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No. 18 Saint Louis ended its 88-75 win over VCU on a power play Friday, thanks to a wild brawl shortly before time expired.

The fun began with Billikens guard Quentin Jones trying to dribble out the clock with his team up by 19 points. VCU’s Nyk Lewis apparently wasn’t happy about that, as he stole the ball, took a few steps and jacked up a half-court shot, which resulted in SLU star Robbie Avila — you might remember him from his time at Indiana State — bumping him out of bounds.

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Avila was called for a foul and also received a hard shove in the back from VCU forward Barry Evans, who then got shoved by Jones. Cue the benches the clearing, with 1.1 seconds left on the clock.

The courtside angle of the chaos:

After a lengthy delay, the officials ejected Evans and Jones with flagrant 2 fouls and also ejected all the players who left the bench once the dust-up started.

That left VCU with only four players. Lewis hit his three free throws, and the game ended.

Curiously, it’s the second straight year in which a VCU-Saint Louis game saw a brawl break out.

Both sides downplayed the incident after the game, with Avila saying “That’s not who we are,” and “there’s no ill intentions between anybody, just the emotions of the game.”

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VCU head coach Phil Martelli Jr agreed:

“I think there’s certainly a healthy intensity, as there should be at the top of the league, right? We’ve got a lot of respect for them. I think they have some respect for us, I assume,” Martelli Jr. said. “It’s two tough teams, two very competitive teams, two physical teams. Stuff like that, you wish it didn’t happen but, yeah, it’s an intense game. It’s an emotional game.”

Saint Louis head coach Josh Schertz said the incident would “get blown out of proportion,” then provided his own recap of the incident:

“Guy stole the ball, Rob didn’t take too kindly to it, fouled him, then that guy didn’t take too kindly to Rob fouling him, two-hand shove in the back. And then our guy shoved that guy back and everybody just milled around and did what the general basketball fighting does, which is everybody’s trying to get held back so they don’t have to do anything.”

The win keeps Saint Louis in the driver’s seat in the Atlantic 10. Friday’s game was between the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the standings, and improved the Billikens’ conference record to 13-1 while VCU sits at 12-3.

The Los Angeles Lakers won Friday, and the Los Angeles Clippers are hoping that’s the only bad news.

Clippers star Kawhi Leonard left the game with five minutes left in the fourth quarter due to left ankle soreness, the team announced. The exit came at a critical juncture, with the Clippers down by three with five minutes left.

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That wound up being significant. The Clippers did an admirable job of hanging around, but took another blow when Bennedict Mathurin’s 26-point night ended with him fouling out. The Lakers pulled out a 125-122 win, behind 38 points and 11 assists from Luka Dončić.

It nearly ended in disaster for the Lakers, though. With a three-point deficit and 9.7 seconds left, the Clippers stole the inbounds pass and got the ball to an open Nicholas Batum for a would-be game-tying 3-pointer. The shot missed, and LeBron James brought down the game-sealing rebound.

It wasn’t the prettiest game for the Lakers, who opened the game by making 16-of-19 shots in the first quarter only to blow a 16-point lead, but it’s a victorious first step with James, Dončić and Austin Reaves all together. That trio has played only 11 games together all season.

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James finished with 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting and 11 assists, while Reaves had 29 points on 9-of-15 shooting in his first game without a minutes restriction since returning from a calf injury.

Leonard, who had some interesting thoughts on the Clippers’ playoff chances the previous night, had 31 points, 5 assists and 4 rebounds in 31 minutes. Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue said after the game that the star has been dealing with ankle soreness for some time and “it got stiff on him” Friday night.

Lue also had some choice words for how the Lakers were running their offense:

“When you’re foul baiting the whole game … it’s tough. These guys are already great players. … We did everything we could.”

The Clippers entered the game as quietly one of the hottest teams in the NBA, having won 21-of-28 games since hitting rock bottom on Dec. 19. Friday was a chance to reach .500 on the season, but they now sit at 27-29 and still in a battle for play-in tournament positioning.

MILAN — The showdown that the hockey world has waited a dozen years to see again on an Olympic stage is finally here.

It’s the U.S. vs. Canada in Sunday’s gold-medal match. The stakes could not possibly be any higher.

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“This is the pinnacle of the sport, this is as good as it gets,” American forward Matthew Tkachuk said.

