In a historic first, the NBA Finals is a battle of non-taxpayers

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🚨 Headlines

⛳️ Scottie wins (again): Scottie Scheffler didn’t win until his ninth event this year. After running away with the Memorial, he’s now won three of his last four events and pocketed nearly $10 million in the past month.

⚾️ Down goes No. 1 (again): Two weeks after Texas A&M became the first No. 1 overall seed ever eliminated in softball regionals, Vanderbilt became the first No. 1 overall seed ever eliminated in baseball regionals.

⚽️ Celebration turns ugly: The excitement following PSG’s Champions League victory was marred as celebrations across France devolved into chaos, leaving two fans dead, nearly 200 more injured and 300 arrested.

🏀 Zion faces lawsuit: Zion Williamson has been accused of rape and abuse in a civil lawsuit filed by a woman claiming to be his former girlfriend. The Pelicans forward has denied the allegations.

🏁 McLaren can’t lose: Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris went 1-2 at the Spanish Grand Prix, giving McLaren seven wins (and 16 podiums) through nine F1 races this season.

🏀 NBA Finals: No taxpayers

Oklahoma City and Indiana will meet in the 2025 NBA Finals, which will be the first in the luxury tax era (2003-present) to feature two teams that weren’t taxpayers.

Last two standing: 11 teams exceeded the tax threshold of $170.8 million this season, and eight of those taxpayers made the playoffs (Timberwolves, Celtics, Knicks, Lakers, Nuggets, Bucks, Warriors, Heat). But the last two teams standing are the Thunder, who ranked 25th in payroll ($165.6 million), and the Pacers, who ranked 18th ($168.2 million).

Contract breakdown: OKC and Indiana share fairly similar balance sheets, with mega deals for their point guards and veteran big men. The rest of their rosters are filled out with reasonably-paid veterans and rookie contracts. The 2024-25 salaries for both starting fives:

Thunder: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($35.9M), Isaiah Hartenstein ($30M), Luguentz Dort ($16.5M), Chet Holmgren ($10.9M), Jalen Williams ($4.8M)
Pacers: Tyrese Haliburton ($42.2M), Pascal Siakam ($42.2M), Myles Turner ($19.9M), Aaron Nesmith ($11M), Andrew Nembhard ($2M)

Exclusive club: This year’s champion will join the 2006 Heat, 2014 Spurs, 2015 Warriors, 2017 Warriors and 2020 Lakers as the only non-taxpayers to win a title while the luxury tax was in effect, per Spotrac’s Keith Smith.

Notes:

Team Canada: Four Canadians will compete in the Finals (Gilgeous-Alexander, Dort, Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin), tying the national record set last year.

Finals preview: What to know about this unexpected matchup (Ben Rohrbach/Yahoo Sports)

📸 The world in photos

🇺🇸 Erin, Wisconsin — Sweden’s Maja Stark fended off world No. 1 Nelly Korda to win the U.S. Women’s Open by two strokes for her first major title and a record-tying $2.4 million prize. Not bad for someone who’d earned less than $131,000 on tour so far this season.

Tiafoe celebrates his fourth-round victory. (Adam Pretty/Getty Images)

🇫🇷 Paris — No. 15 Frances Tiafoe and No. 12 Tommy Paul became the first American men to reach the French Open quarterfinals since Andre Agassi in 2003. As many as three American women could join them.

Pope Leo XIV greets Yates and other cyclists before their ride through Vatican City. (Francesco Sforza via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)

🇮🇹 Vatican City — Simon Yates won the Giro d’Italia after erasing an 81-second deficit on the final mountain stage. The 2018 Vuelta a España champion joins Chris Froome as the only Brits to win multiple Grand Tours.

⚾️ Boswell: Baseball is pretty great right now

Are we living through a golden age of baseball? In his latest column, longtime Washington Post scribe Thomas Boswell makes the case that MLB’s on-field product is as good as it has ever been.

Here’s Boz:

This year I’ve watched plenty of MLB games and enjoyed them — a lot. I find baseball just as well-paced, dramatic and aesthetically pleasing as the sport I first fell for long ago. This has surprised, pleased and confused me.

I’m one of those who, for years, has complained about two problems. First, games were too slow. Second, I agreed that the analytics era focus on “three true outcomes” — homers, walks and strikeouts, none of which involve defensive plays — subtracted athletic action. So why was I enjoying the game so much?

