Each week, Boston Globe Today Sports host and Globe sports columnist Chris Gasper provides commentary on a notable sports topic in the segment “Write or Wrong?”
This week: The debate surrounding the Celtics as they prepare for the NBA Finals. Who deserves more responsibility for their success, Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown? Or neither of them?
Tatum and Brown aren’t competitors for leading man. They’re perfect complements for each other. Watch “Write or Wrong?” at the top of this story.
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TD Garden will host the first two games of the Finals at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday and 8 p.m. on June 9. The West champion Mavericks will host Games 3 and 4 on June 12 and June 14.
Game 5, if needed, would be at TD Garden on June 17. Game 6 would be at Dallas on June 20, and Game 7 in Boston on June 23.
All Finals games will be televised on ABC. See the full schedule here.
Boston Globe Today Sports airs every Friday at 5 p.m. on NESN and is available to stream on-demand on the Globe’s website.
Material from previous Globe coverage was used in this report.
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Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at christopher.gasper@globe.com. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.
It’s been a stormy start to the weekend, and we’re not even close to done just yet!
As a storm moves south through New England, we’ll have more rain, wind and March-like temperatures. Let’s start with the timing and the rain. Showers and some heavy rain will come in waves from north to south, and leave in the same direction. That means, the further north you live, the earlier you saw the rain this morning, but the sooner you’ll see the rain leave this afternoon.
In fact, folks in areas like Worcester County could even see some sunshine before sunset.
On the flip side, if you’re on the South Shore, South Coast, Cape & Islands, the rain takes longer to reach you, but won’t be gone until 3-5 PM or so, and the clouds will take longer to break as well.
Now for the wind. We’ve already seen gusts in the 20s, 30s & 40s. But with the strength of this storm, we could see more up to 55 mph for most of the coast, and 65 mph for the Cape and Nantucket.
For that reason, we have a Wind Advisory and a High Wind Warning until 8 PM this evening. We could even see a few power outages because with the potential of winds blowing weak tree limbs onto power lines.
Finally, the chill. Temperatures early this morning were largely in the low to mid 50s. Not the worst start for this time of year.
But as the cold air associated with this storm kicks in, temperatures go down instead of up. We’ll be in the 40s for most of the afternoon.
If there’s a bright side to this forecast, it’s that the storm is gone and clouds clear in time for us to see the only blue moon of 2026! It will rise tonight, and peak illumination will be at 4:45 AM tomorrow morning! It will be a micromoon, meaning it’ll look smaller than normal, as the moon is at or near apogee, its farthest point in orbit from the earth.
On the note of tomorrow morning… it’ll be beautiful! It’ll be a cold start with temps in the 40s. However, we’ll have some beautiful sunshine as well, and by the afternoon, temperatures will reach the mid to upper 60s and low 70s– not far from normal! That said, clouds increase in the afternoon and we’re keeping an eye out for a few spotty showers as well.
We’ll keep a few showers around on Monday, though they’ll stay spotty. Temperatures will be cooler as a front comes through with highs in the low 60s. We’ll keep a shower around on Tuesday, with a mix of clouds and sun and a shower or two remaining.
The weather finally takes a turn on Wednesday! We’ll be mostly to partly sunny, and the chance of a shower is incredibly slim. Highs will be in the upper 60s. Thursday is mostly sunny and even warmer, with highs in the mid to upper 70s!
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It’s going to be a little while longer before Roman Anthony returns to action.
The Red Sox outfielder has suffered another setback in his recovery from a sprained right hand and will be shut down from swinging for a couple of days.
Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy told reporters in Cleveland that Anthony tried hitting off a tee Thursday for the first time since suffering his injury on May 4, but that he found doing so to be painful.
“He hit off the tee (yesterday) and had some discomfort, so we’re going to slow play it,” Tracy said, per MLB.com’s Henry Palattella. “It’s going to be day-to-day, or even the better way is ‘action-to-action.’ (We’re going to be asking), ‘What did he do today, is that uncomfortable and do we have to wait?’ ”
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Originally thought to be a minor issue that might not even require a stint on the injured list, Anthony has now missed 21 games and likely won’t be back until early-to-mid June.
The recovery process has also been halting. Anthony has continued doing most other baseball activities, including running and throwing, but it wasn’t until earlier this week that he could swing a bat free of discomfort.
Once he was able to comfortably take dry swings — or swing a bat without hitting the ball — the next step was hitting off a tee. Now he’ll be given a couple more days to heal and likely won’t try again until the Red Sox return home from Cleveland and are back at Fenway Park on Tuesday following Monday’s off day.
Tracy acknowledged that the recovery hasn’t gone as smoothly as expected, but emphasized that isn’t because of anything Anthony’s done wrong.
“That’s not Roman’s fault, it’s not anyone’s fault,” Tracy said. “It’s just he got hurt, and it’s a nagging injury on a hand when he’s trying to hit.”
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Speaking to Rob Bradford on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast prior to Thursday’s game against the Atlanta Braves, Anthony clarified the exact nature of his injury, which was officially announced by the team as a right wrist sprain. Anthony said he has a partially torn ring finger ligament, specifically his ring finger CMC (carpometacarpal).
The sprain versus torn verbiage has generated some confusion among fans, though medically there isn’t a meaningful distinction between the two.
“I know stuff came out yesterday about tear versus sprain versus strain and all these different things, and I don’t know what to say other than any of those are a tear,” Tracy said. “You strain a hamstring and that’s a partial tear; fibers let go a little bit and they need to heal.
“I don’t think anything is portrayed differently or wrongly. If a guy strains his hamstring, I won’t come out here and say he tore his hamstring. That’s not how that works.”
Prior to suffering his injury, Anthony was batting .229 with one home run and a .675 OPS through his first 30 games this season.
Surprise: Another weekend and there’s more rain on the way. It’s bad enough we’ve had to post a First Alert.
For now, we’ll watch as clouds thicken today. We’ll squeeze out some drops later this afternoon and evening.
A weather maker is winding up in Canada, wrapping in cold air. All of that is going to dive down to New England.
We’re in the thick of it tomorrow. Rain will be coming at us in bursts with some dry time in between. Winds will likely push past 50 mph in Boston.
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Those winds will eat away at temperatures; with wind chills barely above freezing. And no – not just in the morning – but the afternoon, too!
It’s so cold there’s the threat of snow as that rain bumps into colder air over the Berkshires, Worcester Hills and southern New Hampshire right up to Mount Washington.
The snow isn’t going to pile up but just know there could be some flakes flying over our highest hills.
The blue on our Futurecast map marks the spots where snow could mix with rain.
Rain spins out by Saturday evening but not before dumping about half an inch over Boston.
We’ll try to salvage the rest of the weekend with temperatures in the upper 60s by Sunday. Still, there’s the threat of bits and pieces of rain.
By the way, this isn’t any weekend, it’s the last weekend of spring. Meteorological summer starts on June 1.
The first day of summer remains drab and dreary with more rain chances and temperatures in the low 60 on Monday.