Then, perhaps forgetting that the puck will drop at 8:10 a.m. ET, Tkachuk added optimistically, “There will not be one TV without this game on in the United States and Canada. That should get you pretty fired up.”

The Americans have not won Olympic gold in men’s hockey since the iconic “Miracle on Ice” 46 years ago. They last reached the gold-medal match in Vancouver in 2010 when Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal lifted host Canada to victory in what remains the most-watched TV broadcast in that hockey-obsessed country’s history.

While nine-time champion Canada won the last two times the Olympics featured NHL players in 2010 and 2014, a best-on-best U.S. victory on Sunday would not be a miracle. The Americans came to Milan with a roster overflowing with NHL talent and the unwavering belief that it is at last their time again.

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Many of Sunday’s key players were also on the ice last February when the U.S. and Canada split a pair of tense, hard-fought games at the 4 Nations Face-Off. The Americans won the round-robin matchup in a game that began with three fights in the opening nine seconds. Connor McDavid’s overtime goal secured revenge for the Canadians in the final just a few days later.

Will Canada celebrate Olympic gold for the 10th time? Or will the U.S. end its decades-long drought? Let’s address five key questions about Sunday’s blockbuster gold-medal match.

1. Where does Canada have the biggest advantage? 

Canada’s forward group boasts high-end attacking talent that no opponent can match, not even the U.S. The Canadians feature a trio of superstars who are three of the NHL’s leading point-scorers this season in former league MVPs Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon and teenage phenom Macklin Celebrini.

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McDavid has been the most unstoppable player at these Olympics, leading the tournament with 13 points in five games thanks to his lethal combination of speed and skill. MacKinnon put his stamp on these Olympics with his late goal to complete Canada’s semifinal rally to beat Finland, while Celebrini has 10 points and a tournament-best five goals — not bad considering he won’t turn 20 until mid-June.

While the U.S. can’t counter Canada’s top-tier playmakers, the Americans do have plenty of attacking depth. Auston Matthews, Jack Hughes, Brady Tkachuk and Jack Eichel each have scored two or more goals at these Olympics.

The U.S. so far has also gotten more attacking contributions from its blue line than Canada has. Quinn Hughes, in particular, leads the U.S. in points at the Olympics with seven. He produced the Americans’ biggest goal of the tournament so far, an overtime game-winner to beat Sweden in the quarterfinals.

2. Where does the U.S. have the biggest advantage? 

The presence of Connor Hellebuyck gives the U.S. a clear edge at goaltender. The ferociously competitive three-time Vezina Trophy winner is always calm, never flustered. He often makes the difficult look routine with his long 6-foot-4 frame, savvy anticipation and knack for positioning himself perfectly.

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This has been a rough, injury-plagued season for Hellebuyck at the NHL level, but the Winnipeg Jets netminder has performed up to his reputation in Milan. His goals against average and save percentage both lead the Olympics — and they would be even higher if he didn’t, in his words, get “a little bored” during the third period against Slovakia on Friday and surrender a goal that he doesn’t believe he should have.

Asked where his confidence level is after Friday’s game, Hellebuyck said that it’s at an “all-time high.”

“I’m really enjoying this,” the typically stoic, serious Hellebuyck continued. “This is fun.”

Goaltending was Canada’s primary question mark entering these Olympics, but so far Jordan Binnington has proven up to the challenge. He has raised his level of play while playing for his country, just as he did last year at the 4 Nations Face-Off.

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While Binnington has shown a knack for big saves in big moments, he can be susceptible to giving up rebound goals. Canada’s array of formidable defenders will have to be cleaning up those big rebounds. Otherwise that could be a weakness to exploit for a U.S. team with plenty of physical forwards who excel at crashing the net.

3. How often will Canada play the ‘Three Macs’ together? 

That’s one of Jon Cooper’s key decisions prior to Sunday’s gold-medal match. Does he put McDavid, McKinnon and Celebrini on the same line from the get-go? Or does he save that superline as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option should the Canadians fall behind like they did against Czechia and Finland?

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Cooper’s most likely choice would be to start enforcer Tom Wilson alongside McDavid and Celebrini so that Canada has someone on its top line capable of matching the physicality of the Tkachuk brothers. MacKinnon’s presence on Canada’s second line also makes that unit more threatening.

