness to it all season and wasn't happy about it, sources said.

"Joker is really good at letting you know how he feels," a team source said, "without saying anything."

JOKIC HAS NEVER given any indication he would look to play anywhere other than Denver. Before the season, he even seemed to give a strong vote of confidence to the organization despite the departure of so many key veterans in free agency over the previous two offseasons.

"I think people in general, they always want more and more and more, but they don't know what they have," Jokic told ESPN. "I'm really happy we have one title -- a lot of very good players don't win."

The only nod that's even resembled an openness to playing anywhere else came Tuesday night, when his longtime agent, Misko Raznatovic, responded on Instagram to a Bovada betting line of where his client's next destination could be.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Twins placed pitcher Pablo López on the 15-day injured list Friday with a strained right hamstring.

The move is retroactive to Wednesday, a day after López was removed from his start against Kansas City following 4 innings because of the injury. López is 1-1 with a 1.62 ERA in three starts this season.

The Twins replaced him on the roster by recalling right-hander David Festa from Triple-A St. Paul. Festa, who will start for Minnesota on Friday night against Detroit, is 1-1 with a 5.40 ERA in two minor league starts this season.

Festa appeared in 14 games for the Twins last season, 13 of them starts, going 2-6 with a 4.90 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 64 innings.

So often in recent years, baseballs have been the subject of controversy. How tightly are they wound? What is the height of their seams? What's inside them that might determine how far they fly? What has been slathered onto them that might impact how slick they are?

In that sense, the sudden furor over so-called torpedo bats is refreshing. At least, for once, we're arguing and conspiracy-theorizing about a different piece of equipment.

But torpedo bats are simply an iteration in the art of bat-making, a practice that has been evolving since the day some long-gone hominid first swatted at a round stone with a stick they found lying on the ground.

In that spirit, let's take a moment to consider the turning-point moments in baseball bat history -- an abridged guide to how we got from sticks to torpedoes.

Wee Willie, wood wars and the wild west of bat experiments

From the beginning, the partnership between players and their bats have been personal affairs, with everything from length to weight to wood preference coming under scrutiny. While the points of emphasis in the game have changed, the choice of bat has always depended on the size of the hitter, the shape of his swing and the kind of batsman he wants to be.

During the early days of baseball, regulations were few and far between and there was a lot of experimentation with the stick. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, some hitters used a flat-faced bat that was supposed to help with bunting but looked more suitable for hammering nails.

Bats were heavier in those days. The style of knob varied, from a ball-shaped knob, a mushroom knob to a barely-there knob at the end of bat handles that were much thicker than the ones we see now. Future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie used a bat that had two knobs, which seemed to work fine considering he ended with 3,243 career hits, five batting titles and a modern-era record .426 batting average in 1901.

Like many hitters of his time, Ty Cobb swung a heavy bat (40 ounces until late in his career; bats today weigh between 30 and 33 ounces), and he gripped it with his hands apart to maximize control. That was the dominant theme of the era: The ability to control the bat while slapping at the ball, or bunting, was far more important than bat speed. Perhaps the avatar for that kind of baseball was Wee Willie Keeler, the guy who said, "Keep your eye on the ball and hit 'em where they ain't." Keeler, who stood 5-foot-5, slapped the ball around with what was basically an oversized baton.

Keeler's bats measured 30 to 31 inches in length (bats are now typically 33 or 34 inches), with varying weights up to 46 ounces. Such a thing would look comical in today's game. Keeler flourished with his small body and heavy bat, hitting .341 over a long career. Power was simply not the aim for Wee Willie, and only 33 of his 2,932 career hits were homers -- an estimated 30 of which were of the inside-the-park variety.

Even after specifications on what was allowed were codified, there remained plenty of experimentation. A famous take on bat shape was that of Heinie Groh, an on-base machine for the Giants and Reds in the early 20th century. His "bottle bat" had a long, thick barrel and thin handle. It looked like something more apt for cricket than baseball. Groh's teammate, Hall of Famer Edd Roush, used a 48-ounce stick.

