The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.
Good morning! Embrace the grime today. Coming up:
Grit and Grime: Are the Knicks actually unstoppable?
One thought raced through my head every time I watched a New York Knicks possession in the fourth quarter last night: These dudes are grimy. I mean that as a huge compliment.
Advertisement
There’s grit, and then there’s grime. Every bucket, every rebound, every screen oozed difficulty, as if each player was covered in sludge. Grime, even. My body ached from watching as I paced behind my couch. Doing all of that, on the road, in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against a team that employs a 7-foot-4 alien is championship material.
It’s just one game, but the Knicks are up 1-0 after last night’s 105-95 win, their 12th straight this postseason. Two more notes on the grime:
- New York, and primarily Karl-Anthony Towns, was excellent against that alien, Spurs wunderkind Victor Wembanyama. He finished with 26 points, but it came on 6-of-21 shooting. He was in the muck all night.
- On the other side, I don’t know what more to say at this point about Jalen Brunson. The 6-foot-2 point guard, most often the shortest player on the floor, scored 30 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter. A huge 3-pointer with 1:50 left and an absurd fadeaway jumper with 37 seconds left sealed the win. Superhero stuff, and this all came after the 29-year-old left the game in the first quarter with a knee injury.
My colleague Law Murray made an incredible point in our live blog last night: This is the first time the Knicks have led the finals since they won Game 5 of the 1994 series, which also happened to be the infamous O.J. Simpson White Bronco night.
Game 2 is tomorrow. Can’t wait.
- In other title series news: Texas is up 1-0 in the Women’s College World Series championship after a solid 7-3 win over a surging Texas Tech. Longhorns pitcher Teagan Kavan threw a complete game. Texas can win its second straight championship tonight.
Let’s move on:
News to Know
Sabalenka’s chance flutters away
Women’s world No. 1 tennis player Aryna Sabalenka saw the boogeyman ahead of her and, for once, he didn’t look so scary. Most of her top competition had already cleared out of the ongoing French Open, which has become a bloodbath of upsets. Sabalenka has never won a Grand Slam title off of a hard court. Why not this year?
Sabalenka then lost in stunning fashion to No. 25 seed Diana Shnaider — and the wind. It’s the second straight year windy conditions have doomed Sabalenka on Roland Garros’ clay. The wind was yesterday’s main villain.
Wilson retires
Russell Wilson is officially done as an NFL player, wrapping up a career more impressive than you remember: 10 Pro Bowls, two Super Bowl appearances, one ring. It’s funny how recency bias plays into how we view a player like Wilson, 37, who bounced around the league for the last two years of his career after a disastrous stint in Denver. His next stop: CBS.
{“endpoint”:”https://api-prd-nyt.theathletic.com/graphql”}
Saban supports bill
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban said yesterday he supports a bipartisan bill in Congress to regulate college sports, which is still opposed by the SEC and Big Ten. The tentpoles of the Protect College Sports act are mostly popular: limiting transfers and eligibility, enforcing a spending cap, giving conferences the option to pool media rights and, in news directly for this LSU fan, preventing coaches from leaving their team before the end of the season. The big conferences say it needs work, though.
Advertisement
More news:
- President Trump plans to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, a source confirmed to The Athletic.
- NBA commissioner Adam Silver had a simple message about the Clippers-Aspiration investigation: Wrap it up.
- NC State and Virginia were supposed to open the college football season in Brazil this fall. Now that’s not happening, and it seems like a mess.
- Another day, another video game update: Bears quarterback Caleb Williams is your Madden NFL 27 cover athlete. See it here.
- Terry Rozier will forfeit most of his $26.2 million NBA salary for this season as part of the ongoing investigation into illegal sports gambling. Read our full story.
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says the luxury-tax system has failed. See his full comments.
One Week Out: Let’s get to the pitch
We are just seven days away from kickoff of the World Cup, and I wish I could say we had more exciting news in the headlines. Just yesterday, FIFA: banned refillable water bottles, failed to implement a cut-off point for matches and drew the ire of a Dallas artist by painting over his mural.
Maybe we should focus on more fun stuff? Or, as our staff termed it today, mad. We can wither about anything in the lead-up to the Cup, but once play begins, mad things will happen. We compiled 20 this week. Here are my two favorites:
19. The first tournament
I haven’t read much about the 1930 World Cup, but I now learn that there were missed boats and one Romanian player who returned from the Cup and showed up at his own funeral. Wild.
1. Zidane’s headbutt
This has to be No. 1, right? French legend Zinedine Zidane headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final, which was Zidane’s last match. Materazzi said something crass about Zidane’s sister and suddenly had a bald head in his chest. This was so ubiquitous that my friends and I would just say “Zidane!” and fake a headbutt to each other in the school hallways.
Read the rest of that list here. And maybe we can get excited now.
Watch Guide
📺 WNBA: Dream at Fever
7 p.m. ET on Prime Video
An Angel Reese-Caitlin Clark matchup doesn’t have the same energy as it once did, but this is still a great game for other reasons. One, whatever is going on with Clark in Indiana is concerning, to say the least, though I suspect that will peter out with a few good performances. Atlanta is also just a really good team, ranked No. 2 in our latest Power Rankings.
📺 NHL: Golden Knights at Hurricanes
8 p.m. ET on ABC
Every Stanley Cup Final game is a big one, to be clear, but nothing feels more nervy than a home favorite, down 1-0, clawing for survival so quickly out of the gate. I expect plenty of urgency here.
Advertisement
📺 WCWS: Texas vs. Texas Tech
8 p.m. ET on ESPN
Texas can win its second straight title tonight. I just love this rivalry.
Pulse Picks
A final note on the Spurs for now, and this is a nice one. Mirin Fader wrote a beautiful story this morning on the Salesian sisters, the basketball-loving nuns sitting courtside at every San Antonio playoff game. They seem fun.
Burbling in the background of the NBA Finals is the upcoming “deadline” for the Bucks to trade Giannis Antetokounmpo. Our latest file identified two top candidates: Miami and … Oklahoma City.
Mitch Light played the savior in sorting through the delightful mess that is college baseball, where more teams in The Athletic’s preseason top 25 missed the NCAA Tournament than made the super regionals. He ranked the 16 teams left.
One interesting aspect of this WCWS, too: It’s a quasi-preview for the 2028 Olympics, which has stirred up an intense debate once again.
The NHL is ready to move past its Russia problem, but as Chris Johnston writes, it’s not that easy.
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: The entire Eric Weddle diatribe — and subsequent reaffirmation — on Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood. Catch up here.
Most-read on the website yesterday: Knicks-Spurs Game 1 live blog.
📫 That’s all for now! Say hello at thepulse@theathletic.com, check out our other newsletters and connect with me on Instagram for more.