As reported by severaloutlets, the Trump administration dismissed members of the National Science Board (NSB), which is tasked with establishing policies for the National Science Foundation. It’s not clear how many members have been dismissed. According to screenshots shared with The Washington Post, board members received a message that their position was “terminated, effective immediately.
The NSB establishes policies for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the independent US agency responsible for apportioning about 25 percent of federal support towards research conducted by the country’s colleges and universities. The foundation has existed for over 75 years and has contributed to the development of MRIs and cellphones, among other breakthroughs. Up to 25 active members can head the NSB, however, the current board only has 22 members; the NSF’s former director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, abruptly resigned last year.
In response, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren called the latest decision a “real bozo the clown move” in a statement. “This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” Lofgren, who also serves as the Ranking Member of the House’s Science, Space and Technology Committee, added in the statement. “It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation.”
It’s unclear if the NSB’s next scheduled board meeting for May 5 will take place. We’ve reached out to NSB for additional details and will update if we hear back.
“Michael” glided to the top of box office charts with $217 million globally, the biggest opening weekend of all time for any musical biopic.
Those ticket sales include a mighty $120.4 million from 82 international markets, as well as $97 million in North America. Despite the mostly negative reviews from critics, “Michael” has exceeded all box office expectations; heading into the weekend, the film about the rise of Michael Jackson was projected to earn roughly $75 million domestically and $150 million globally.
“Michael” cost nearly $200 million to produce after extensive re-writes to the film’s third act. Lionsgate, Universal (the movie’s international distributor) and the Michael Jackson estate split those expenses. Although it’s one of the most expensive musical biopics of all time, “Michael” is already a blockbuster. Ticket sales are expected to exceed $700 million worldwide by the end of its run.
Previously, 2018’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” held the record for largest worldwide start for a musical biopic with $122 million. That film, about the band Queen, became a massive blockbuster with $910 million by the end of its theatrical run. “Michael” also ranks as the year’s second-biggest global debut, behind Universal’s sequel “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” with $372.5 million.
“Michael” got a jump on the weekend by launching on Wednesday in most foreign markets. Top territories include the United Kingdom and Ireland with $15.6 million, France with $10.1 million, Mexico with $9.7 million, Brazil with $8.2 million and Italy with $8 million. It has yet to open in Japan.
Antoine Fuqua directed “Michael,” which explores the performer’s early days in the Jackson 5 to becoming one of the biggest entertainers on the planet. Jaafar Jackson, the singer’s real-life nephew, stars as Michael Jackson in his acting debut, with Colman Domingo and Nia Long portraying parents, Joe and Katherine. Some critics have knocked “Michael” for taking a sanitized look at Jackson’s life; the story ends before the singer had faced allegations of child sexual abuse.
“Audiences like it, but reviews are weak,” says David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe. “Overseas numbers are outstanding so far.”
Elsewhere at the box office, two other films notched major milestones as “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” cleared the $800 million mark and “Project Hail Mary” crossed $600 million worldwide.
“Mario” added a notable $36.6 million from 83 foreign markets in its fourth weekend of release, boosting the overseas tally to $444 million and global total to $831 million. Meanwhile “Project Hail Mary,” a space epic starring Ryan Gosling, collected a stellar $12.2 million in its sixth frame, bringing its tally to $308 million internationally and $613.3 million worldwide.
If you could get on the list, it was the place to be.
Judging from the line snaking down Robertson Blvd. into the wee hours on Saturday night, many did — but not everyone made it inside to catch a close-up glimpse of Madonna, who strolled behind the decks at 12:53 a.m., sending the packed crowd into a frenzy.
The pop icon, 67, previewed two new songs at the (not-so) surprise appearance at Club Confessions — a one-night party at the legendary Abbey nightclub in West Hollywood.
Doubling as a birthday bash for Tristan Schukraft, the CEO of telehealth company MISTR and owner of the storied gay Mecca, the event gave fans some of the earliest tastes of her next era.
Wearing a powder-pink bustier — reminiscent of the archival piece she wore at Coachella that was later stolen — she rolled out two previously unheard cuts: “Love Sensation” and a track titled “Freedom” that played like a demo and quickly became the night’s centerpiece.
