Sports
Paige Bueckers aims to make this her final season at UConn … and to go out with a bang
If there’s an overriding lesson from the last four years of Paige Bueckers’ college basketball career, it’s this, she explains: “You never know what each day will bring. You never know what life is gonna throw at you.”
There was a time when Bueckers didn’t necessary think that way, when she assumed her plans would come to pass. Like when she arrived in Storrs, Conn., in the fall of 2020. She knew then that her freshman season — already outlined with the COVID-19 protocols of testing, masks and isolation — wouldn’t look exactly the way she always imagined as a kid. Still, when she thought about the four seasons in front of her, there was a sense of expectation and progress: Four years of healthy play, a few national titles, a graduation and at the end of it, a seat at the 2024 WNBA Draft.
Very little has gone to plan. Bueckers was, in fact, at the 2024 WNBA Draft, but she was there supporting her teammates Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Mühl being drafted. She described the night as “surreal,” having always imagined that the class she entered with alongside Edwards and Mühl would be the class with which she exited. Instead, she’s now watching them begin their WNBA careers on television as she returns to college offseason workouts, using one of the two available redshirt years.
Paige Bueckers supporting her teammates at the #WNBADraft pic.twitter.com/iQnI3sjNht
— The Athletic WBB (@TheAthleticWBB) April 16, 2024
Bueckers has played only two healthy seasons of college basketball, as a freshman, when she was named national Player of the Year, and last season, when she was again an All-American. She has advanced to three Final Fours in four years but never won a title.
She has readjusted her expectations, imagining her name called in the 2025 WNBA Draft. She plans to make the 2024-25 season her last at UConn, she told The Athletic.
“There’s a much larger sense of urgency,” Bueckers said. “This is my last year to get what I came here for, which is a national championship. … No more ‘Passive Paige.’”
As Bueckers enters her final chapter in Storrs, going through her first (and last) college offseason workouts in which she’s completely healthy, she’s focused on definitively shifting her mentality while recognizing the need for flexibility. After all, that’s the lesson the last four years have taught her.
Bueckers’ final shot at a national title will come with some adjustments. Edwards and Mühl are gone. The three returning upperclassmen — Azzi Fudd, Aubrey Griffin and Caroline Ducharme — are coming off injuries. Kaitlyn Chen, a Princeton transfer, is settling into the program after arriving on campus in late May.
But that turnover in roster — nothing new to Bueckers — makes her mental shift that much more important as she prepares to shoulder so much more.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma can point to March to remind Bueckers of her focus. Conversation around Bueckers’ aggressive mentality have been “constant” since she arrived on campus in 2020, he said. But the Huskies’ recent history, an unexpected run to the Final Four, led by Bueckers, provides all the evidence she needs to continue to be a bit more selfish on the floor. Before the Big East tournament, Auriemma said he told Bueckers, “Paige, you need it to get 30 every night. Just make life easier on everybody else. We don’t have a lot of options. We don’t have a lot of choices. So this is what we got. And we can’t be milling around with this stuff.”
In short: No more Passive Paige.
Through five NCAA Tournament games, Bueckers’ game completely elevated. After averaging 21.3 points, 3.7 assists and 4.8 rebounds a game during the regular season, she averaged 25.8 points, 4.6 assists and 8 rebounds a game, pulling the Huskies to their 23rd Final Four.
“I love to score. I’ve always felt like I’m a pass-first player. I love to get my teammates involved. I love to make sure everybody’s happy,” Bueckers said. “But at the end of the day, everyone is happy when we win, and I think we have a better chance of winning when I’m aggressive.”
Added Auriemma: “She’s too nice, too caring about what other people think. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a great, great quality. I just don’t know if it’s a great quality for (a) killer superstar.”
Bueckers has learned too much over the past four seasons to make too many plans. Everything can change in an instant. She knows, because she has been there (multiple times). But with a heightened sense of urgency, she’s approaching this offseason differently. She wants to come in as a better scorer, passer and rebounder. Ask her where her game can improve, and there is no shortage of options that come to Bueckers’ mind: her range, 3-point shooting, off-the-dribble shooting, one-on-one moves, ballhandling, playing off two feet, experimenting with tempo.
She’s trying not to live in the past too much and also not look too far into the future. She hasn’t rewatched the Huskies’ final game of the 2024 NCAA Tournament yet — a loss to Iowa — but she’ll get there. She knows she has to watch it to completely turn the page from last season. Just like the NCAA Tournament, there will be lessons to glean from those 40 minutes, but Bueckers still wonders if she had been just a bit more aggressive, maybe the game would’ve turned out differently. With one final year at UConn, she’ll make sure not to feel that after any game again, she said.
“I want to be an unselfish player, somebody that people love to play with, but at the same time, I’m trying to balance that with also being like, a killer, a scorer, a bucket getter,” she said. “It’s always been a battle of me trying to find the happy medium, but I think for the most part from here on out I gotta be more aggressive first.”
(Photo of Paige Bueckers: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
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WWE will swing for the fences for the second straight year when it hosts one of its major premium live events of the year at a Major League Baseball ballpark.
The company announced on Monday that Survivor Series: WarGames will take place at Daikin Park in Houston – the home of the Astros – on Saturday, Nov. 28. It follows up the success of last year’s Survivor Series: WarGames event, which took place at Petco Park in San Diego – the home of the Padres.
