ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Blues placed veteran forward Brandon Saad on waivers Tuesday with the intent of sending him to the minors.

General manager Doug Armstrong said Saad would be assigned to Springfield of the American Hockey League if he clears or be playing for a different NHL team if he is claimed. Saad has another year left on his contract at a salary cap hit of $4.5 million, which makes it unlikely he's going anywhere but the AHL.

"That will open up some space for different players that I'd like to see get in the lineup and see where it goes," Armstrong said, referring specifically to younger Alexandre Texier.

The 32-year-old Saad has been held without a goal in 40 of his 43 games this season. He has a total of 16 points on seven goals and nine assists and was not garnering much, if any, trade interest around the league.

"Obviously, the production's not there," Armstrong said. "Right now the cap is tight, and obviously statistically he's not having a great year and he's got another year left. If we could find a match, we would try."

The Blues are languishing on the edge of the Western Conference playoff race past the midway point of the season, five points back of the second and final wild-card spot. Armstrong made his first big move in November by firing Drew Bannister 22 games into being the full-time coach and hiring Jim Montgomery as his replacement.

St. Louis has gone 14-12-3 with Montgomery behind the bench. The organization is trying to build for the future but also attempt to win now, and there are plenty of questions about why that is not happening.

"I don't know why our home record is under .500," Armstrong said. "I don't know whey we didn't embrace the opportunity of a three-game homestand to make hay. But my job is to not react to it but to observe it and then say, 'OK, well what do we need to do moving forward?' Part of the retool is we're finding out positives and negatives about a lot of different situations in our group."

Saad is in his fourth season with the Blues. During the prime of his career, he helped Chicago win the Stanley Cup twice: in 2013 and then in 2015.

Putting him on waivers comes a day after trading defenseman Scott Perunovich to the New York Islanders for a conditional 2026 fifth-round pick.

"I talked to the coach over the last little while and he didn't see a future to get him in the lineup here," Armstrong said. "So, when an opportunity came to give him a chance to play and the Islanders were interested, it seemed like something that made sense for us to help him along and wish him nothing but the best."

Texier, 25, has three goals and eight points this season across just 24 games. Last season, appearing in 78 contests for the Columbus Blue Jackets, he had a career-high 12 goals and 30 points.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Wrexham lost ground in the League One promotion race after a 3-2 home defeat to Stevenage in England's third division on Tuesday.

The Welsh side is attempting to earn a third straight promotion under the ownership of actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

The visitors grabbed an early 2-0 lead at the Racecourse Ground on goals by Dan Kemp and Jamie Reid. Wrexham's Oliver Rathbone cut the deficit in half before Jake Young restored Stevenage's two-goal advantage.

Max Cleworth's header in the 90th minute gave Wrexham hope, but Paul Mullin's shot went over the bar deep into stoppage time.

Wrexham haven't lost a League One home game all season. They remain in third place, six points behind second-place Wycombe, who won Tuesday. Both teams have 18 games remaining.

Birmingham retained their league lead at the top after a 1-0 victory over fourth-place Huddersfield. NFL great Tom Brady is a minority shareholder of Birmingham, who lead Wycombe by two points with two games in hand.

"HUGE win today boys," Brady said in a social media post.

The top two teams earn automatic promotion to the Championship, and the next four enter a playoff for one other promotion spot.

Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury has elected not to pursue a head coaching job in 2024, a team source confirmed to ESPN.

Kingsbury's decision takes him out of the running for the open position with the New Orleans Saints, who are the only team left with a head coaching vacancy.

Kingsbury had previously declined all potential coaching interviews while the Commanders were still in the playoffs, making him a long shot to take a job this year.

Because Kingsbury did not take any initial interviews, league rules would have prevented him from interviewing until after the Super Bowl was over if they had made it to that game. Kingsbury was available to do interviews after the Commanders were eliminated Sunday but opted against doing any this year.

Kingsbury is one of three coaches officially requested by the Saints that has later withdrawn from their interview process. Aaron Glenn, who played for the Saints in 2008 and coached there from 2016 to 2020, never made it to a second interview. Glenn interviewed virtually with the Saints but was hired by the New York Jets after interviewing with them in person.

Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, whose team was eliminated in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, opted to stay in Buffalo instead of pursuing a second interview in New Orleans. Brady was an assistant coach in New Orleans during the 2018-2019 seasons.

The remaining Saints candidates are believed to be New York Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver and Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, who all did second, in-person interviews with the team. Former Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is also a potential candidate but has not yet interviewed.