Her recently released “I Feel So Free” and 2005’s “Hung Up” also surfaced in the set. Stuart Price, the architect of 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor and Confessions II — which drops July 3 and marks Madonna’s return to her previous home Warner Records — kept the beats coming.
Before him, Romy — also fresh off a Coachella appearance with her band The xx — and DJ Mez Monty took turns at the decks. Romy spun remixes of Ariana Grande’s “Into You” and her own duet with bandmate Jamie xx, “Higher Places,” while Monty teased the crowd with Madonna’s “Get Together” and “Thief of Hearts.”
From behind the booth, Madonna worked the room like a drill sergeant. “Don’t wait. Take it. Don’t wait. Take it. Take your freedom! Put your hands up! Put your hands up!” she shouted, before admonishing the crowd to “put your phones down” and be in the music. At another point, she led the room in a call-and-repeat: “There’s nothing that we cannot do!”
The guest list reflected Madonna’s enduring crossover pull, drawing daughter Lourdes Leon, boyfriend Akeem Morris, Cara Delevingne, Tom Daley, Tori Spelling, Lily Allen, Sky Ferreira, Addison Rae, Kali Uchis, Lola Young and Vivian Jenna Wilson.
RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Willam, Trinity the Tuck, Morgan McMichaels, Gottmik and Symone were also in the mix, as was TikTok creator Harry Daniels, who was reportedly waiting at the door to serenade her on arrival.
Madonna last released a studio album in 2019 with Madame X.
Frankel told Entertainment Weekly that he tried “sneaking” Grenier in for a cameo. But ultimately, “it was just too late in our production schedule to make it happen.”
In March, Grenier told Page Six that “it was a disappointment that I didn’t get the call to be in the sequel, but I also understand there’s some backlash with Nate, the character, so that might have something to do with it. But I think that just leaves room for a spinoff.” He added, “We’re all fans of the movie, whether or not we’re in it.”
Grenier also appeared in a Starbucks commercial poking fun at his role as Nate, which Frankel commented on, saying, “I’m thrilled that he [Grenier] did a Starbucks commercial, which was really funny and so self-effacing. I love the humility and the comedy of it!”
Frankel did not share what Grenier’s possible plotlines in the sequel could have been. The original “Devil Wears Prada” was released in 2006, starring Hathaway, Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, Emily Blunt as Emily Charlton, and Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling, all of whom reprised their roles in the sequel.
Nate and Andy’s relationship has been debated by fans who consider his behaviour in the movie selfish, getting upset with Andy as she starts pursuing her career at Runway Magazine. The film ends with their relationship status open to interpretation, having previously broken up in the movie.
Premiering May 1, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” follows Andy as she returns to Runway Magazine 20 years after quitting her job as Miranda’s personal assistant. As the publication faces a shifting media landscape, Andy and Miranda team up with fellow former assistant Emily, now head of a luxury brand, to buy advertising that could save Runway from ruin.
Lending platform Aave has raised about $160 million it needs to cover the $200 million in bad debt left behind by the year’s largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploit, Arkham posted on X on Saturday.
“$AAVE have so far raised $160M to cover the bad debt from the Kelp DAO Exploit, at defiunited.eth,” the blockchain analytics platform wrote. “The largest contributors are Mantle and $AAVE DAO, who together raised 55,000 $ETH or $127M.”
Last week, Aave and several major crypto firms announced a coordinated recovery effort to stabilize DeFi markets after a $292 million security breach left the crypto borrowing sector’s largest lender facing a financial crisis.
Called DeFi United and led by Aave service providers, the effort’s goal is to restore support for rsETH, the yield-bearing derivative token of ether ($ETH) at the core of the exploit.
“I’m personally contributing 5,000 $ETH to DeFi United as we continue working together with partners,” said Aave founder Stani Kulecho. His personal contribution at ether’s current price of roughly $2,346 is worth $11,730,000.
The exploit is traced back to a KelpDAO integration vulnerability with LayerZero, where an attacker minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens. That left Aave with impaired collateral, triggering a run on deposits as lenders rushed to exit, ultimately withdrawing $10 billion.
