Texas
Edmonton avoids a painful repeat, and Texas stuns Texas Tech late
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Good morning! Refuse that intentional walk today.
While You Were Sleeping: Playoff hockey, man
We can quibble with quantitative analyses and details later. But watching Game 1 of both the Stanley Cup Final and the Women’s College World Series championship last night left me with the best eye test result you can hope for in these situations: It feels like the two best teams are playing each other at the end.
Truly a wonderful thing. No flukes. Best-on-best, and last night’s winners were decided on singular moments:
We must start with a scintillating hockey game in Edmonton, where the Oilers — losers of last year’s Stanley Cup Final against this same Panthers team — took a 1-0 series lead with a 4-3 overtime win. Florida was up 3-1 early in the second in this one, too. Here’s the game winner from Leon Draisaitl with just 31 seconds left in the overtime period:
LEON DRAISAITL IS EDMONTON’S HERO 🔥
The Oilers rally back from a 3-1 deficit to take Game 1 in OT!
🎥 @Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/iRUX1ikCHO
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 5, 2025
Avoid a 3-0 deficit this year? ✅
On the diamond, we saw an intentional walk gone awry win the game for Texas. It was wild. Texas Tech, fueled by star pitcher NiJaree Canady, had a 1-0 lead in the sixth inning when the Red Raiders decided to give Reese Atwood a free bag with two runners on base.
The problem was that Atwood refused the offer:
After review, this pitch was obstructed by @atwood_reese bat. #HookEm | 📺: ESPN pic.twitter.com/UUGgsJxVsY
— Texas Softball (@TexasSoftball) June 5, 2025
That was essentially the game. Longhorns up 1-0 in the series. Let’s keep moving:
Hi, My Name Is: An overnight French superstar
Just a few weeks ago, Loïs Boisson was mostly known for a deodorant incident.
Boisson, the 22-year-old French tennis revelation, began this year’s French Open ranked No. 361 in the world. She had been aching for this opportunity to play in front of French fans, one year after a brutal injury forced her to forgo a wild-card spot in the tournament.
This morning, Boisson is a phenomenon. The last remaining French player in the tournament, facing world No. 2 Coco Gauff for a spot in the final. A quick introduction:
- In April, Boisson faced British tennis player Harriet Dart at the Rouen Open, and a hot mic caught Dart asking the umpire to tell Boisson to wear deodorant because “she smells really bad.” Boisson, who won the match in straight sets, shrugged it off. Dart apologized … and has not won a match since.
- After missing last year’s Open, Boisson has shown the aptitude real tennis nerds have known about for a couple of years now. She breezed through the lower levels of tennis last year and is considered one of the sport’s best young talents. Five wins at Roland Garros have proven it.
- Her fourth-round win over world No. 3 Jessica Pegula is her pièce de résistance thus far. With a forceful French crowd frothing behind her, Boisson overcame dropping the first set 6-3 and won the next two, 6-4, 6-4. She rode that wave through her quarterfinal match against Mirra Andreeva, and as Matthew Futterman wrote from the court, Boisson is already a French hero.
Victory is a great cologne, and Boisson is much more than the victim of some petty routine. Today’s match against Gauff is a must-watch.
More on that later, but I recommend listening to “The Tennis Podcast” on Boisson before she takes the court. Catch that here.
News to Know
Former IU players file sexual assault suit
More than a dozen former Indiana men’s basketball players have accused former team physician Dr. Bradford Bomba of sexual assault during his decades of work at the school. Two former Hoosiers, Haris Mujezinovic and Charlie Miller, filed suit in October against the university and head trainer Tim Garl, alleging both had knowledge of Bomba’s actions and the school “acted with deliberate indifference” toward his behavior. Two other players joined the suit in April, and yesterday an attorney told The Athletic at least 10 more players plan to come forward. Bomba died in May, and some players have said legendary Hoosiers coach Bob Knight was aware of Bomba’s alleged impropriety. More details in our full report.
Manfred regrets ESPN opt-out
The messy breakup between MLB and ESPN has moved past the anger stage and into nostalgia, as commissioner Rob Manfred said yesterday he regrets the move. Sources told The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand that the league is in negotiations with multiple networks over the rights ESPN once had, and the packages are nowhere near the value of ESPN’s offering. Manfred hopes to have a rights deal finalized soon. See his full comments.
More news
- C.J. Gardner-Johnson disputed the notion that the Eagles traded him for salary cap reasons. Hm.
- FIFA slashed ticket prices for the upcoming Club World Cup. 👀
- Manchester United has made its first bid for Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo. See the details.
- The Suns will hire Cavaliers assistant Jordan Ott as their next head coach. Read our scouting report
- Pacers coach Rick Carlisle thought the news of Tom Thibodeau’s firing was “fake AI.” Me too, man.
- Sure enough, women’s hockey legend Hilary Knight signed with the PWHL’s new Seattle franchise after going unprotected from expansion.
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What to Watch
📺 French Open: Women’s Semifinals
9 a.m. ET on TNT/Max
If you’re able, throw this on this morning. First up is top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka against Iga Świątek for a spot in the final. Boisson-Coco Gauff follows. Both should be great.
📺 WCWS: Texas vs. Texas Tech, Game 2
8 p.m. ET on ESPN
Texas can win its first title here. Easy call to watch.