Kingsbury, the Arizona Cardinals' head coach from 2019 to 2022, said in December that he'd like to be a head coach again "at some point." Kingsbury is still being paid by Arizona after the team signed him to a five-year extension in 2022 but fired him less than a year later.

Kingsbury made it clear to people that he has been happy with his situation in Washington because he could just focus on running the offense and not the other responsibilities that come with being a head coach. He has also enjoyed working with rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, who is considered the favorite to earn Offensive Rookie of the Year honors, and told ESPN last month "it would take a lot to leave this kid."

"I didn't get into this to be a head coach again," Kingsbury told ESPN last month. "It's not about money. It never has been about money. So, that won't move me at all. It's just I want to do the best job we can here for those guys and then kind of go from there."

The news that Kingsbury has decided to remain with the Commanders was first reported by Fox Sports.

The NBA announced the player pool Tuesday for the 2025 Rising Stars at NBA All-Star Weekend in San Francisco, and the group features four Frenchmen, including the top picks of the past two drafts in Victor Wembanyama (2023) and Zaccharie Risacher (2024) along with Alex Sarr and Bilal Coulibaly.

The league's annual showcase features the top first- and second-year NBA players as well as NBA G League standouts broken into four teams for a Feb. 14 tournament that consists of three games total.

The player pool is made up of 10 NBA rookies, 11 NBA sophomores and seven G League players. Submitting one ballot per coaching staff that consisted of four frontcourt players, four guards and two additional players at either spot, NBA assistants selected the 21 NBA players in the pool who will be drafted onto three seven-player teams, while the league office picked the seven NBA G-League players that will make up the fourth squad.

2025 NBA Rising Stars rosters released: pic.twitter.com/0e7Bb7CbW4

Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 28, 2025

One of the new wrinkles for Rising Stars in 2025 involves the winning Rising Stars team playing in the All-Star Game mini-tournament on Feb. 16 against the NBA All-Stars. TNT analyst and three-time WNBA champion Candace Parker will serve as honorary GM of the Rising Stars champion, which will be called Team Candace.

The league will conduct the Rising Stars draft on Feb. 4 ahead of the game while the three teams of NBA All-Stars will be drafted by honorary head coaches, who will be announced later.

Once the tournament commences, Team A takes on Team B in the first semifinal matchup, while Team C and Team D meet in the second semifinal contest. The semifinal winners would then face off in a championship game. In the semifinal clashes, the winner will be the first team to reach or surpass 40 points. In the championship, the winner will be the first team to reach or surpass 25 points.

If a player is selected to play in both the NBA All-Star Game and Rising Stars, he will only compete on Feb. 16 for one of the three teams of NBA All-Stars.

The Sacramento Kings are expected to open up talks for a potential De'Aaron Fox trade ahead of the Feb. 6 deadline, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

Fox, 27, has one year left on his contract before he hits free agency in summer 2026.

There will be plenty of suitors for Fox, who made an All-NBA team in 2022-23, but it's believed that the San Antonio Spurs are atop his list of preferred landing spots, league sources told ESPN. Fox and his representation, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, have a target destination in mind ahead of his free agency, those sources said.

The Kings fired head coach Mike Brown last month after the team appeared to be falling short of expectations. Since then, the Kings have won 11 of their past 15 games under interim coach Doug Christie.

Sacramento enters Tuesday night 1 games up on the Golden State Warriors for the final play-in spot in the Western Conference.

Fox has played his entire career in Sacramento and ranks fourth in career points in Kings history -- trailing only Oscar Robertson, Jack Twyman and Mitch Richmond.

In his eighth season in the league, Fox is averaging 25.2 points and 6.2 assists while shooting 46.8% from the field.

FROM THE SOLD-OUT stands in Boston's TD Garden, Terry Pritchard could feel the swell of anticipation building around him as his son checked in to the game with four seconds left before halftime. Seated about nine rows behind the Celtics bench, Terry rose from his seat, along with thousands more, anticipating what might happen next.

It was June 17, 2024, and the Celtics were hosting the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. At that moment in a potential title-clinching game for Boston, Mavericks star Luka Doncic was at the free throw line, trying to convert a three-point play. Celtics guard Payton Pritchard had checked in for Derrick White, with the Celtics comfortably leading by 18 points.

From his perch in a fifth-floor suite above midcourt, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens looked on, and he, like everyone else in the arena -- if not the entire league -- knew what would happen next..

"He'll never not take a heave," Stevens told ESPN of Pritchard. "It's not about what his shooting percentages are. It's about winning. And I love that."