The effort to erase the bad debt is focused mostly on stabilizing the system with a coordinated bailout to recapitalize rsETH and mitigate losses.
The second-largest exploit this year took place late March, when an attacker drained at least $270 million from the Drift Protocol on Solana by abusing a legitimate feature called ‘durable nonces,’ rather than exploiting a code bug or stolen keys.
In a recent interview with Anthony Pompliano, experienced macro investor and founder of Jordi Visser Labs, Jordi Visser, explained that the global economy is under unprecedented “double pressure.”
According to Visser, Bitcoin possesses a unique immunity to both rising inflation and the deflationary wave brought about by technological advancements.
Contrary to general market expectations, Visser argues that inflation will not fall, pointing out that manufacturing and services PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) data have reached their highest levels since 2022.
Visser says, “I am confident that consumer inflation (CPI) will rise above 4% in the next three months,” predicting that the commodity bull market and logistics bottlenecks will continue to push prices higher.
Related NewsA Bitcoin Developer Has Raised the Banner of Rebellion: He Plans to Create a Bitcoin Clone and Distribute Satoshi Nakamoto’s Funds to Users
Visser attributes the decline in software (SaaS) stocks to the “margin narrowing” created by artificial intelligence. Referring to Jeff Bezos’ famous quote, “Your profit margin is my opportunity,” the investor argues that terminal value (the company’s infinite life value) no longer exists in code-based businesses. As AI reduces software production costs to near zero, this is turning into a deflationary disaster for traditional software companies.
According to Visser, Bitcoin stands as the “winner” right in the middle of these two opposing poles. As global liquidity increases and negative real interest rates (inflation being higher than interest rates) become permanent, BTC is gaining value as the most vulnerable growth asset. In a world where software and technology stocks are losing value, investors are turning to Bitcoin, the only asset where “rarity,” not code, is valuable. Visser attributes Bitcoin’s divergence from software stocks to this situation.
Visser stated that portfolio management has now entered an era of “scarcity capitalism,” and shared that he focuses on five main themes: semiconductors, power (electrical) equipment, chemicals, physical servers, and Bitcoin.
Visser argues that within the next 20 years, artificial intelligence will challenge capitalism and the fiat currency system as we know it, and that in this “world of abundance,” the only truly rare asset that can be exchanged will be Bitcoin.
In another win for a non-franchise title, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic pulled off a moon walk for the ages at the worldwide box office with a record-smashing $97 million domestic opening and $120.4 million foreign launch for a global blast-off of $217.4 million.
Michael, coming in nearly $30 million ahead of expectations in North America, boasts the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic, and the biggest globally for a music biopic after stealing the show from Universal’s Straight Outta Compton ($60.1 million) and Fox’s Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody ($55 million), not adjusted for inflation.
Other milestones: it marks Lionsgate‘s best debut since the pandemic and its sixth biggest ever. And it danced past the opening of fellow 2026 box office surprise Project Hail Mary to mark the second-biggest start of the year in North America behind Universal’s Super Mario sequel. (Don’t feel too sorry for Amazon MGM’s Ryan Gosling-led Hail Mary, which celebrated its own milestone in crossing the $300 million mark domestically.)
Endorsed by the Jackson estate, Michaelhit a major delay when the decision was made by producer Graham King and Lionsgate to spend tens of millions reworking the third act to avoid mention of the allegations of child sexual abuse that engulfed the King of Pop in scandal before his death in 2009. All told, the final budget of $200 million appears worth it. Universal is handling the film overseas on behalf of Lionsgate, save for Japan.
Phenomenal world-of-mouth is more than making up for generally lousy reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes critics score is 40 percent).
By Saturday, it was clear the movie wasn’t just appointment viewing for hard-core fans, and that strong word of mouth is more than making for one of the biggest divides in recent memory between critics and audiences: the film is graced with 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes — the best ever for the genre; PostTrak exit scores are in the low 90s and a definite recommend of 85 percent, levels rarely seen. And while it didn’t earn a perfect grade on CinemaScore, it did earn a good enough A-.
Michael‘s success is a result of playing across all ethnicities and age groups. While it did over-index among Black moviegoers (38 percent), Latinos accounted for a sizable 26 percent of the audience, followed by white moviegoers at 26 percent, according to PostTrak.