The answer: Thanks to the pitch clock, games aren’t too slow anymore. And aside from the steady rise in strikeouts, the “three true outcomes” aren’t all bad trends. In fact, statistics suggest today’s brand of baseball is remarkably similar to the brand that was played during MLB’s boom years from 1975-1994, a 20-year stretch that saw the league’s popularity skyrocket and showed “what the sport looks like when it’s healthy,” writes Boswell.

1975-94: The average team scored 700 runs per 162 games, with 121 steals, 529 walks and an OPS of .713. The average game time was 2:43.
2024-25: The average team scores 709 runs per 162 games, with 122 steals, 506 walks and an OPS of .711. The average game time is 2:39.

The last word: “If we could love only perfect things, our days would be bleak. Baseball, as we find it today, is an opportunity to appreciate an imperfect thing and allow it to make us feel happy,” writes Boswell. “MLB has warts. But I’ve never been happier to have an exciting crisp version of the old game for summer company.”

Full column: Is baseball actually troubled, or is it as good as it has ever been?

⚽️ PSG finally conquer Europe

PSG stormed past Inter Milan, 5-0, on Saturday night in Munich to win the club’s first Champions League title after years of falling disappointingly short.

From Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell:

For a little over a decade, PSG was a controversial project and a collection of names. It was Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Beckham, then Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi. It was a club transformed by money and defined by unflinching ambition.

It was many things, but never the one thing it desperately wanted to be — until Saturday, when PSG, in its very first year without a megastar, became the European champion.

PSG manager Luis Enrique is hoisted into the air by his players. (Lars Baron/Getty Images)

Behind the scenes: To be clear, this was not some low-budget rebuild or underdog story. PSG spent $800 million over the last two years, more than any other club. The difference: Instead of splurging on all-world players, they invested in talented but not-yet-heralded youngsters who, sans ego, would heed the demands of manager Luis Enrique.

“I would like him to stay. He’s the cornerstone of the team,” Enrique said last year around the time Mbappé exited for Real Madrid. “But the moment he leaves, the team becomes the cornerstone. I think we can be even better next season.”

Completing the treble: PSG are the ninth club to win domestic league, domestic cup and European Cup titles in the same season, joining Celtic (1966-67), Ajax (1971-72), PSV Eindhoven (1987-88), Manchester United (1998-99), Barcelona (2008-09; 2014-15), Inter Milan (2009-10), Bayern Munich (2012-13; 2019-20) and Manchester City (2022-23).

📺 Watchlist: Monday, June 2

The Red Raiders are in the WCWS semifinals for the first time. (Texas Tech Athletics)

🥎 Women’s College World Series, Semifinals | ESPN

No. 6 Texas advances to the Final with a win over No. 7 Tennessee (12pm ET), while a loss would trigger a winner-take-all game at 2:30pm. No. 12 Texas Tech advances with a win over No. 2 Oklahoma (7pm); a winner-take-all game would be at 9:30pm if needed.

⚾️ NCAA Baseball Championship, Regionals | ESPN+

10 teams have already advanced to the Super Regionals. The final six spots will be determined in tonight’s elimination games. If you can only watch one, make it No. 14 Tennessee vs. Wake Forest in Knoxville (6pm, ESPN2), as the defending champion Vols look to keep their hopes of a repeat alive.

🎾 French Open, Fourth Round | TNT, truTV, Max

No. 6 Novak Djokovic (7:55am), No. 7 Madison Keys vs. fellow American Hailey Baptiste (8:30am) and No. 1 Jannik Sinner vs. No. 17 Andrey Rublev (2:15pm) headline the action.

🏀 NBA Finals trivia

Reggie Miller and Jalen Rose during the 2000 NBA Finals. (Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images)

The Pacers are back in the Finals for the first time since 2000, when their lone appearance on the NBA’s grandest stage ended in a 4-0 sweep.

Question: Who swept them?

Hint: Their center won MVP that year.

Answer at the bottom.

⚾️ The perfect season

LSU Shreveport became the first college baseball team ever to finish a season undefeated, capping their 59-0 campaign on Friday with the school’s first NAIA national championship in any sport.

By the numbers: The Pilots played only four one-run games and won eight games by 15+ runs. They led the nation in ERA (2.38) and fielding percentage (.982), ranked second in runs per game (11.3) and third in batting average (.361). Three players hit better than .400 and ace Isaac Rohde finished 16-0.

For comparison’s sake: The NCAA’s best single-season winning percentages are .914 by Arizona State (64-6 in 1972) in D-I, .939 by Savannah State (46-3 in 2000) in D-II and .978 by Trinity College (45-1 in 2008) in D-III.

Trivia answer: Lakers

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