Yahoo Sports AM: Ohtani is inevitable

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🏒 Three. Goals. Away: Alex Ovechkin cannot be stopped, scoring in his third straight game to move within three goals of passing Wayne Gretzky.

🏀 JuJu wins POY: USC’s JuJu Watkins was named the Naismith Player of the Year, beating out UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and UCLA’s Lauren Betts to become the first Trojan to win the award since Lisa Leslie in 1994.

🎄 Merry Chiefsmas: The Chiefs have requested that the NFL make them a fixture on Christmas Day, much like the Lions and Cowboys play every Thanksgiving.

⚾️ Extensions galore: Padres CF Jackson Merrill (9 years, $135M), Diamondbacks 2B Ketel Marte (6 years, $116M), Red Sox 2B Kristian Campbell (8 years, $60M) and Red Sox LHP Garrett Crochet (6 years, $170M) all inked new deals.

🏀 Houston clinches: The Rockets won their 50th game of the season to clinch their first playoff berth in five years. Not bad for a team that won 22 games just two years ago.

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Shohei Ohtani hit a walk-off home run on his bobblehead night to lift the Dodgers past the Braves and into the record books: They are now the first defending World Series champions ever to start the season 8-0. (Atlanta, meanwhile, falls to 0-7.)

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Dodger Stadium rose to its collective feet when their beloved superstar stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied 5-5. First pitch he sees: Gone. Game over.

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

🎙️ Joe Davis on the call: “Ohtani! Inevitable!”

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

NL West dominance: The Dodgers (8-0), Padres (7-0), Giants (5-1) and Diamondbacks (4-2) are off to a combined 24-3 start, which is pretty ridiculous. The poor Rockies are already in the basement at 1-4.

(Elsa/Getty Images)

Carmelo Anthony will enter the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame when the Class of 2025 is announced this weekend at the Final Four. He got in on his first ballot thanks to a résumé that includes an NCAA title, three Olympic gold medals and lots and lots of NBA buckets.

From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Devine:

Over the past quarter-century, the NBA game has largely transformed from a grimy, physical, elbows-and-in slugfest into a more streamlined, faster-paced and immaculately spaced factory for creating layups, 3-pointers and free throws.

This shift has generated the most efficient and effective offenses the sport has ever seen. It has also generated no shortage of arguments about whether said sea change is, in and of itself, a good thing — about the scourge of stylistic homogeneity, about forsaking art for math, and about whether something might be lost in the relentless pursuit of increased efficiency.

Reasonable people can disagree on the relative merits of back-in-the-day ball and the post-Moreyball model. (Unreasonable people can, too. And they do. Most hours of the day and night. On pretty much every sports television, radio and podcast outlet.)

You’d like to think, though, that even the most ardent adherent of the modern game can feel stirred by watching a heavyweight deliver knockouts in a phone booth; can find joy in watching a craftsman create something simple and effective with tools honed over countless hours; can see the beauty in pristine and refined footwork, timing and form translate into points.

Man, it was fun to watch Carmelo Anthony cook.

Read the full story.

Sonny Vacarro (center) stands alongside LeBron James during the 2003 Roundball Classic, which Vacarro founded. (Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

Anthony will be joined in the Class of 2025 by other players, coaches and contributors. Sonny Vacarro will not be among them, extending one of the puzzling omissions in sports, writes Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel.

Sole man: Vaccaro is most famous for signing Michael Jordan to an endorsement at Nike (the plot of the 2023 movie “Air”). But he also founded the first national high school all-star game, created the popular ABCD Camp, and came up with the idea of signing college athletic departments to shoe deals. And that was all before Phil Knight fired him in 1991.

After a split from Nike, Vaccaro brought Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady to Adidas and began the so-called “shoe wars,” which led to massive sponsorship dollars being poured into high school and travel teams across the country and eventually the world.

To pretend the game of basketball — from city playgrounds to the pro arenas — wasn’t significantly impacted by Vaccaro, that his “contributions” to it are somehow non-Hall worthy is ludicrous. You simply can’t tell the story of the sport without him.

So what gives? The problem with Vaccaro’s candidacy appears to be the enemies he made along the way. No matter his job title, he was always a fierce and outspoken proponent of players’ rights, especially against the NCAA.

Maybe a still bitter college sports industry is leaning on the process. Or maybe it is Nike, who engaged in decades of discord after firing Vaccaro. Whatever it is, he didn’t even make the finalist stage.

“I don’t know what it takes,” said Vaccaro, 85, from his home in California. “But I’m not going to dwell on it. It’s not some slight, because I’ve lived a pretty damn good life.”

