Good Morning, Stumpers!

What. Just. Happened. The New York Knicks are now up 3-1 on the Boston Celtics, and they are the favorites to come out of the East and make it to the NBA Finals! WOW, WOW, WOW! The unfortunate raincloud over this win for the Knicks was the Jayson Tatum non-contact leg injury late in the fourth, we can only hope and pray that the damage is limited 🙏 . Lot to uncover in the sports world yesterday, Let’s start digging.

Today’s Rundown

What’s in today’s edition?

• 🏀 Winners of the NBA Draft Lottery

• 🗽 Knicks Win, Tatum Goes Down With Injury

• 🐺 Chiefs Superfan Hit with Bad Sentence

• ✒️ A Quote to Make You Think!

On This Day

On This Day…

⚽️ Man City Smashes EPL Records

There’s been some historic runs in the history of the English Premier League, but none other may rival the year that Manchester City had just seven years ago.

On this day in 2018, Man City ends the Premier League season with a 1-0 win at Southampton, smashing 11 Premier League records in one season. The most notable record was they became the first team to accumulate 100 points in a season, and also the biggest title winning margin, 19. Since then, only Liverpool has came close to triple digits, with 99 points in 2019-2020, and 97 in 2018-2019.

Today’s Trivia

🧠 Test your sports knowledge…

Yesterday’s Trivia Answer: B. Travis Pastrana. I can’t lie, I did run out of names of BMX riders so I had to include a skateboarder and a snowboarder, hopefully that didn’t mess you up too much.

Before We Dive In…

👀 Yesterday’s Must See’s

• ‼️ Knicks fan are SHUTTING DOWN NYC

• 🏀 Mavs staff the moment they find out they have the #1 pick

• 🤣 Chiefs twitter admin must be BORED

🔍️ Stump Spotlight

NBA

🏀 Winners and Losers of NBA Draft Lottery

Look, I’m no conspiracy theorist or anything, but you can’t sit there and tell me with a straight face that the Denver Mavericks just HAPPENED to win the lottery and get the 1st pick after all that went down with Luka this year.

Winner: Dallas Mavericks. This one feels obvious. It’s unreal for the Mavericks. They’ll now have a generational talent in Cooper Flagg to replace Luka Doncic and pair with two all-star talent veterans Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving. It’s remarkable. They’re a playoff team in the Western Conference the second the draft pick goes in. But here’s where I throw on my tinfoil hat. The NBA is rigged. It is, it has to be. The Mavericks had one of the WORST odds to win the lottery, they’ve never won it before, and yet they won. Their fans were ready to burn down their arena a few months ago, there was riots, it was unfathomable to trade away Luka. So, the NBA rewards them with Cooper Flagg. It makes too much sense. The NBA makes money off of headlines, interaction, gossip, everything that keeps them relevant and gets people to talk about it. And this does exactly that. They’re winning every second I take writing this.

Loser: The ACTUAL bad teams. I’m no dummy, I understand the purpose of the NBA Draft lottery is to dissuade teams from continuous tanking to get good draft picks. I understand that. But when some of the worst teams from the last year don’t even manage to crack the top 5 of the draft? That feels wrong. I feel really bad for teams like the Hornets, Jazz, Wizards, and Raptors. Teams that have significant talent problems are being forgotten. They sit on the outside and hope a guy they draft turns into a star, while the more “surefire” stars go to teams who are in win now situations.

Winner: Cooper Flagg. This one, again, feels obvious. He avoided going into situations like Charlotte, Washington, or Utah, where he would be in an organization void of talent and years away from winning. Instead, he likely goes to Dallas, where he’ll be a key piece in their current success and future success, and he also gets to learn from one of the best stretch bigs of all time, Anthony Davis.

Loser: Mavs GM Nico Harrison Haters. Nico Harrison took Luka Doncic, traded him for Anthony Davis, sprinkled some fairy dust, and ended up with Cooper Flagg on top of it all. Good for this guy. It may be the most mad scientist move of all time. Along with a LOT of luck, Nico looks like the greatest GM of all time.

Winner: Giannis. Wait, what? Giannis? Hear me out, the tinfoil cap is coming back on. With all the noise about Giannis considering a trade and the Bucks apparently being willing to oblige, how does a Flagg for Giannis trade sound? From an 1,000ft view, it makes a lot of sense for both teams. The Bucks get the future of their franchise, a new star to build around, and move into the next portion of life in Milwaukee. For Dallas, they become an instant championship contender overnight. With two aging stars in AD and Kyrie, they may not be able to wait on Flagg to develop.