Of course, it doesn’t take a hockey mastermind to understand the appeal of the “Three Macs” line, especially when Canada has an extra man on the power play. There’s a certain intimidation factor in sending three of the sport’s most skilled players onto the ice at the same time.

When asked if he’s ever seen a line quite like McDavid-MacKinnon-Celebrini, Canada’s Sam Bennett said, “No, I never have and I don’t know if there ever will be.”

“Those are three generational players, and they’re doing ridiculous things out there,” Bennett added.

4. Will Sidney Crosby play?

Believe it or not, the U.S. could have to deal with another Canadian attacking superstar. When speaking with reporters after Canada’s semifinal victory over Finland, Cooper did not rule out the possibility that Crosby could return to the ice for Sunday’s gold-medal match.

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“We have 48 hours to decide that,” Cooper said, “but I will tell you he’s got a better chance of playing in the gold-medal game than he had playing in tonight’s game.”

Crosby suffered an unspecified injury in the quarterfinals against Czechia when he took a hit from defenseman Radko Gudas and his leg bent in an unnatural direction. He sat out the rest of that game and did not dress for Friday’s semifinal.

If Crosby were to play through the injury, his return would provide Canada an emotional lift as well as a boost on the ice. Crosby had two goals and six points during the Olympics prior to his injury. Even at 38 and having long since outgrown his “Sid the Kid” nickname, Crosby remains a force.

5. Who is helped more by the 3-versus-3 overtime rules?

If the U.S. is going to win, it may have to be in regulation.

The American roster is built for the tight spaces and physical battles of 5-on-5 hockey. The faster, more skilled Canadians would have a clear advantage in a wide-open 3-versus-3 overtime.

MILAN — Certain locations evoke the Winter Olympics in all its snowy glory, places with romantic names like Milano-Cortina, Chamonix, Lake Placid and Lillehammer.

Hanover, New Hampshire, might not be the first — or the 50th — locale to come to mind in connection with the Winter Olympics, but it should. Hanover is the home of Dartmouth College, which has the unique distinction of sending Olympians to every single Winter Games, from Chamonix in 1924 right on through to Milan Cortina in 2026.

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Skiers have come from Dartmouth, of course; the school boasts one of the finest skiing programs in the country. (Jeff Shiffrin, Mikaela’s father, was an alumnus.)  But so have biathletes and bobsledders, hockey players and speed skaters. Several Dartmouth athletes at this year’s Games have already won medals, including skier Tanguy Nef (gold medalist for Switzerland in the alpine skiing team combined event) and hockey forward Laura Stacey (silver medalist for Canada). Several more have marched and competed under a wide range of both flags and disciplines.

How has this tiny Ivy League school, with an enrollment of around 7,000, produced so many elite athletes? There are three answers: one cultural, one logistical, and one geographic.

“Any Ivy League school is going to attract the best and the brightest,” Maura Crowell, Dartmouth’s hockey coach, said recently. “And I’m looking out the window in this snowy, beautiful setting up here in New Hampshire. Your skiers and hockey players just gravitate to this area. It’s an unbelievable place to go to school.”

The school also boasts easy access to the Appalachian Trail and a range of running, hiking and mountain biking trails, all of which encourage students to get outdoors. “It’s so easy to get outdoors here. I mean, you can more or less ski from campus if you’re a Nordic skier,” says Cami Thompson, Dartmouth’s women’s nordic head coach. “Our trails are very close to campus. There’s snow on the green here today. And that gets people excited to get out and ski.”

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Two-time Team USA Olympian cross-country skier Julia Kern agrees. “What drove me there is that I really wanted a strong education, but I also wanted to ski race at a high level,” she said recently, “and I felt like going to Dartmouth gave me the best of both worlds.”

“It’s the smallest Ivy, so I think a quarter of our student body is a Division I athlete,” Crowell says. “When you walk around campus, you inevitably see Dartmouth lacrosse, Dartmouth track and field, Dartmouth hockey … and because of our size and our location, it is a pretty close-knit athletic community.”

One logistical key to Dartmouth’s Olympic success: its academic calendar, which allows for potential winter Olympians to structure their schedules to fit their athletic needs. The calendar is made up of four 10-week terms, three classes per term, one term off per year. That offers much more flexibility not just on the annual calendar, but on the weekly and daily ones too.