The shots provide huge momentum swings and are often worth more than the point total, Stevens said. Pritchard proved as much in Game 2, when he sank a buzzer-beating 34-footer at the end of the third quarter -- his only points of the game -- that gave the Celtics an eight-point lead.

Boston won, and Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla called it the "play of the game."

With the Celtics seemingly cruising toward their 18th championship in Game 5, Doncic missed his free throw. Celtics big man Al Horford grabbed the rebound with two seconds left, turned his head and immediately passed to Pritchard, who was calling for the ball.

"Here's Pritchard," broadcaster Mike Breen announced, as Pritchard sprinted up court, taking one dribble before entering his shooting motion. "He loves these."

"In the moment of the game and the adrenaline, it doesn't matter how far it is, it just makes you lock in to a whole other level," Pritchard told ESPN. "I don't know how to explain it, but the moment is there and everything slows down -- and I just truly believe that when I put it up, I can make this."

On the bench, Celtics reserves were already celebrating as the ball sailed through the air from half court, raising their arms in anticipation.

"BANG!" Breen announced as the heave splashed through the net, a 49-footer that registered as the longest made shot in the Finals in nearly a quarter century. "Pritchard at the buzzer!"

The Garden erupted.

"I've been in TD Garden now for 12 years of basketball games," Stevens said. "I don't know if I've ever heard it like that -- at that very moment."

A frenetic celebration around Pritchard ensued, and the Celtics went on to win their 18th NBA title. This season has been an extension, an encore celebration for the 28-year-old Pritchard.

He's averaging a career-best 14.1 points and has scored 664 total points off the bench, the most in the NBA.

He has made the seventh-most 3-pointers for any player overall -- on 41.5% shooting. He has been one of the NBA's best fourth-quarter scorers all season. And when Pritchard brings the ball up the floor for the Celtics, they're averaging 1.21 points per possession -- a figure that is sixth best among NBA players who have brought up the ball for 800 or more possessions, according to Second Spectrum tracking.

The others on that list? Cleveland's Darius Garland, Denver's Jamal Murray, Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Dallas' Kyrie Irving and Golden State's Stephen Curry. Of that crew, Pritchard is the only one who comes off the bench. Pritchard is a front-runner for Sixth Man of the Year, a candidate for Most Improved Player and a vital piece of a Celtics team that aims to repeat as champion.

For Pritchard, it's the culmination of a pursuit that began so many years ago.

IN 2015, WHEN Blake Griffin was already a five-time All-Star with the LA Clippers, he received a message from his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma.

Lon Kruger, then the Sooners' men's basketball coach, relayed to Griffin that there was a 16-year-old in Oregon who had verbally committed to Oklahoma, and Kruger wanted Griffin to meet him. Griffin obliged. He gave Pritchard a pass to come to the arena after the Clippers faced the Trail Blazers in Portland, and the two met for the first time.

"He was super shy," Griffin told ESPN. "We talked for a little bit, but I mean, dude, when I say he was scrawny, I was like, man, this kid must be nasty on the court."

Pritchard had long known his appearance didn't exactly convey that he was a high-level player -- let alone someone with NBA aspirations. Growing up, he wrote in notebooks that he wanted to play in the league, but even his father, a former tight end at Oklahoma, wasn't so sure.

"Obviously, he used to get mad at me because I'd tell him, 'Hey, you got to have a plan B in school,'" Terry Pritchard said. "And he'd get mad at me and say, 'I'm going to prove you wrong. You don't believe me.'"

During middle school, Pritchard would set an alarm for 5:30 a.m., enter the family garage and dribble a coarse, weighted ball for up to an hour, sometimes to the point that his fingers bled. During lunch, he'd run around the school track. After school, he'd work out for another hour. For years he did this at least five days a week. He won four state championships at West Linn High School in Oregon, earned various state player of the year honors and became a four-star recruit with offers from blue-blood college programs.

Ultimately, despite the meeting with Griffin, Pritchard chose to stay closer to home to play for Oregon, where he started in the Final Four as a freshman. As a senior, he was named the Pac-12 Player of the Year, was a consensus All-American and won the Bob Cousy Award as the nation's top point guard.

"There was a drive there, a consistency that not many players have," Ducks coach Dana Altman told ESPN. "They give themselves a long stretch off, or a day here, a day there. Payton didn't do that."

From afar, Danny Ainge, then the Celtics' president of basketball operations, paid close attention. He loved Pritchard's shooting, his playmaking and especially his competitiveness, and told ESPN he considered Pritchard as driven as any player he'd ever seen.

Ainge sang Pritchard's praises to other members of the Celtics' front office and made them watch one of his college games three times.