The Hot Stove

🏀 Tatum Goes out With Injury, Knicks on Brink of Eastern Conference Finals

The New York Knicks are one game away from the Eastern Conference Finals. Let that sink in! This will be slightly overshadowed by a late Jayson Tatum injury that did not look good at all!

Game 4 of this second round series between New York and Boston had a little bit of everything. It was an unbelievable game from beginning to end. The only way to describe it, as usually playoff games go, was a game of runs! The Celtics were in control for about 3 quarters of this game. Always ahead by a few. Their lead even went to 14 after a fiery first quarter, which ended on a 12-0 Celtics run with four threes by Tatum and White. Once the lead ballooned to 14, the Knicks slowly started to chip away, and it was all hands on deck. The Big Dawgs were eating, the role players were ROLLING, and the Deuce McBride chants were CHANTING!

It was Jalen Brunson’s 18 point third quarter that helped give the Knicks a 3-point lead going into the fourth, and the Knicks never looked back. They hit tough shot after tough shot to go up three games to one in the series. With the Knicks up 7 with two minutes to go, Jayson Tatum went down with a non-contact lower leg injury. Prayers up to JT, hopefully he can recover smoothly, but in the moment it did not look at all, hopefully we have more news today! This will definitely put a damper on the mood, but the Knicks are still up 3-1 and have a chance to go as far as they ever have before!

🏀 Timberwolves Go Up 3-1 on Dubs

There’s no two ways about it, the Steph Curry injury changed the complexion of not only this series, but the entire landscape of the NBA playoffs this year. The Timberwolves again overpowered the Warriors and now are up 3-1 as they head back to Minnesota for Game 5!

Similar story in this game, the Warriors showed a lot of fight early, they had one of their guys step up and show out, last night that was Jonathan Kuminga again in the first half. Be even after a lead going into the second half, the Warriors were overpowered by a barrage of shots and size from Minnesota. The third quarter barrage from Ant Edwards, Julius Randle, and seemingly every player that attempted a three for the Wolves, it was just all too much!

The lead ballooned from 4 to 20 in about a blink of an eye, and now the Timberwolves are one game away from returning to the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year!

🐺 Chiefs Superfan Gets 32 Years in Prison

If you haven’t heard this story at all over the last couple years as it develops, it’s a WILD ride. Yesterday, the fan known as ChiefsAholic, got some more time added to his already underway federal prison sentence.

Kansas City Chiefs superfan Xavier Babudar, who was known by NFL fans and Chiefs fans alike as ChiefsAholic (he wore a grey wolf suit to games and fired up the crowd and grew a big following on social media), was arrested two and a half years ago after authorities caught him in Oklahoma fleeing a local bank robbery. In March of this year, Babudar pleaded guilty in Oklahoma to robbery with a firearm, assault while masked, and removing an electronic monitoring device. In December of 2022, en route to a Chiefs game against the Texans, Babudar stopped at a bank in Bixby, Oklahoma, and pointed a CO2 pistol at a bank teller before fleeing with $150,000 and heading to the game. He was caught a few weeks later and released on bond, but given an electronic monitoring device. That next month, he won over $100,000 on two bets—removed his GPS device, and went on the run. Obviously he was caught. He’s currently serving 17 ½ years in federal prison for a string of previously unsolved robberies throughout the Midwest and in Tennessee, but the state of Oklahoma threw on an extra 32 years in the courtroom yesterday. The craziest thing of all of this? Babudar used the same mask of the grey wolf suit he wore at Chiefs games to rob the banks.

⬇️ Quick Links

• 🏈 Chiefs to host Broncos on Christmas

• 💥 Hurricanes rout Capitals, put WASH on brink of elimination

• 🙏 Browns JOK out for season, continues recovery from scary neck injury

What To Watch

🏀 NBA Playoffs

• TNT: Pacers @ Cavs (7:00 PM), Nuggets @ Thunder (9:30 PM)

⚾️ Major League Baseball

• TBS: Red Sox @ Tigers (6:40 PM)

• More to Watch: Brewers @ Guardians (6:10 PM), Cardinals @ Phillies (6:45 PM), Royals @ Astros (8:10 PM), Yankees @ Mariners (9:40 PM), DBacks @ Giants (9:45 PM), full schedule

🏒 NHL Playoffs

• ESPN: Jets @ Stars (8:00 PM)

⚽️ Soccer

• LaLiga: Real Sociedad @ Celta Vigo (2:00 PM)

The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For

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