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“As a hockey coach, I’m thrilled, because we can do individual meetings, we can do video, they can get in the shooting room, they can work with our mental performance people,” Crowell says. “There’s just more time in their days to focus on athletics, which is kind of rare at an Ivy League school.”

“There’s no athletic scholarships,” Kern noted. “You’re going there because you want a good education, but you also care about skiing. A lot of people who are driven and disciplined in skiing are also very driven in school.”

“It’s really up to the students to establish relationships with their professors and think strategically about what classes they’re taking, and when they’re taking them, and how to manage the training and the competition around their classes,” Thompson says. “There’s no special favors for these athletes. They have to make it work on their own.”

One of those students: Sophomore Michaela Hesova, a goalie on the Dartmouth hockey team and a 2026 Olympian for Czechia. She found out she would be an Olympian while walking home from a workout, and while in Italy, she worked with her professors remotely, taking tests online.

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“It’s going to be challenging,” Hesova said before the Games, “but I think it’s going to be more than worth it.”

“The thing that most [Dartmouth Olympians] possess is a willingness to put themselves out there and to try, but also to find balance and figure out where sport fits in their life,” Thompson says. “For most of them, the academics are also important when they’re here. They’re able to find the balance to be successful in a number of areas.”

“Outside of hockey and classes, there’s still not a bunch of time, but there’s still time to get everything done,” Hesova says. “Especially Sundays, you’ll find our entire team in the library for six hours. I’m not even kidding. As long as you’re willing to put your head down and grind it out, anybody can do it.”

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Well, maybe not anybody.

“I like to think that we sort of attract the sort of super-motivated individuals who like to succeed, so that not only is in the classroom, but also on the trails and the ski hill,” Thompson says. “The culture of our program is encouraging our athletes to shoot big. So we’re always happy when they succeed.”

DirecTV’s Entertainment tier gets you access to loads of channels where you can tune in to college and pro sports, the Winter Olympics, and more. Channels include ESPN, TNT, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS Sports Network, and, depending on where you live, local affiliates for ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

Whichever package you choose, you’ll get unlimited Cloud DVR storage and access to ESPN+’s new streaming tier, ESPN Unlimited.

DirecTV’s Entertainment tier package is $89.99/month. But you can currently try all this out for free for 5 days. If you’re interested in trying out a live-TV streaming service for football season but aren’t ready to commit, we recommend starting with DirecTV.

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo is officially 6 for 6: He’s won gold in all six of his cross-country events at the Milan Cortina Olympics.

Norway’s 29-year-old Olympic legend entered rare air with one more signature kick on Saturday.

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Klaebo overtook teammate Martin Loewstroem Nyenget on the final lap of the men’s 50-kilometer mass start, climbing with a frenetic burst almost unfathomable after more than two hours of skiing.

He finished in 2:06:44, clinching his sixth gold medal of this year’s Olympics, the most ever recorded by an athlete at a single Winter Games.

Norway swept the event, with Nyenget taking silver and Emil Iversen earning bronze.

Klaebo now has 11 career gold medals, the second most all time in Olympic history. In that regard, Klaebo trails only U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all-time.

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For some more context, here’s where that haul ranks Klaebo among the most golden Olympic athletes, according to NBC:

1. Michael Phelps (swimming, U.S.): 23 gold medals
2. Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (cross-country skiing, Norway): 11
T-3. Larisa Latynina (gymnastics, Soviet Union): 9
T-3. Katie Ledecky (swimming, U.S.): 9
T-3. Paavo Nurmi (athletics, Finland): 9
T-3. Mark Spitz (swimming, U.S.): 9
T-3. Caeleb Dressel (swimming, U.S.): 9
T-3. Carl Lewis (athletics, U.S.): 9

In other words, Phelps and Klaebo are the only two athletes to ever win at least 10 Olympic gold medals. With Saturday’s triumph, Klaebo joined Phelps, Spitz and another swimmer, German Kristin Otto (represented East Germany), plus Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo (represented the Commonwealth of Independent States), as Olympians with at least six gold medals at a single Games, per ESPN.

Phelps, of course, won eight golds during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

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Klaebo’s six golds in one Winter Games broke a 46-year-old record that American speed skater Eric Heiden set during the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.