In 2020, the NBA schedule was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, moving the draft from June to November, giving Pritchard an even longer wait than most to be selected. On draft night, the Celtics selected Pritchard, with the 26th pick in the first round.

When Ainge spoke with Pritchard that night, the newest Celtic -- who hadn't been able to play an organized game since March, when Oregon's season was shut down -- said, matter-of-factly, "When can I get to work?"

AROUND THE TEAM, coaches and front-office staff quickly saw how Pritchard challenged Celtics stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to one-on-one sessions after practice. They saw how he'd challenge others to do the same. They heard how he'd return to the practice facility at night for running and shooting workouts. A reputation was quickly established.

"He works as hard as anybody I've ever seen in my 20-plus years of being around the game," said Stevens, who coached Pritchard as a rookie.

"He's the kind of guy that, especially when I was coaching in college, I would have to change or tailor our practice plans because I would know that he's doing way more," Stevens said. "You don't want to take that away from him, because I think he's always been a great worker. I think as he's aged, he's gotten even better about how to work and the right way to approach it. But he's really got to. I mean, he's at the highest echelon of work ethic for sure."

Asked about these workouts, Pritchard cites a player so well known for them that it has become an NBA cliché: Stephen Curry.

"They talk about his shooting. He's unbelievable, right? But ... he never stops moving, so that makes him so hard to guard. By the fourth quarter, when guys are tired of chasing, he's still going the same speed," Pritchard said of Curry. "So at the end of the day, conditioning is really that. ... When you start to get so tired, you start to lose your train of thought and everything goes into that."

Even on a stacked roster with Tatum and Brown and several deep playoff runs of experience, Pritchard averaged 19.2 minutes per game as a rookie, eighth best on the team.

As the season progressed, he became a steady double-digit scorer. After his rookie campaign, Pritchard earned all-summer league first team for the Celtics -- and then scored 92 points in a Portland pro-am game the following month.

The following season, when Stevens transitioned to an executive role, Pritchard's minutes dropped, slightly, to 14.1 per game, under first-year head coach Ime Udoka. The Celtics reached the NBA Finals, where they fell to Golden State in six games.

In July 2022, still reeling after the Finals loss, the Celtics sought more of a scoring punch around Tatum and Brown and added veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon.

That acquisition helped create a logjam at the guard position already crowded with Marcus Smart and Derrick White. The following month, the team added Griffin, who was immediately struck by how hard Pritchard -- the once-scrawny kid he helped recruit -- worked on his game.

"This kid will play one-on-one with anyone at any hour of the day, all day, every day," Griffin said. "And he is just torching guys. I mean, he's going at [Brown], going at [Tatum], he's going at guys. And not to say they don't get some stops every now and then. And not to say they weren't going at people, too, but I was so impressed with just his mindset and then also his work ethic. This guy works his ass off."

"That has been his great separator his whole life," Stevens said. "It continues to be."

Still, Pritchard saw his minutes sink to 13.1 per game in his third season -- when Mazzulla took over for Udoka, who was suspended for violating team policies -- and he played in just 48 regular-season games after averaging 68 the two seasons before.

It was agonizing. To fall further down the bench after all the work he'd put in was demoralizing.

"He was losing his mind not getting minutes," a team source said.

Pritchard called his father, Terry, often.

"Just wait your time," Terry told his son. "I don't care if you're getting in for one minute -- just be the best player on the court for that one minute."

Griffin saw the toll, too.

"Hey, just stick with it, man," Griffin told Pritchard. "Just stick with it. I get your frustration."

Pritchard didn't -- or couldn't. When the February trade deadline approached, Pritchard asked to be traded.

The front office made calls to try to honor the request, team sources said, but no call yielded enough interest to warrant a deal, and Pritchard remained a Celtic.

"I had to sit behind a lot of people, a lot of good guards that honestly I've learned a lot from," Pritchard said. "But it was tough to sit there for those times."

Pritchard continued to attack practices, post-practice one-on-one sessions, scrimmages and pickup games. In their final two regular-season games, the Celtics sat several starters before the 2023 playoffs, and Pritchard made the most of his minutes. On April 7, he scored 22 points in a win over Toronto. Two days later, in a win over Atlanta, Pritchard made nine 3-pointers and tallied 30 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists for his first triple-double. The Celtics' front office took note.

"The way his career has gone as far as playing time and not playing time, he's always handled it the right way," Mazzulla told reporters after the game. "He has a competitiveness, a professionalism and work ethic about him."