Overseas — where Jackson is an even bigger draw — Michael is likewise off to a record-breaking start with $120.4 million. It opened in virtually every corner of the globe. One exception is Japan, where Jackson’s fanbase is enormous. (The 2011 Michael Jackson posthumous concert doc This Is It earned $196 million at the foreign office; Japan’s contribution was $57 million).
Mohamed Salah has become the latest player to sustain an injury weeks ahead of the World Cup, adding to his team’s and supporters’ woes as Egypt return to the tournament after missing out on the previous edition.
Salah suffered a hamstring injury during Liverpool’s 3-1 win over Crystal Palace in the English Premier League on Saturday, with a top Egyptian football official confirming the forward will miss the rest of his club’s season.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
The Egyptian talisman is not the only player to have suffered a blow ahead of the global tournament, and joins an increasing list of major players spending the rest of the club football season on the sidelines.
With the World Cup kicking off in less than two months in Canada, Mexico and the United States, several players find themselves in a race against time to overcome injuries and prove their fitness.
Title contenders and former champions Spain, Brazil and Germany will be among those hoping some of their key players recover in time for the tournament, which begins on June 11.
Here are some of the big names who have sustained injuries ahead of the World Cup:
Mohamed Salah: Egypt
The Egyptian and Liverpool forward was in pain as he limped off the field and held his hamstring after being substituted in the league game.
While his club manager Arne Slot refused to say whether Salah would miss the rest of Liverpool’s season, his national team’s director confirmed that the 33-year-old will be out for four weeks.
“We have to wait and see how his injury is and if he is able to return to play,” Slot told reporters after the match.
“What I do know about Mo is that throughout all of these years, he has taken such good care of his body that he will have the minimum time required to recover from an injury,” he added.
However, Egyptian football official Ibrahim Hassan confirmed that Salah’s club season was over.
“He has suffered a hamstring tear and will require four weeks of treatment,” Hassan told the Reuters news agency.
Hassan said Salah would be fit for the World Cup, where Egypt face Belgium, New Zealand and Iran in Group G.
Salah is no stranger to pre-World Cup blows, having injured his shoulder before the 2018 edition in the Champions League final. He missed the Pharaohs’ opening game, but recovered for the remaining two group matches and scored two goals in a campaign that ended at the group stage.
Egypt at World Cup 2026: Belgium (June 15), New Zealand (June 21), Iran (June 26)
Lamine Yamal: Spain
All eyes will be on the award-winning football prodigy, but his World Cup debut has been thrown into doubt after a hamstring injury in his left leg (biceps femoris muscle).
Barcelona announced that Lamine Yamal’s domestic season in Spain is over, but the international forward should be fit to represent Spain at this summer’s World Cup.
The 18-year-old’s participation is still doubtful since it could take four to six weeks to recover as he follows a “conservative treatment plan”.
Yamal was an integral part of the Spain side that lifted the Euro 2024 title with their 2-1 win against England. Then just 16 years of age, he showed speed and guile on the ball that marked him as one of the hottest properties in global football.
Spain at World Cup 2026: Cape Verde (June 15), Saudi Arabia (June 21), Uruguay (June 27)
Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Serge Gnabry: Germany
The 33-year-old first-choice goalkeeper for Germany has spent more time recovering than playing this year after a severe hamstring injury in February sent him into rehabilitation.
German national team coach Julian Nagelsmann told Marc-Andre ter Stegen in March that his chances of playing for the national side were “very slim” and that he had to speed up his recovery to be fit for the tournament in June.
The four-time champions could rely on Oliver Baumann in Stegen’s absence.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Serge Gnabry took to social media this week to announce he would be “supporting the boys from home”. The 30-year-old suffered a torn adductor muscle in his right thigh that also ruled him out of Bayern Munich’s remaining Bundesliga season.
Germany at World Cup 2026: Curacao (June 14), Ivory Coast (June 20), Ecuador (June 25)
[Al Jazeera]
Estevao, Rodrygo and Eder Militao: Brazil
Brazil and Chelsea forward Estevao has also been ruled out of the remaining Premier League season after suffering a hamstring injury that left the teen in tears as he was taken off the pitch.