Read the full story.

El Farolito’s Edgard Kreye celebrates their upset victory. (Doug Zimmerman/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)

The second round of the U.S. Open Cup concluded on Wednesday, leaving 48 teams still contending in the country’s oldest ongoing national soccer competition.

How it works: The tournament features teams from every level of the U.S. soccer pyramid, which includes three professional divisions and numerous amateur and semi-pro leagues.

Division II: USL Championship
Division III: USL League One, MLS Next Pro

Further down: Other notable leagues include the National Premier Soccer League, United Premier Soccer League and USL League Two.

Where it stands: 16 clubs from 13 different states punched tickets to the third round this week, with four hailing from USLC, nine from USL1 and two from MLS Next Pro. Then there’s El Farolito of the NPSL, an amateur side that won the 1993 U.S. Open Cup and are named after the owner’s San Francisco burrito shop. They made it to the third round last year, too.

Florida (2): Miami FC (USLC), FC Naples (USL1)
Georgia: Tormenta FC (USL1)
North Carolina: Charlotte Independence (USL1)
California (2): AV Alta FC (USL1), El Farolito SC (NPSL)
Maine: Portland Hearts of Pine (USL1)
Nebraska: Union Omaha (USL1)
New York: Westchester SC (USL1)
Ohio: Columbus Crew 2 (MLS Next Pro)
Oklahoma: FC Tulsa (USLC)
Tennessee (2): Chattanooga Red Wolves (USL1), One Knoxville SC (USL1)
Texas: El Paso Locomotive (USLC)
Virginia: Loudoun United (USLC)
Washington: Tacoma Defiance (MLS Next Pro)

What’s next: These 16 teams will be joined in the third round by the 16 highest-seeded USLC clubs (including 2024 quarterfinalists Indy Eleven, New Mexico United and Sacramento Republic). 16 MLS teams will then enter the tournament in the Round of 32.

(Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The 87th NIT championship game is tonight in Indianapolis (9pm ET, ESPN), where the UC Irvine Anteaters will take on the Chattanooga Mocs.

The former big brother: The NIT (founded in 1938) predates the NCAA tournament (1939), and for decades it was college basketball’s most prestigious national championship. But by the 1970s, the tournament now known as March Madness had become the sport’s premier event.

More to watch:

🏀 NBA: Grizzlies at Heat (7:30pm, TNT); Warriors at Lakers (10pm, TNT) … Los Angeles goes for its first season sweep over Golden State since 2019-20.
🏒 NHL: Jets at Golden Knights (10pm, ESPN+) … First place in the Central vs. first place in the Pacific. Winnipeg leads the league in points (106).

Plus: PFL World Tournament (7:30pm, ESPN+; 10pm, ESPN2); Round 1 of the PGA Tour’s Texas Open (8:15am, ESPN+; 4pm, Golf); Round 2 of the College Basketball Crown (7-9:30pm, FS1); Round of 16 at the WTA’s Charleston Open (11am, Tennis)

(Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Carmelo Anthony is 10th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, with 28,289 career points.

Question: Can you name the nine guys ahead of him, in the correct order?

Hint: Four of their names start with a “K”.

Answer at the bottom.

Ryan Mountcastle sporting his Phiten necklace during a spring training game. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)

Phiten necklaces were practically part of the baseball uniform in the early 2000s. Decades later, the Orioles are bringing them back.

The Phiten revival: Randy Johnson is credited with bringing the braided necklaces to the U.S. after discovering them in Japan in 2001. The claim is that the nylon is coated in a titanium solution that improves balance and performance, but there’s no medical proof to back that up. In reality, the necklaces were a fashion trend — and they were everywhere.

The Phiten necklaces were all the rage when Adley Rutschman and his teammates were growing up — a status symbol, almost, on travel baseball circuits — but only now are they coming back into style. And they’re only coming back in style, it seems, because this group of knuckleheads who populate the Orioles clubhouse decided to bring them back.

Team bonding: A few Orioles bought necklaces during spring training and the trend quickly spread throughout the clubhouse. A week into the season, there are few players without one. It’s silly — but silly is good, says starting pitcher Zach Eflin. “It’s a really long season, and a lot of it is monotonous. Little things like this keep everyone pulling the rope in the same direction.”

Trivia answer: LeBron James (42,036 points), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387), Karl Malone (36,928), Kobe Bryant (33,643), Michael Jordan (32,292), Dirk Nowitzki (31,560), Wilt Chamberlain (31,419), Kevin Durant (30,571), Shaquille O’Neal (28,596)

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AM, our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

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Yahoo Sports AM: Ohtani is inevitable

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