There was also a long-standing competition in wood sources, with hickory rivaling ash for supremacy. Cobb used a bat made out of what he claimed was black ash, but was probably just white ash. Perhaps the most famous bat in history was Shoeless Joe Jackson's "Black Betsy," a massive 36-inch, 39-ounce stick Jackson used his entire career. It was made out of a hickory tree from South Carolina, his native state.

Hickory has fallen completely out of favor, and, considering the rise in importance of power and bat speed over the decades, it's not hard to understand why. According to Steven Bratkovich, author of "The Baseball Bat: From Trees to the Major Leagues, 19th Century to Today", Roger Maris used a 33-ounce ash bat when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961. If he had used a hickory bat of the same dimensions, it would have weighed 42 ounces.

The invention of The Louisville Slugger

The origin story of the Hillerich & Bradsby Co., at least the bat-making portion of it, traces back to a seminal spring day in 1884. As with most of baseball's storied past, details of the story have been questioned -- even the Louisville Slugger Museum refers to it as "company legend" -- but if it's not exactly true, it ought to be.

One of the great hitters of the day, Pete Browning, had a frustrating day at the plate during a home game in Louisville and seemed to be especially irked by a bat that had broken. In the stands was 17-year-old Bud Hillerich, son of a local woodworker and an apprentice in the craft. Browning, having heard of Hillerich's skills, asked the teenager whether he could help. Hillerich could, and the next day Browning rang out three hits with the custom-made bat Hillerich constructed for him out of Northern White Ash.

Browning went on to win two battling titles after that day, adding the nickname "the Louisville Slugger" to his existing moniker "Gladiator." The ramp-up was a bit slow, but by 1894, the company had trademarked "Louisville Slugger" and the bat business was swinging away.

Three years later, Honus Wagner's big league career began with the Louisville Colonels. Just after the turn of the century, when he had become one the game's first true superstars with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he also became what is believed to be the first athlete to endorse athletic gear when he signed on as a pitch man for the Louisville Slugger. His autograph began appearing in the wood of the bat itself -- the beginning of that long-common practice.

For 100 years or more, the Louisville Slugger reigned supreme as the bat of choice in the majors. The Slugger remains a popular choice, but in recent years, it has had to make room for batmakers such as Victus and Marucci atop the leaderboard.

The Babe's thin-handled stick helps change baseball forever

Baseball writer and historian Bill James has often pointed to the continual thinning of the bat handle as a key driver of the game's shift from an emphasis on bat control to one of bat speed. This evolution began in the early 1920s and, yes, it exploded when Ruth clubbed an unthinkable 54 homers in 1920, turning the dead ball era on its ear.

Ruth swung heavy bats -- it's one of the things for which he's most well known. They tended to weigh at least 44 ounces and as heavy as 50, though it's not believed he used the latter much during the regular season. But the handles were thin, allowing him to lash the bat around on the pitchers of his day. There was no one factor that led to the game's transformation to a power-based sport, but the proliferation of thin handle bats in the wake of the Ruth phenomenon was certainly a contributor.

Incidentally, Ruth modeled the bat shape after that of another Hall of Famer, Rogers Hornsby, who didn't use as heavy a stick but favored thin handles, recognizing their value in getting the bat head through the zone more quickly than was possible with thicker handles. Through 1920, Hornsby was already a .328 career hitter but had just 36 career homers in 2,903 plate appearances. During the next nine seasons, he hit .384 with 241 homers.

Other players, including The Babe, tend to notice such things.

Teddy Ballgame's baked bats

If you had to anoint one player as the Albert Einstein of hitting, it would be Ted Williams. Williams had a theory of everything, as long as it pertained to hitting, and there was no detail too small. Naturally, this included his bats.

The story goes that while Williams was still in the minors, using a fairly standard-for-the-time 35-ounce bat, he borrowed a lighter stick from a teammate named Stan Spence. He used it to club a home run to center field and immediately knew that, for him, the lighter bat was the way to go. Initially, when Williams tried to order a lighter-weight model, Hillerich and Bradsby tried to talk him out of it. But you couldn't really talk Teddy Ballgame out of anything.