Heiden won five golds that year. All of them were in individual events, whereas Klaebo won two of his golds in this year’s Olympics in team events.

In his third Olympics, Klaebo’s efforts are a big reason why Norway has 18 gold medals in this these Games, the most a country has ever recorded in a single Winter Olympics.

LIVIGNO, Italy — The United States set a new American record for gold medals won at a Winter Olympics on Saturday. And it came from a discipline where Team USA hadn’t had any success earlier in the Games.

After disappointing performances in the individual aerials events, the mixed team of Kaila Kuhn, Connor Curran and Chris Lillis got to take home some hardware, defending the gold medal Team USA won in this event four years ago in Beijing.

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It was the 11th gold of these Games for the U.S., topping its previous Winter Olympics record set in Salt Lake City 24 years ago.

“We’ve had a lot of success with (this event), and I think the fact a lot of U.S. athletes come from team sports and just using each other as motivation really helps us, especially in aerials skiing,” said Lillis, who was the only holdover from the 2022 team and thus became the most decorated aerials skier in Team USA history. “It can feel kind of lonely up there, but if you watched our team at any point in the day, we literally vibe off each other so much and each person that puts down a great jump just motivates the next person.”

After none of the Americans hit the podium during the individual competition — they all seemed to struggle with takeoff speeds in changing wind conditions — it was unclear who would actually be chosen to compete in the team event.

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Lillis, 27, was obvious given his track record, and the 22-year old Kuhn won the gold medal at last year’s world championships. The third spot went to Curran, a 21-year old, first-time Olympian from Cincinnati, who said he found out at roughly 6:30 p.m. Friday night he was getting the call.

“Connor says he was nervous, and I’m sure he was, but I wasn’t nervous for him,” Lillis said. “When you get into that moment and you’ve got the right people on the team you just know you’re going to have success.”

It turned out to be a brilliant call, as the Americans landed six straight clean runs across the two rounds of the finals to claim the gold.

As Lillis stuck a clean landing on the final jump of the competition — a back double-full-full-full jump — he pumped his fist, knowing he had certainly done enough to secure the top spot on the podium.

“I think we all walked away from our individual competitions pretty crushed,” Kuhn said. “None of us really performed at our highest degree that we could have, and we know that we could bounce back for this event so we used it as motivation and it worked out in our favor.”

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On a day with a light, but steady snow and very little wind, the conditions were far more favorable for the American men — “Connor and I are both pretty tall, lanky jumpers, which made it a little bit easier,” Lillis said — but what really made the difference was coming out strong right away and staying consistent throughout.

Starting with Kuhn, who landed a nice back-full-full-full to get things started, the U.S. was on top of the leaderboard right out of the gate and amassed a combined score of 351.23 in the first round — significantly more than the other three teams (China, Australia and Switzerland) who made the cut to the second round of the finals.

Though scores reset after the first final round, the U.S. had earned the advantage of going last, which meant they could adjust their strategy based on what other teams were doing. That turned out to be crucial because China, which dominated the individual events and won four of the six medals, did not get clean runs out of its two male skiers.

Wang Xindi, the men’s gold medalist, attempted a double full-double full-full jump that would have earned a high score based on degree of difficulty if he landed it on China’s second run. But he didn’t quite measure the landing correctly, leaving the door open for the Americans to take control.

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That allowed Curran to dial back a bit for his jump, landing a back full-double full-full to put the U.S. in front with a combined score of 208.16, nearly 24 points ahead of China.

“Team China is always the team to beat,” Lillis said. “They helped us out a bit today”

On the third run, China’s Li Tianma landed short and dislodged his skis, meaning Lillis only needed to score 89 points to secure gold. Though nothing is assured in an event where you’re jumping 50 feet in the air and trying to land on skis, it allowed him to perform a pretty standard trick with a lot of margin for error as long as he avoided disaster.

Though it took nearly two long minutes for the judges to actually announce the score after Lillis’ clean landing, there wasn’t much suspense. Lillis’ 117.19 was plenty good enough to beat Switzerland by nearly 30 points. China took the bronze.

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“In aerial skiing, I’d say the average jumper crashes on 50 percent of their jumps,” Lillis said. “So for three different people to put down two rounds, it’s extremely difficult. Though (my performance) in the individual events doesn’t get redeemed by the team event, it’s so great to get Olympic gold with my teammates and to do it for them and them doing it for me and I can’t describe how special it is to bring home a gold medal for the U.S.”

