Sports

LeBron James, Steph Curry had a 'healthy resentment' — Olympics offer something new

Published

6 months ago

July 18, 2024

LeBron James, Steph Curry had a 'healthy resentment' — Olympics offer something new

Follow our Olympics coverage in the lead-up to the Paris Games.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — LeBron James was genuinely thrilled to see Stephen Curry in that Bellagio hotel ballroom in Las Vegas on the eve of Team USA training camp.

Born in the same Akron, Ohio, hospital nearly four years apart, co-authors of the last great NBA rivalry, co-inhabitants of the league’s C Suite as the two most famous, respected and decorated active players, they were to join up as co-chief executives of the American Olympic team as teammates for the first time, outside of a meaningless All-Star Game.

“’Bout time, ’bout (expletive) time,” James, in a denim jacket and do-rag, said to Curry, wearing a plain white T and a black vest, when they saw each other the night of July 5, with cameras rolling and a boom mic hanging over them.

It was nearly one year ago, in late August 2023, when James called Curry to see if he was interested in joining him on the Olympic team. Now, granted, at the time of the call, there was no Olympic team yet. USA Basketball was engaged in the FIBA World Cup, a wholly separate team and event, and it is typically not up to players as to who makes the 12-man roster for any U.S. national team.

But a player the caliber of James, or Curry? If they say they want to play for Team USA, they aren’t going to be told no.

James, 39, has played 21 NBA seasons, is the sport’s all-time scoring king, a four-time champion (on three different teams; no one had led three franchises to titles before James did it), a four-time MVP and a league-record 20-time All-Star. James co-anchored the Redeem Team in 2008 and is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, as well as USA Basketball’s all-time assists leader. He is, and has been for many years, widely considered the “face” of the NBA.

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Curry, 36, has changed in 15 NBA seasons how the game is played — not only in the NBA, or America, but also around the world. He revolutionized the sport with a relentless aerial assault of 3-pointers, making (and shooting) more of them than any other NBA player ever, though it would be selling him way short to simply call him a great shooter. Curry encapsulates greatness as a winner (four NBA championships), performer (two-time MVP, 10-time All-Star) and as the steward of the Golden State Warriors’ dynasty.

The two of them wearing USA jerseys at the same time, sharing the same practice courts at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, or at New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi, or on the biggest sports stage in the world, the Paris Olympics, is or will be a surreal sight for anyone privileged enough to see it, including their teammates.

“It’s just cool, I’m not going to lie,” said Tyrese Haliburton, a Team USA guard at the tender age of 24. “It’s pretty dope just for me, like when I was a kid, just watching those guys playing the finals every year. I think the more time I’m around them, the more I’ll hear stories and stuff, and that’ll be really cool because those are things that I probably wondered about when I was 15, 16.”

Will Haliburton hear about when James and Curry didn’t like each other too much? Unlikely, but it happened.

Perhaps measuring the relationship in terms of “like” or “dislike” is the wrong metric. When Curry was starring in college at Davidson, and leading the small school on a ride through the NCAA Tournament in 2008, James, already an established megastar, attended one of Curry’s games. When Curry was a rookie with Golden State in 2009-10, James invited him to his house in suburban Cleveland on an off night for the Warriors and Cavs. Curry said he could call on James occasionally for advice.

LeBron James congratulates Stephen Curry after the 2017 NBA Finals. The two stars met in four straight finals from 2015 to 2018. (Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)

But from 2015 through 2018, James’ Cavs and Curry’s Warriors met every June in the NBA Finals. The first three of those series were remarkably tense, and the stress spilled onto how James, and the people close to him, thought of Curry at the time, and vice versa.

In 2015, James’ short-handed Cavs took a 2-1 series lead, only to be overcome and outlasted by a healthier, deeper Warriors team. The next year, Cleveland became the only team to ever recover from a 3-1 deficit in a finals to win; James spearheaded the comeback. And then Curry recruited Kevin Durant to the Warriors, and while they beat Cleveland in five games the following finals, the series turned on Durant’s 31 points in Game 3, including a game-winning 3-pointer over James.

From the end of the ’15 finals, just about until the nanosecond the Cavs won in ’16, people close to James often scoffed at Curry’s rising star, suggesting that Curry unfairly escaped the scrutiny James was constantly under. In an extended celebration of the 2016 championship, James hosted a Halloween party the following October with cookies decorated as tombstones, with Curry (and, to be fair, other Warriors stars) engraved on the treat.