A few years later, around 1948, a young Red Sox fan named David Pressman -- who must have been a spiritual descendant of Bud Hillerich -- noticed that, one night, after he had left a bat outside overnight in some dew-covered grass, it felt heavier. When he weighed it, sure enough, it had gained about two ounces. Assuming it had absorbed some moisture, he put the bat into a coal oven and -- voila! -- it was back to normal.

The story was recounted in Ben Bradlee Jr.'s "The Kid." The excited Pressman managed to get this information to Williams, his favorite player, who invited him to Fenway Park for a chat. Pressman told him what he had found, and Williams listened. They settled on a system of using clothes dryers in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse to heat up and dry out Williams' bats, and Williams used scales to monitor the weight of his weapons of choice from there on out.

This system of heating up his bats continued during the rest of Williams' Hall of Fame career, during which he hit .336 with 299 homers -- beginning with his age-30 season. Williams and Pressman remained friends and associates for the rest of Teddy Ballgame's life. But Williams insisted Pressman keep the bat-heating ploy a secret until his passing.

However, Williams did ask Pressman to explain the theory of bat-heating one time to Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio, according to Pressman, looked unconvinced and simply walked away.

Superballs, pine tar -- and an MLB 'Mission: Impossible'

Cheating has a long, inglorious history in baseball, and when it comes to bats, there have been plenty of shenanigans and intrigue. DiMaggio used a bat named "Betsy Ann" during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941. The bat was stolen in the midst of his spree between games of a doubleheader. Despite his despair over losing Betsy Ann, DiMaggio kept his streak alive. Then she returned, arriving a week later in a plain brown package delivered by a courier. It turned out that the thief, a guy from Newark, had bragged about his prize to the wrong people.

One famous incident was the George Brett pine tar episode from 1983, though despite the rule on the books about the substance, it has never really been explained why having extra pine tar on a bat, while messy, would give a hitter any kind of edge.

Numerous players have been rumored to have used corked bats, which seemed to be most prominent from the 1970s through the early 2000s. The goal was simply to lessen the weight of the bat in the never-ending pursuit of bat speed.

There are all sorts of things you can stuff into a bat. On Sept. 7, 1974, Yankees star Graig Nettles homered against the Tigers. His next time up, Nettles stroked a single but broke his bat in the process. While Nettles ran to first, Detroit catcher Bill Freehan was busy chasing the six Superballs that had come tumbling out of Nettles' bat.

Nettles explained that the bat had been a gift from a fan and, apparently, the powers-that-be bought his story. Nettles wasn't suspended.

In another famous incident, a suspension was handed out. During a game at Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1994, White Sox manager Gene Lamont challenged Albert Belle's use of a bat, and it was confiscated by the umpiring crew for later investigation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game played out. Cleveland reliever Jason Grimsley crawled through the ceiling from the visiting clubhouse to the umpire's room and swapped Belle's bat out for one belonging to Paul Sorrento, leaving behind chunks of ceiling tile and mangled metal. The umpires were not fooled, and Belle was suspended seven games.

An even longer suspension was doled out to Sammy Sosa in 2003, when his bat shattered during a game and revealed the cork that was within. Sosa claimed he picked up the bat by mistake. He did not get the same benefit of the doubt that Nettles did.

Barry, Barry good wood

Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001. It's a record. No, really, you can look it up.

There has been so much clamor about Bonds' training methods over the years that his place in bat evolution tends to be overlooked. When Bonds set that record, he swung bats made out of maple, not ash.

ESPN wrote about this at the time. Bonds said then, "I tried it and I liked it. Ash wood is a softer wood that has a tendency to split and crack easier. Maple gives you the opportunity that if you feel comfortable with it, you've got a chance of keeping it for a while."

It seemed to work out for him. Bonds wasn't the first player to use a maple bat, but many others followed his example once his historic numbers attracted unprecedented attention.

A few years later, after the use of maple bats spread, it became a source of concern. While maple bats were harder to break than bats made out of other wood, including ash, when they did come apart, they tended to shatter. This would send dangerous shards of wood flying through the air around the field. People got hurt. Since then, after some MLB-led investigations into maple bats, the manufacturing processes evolved and the rate of broken bats has improved.