Chelsea’s interim coach Calum McFarlane expressed his hope for the 19-year-old to make it to the Brazilian squad, though he cautioned there was no guarantee yet.
Estevao joined Chelsea from Palmeiras last year and has scored eight goals this season. He was expected to be part of Carlo Ancelotti’s squad for the World Cup after scoring five times in his last six international appearances.
Unlike Estevao, Brazil forward Rodrygo has been decisively ruled out of the World Cup squad due to a torn meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee.
“One of the worst days of my life, how much I always feared this injury,” the 25-year-old wrote in a social media post after the setback in March.
Rodrygo made five appearances for Brazil at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Yet another blow to Brazil comes from a hamstring injury sustained by Eder Militao during Real Madrid’s 2–1 win over Deportivo Alaves.
The 28-year-old defender is set to undergo surgery, and according to reports, will not be available for Brazil’s World Cup campaign as previously expected.
Brazil at World Cup 2026: Morocco (June 13), Haiti (June 19), Scotland (June 24)
Hugo Ekitike: France
France striker Hugo Ekitike has also been ruled out of the World Cup entirely after tearing his Achilles tendon in April during the Champions League defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.
He recently underwent surgery, which Liverpool manager Arne Slot said went well, although recovery and a return to the pitch for the 23-year-old could take as long as 2027.
France at World Cup 2026: Senegal (June 16), Iraq (June 22), Norway (June 26)
Wataru Endo and Takumi Minamino: Japan
A question mark lingers over the participation of Japan captain and Liverpool defender Wataru Endo, who has not played since sustaining an ankle injury at Sunderland in February. Liverpool manager Slot recently provided an update, saying the 33-year-old midfielder may return just in time for the end of the season.
Teammate Takumi Minamino is also in the same situation after rupturing his ACL in December.
Japan at World Cup 2026: Netherlands (June 14), Tunisia (June 20), Sweden (June 25)
The easiest take after a $290 million exploit and a roughly $13 billion slide in DeFi total value locked is that decentralized finance is broken again. It is also probably the laziest.
The KelpDAO exploit over the weekend was serious. It appears to have started with a targeted attack on infrastructure used in LayerZero’s verification stack, not a smart contract bug as commonly seen in other exploits. LayerZero has preliminarily linked the incident to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and said the attack succeeded because Kelp had opted for a single-verifier setup despite repeated recommendations to use a more resistant configuration. The exploit left rsETH (a liquid staking token issued by KelpDAO) unbacked and triggered fears that bad debt would spill into lending markets, especially Aave’s WETH pool (where users borrow wrapped ether against collateral).
And yet the more interesting story is not that DeFi was hit. It is that DeFi is still here.
Capital fled quickly after the breach. Aave alone experienced $8.45 billion in outflows over 48 hours, while broader DeFi TVL fell into the mid-$80 billion range, roughly back to where the sector sat around this point last year. In other words, this was a sharp repricing of risk, not as destructive as some are making out.
Aave, the largest DeFi lending market, had accumulated significant rsETH as collateral in the weeks before the exploit as users built leveraged positions. The scale of that TVL drop also warrants some context. A $292 million theft does not directly produce a $13 billion decline unless a meaningful portion of that TVL was already recycled collateral. Much of Aave’s $ETH exposure heading into the weekend was concentrated in looping strategies, where users deposit liquid restaking tokens, borrow $ETH against them, swap for more restaking tokens, and repeat. In other words, the same pile of assets may be counted multiple times in the TVL calculation. That leverage inflates TVL on the way up and unwinds sharply during events like this. The actual net capital loss is likely a fraction of the headline figure, though the exact amount is difficult to isolate given how deeply looping strategies are embedded in DeFi’s TVL calculations.
Those strategies were themselves partly a product of a yield environment that had already stopped making sense. As of early April, Aave was offering 2.61% APY on USDC deposits, below the 3.14% available on idle cash at Interactive Brokers, a traditional financial brokerage. The risk premium that historically justified DeFi’s complexity and smart contract exposure had largely disappeared. With organic yield insufficient, leverage filled the gap, and that concentration is what made the rsETH contagion as damaging as it was. Data from DefiLlama shows that reETH balances on Aave had grown rapidly in the weeks leading up to the exploit, reaching nearly 580,000 tokens ($1.3 billion), evidence that the leverage buildup made the subsequent unwind so sharp.