On the other side, people close to Curry often pointed out how much drama seemed to follow James’ teams, whether it was on the Cavs, or even before that in Miami. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2016, Curry’s Warriors played their first game in Cleveland since clinching the ’15 finals there seven months earlier, and Curry infamously quipped about the visitors locker room: “Hopefully, it still smells a little bit like champagne.” After the Warriors won in 2017, Curry was caught on a cell phone video at Harrison Barnes’ wedding mocking James as a dancer — with James’ about-to-be former teammate Kyrie Irving laughing hysterically.

Both Curry and James acknowledged that there was a certain tension between them that has dissipated.

“It was like a healthy resentment of somebody that’s standing in your way,” Curry said. “But through it all, like there’s obviously the utmost respect for who he is as a person and a player and like how good he is and the challenge of trying to beat him and trying to solve that problem every year.”

James nodded in agreement when a reporter suggested an apparent rivalry existed between him and Curry years ago, though he said the idea that “they should hate each other” was a false media narrative. James went on to explain why he wanted to make sure it never came to that between him and Curry.

“The game of basketball don’t last forever,” James said. “You don’t want to waste the opportunity to be able to have a relationship with someone.”

Team USA gives LeBron James and Stephen Curry a rare opportunity to be teammates. “There’s obviously the utmost respect for who he is as a person and a player,” Curry says. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

James said he and Curry “understand” that NBA fans, and media, for that matter, of a certain age still viewed how players should act toward each other through the lens of the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry of the 1980s, or of Michael Jordan’s contempt for virtually all opponents when he dominated the 1990s.

“A lot of y’all maybe grew up in the Bird-Magic era and we shouldn’t like each other, but I’m also (aware) enough to know that Isiah (Thomas) and Magic hugged and kissed each other on the floor too because it was just mutual respect,” James said. “They say Michael never talked to any of his opponents, but I’m also smart enough to know that him and Charles (Barkley) had a lot of conversations during the ’93 finals and also played golf against each other.

“So I don’t want to lose those moments (with Curry).”

James and Curry have said over the last two weeks that they’ve enjoyed watching each other in practice, gleaning how each transcendental superstar goes about his work and learning more about who they are (or, to be more precise, who they’ve become since those finals battles) off the court.

Durant, another Team USA superstar, said the relationship between James and Curry is stronger because of the tension from the previous decade, when they commanded record TV audiences in June and otherwise co-opted the center of the basketball universe, with split headquarters in Cleveland and San Francisco.

“He ain’t young Steph no more, and he’s not the Bron that you were looking up to no more — you become competitors,” Durant said, explaining how he viewed whatever it was that used to exist between James and Curry. “I think that respect level goes up even more. I think they became better friends now than they were when they went through that experience, competing with one another and being rivals, if you call it that.

“You could see that, you can see how much they respect one another.”

It is about (expletive) time.

GO DEEPER

Anthony Davis’ solid play for Team USA creates a tough question for Steve Kerr

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Giuseppe Cacase / AFP / Getty Images, Joe Murphy / NBAE / Getty Images)

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Sports

What is TGL? Explaining Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s new simulator golf league

Published

1 hour ago

January 8, 2025

Press Room

What is TGL? Explaining Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s new simulator golf league

If you were to recreate the sport of golf for the year 2025, what would it look like?

TGL believes it has that all figured out: A prime-time golf league featuring PGA Tour players competing on teams hitting shots against a giant screen and finishing their holes on a shape-shifting putting green in a stadium of 1,500 spectators. Welcome to professional golf’s latest science experiment.

TGL will broadcast its first match at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday on ESPN, and the golf world is anxiously waiting to see how it’ll play out on live TV and in person at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach, Fla. Here’s everything you need to know about the new league ahead of its debut:

What is TGL?

TGL is a 15-week golf series started by TMRW Sports — a company founded by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley, a former NBC Sports executive, and backed by big-name investors that include Steph Curry and Fenway Sports Group.

The league will take place indoors, in a custom stadium on the campus of Palm Beach State College equipped with a simulator screen that is five stories high, grass tee boxes for full-swing shots and bunkers that are filled with what is believed to be the same sand used at Augusta National Golf Club. Once the players reach the area surrounding the green on each virtual hole, they’ll turn around to the rotating green to complete it. Nearly 600 hydraulic jacks will help change the undulation of the green to distinguish the holes, which were designed by various golf architects with no construction constraints. This is video game golf, after all.