And it was a significant gold medal, indeed. After a bit of a slow start to the Olympics for the action sports – including zero gold medals in snowboarding – Alex Ferreira’s freeski halfpipe gold on Friday and this effort by the aerials team made this the most golden Winter Olympics ever for the U.S.

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“It hasn’t been easy and we’ve all had our falls,” Kuhn said. “For us to put things down when it really, truly matters. … I wanted to walk away with a medal. I let myself be upset (about the individual event) for a couple hours but then I knew I had to switch gears and I wasn’t going to let that beat me down for too long. I let it motivate me for my job today.”

Hall of Fame second baseman Bill Mazeroski died at the age of 89, the Pittsburgh Pirates announced on Saturday. He passed away on Friday, according to the team.

Mazeroski is best known for arguably the most legendary home run in baseball history, hitting a walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series against the New York Yankees. Leading off the ninth inning, the homer came off reliever Ralph Terry, breaking a 9-9 tie, at Forbes Field.

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As Mazeroski rounded the bases, fans ran out of the stands to congratulate Mazeroski and round the bases with him in celebration. He was 24 years old at the time, in his fifth year with Pittsburgh. No other player has ended a World Series with a Game 7 home run.

Responsible for an iconic moment in the sport, Mazeroski was remarkably modest about his accomplishment.

“I didn’t expect that much attention, just hitting a home run to win a game,” he continued. “I don’t know. I just kind of wish maybe somebody else had hit it, or explained it better than I did. I just never came up with a good way.”

Mazeroski later explained that he wasn’t certain that he hit a home run because the left-field wall at Forbes Field was 406 feet away from home plate in the alley.

“I don’t know it’s out. I don’t know it’s a home run. But I know I’m going to end up on third if he misplays that ball off the wall,” Mazeroski said in 2015, via MLB.com. “So I’m busting my tail getting around there, and by the time I hit second base, I looked down the line and the fans went crazy. From second base, I didn’t touch the ground all the way in.”

Mazeroski won two World Series titles with the Pirates, also playing on the 1971 champions that defeated the Baltimore Orioles in seven games. The team retired his No. 9 in 1987 and honored him with a 14-foot bronze statue outside PNC Park, unveiled in 2010.

“Maz was one of a kind — a true Pirates legend, a National Baseball Hall of Famer and one of the finest defensive second basemen the game has ever seen,” said Pirates chairman Bob Nutting in a statement.

“His name will always be tied to the biggest home run in baseball history and the 1960 World Series championship,” he added. “But I will remember him most for the person he was: humble, gracious and proud to be a Pirate.”

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Despite being associated with one of baseball’s most famous home runs, Mazeroski became a Hall of Famer because of his defense at second base. He was awarded eight Gold Gloves during his career.

“I think defense belongs in the Hall of Fame,” Mazeroski said during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Defense deserves as much credit as pitching and hitting, and I’m proud and honored to be going into the Hall of Fame on the defensive side and mostly for my defensive abilities.”

In his 17 seasons with the Pirates, Mazeroski compiled a career average of .260/.299/.367 with 294 doubles, 138 home runs and 853 RBI. In addition to his two World Series championships, Mazeroski was an 10-time All-Star. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001, elected by the Veterans Committee.

The Los Angeles Clippers have 26 games remaining on their regular-season schedule, in addition to two possible postseason games if they qualify for the NBA play-in tournament. Contrary to Kawhi Leonard’s belief that the team is not a contender to advance in the playoffs, head coach Tyronn Lue says the team will try to keep winning.

At 27-29 following Friday night’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Clippers currently hold the ninth spot in the Western Conference standings, just a half-game ahead of the Portland Trail Blazers.

“Man, we’re playing to win,” Lue told reporters afterwards, including ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “I don’t care if it’s young, old, toddlers… Whoever’s on the floor, we’re trying to win. I mean, we’re trying to win. There’s no other reason to play.”

Lue’s remarks appeared to be a response to Leonard saying earlier in the day that the Clippers’ status as contenders was finished.