📺 NBA: Pacers at Thunder
8:30 p.m. ET on ABC
Finally, after nearly a week of waiting, the finals are here. We’ve talked about it plenty. I expect this game to be fast — Indiana’s pace-driven offense against Oklahoma City’s swarming defense that gorges on fast-break points. As Zach Harper said yesterday, the basketball itself will be good.
Get tickets to games like these here.
Pulse Picks
For all of the angles in this NBA Finals, I think it comes down to one guy: Tyrese Haliburton. Shakeia Taylor has a great story today on the league’s new premier antagonist, a player who loves his haters.
Former Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin was against “shrink dudes.” Then he worked with one.
Max Muncy is mashing for the Dodgers again. His redemption arc is nearly complete.
Fun story: Jeff Hoffman doesn’t play for the Phillies anymore, but he’ll always have a piece of Philly. No, literally.
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our story on the Steelers writing a letter to fans angry about players showing up to a Donald Trump rally. Read it here.
Most-read on the website yesterday: Andrew Marchand’s column on how ESPN messed up its announcer trio for the NBA Finals.
Ticketing links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Top photo: Walter Tychnowicz / Imagn Images)
In an incident that was horrific beyond words, late last month, a stunned family watched in horror as a car plowed into the Katy, Texas home of a 76-year-old mother and grandmother, killing her. The driver has been charged with manslaughter.
In the aftermath of the crash, it emerged that the car in question was a Tesla, and that the driver was making use of full self-driving mode (FSD) around the time the crash occurred. The victim’s family has named Tesla and the driver as defendants in a lawsuit. But per Electrek, Tesla was able to view crash data very quickly after the incident, and the head of AI at the company, Ashok Elluswamy, said the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.”
In the days after the crash, Tesla fans took issue with coverage that characterized the car as in FSD when the crash occurred. CEO Elon Musk seemed to agree, replying to a post, “Yes, this makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!”
But Musk seems to be assuming bad faith, as if coverage implied FSD had suddenly shifted into, perhaps, some kind of previously unannounced homicidal maniac mode and attacked a house. If anyone was saying this is what happened, they should apologize. It’s clearly not what happened.
And on Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) largely confirmed Tesla’s version of events. Their report reads, in part:
“Electronic data recovered from the vehicle indicated that before the crash, the driver manually overrode FSD (Supervised) by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100%, and the vehicle’s speed was greater than 70 mph when the crash occurred.”
But cooler heads had noted weeks earlier that, like with good old fashioned cruise control, accelerating doesn’t boot you from FSD. The car takes the input, and stays in FSD. The question isn’t one of mechanics and technology, but one of philosophy: if FSD is meant to be “driving” when someone jams on the accelerator in a residential area, FSD may not be the “driver” in one important sense, but the car was still in FSD mode.
Because as much as Tesla would probably like FSD to be a total non-factor in the incident, that may not be the case either.
ABC News noted that, according to court documents, the driver claimed he “passed out” with the car in FSD on the highway, and that’s the last thing he remembers before the crash. He says he wasn’t sick, and medical records show no seizures, cardiac episodes, drugs, or alcohol.
A local Fox affiliate says records show the car was making deliveries for DoorDash while in FSD in the “hours and minutes leading up to the crash.” While in a neighborhood, it apparently signaled it was going to turn left onto one street, but instead the pedal went to the metal. This took the Tesla onto the victim’s cul-de-sac instead, and put it on its fateful collision course with her house.
To make matters weirder, other court records now show, per Electrek, that the driver had Googled the terms, “Tesla fsd not aggressive enough 2026,” “FSD is not aggressive enough for city driving,” and “Tesla fsd too timid.” That’s the kind of thing you Google when you’re looking for a Reddit post from someone sharing your consumer gripe.
In any case, the odds aren’t good that the driver wanted this to happen, nor that Tesla programmed its cars with evil intent. But FSD was being used around the time of this unusual fatal incident, and the public deserves to know more. Fortunately, a lot more will come out as the lawsuit progresses.
AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Wednesday he has secured a settlement of bankruptcy claims against genetic testing company 23andMe stemming from a 2023 data breach that exposed personal information, including some genetic ancestry data, of 6.9 million customers worldwide.
Paxton’s office said the settlement includes $150 million for a multistate coalition of 42 states. But because of limited funds in 23andMe’s bankruptcy estate and competing claims, the states’ recovery will be $18 million paid immediately, with Texas receiving $1,266,860.
23andMe disclosed in October 2023 that attackers had accessed accounts affecting 6.9 million consumers. Some of the information was later posted for sale on the dark web, according to Paxton’s office, which said the company learned of the breach months after the data became publicly available. The office said 23andMe initially denied a breach and later blamed consumers’ account settings and password practices.
Paxton joined a multistate investigation that concluded 23andMe used unreasonable security practices and failed to implement adequate safeguards against hacking, the office said.
23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2025. Paxton’s office said the settlement incorporates privacy and cybersecurity requirements, including enhanced security standards, comprehensive risk assessments and creation of an independent advisory board, along with enforcement of state privacy laws and continued consumer data deletion rights.
“Companies that collect and profit from Texans’ most personal information have a legal duty to protect it,” Paxton said in a statement.
The company also agreed to a $46.75 million class-action settlement in the bankruptcy case for affected U.S. consumers who submitted claims by Feb. 17, 2026, Paxton’s office said.
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