There are six TGL teams, representing cities around the U.S., consisting of four PGA Tour players each. Throughout the season, those teams will face off against each other live. Then the top four teams will move on to playoffs. The golfers will be mic’d up and shot-clocks will necessitate a snappy pace of play. There will be referees and timeouts like in other major league sports — even smoke and walk-out music will introduce the players to the ticketed crowd. No glass plates or nets separate the fans from the golfers. So yes, a skulled greenside bunker shot could get dicey.

A volcano splitting a fairway? Possible in TGL’s virtual world. (Courtesy TGL)

What does TGL stand for?

Tomorrow’s Golf League

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Who are on the TGL teams?

Woods and McIlroy headline the list of PGA Tour players on the TGL roster, but neither will appear in the first match-up, which is between the New York Golf Club and The Bay Golf Club. The league is operating in partnership with the PGA Tour, which means no LIV golfers have been included. Major champions such as Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka won’t be hitting into the 60-foot tall screen. Notably, the world’s No. 1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, didn’t sign up either. Here’s the full breakdown of the six teams:

• Atlanta Drive GC: Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel, Lucas Glover
• Boston Common Golf: Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott
• Jupiter Links GC: Tiger Woods, Max Homa, Tom Kim, Kevin Kisner
• Los Angeles Golf Club: Collin Morikawa, Sahith Theegala, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood
• New York Golf Club: Matt Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Cameron Young
• The Bay Golf Club: Ludvig Åberg, Wyndham Clark, Min Woo Lee, Shane Lowry

It’s New York vs. The Bay for opening night, with Fitzpatrick, Fowler and Schauffele playing for the former and Åberg, Clark and Lowry for the latter. Lowry has already indicated the tee is his first.

GO DEEPER

TGL is big, aggressive and not about the money. That gives it a real chance

What is the TGL format and rules?

Three players from each four-man team will compete in each match-up. The matches will run for two hours and the players will play 15 holes.

In the first nine-hole session, the players will compete in “Triples,” which is 3 vs. 3 alternate shot. Each team will alternate playing until they complete the hole, and the lowest score wins. No points will be awarded for a tied hole, just like in traditional match play.

In the second session, head-to-head play will begin with “Singles.” One player will face off against another player on the first hole, then the second set of players will go against each other, then the third set. That cycle will repeat once more for the full six-hole “Singles” portion.

Teams can increase the stakes of a hole by implementing a feature called “The Hammer.” If the opposing team accepts, the value of the hole becomes two points, rather than one. If they decline, they effectively concede the hole.

Overtime will be a 3 vs. 3 closest to the pin contest between the teams, until a winner is decided.

The green rotates at the SoFi Center depending on the hole’s layout, with pistons underneath the surface also changing the undulation. (Courtesy TGL)

How long is the TGL season?

The TGL runs from January through March, with the regular season concluding on March 4. Matches will exclusively air on Monday and Tuesday nights, depending on the week and conflicting broadcast schedules. The top four teams after regular season play will advance to a four-week playoff season, with matches on March 17-18 and 24-25.

How to watch

TGL will broadcast on ESPN and ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET.

(Top photo of Rory McIlroy: Courtesy TGL)

Sports

Padres' late owner's widow sues for control of team from his siblings

Published

2 hours ago

January 8, 2025

Press Room

Padres' late owner's widow sues for control of team from his siblings

The San Diego Padres are in the midst of a custody battle.

Sheel Kamal Seidler, the widow of deceased team owner Peter Seidler, has filed a lawsuit against his two brothers in attempt to seize control of the team.

The widow has alleged in her complaint that Peter, before his death, revealed his dying wish was for her to take control of the Padres, followed by their children, and that her children hold the largest stake in ownership. She adds that Peter’s two brothers, Matt and Bob, “are trying to erase Peter’s vision and legacy, as well as falsely cast themselves as Peter’s true heirs.”

The suit also alleges that Bob’s wife made multiple “racist, profane and hateful communications directed at Sheel—a woman of Indian descent—in communications.”

The widow released a statement addressing the complaint on social media.

