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🏆 Five things to know Monday
- Cade Cunningham rescues Pistons after digging 3-1 hole. For those who might have doubted De-troit bas-ket-ball!, Cunningham & Co. are for real. Cunningham, the emerging superstar, grabbed a cape and went to work in Games 5, 6 and 7 averaging 36.3 points per contest. Detroit winning Sunday’s Game 7 felt like a foregone conclusion after Orlando squandered a 22-point halftime lead in Game 6 and lost by 14 points. For their part, the Magic had a funky season — a preseason favorite that had to deal with a rash of injuries only to get tantalizingly close to putting down a 1-seed. And yet we still really don’t know what they can actually become.
- Cavaliers advance after the home team wins every game. Cleveland-Toronto might not have featured the most popular teams, but the games could not have been tighter. Yes, the Cavs rode the Jarrett Allen train (14 points, 10 boards in the third quarter alone) en route to Sunday’s 114-102 clincher, but literally half the series couldn’t get more even. Games 4, 5 and 6 were decided by a total of nine points and Game 7 was tied at the half. The bracket tells us that Cleveland heads to Detroit for what is sure to be a friendly series while Toronto wonders where it goes from here. Our Sam Quinn ponders whether a Kawhi Leonard reunion could be in order.
- Golden Tempo wins historic Kentucky Derby. They say it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish, and apparently Golden Tempo was listening. Entering with 23-1 odds, Golden Tempo produced a rousing outside charge from the back of the pack and ran past co-favorite Renegade (5-1) at the finish line to win the Kentucky Derby. In the process, Cherie DeVaux became the first female trainer to win the Run for the Roses. The win comes with a $3.1 million payout. Next up is deciding whether Tempo will run in the Preakness a week from Saturday.
- Canadiens oust Lightning in Game 7 on the road to advance. The second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is set after the Canadiens beat the Lightning 2-1 on the road by managing just nine shots on Sunday. In fact, the round is already underway: On Saturday, the Hurricanes topped the Flyers 3-0 in Game 1, with Logan Stankoven finding the net twice for Carolina. And in an explosion of goals on Sunday, the Avalanche won Game 1 defeating the Wild 9-6 in the second 15-goal playoff game since 1994 and only the 10th in NHL history.
- Cameron Young has found his groove. For a long time, Young was one of the best players without a win on the PGA Tour. Now, he can’t stop winning. The talented American earned his third win in his last 14 starts, running away from the rest of the field and winning the Cadillac Championship by six strokes in going 19 under overall at Doral. (And that’s despite calling a penalty on himself.) This is the same guy who was winless through his first 93 career PGA Tour starts! And that $3.6 million check is a nice early birthday present, too; he turns 29 on Thursday.
🏀 Do not miss this: How 76ers, Joel Embiid overcame years of heartbreak
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We already covered the Pistons and Magic advancing Sunday, but let’s not forget about the other winner of the weekend, perhaps the biggest winner of them all: The 76ers completed their stunning comeback from down 3-1 in the series with a 109-100 Game 7 win over the Celtics in Boston.
Joel Embiid, less than a month removed from emergency appendectomy, went for 34 points and 12 rebounds, and Tyrese Maxey — whose offensive game is as fun to watch as anyone’s right now — scored 30 points, many down the stretch. Fearless rookie VJ Edgecombe added 23 and made five 3s.
Boston, which was without Jayson Tatum (left knee stiffness), blew a 3-1 series lead for the first time in franchise history. It’s also the first time Philadelphia has won a playoff series over Boston since 1982. That’s a rough combination of sentences for the Celtics, who we’ll talk about more in a bit.
What a win this is for Philly. It is awesome to see Embiid not just playing, but playing well. He has had such rough, untimely injury luck, and the appendicitis looked to be the latest chapter. But he somehow returned by Game 4 and helped swing the series. Call it historic, call it cathartic, call it flopping (as Jaylen Brown did on Saturday before adding on Sunday that the refs have an “agenda” with him) … this one means a lot, writes John Gonzalez.
- Gonzalez: “The last time Embiid won a Game 7 before this was never. He was 0-3 in his previous tries. That he was even part of the proceedings at all was its own giant surprise. The man’s body has famously failed him. He has missed 150 regular-season games over the last three years. … The whole thing has been so improbable that it’s hard to say who’s more floored by the events between the good people of Philadelphia and Boston. Even former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie couldn’t believe it.”
Now, there are eight teams left. Here are the matchups and the series schedules.
- Western Conference: (1) Thunder vs. (4) Lakers
- Western Conference: (2) Spurs vs. (6) Timberwolves
- Eastern Conference: (1) Pistons vs. (4) Cavaliers
- Eastern Conference: (3) Knicks vs. (7) 76ers
🏀 Celtics’ loss will have major implications
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What a ride the Celtics‘ 2025-26 season was: thrilling, unexpected highs for so many months, the Jayson Tatum return going better than anyone could have expected and making Boston look like legit championship contenders, and then the parquet floor collapsed beneath them.
So now what? Sam Quinn has the postmortem on Boston, which, let’s remember, overachieved vastly.
- Quinn: “Never was the talent drain more evident than it was for Game 7. Joe Mazzulla kept only two of his Game 1 starters: Derrick White and Jaylen Brown. The three others? Baylor Scheierman, who hadn’t played more than 15 minutes in any game this series, Luka Garza, who hadn’t played more than 14, and Ron Harper Jr., who was playing on a two-way contract until early April. Mazzulla just didn’t have the tools that he used to.”
But you know who’s super talented? Giannis Antetokounmpo. Sam navigates that possibility, too.
- Quinn: “It’s the highest-stakes floor vs. ceiling debate any NBA team is likely to have in quite some time. The best version of a hypothetical Antetokounmpo-Celtics team would be better than the existing one because Giannis is a more impactful player than Jaylen Brown, and the better your best player is, the less you tend to need elsewhere. … But the worst-case outcomes, especially when you factor in the extra draft picks you might have to put into the trade and any others you’d spend retrofitting the roster around your new star, are significantly drearier.”
Of course, the Celtics won’t be the only team in the Giannis sweepstakes, and this potential suitor might surprise you.
👍👎 The best (and not-so-best) of the rest
📺 What we’re watching Monday
⚽ Chelsea vs. Nottingham Forest, 10 a.m. on USA Network
⚽ Everton vs. Manchester City, 3 p.m. on USA Network
🏒 Flyers at Hurricanes, Game 2, 7 p.m. on ESPN
⚾ Brewers at Cardinals, 7:45 p.m. on FS1
🏀 76ers at Knicks, Game 1, 8 p.m. on NBC/Peacock
🏀 Timberwolves at Spurs, Game 1, 9:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network/Peacock
🏒 Ducks at Golden Knights, Game 1, 9:30 p.m. on ESPN