Crypto has survived worse
The phrase “DeFi is dead” gets wheeled out after every hack because the failures are visible and immediate, while the recovery is slower and less cinematic. But crypto has seen worse. Terra collapsed and vaporized confidence across the sector. Wormhole and Ronin lost roughly $1 billion each. Multichain unraveled.
“DeFi didn’t die when Terra collapsed and caused billions in liquidations and losses,” wrote a pseudonymous trader on X. “DeFi didn’t die when Wormhole and Ronin got drained for around $1 billion. DeFi didn’t die when Multichain bridge assets were stolen.”
More recently, Bybit suffered what was widely described as the largest crypto theft on record, losing around $1.5 billion last February, yet it continued operating, processed a surge in withdrawals, restored reserves and still handles billions of dollars in trading volume each day.
The repricing of trust
0xNGMI, founder of DefiLlama, told CoinDesk the losses are significant but unlikely to be existential. “Aave has many recourses to cover the loss, including its treasury and taking loans, and I think those will have to be used to protect the protocol,” he said. “Overall a significant loss but one that will be recovered. The biggest issue will be the impact on risk premiums that are assigned to DeFi.”
Those risk premiums are a real and lasting cost. Capital will demand more compensation for sitting in onchain systems whose attack surface now extends beyond code
Still, repricing is not the same thing as collapse. “Some of the money will come back,” 0xNGMI said. “We saw this before in Aave when rumors of a hack appeared. It’s always the best strategy to withdraw and redeposit later as the cost of that is tiny and the reward very large.” Some deposits will not return, but historically deposit outflows during stress events reverse as conditions stabilize, as evidence after Terra’s collapse in 2021.
There is also evidence that capital is not simply leaving DeFi. It is rotating. Spark offers one example. Spark’s strategy lead, who goes by monetsupply.eth,said the protocol delisted rsETH and other low-utilization assets in January, a move that may have cost it business and $ETH-looping activity to Aave at the time. Under current conditions, however, SparkLend still has ample $ETH withdrawal liquidity while Aave is experiencing shortages across several markets. Over the weekend Spark TVL jumped from $1.8 billion to $2.9 billion, demonstrating clear capital rotation.
The more interesting critique, raised by some builders after the exploit, is not that DeFi failed but that it has become too timid. If the sector is going to ask users to bear infrastructure risk, smart contract risk and governance risk for low single-digit yields, the product set starts to look less compelling. With that in mind, Kelp is not the end of DeFi. It is a wake-up call for builders to build safer systems while continuing to offer real world use cases.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are one one of the most dominant, two-year runs in NBA history, and the dominance continued with a 121-109 victory in Game 3 of their first round series with the Phoenix Suns on Saturday afternoon.
The Thunder were without Jalen Williams, who suffered a hamstring strain three days earlier. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t need much help.
The reigning MVP scored a career-playoff-high 42 points, shooting an amazing 15-for-18 from the field and 11-for-12 from the free throw line, adding eight assists. The Thunder continue to score efficiently against what was a top-10 defense in the regular season, and Gilgeous-Alexander’s performance was just the seventh 40-point playoff game in NBA history where the player had a true shooting percentage over 90%.
Playing at home for the first time, the Suns led by nine points late in the first quarter. But the Thunder closed the period on an 18-4 run and were in control most of the way after that.
Here are some notes, numbers and film as the champs improved to 11-0 in first-round games over the last three years:
1. Gilgeous-Alexander is too much from mid-range
Even when he won the Kia MVP award last season, Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t as good of a mid-range shooter as he was this year, when he shot an incredible 197-for-359 (54.9%) between the paint and the 3-point line. That was the fourth-best mark for a player with at least 300 mid-range attempts in the 29 seasons for which we have shot-location data; the only three better ones are held by Kevin Durant.
On Saturday, Gilgeous-Alexander was 6-for-7 from mid-range, and his best work was done over the last six minutes of the second quarter, when the Thunder took full control of Game 3.