“I think it’s over now,” he said. “It’s, the second half, like a fourth of the season left. But every day is a day to grow. A day to learn and get better. So just got to keep looking over time and see in two weeks if we’re getting better and see what happens from there.”

Leonard’s outlook follows the Clippers sending James Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Ivica Zubac to the Indiana Pacers before the NBA trade deadline. The team received Darius Garland, Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, two first-round picks and two second-rounders in those deals. But those aren’t the kinds of trades a playoff contender makes in hopes of boosting championship chances.

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Additionally, the Clippers benched veteran point guard Chris Paul before sending him home and eventually traded him to the Toronto Raptors. Paul, 40, was subsequently released by the Raptors and announced his retirement. He signed a one-year deal before the season, presumably to be a veteran leader but reportedly clashed with Lue.

Lue acknowledged that the Clippers team Leonard originally signed with in 2019 is much different now.

“I thought he was just saying far as contender when he first got here, you have PG [Paul George], Kawhi, you have James, you have Russ [Russell Westbrook], you have Zu,” Lue told ESPN. “And so now, having a younger team, we got to play different. We got to do things different, we got to do things better.”

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The Clippers being in the play-in mix with a chance to make the playoffs as the eventual No. 8 seed is the result of an impressive turnaround. The team began the season as one of the league’s biggest disappointments, compiling a 6-21 record. Yet a 21-8 run in December put a .500 record and postseason berth within reach.

Up next for the Clippers is a matchup with the Orlando Magic (29-25) on Sunday, followed by a Thursday contest versus the Minnesota Timberwolves (35-22).

A sneaker company is suing Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and quarterback Patrick Mahomes for trademark infringement, according to a Friday report from ESPN, which cited court records.

The company, 1587 Sneakers, reportedly alleges in the suit that the name of the Kansas City steakhouse Kelce and Mahomes own, 1587 Prime, infringes its usage of the identical number combination and, as a result, is causing damage.

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Along with business partner Noble 33, Kelce and Mahomes opened the restaurant last year. Its name derives from the stars’ jersey numbers — Mahomes’ No. 15 and Kelce’s No. 87 — whereas the sneaker company’s name is inspired by the year 1587, per its website, which explains that the year marks the first recorded presence of Asians in America. At that time, Filipino sailors initially arrived in what became the United States, it says.

“We are the first sneaker brand in the U.S. that is owned, designed and inspired by Asian American culture — empowering Asian Americans to be unapologetically themselves,” the site reads.

The sneaker company, which appeared on “Shark Tank” and was founded by Adam King and Sam Hyun, started selling its shoes in April 2023, per the suit, ESPN reported.

That’s before Kelce and Mahomes announced their plans to open their steakhouse, according to The Kansas City Star.

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Trademark attorney Josh Gerben of Gerben IP, who doesn’t represent either company, told ESPN that the suit boils down to the unregistered rights that the sneaker company claimed before it filed its trademark applications in 2025.

More specifically, that application didn’t come until October of last year. It’s still being reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, per ESPN.

Yet because the sneaker company launched its business before the steakhouse, the suit reportedly alleges the sneaker company has first use of “1587.” It’s important to note, though, that Kelce’s and Mahomes’ restaurant applied for the trademark “1587 Prime” in December 2023, according to ESPN, which also reported that the “1587 Prime” trademark is in the bar and restaurant category, whereas the sneaker company’s “1587” trademark application is in the clothing category.

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“I think it’s a tough case for the sneaker company,” Gerben told ESPN. “Trademarks can coexist in different industries. … Given that the marks are essentially identical here, is a restaurant and a shoe company too close? Are consumers likely to be confused in thinking they are affiliated with one another?”

The sneaker company is alleging that confusion is in fact happening and is requesting Kelce and Mahomes’ restaurant no longer use the name “1587 Prime,” in addition to stop selling apparel merchandise with the name on it. The steakhouse currently sells caps and a shirt on its website.

“The company was understandably concerned that such a high-profile project choosing a brand name virtually identical to that of its own would overshadow it and cause irreparable damage,” the suit reads, according to The Kansas City Star.

“It did. And continues to do so up to this very present day, forcing the AAPI-company towards the cliff of collapse.”

King said in a written statement that 1587 Sneakers continues “to hope to resolve this matter amicably,” per ESPN.

That said, the sneaker company is reportedly seeking unspecified damages.