Internally, there was belief that Payton was ready for a bigger role, and, that offseason, the Celtics turned over their guard depth, first trading Smart, then Brogdon, and acquiring former Bucks All-Star Jrue Holiday. Then, in October 2023, they signed Pritchard to a four-year, $30 million deal.

BY THE MORNING of October 28, 2024, before facing the Celtics in Boston, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers went over the game plan with his team.

He specifically circled Pritchard's name.

"This guy comes in," Rivers said, "and he's a game changer."

His words proved prophetic. When Pritchard caught the ball with about six seconds left in the third quarter and dribbled up the court, Rivers' hands dropped to his knees. When Pritchard pulled up from the right wing for a step-back 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left, Rivers watched it go through the net, and his gaze sank to the floor, defeated.

It was Pritchard's sixth 3-pointer of the game, and it came during a decisive 18-2 run that stretched from the third quarter and into the fourth -- a "gut-punch," Pritchard said after.

"Payton, what he does speaks for itself. He's a killer," the Celtics' Brown said after. "And he's always looking to put pressure on the defense. And we just played through him tonight. And we love that."

Pritchard has 16 games with five or more 3-pointers when coming off the bench this season, the most in a season in Celtics history and one game shy of matching the NBA record. He also ranks in the top five in made catch-and-shoot 3-pointers and catch-and-shoot 3-point field goal percentage this season. And his average made 3-pointer distance is 26.7 feet, about the same as Curry.

In some ways, it is fitting that his heaves and long 3-pointers have gained folk-hero acclaim, because Pritchard always heard that his dream of making the NBA was just that. That part of him has never left.

"I am 100% still the same person," Pritchard said. "Every day, I'm trying to prove that I can still reach another level. I can still show people what I'm trying to become. That's why I'm always challenging the best that we have -- like Jaylen and Jayson. I'm trying to become as good as them one day. That's why I challenge them. I'm trying to keep taking steps to better myself, which, at the end of the day, is only going to better our team."

Two months after the Celtics' championship win, Pritchard headed to receive another ring, this one at a ceremony officiated by Griffin.

ON A WARM Saturday in August 2024, Pritchard stood at the Wychmere Beach Club on the elbow of Cape Cod, wearing a white linen suit with a peak lapel. Next to him, in a Vera Wang wedding dress, was his soon-to-be wife, Emma MacDonald. And next to them, in a navy tuxedo with a shawl collar, was Griffin.

Before them were hundreds of family and friends, including many members of the Celtics organization, along with the team's newest championship trophy.

Pritchard had asked Griffin to lead the ceremony in part because Griffin had played a key role in Pritchard's relationship with his wife, even attending one of their first dates, in Dallas, during a Celtics road trip. ("Yo, come to dinner with us," Pritchard told Griffin. "I don't want it to be weird.")

But it was also meaningful for Pritchard because he recalled how much Griffin consoled him during their lone season together, when Pritchard ultimately asked for a trade request.

"I love Blake," Pritchard said. "I owe him a lot, just to help me get through that year. Just having somebody as a positive figure and as big as the person he is to really try to help me through that. I feel like he really took me under his wing."

That season together in Boston marked Griffin's 16th and final year in the NBA. Retired now, the six-time NBA All-Star has enjoyed Pritchard's success from afar. "He's one of those guys that makes you go harder because you see how hard he's going," Griffin said.

Pritchard is still searching for balance. His obsession with the game remains. "I live it, breathe it. I think about it," he said. "My wife, sometimes she'll be talking to me and then she's like, 'Oh my God, you're thinking about basketball right now.' And I really am. My mind's always consumed with it and I'll put everything into it to become what I want to be."

Fly-half Sam Prendergast "trained fully" despite a dead leg as Ireland reported a clean bill of health before Saturday's Six Nations opener at home to England.

Prop Tadhg Furlong has already been ruled out of the game, but all 36 players in interim head coach Simon Easterby's squad took part in Tuesday's training at the team's camp in Portugal.

Prendergast had his leg strapped for the session but assistant coach Andrew Goodman said he is "sure" the 21-year-old will be "all right" for the visit of Steve Borthwick's side to Dublin.

The Leinster number 10 made his Test debut from the bench against Fiji in November before starting the games against Fiji and Australia ahead of Jack Crowley.

"It's been a great couple of months for Sam," said Goodman.

"Just the game experience he's managed to gather up both with Ireland, first with Emerging Ireland, then Ireland, then some big Champions Cup games away to La Rochelle, home to Bath, so it's been a great period for him to get real game experience.

"I know he valued the time at Leinster when he was training alongside the senior squad as an academy member, but to get out there and feel it for himself, there's been huge growth in his game."