Collin Gillespie has been Gilgeous-Alexander’s primary defender for most of this series, but he was getting the business. So the Suns actually assigned starting center Oso Ighodaro to the MVP for a stretch late in the second.
Gilgeous-Alexander proceeded to target Devin Booker in the pick-and-roll, getting to his mid-range pull-up:
On the next possession, he rejected a screen, beat Ighodaro off the dribble, and drew a foul on Booker. Then, attacking Booker again, he got an open 3 for Jaylin Williams.
Grayson Allen made his series debut on Saturday and was not spared. Gilgeous-Alexander attacked him to generate a layup for Alex Caruso and to get to another mid-range pull-up:
Finally, the Suns sent a double-team at Gilgeous-Alexander in the middle of the floor. The result was an open corner 3 for Caruso.
Again, the Suns ranked ninth defensively, and the Thunder have scored at least 120 points per 100 possessions in all three games of this series. Overall, they’ve scored 10.9 per 100 more than Phoenix allowed in the regular season.
2. Thunder handle the pressure
The biggest strength of the Suns’ defense was forcing turnovers. They ranked third in opponent turnover rate, forcing 16.5 per 100 possessions, having seen the biggest jump (by a wide margin) from last season.
But now they’re facing the team that has committed the fewest turnovers per 100 possessions in each of the last two seasons. And the Thunder have been even better at taking care of the ball in this series.
Over the three games, the champs have committed just 8.9 turnovers per 100 possessions, what would be tied for the third-lowest rate for any team in any playoff series in the 30 years for which we have play-by-play data. They’ve taken their opponents’ biggest strength and turned it into a major weakness.
According to tracking data, the Suns rank fourth in these playoffs in average pick-up distance, so they’re applying pressure. But it’s not working on the Thunder, who had just two live-ball turnovers in Game 3 on Saturday.
Shooting is the most important thing in this game, but you there are other ways to boost your efficiency and the Thunder have done it by taking care of the ball.
3. Best bench in basketball
It was a little bit of a surprise that Ajay Mitchell started in place of Jalen Williams on Saturday, given that Cason Wallace started 42 more games than Mitchell (58-16) in the regular season. Mitchell was the Thunder’s second leading scorer (15 points) in Game 3, but shot just 5-for-20, forcing some tough shots along the way.
The Thunder’s new starting lineup had played just 37 total minutes (over seven games) together in the regular season and was outscored by four points on Saturday. But the champs outscored the Suns by 16 points with at least one reserve on the floor.
Even without Williams to run the second-unit offense, the Thunder outscored the Suns by two points (20-18) in Gilgeous-Alexander’s 10 minutes on the bench. The shooting wasn’t great (8-for-22, including 1-for-7 from 3-point range), but they didn’t commit any turnovers when the MVP sat.
They used the same five-man unit (Mitchell, Wallace, Jared McCain, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein) for those entire 10 minutes. Mitchell scored seven of his 15 points and McCain scored all of his seven in those no-SGA minutes, with a couple of SGA-esque buckets included.
The Thunder have had the league’s No. 1 bench in each of the last two seasons, and though their versatility is a little compromised with the absence of Williams, they’re never dependent on the success of any particular lineup. Still, it will be interesting to see if Mitchell remains the starter going forward.
4. Booker still can’t get going
Dillon Brooks (33 points) and Jalen Green (26) were again the Suns’ leading scorers on Saturday, and that’s by the Thunder’s design. The league’s No. 1 defense has made Devin Booker its No. 1 priority, making sure he plays in a crowd and has a hard time finding open shots.
When he’s used a ball-screen, he hasn’t seen any kind of advantage for himself:
The Suns have bee able to leverage the attention on Booker to get good shots for his teammates. Early in the third quarter on Saturday, there was no weak-side help on an Ighodaro roll to the rim, because Dort stayed attached to Booker in the corner:
But the Suns haven’t been able to find enough of those kinds of openings to keep up with the Thunder. And at 20.3 points per game, this is the lowest-scoring playoff series of Booker’s career. His true shooting percentage of 55.1% would be his third worst mark of the 10 series that he’s played in.
The Suns first chance to avoid a sweep is Game 4 on Monday (9:30 ET, Peacock).