San Diego Padres Chairman Peter Seidler and President of Baseball Operations and General Manager A.J. Preller talk during the San Diego Padres Fan Fest at PETCO Park on February 4, 2023 in San Diego, California. (Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty Images)

“The complaint alleges claims against Matthew and Robert for breaches of fiduciary duty and fraud. I would urge anyone who is interested in the details to read the full complaint. This was not a decision I made lightly. During this difficult period, I have done everything in my power to avoid unwanted distractions and resolve the matter privately. I have focused on supporting the work of the many dedicated professionals within the Padres organization, as well as the incredible players we have the privilege of watching nearly every day throughout the season.

“I made this decision as a very last resort, but I am confident it is the right one, and the best way to protect the Padres franchise and ensure the vision that Peter and I shared for the team will continue.”

Matt released a statement via Sportico, claiming that Sheel’s allegations are “without merit.”

“The complaint filed by Sheel Seidler, the widow of Peter Seidler, is entirely without merit,” Seidler said. “Peter had a clear estate plan. The plan specifically named three of his nine siblings, with whom he had worked closely for many decades, as successor trustees of his trust, and Peter himself prohibited Sheel from ever serving as trustee.”

PATRIOTS OWNER ROBERT KRAFT SHOULDERS BLAME AFTER FIRING JEROD MAYO: ‘WHOLE SITUATION IS ON ME’

San Diego Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar, left, is held back by teammates after he protested with umpires when items were thrown at him in the outfield during the seventh inning in Game 2 of a baseball NL Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Peter died in November 2023 at the age of 63. He had been ill for months, though it has not been disclosed what exactly he’d been dealing with. Seidler is a cancer survivor who had health issues for quite some time.

He said in July 2023 that the Padres would stay within his family for generations after he passed away.

Seidler was the founder of Seidler Equity Partners, which was a key piece of the group that purchased the Padres in 2012. Seidler’s uncle, also named Peter, and Ron Fowler were a part of the group, too.

The name of the group derives from Seidler’s grandfather, Walter O’Malley, who owned the Dodgers from 1950, when they first relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, until 1979. Fowler transferred the role of chairman to Seidler in 2020, and then Seidler purchased part of Fowler’s stake in the organization to become the team’s largest stakeholder.

The San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler looks on prior to the MLB World Tour Mexico City Series between the San Diego Padres and the San Francisco Giants at Alfredo Harp Helú Stadium on April 29, 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Prior to his death, he dealt out a series of high-cost contracts to superstar players in an effort to compete with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West division and win a World Series.

These contracts include Manny Machado’s $350 million, deal, Fernando Tatis Jr.’s $340 million deal, Xander Bogaertz $280 million deal, and Yu Darvish’s $108 million deal.

The Athletic reported in November 2023 that the team took out a $50 loan to help pay for the costs of the contracts.

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Jackson Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital. He previously worked for ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson has covered the Super Bowl and NBA Finals, and has interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.

Sports

USC closes in on hiring Chad Savage to be tight ends and inside receivers coach

Published

2 hours ago

January 8, 2025

Press Room

USC closes in on hiring Chad Savage to be tight ends and inside receivers coach

USC is finalizing a deal to hire Colorado State assistant Chad Savage as its new tight ends and inside receivers coach, a person familiar with the decision but not authorized to speak on the matter told The Times.

ESPN first reported the news.

Just 30 years old, Savage spent the past three seasons working under coach Jay Norvell at Colorado State, where he earned a reputation for his stellar work on the recruiting trail. During all three seasons with the Rams, Savage was rated as the top recruiter in the Mountain West Conference. Before that, he served as tight ends coach at Nevada and receivers coach at San Diego, his alma mater.

He’ll replace Zach Hanson, who shifted to coaching the offensive line last month following the departure of assistant Josh Henson. And Savage will have no shortage of talent to work with at tight end, with USC set to return a deep well of talent at the position that includes a third-year starter in Lake McRee, as well as young prospects such as Walker Lyons, Joey Olsen and Walter Matthews — or at inside receiver, where Makai Lemon should be one of the top returning wideouts in the Big Ten.

But perhaps most important, Savage should play a major role in helping reestablish USC’s recruiting foothold in Southern California. Despite only being a full-time coaching staff member for the past five years, the Reno, Nev., native has deep connections in the region after making it his primary recruiting focus during his tenure at Colorado State.

Savage is the first new full-time addition to USC’s staff this offseason after two assistants, Henson and linebackers coach Matt Entz, left the program.

USC still needs to hire a linebackers coach to fill out its staff. The program is also expected to hire a new general manager to run football personnel operations in the coming weeks.