In the years since Bonds largely sparked their proliferation, maple bats raced past ash as the wood of choice in the big league. The trend was accelerated by blight -- a massive infestation of invasive beetles wreaked havoc on the ash trees that companies such as Hillerich & Bradsby so long relied upon. More than three years ago, The Athletic profiled this sea change in the industry, describing Joey Votto as the last of the ash bat advocates. Votto, of course, has since retired.

Even so, more than 150 years since the advent of major league baseball, the source of wood for bats is not a settled, consensus part of the game. Birch is used in some bat models, and bamboo is often cited as a possible competitor. How long before someone tries to bring back hickory?

The only constant is change.

Synthetic sticks

In 2022, commissioner Rob Manfred announced that baseball would be experimenting with aluminum bats in hopes of introducing them for regular-season use in the middle of that campaign.

Except he didn't -- because that story making the rounds three years ago was an April Fools Day concoction, one that has cropped up around that date a few times. But this hoax underscores why it's outlandish to even ponder metal bats rising from Little League and college ball up to the majors. Pitchers might have to wear Kevlar on the mound. Still, while aluminum bats aren't coming to MLB, James wrote about the profound impact the advent of metal bats at other levels of the game has had in the big leagues in "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract."

In a nutshell, James wrote that it was once dogma that a hitter couldn't prosper by crowding the plate and trying to drive outside pitches to the opposite field, the likely outcome being a stream of ground outs to middle infielders. But then aluminum sticks showed up and amateur batters found they were able to drive outside pitches just fine. Soon, advanced hitters learned that the same approach worked once they made the switch to wood.

Now, it's no longer considered strange to see a hitter trying to drive the ball, in the air, to the opposite field. (See: Aaron Judge.) There's more to it than the rise of the aluminum bat, but the kind of stick a player uses as a kid impacts what they do when they swing wood bats when they reach the big time.

The bat, er, beat goes on

The appearance of the torpedo bat is noteworthy, but the only thing novel about it is that it took so long for someone to think of it. There have been flat bats and round bats. Thin handles, thick handles, V-handles (a Don Mattingly innovation) and axe handles. Heavy bats, heavier bats and light bats. Short bats and long bats. The bat is always changing, and always has.

Twenty-five years ago, the rise of maple seemed like a revolution. Thirty years before that, it was the sudden appearance of cupped bats, a style in which the end of the bat is hollowed out. The origin story of those is another murky area, but it appears that while you could get cupped bats in America as early as the late 1890s, they first became much more popular in Japan's professional leagues. In the late 1960s, onetime Cubs outfielder George Altman played in Japan after his career in the majors wound down, then brought some of the cupped bats back with him, where they attracted the attention of outfielder Jose Cardenal. (Or possibly Lou Brock, and Cardenal saw Brock with them.) The use of cupped bats had been sporadic but spread quickly, and the bats are now ubiquitous.

With companies such as Victus offering painted bats and other modes of aesthetic customization, including the popular pencil bats, bats have become as much about personal expression as they are about productivity. This is on full display on Players Weekend, when players and those who supply their bats can let their creativity fly. While these innovations might not have much competitive impact, they add color and flavor to the old game.

Torpedo bats are just the latest entrant on this ongoing continuum. They are the product of a collaboration between data science, bat manufacturers and each individual player. Just as bats have long been made to spec depending on a player's swing and proclivities, so too is the torpedo bat.

For now, we can't declare one way or another whether the advent of the torpedo bat is going to change the game, but it probably won't. As we collect the data, chances are any tangible effect the bat might have will be subsumed by a thousand other factors that produce the game's statistics. Perhaps we wouldn't even be discussing this if Yankees announcer Michael Kay had not pointed out that New York was using these newfangled bats during a historic game in which the team ultimately went deep nine times against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Torpedo bats won't work for everyone, but for some they will. Will they change the game? Whether they're here to stay or another passing fad, they're part of a sport that is constantly evolving -- and will continue to do so.