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Roman Reigns lands a Superman Punch on Brock Lesnar during Survivor Series at Petco Park in San Diego, Calif., on Nov. 29, 2025. (Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images)
“Houston is the perfect host city to celebrate this milestone chapter in Survivor Series’ storied history, and we look forward to partnering with Houston First and the Houston Astros to deliver an unforgettable event,” WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque said in a news release.
WarGames is a highly anticipated match, which has taken place yearly among wrestlers on the WWE roster since 2022. The premium live event has also seen some dramatic returns.
Stephanie Vaquer enters the ring during Survivor Series at Petco Park in San Diego, Calif. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
In 2023, CM Punk came back to WWE at the end of the show and shocked the entire sports world. Randy Orton also made his in-ring return during the match. Last year, a mystery attacker interrupted the WarGames match and gave the win to The Vision and company.
It’s unclear what is in the cards right now for the 40th edition of the event.
“We are proud to be able to help bring one of the world’s premier entertainment brands to Houston for what promises to be an unforgettable holiday weekend,” said Michael Heckman, President and CEO of Houston First, which partnered with WWE to bring the event back to Houston.
Liv Morgan and Dominik Mysterio celebrate their win during Survivor Series at Petco Park in San Diego, Calif. (Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images)
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“Hosting WWE Survivor Series will bring thousands of passionate fans to our city and generate a significant economic impact for community. Houston has earned a reputation for delivering world-class entertainment events, and we look forward to welcoming the WWE Universe to our destination.”
How much would you pay for a pair of shoes? Someone else’s shoes, I mean.
Would you pay $7,000 for a chair on which Taylor Swift sat in a basketball arena — for an NBA playoff game, not for her wedding? Someone did.
There was one Swift chair up for bid. The Dodgers gave away 52,000 trading cards as part of a promotion for the Japanese animated series “One Piece” this month, and the current asking prices for one of those cards on eBay range from $784 to $15,656. Even at the low end … strike that, there is no apparent low end to the collectibles market these days.
Now add Shohei Ohtani to the mix. A pair of his cleats hit the auction block Monday, hyped by the promoter as “one of the most significant baseball artifacts ever” and “the greatest baseball footwear ever made available” and “the most culturally significant footwear ever worn on Japanese soil.”
In this case, the adjectives are more than breathless. Ohtani is the best player in baseball, the favorite to win his fifth most valuable player award in six years, an international tourist attraction, and a global pitchman making an estimated $125 million in sponsorships and endorsements this year.
So, the footwear: These are the cleats Ohtani wore when the Dodgers opened the 2025 season in Japan, decorated with art of his world-famous dog Decoy and signed by Ohtani with Asian kanji characters rather than English letters.
The cleats were purchased last year by Take to the Universe (TTU), a Japanese company that distributes beauty and wellness products in Japan and throughout Asia. State records show the company registered a subsidiary in Los Angeles two months ago.
The cleats Shohei Ohtani wore during the Dodgers’ 2025 season opener in Japan are on the auction block.
(The Realist)
“We thought, hey, we could actually use this to market our company and enter into the U.S. market,” said Ryoji Iguchi, chief executive of the subsidiary. Iguchi declined to say how much TTU paid for the cleats.
For a Japanese company to leverage Ohtani and the Dodgers to introduce itself to an American audience is nothing new — not just for tangible consumer goods, but also for animated characters.
You wouldn’t actually go into a store and ask for a TTU product, though. You eventually might go into a store and ask for a beauty product made by another company. TTU would just get it there.
So how does selling a pair of cleats create brand awareness for a brand consumers would not even know?
“This interview,” Iguchi said.
The Ohtani Economy strikes again: You don’t know us, but we’re coming to America, we want to help you sell your wares — and we’re selling Ohtani’s cleats!
The sale was arranged by Scott Keeney, founder of the Realest, a Los Angeles-based enterprise specializing in sports and entertainment memorabilia.
The cleats Shohei Ohtani wore during the Dodgers’ season opener in Japan in 2025 are on the auction block.
(The Realist)
Keeney talks about the “museum-grade” and “investment-grade” quality of the cleats. You might find a trading card marketed as one of one, but someone could make another. In this case, no one can make another pair of cleats worn by Ohtani on that particular day.
“It’s no different than art, where you’re seeing paintings selling for tens, hundreds of millions of dollars,” Keeney said. “The top grails are in a category of their own.
“It’s what the ultra, the top 0.0001% want, and they appreciate faster than anything else in the category.”
So how much might the Ohtani cleats command, given the combination of sport and celebrity?
Kobe Bryant’s sneakers from the game in which he tore his Achilles tendon — and hit two free throws before he left the court — fetched $660,000. Michael Jordan’s “Flu Game” shoes sold for $1.4 million. Kanye West wore “Air Yeezys” to the Grammys, and the pair sold for $1.8 million.
The ball Ohtani hit for his 50th home run in his 50-50 season: $4.4 million. And, speaking of holy grails: Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” fetched $32.5 million.
I cannot afford that, in this lifetime or any other. Perhaps you can. If you cannot, the Realest is offering this free-to-enter contest: Guess the sale price of the Ohtani cleats and, if you come closest to the actual sale price, you win 1% of the price. In the event of a tie, the first submission wins.
The cash would be nice, because this is just a pair of someone else’s worn shoes. But, since everything else Ohtani does seems to be unprecedented, this auction just might be too.
Sports
Stefon Diggs, still seeking new NFL home, insists no team has a better No 2 receiver ‘than me’
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Stefon Diggs is still looking for his next NFL team after one season with the New England Patriots, which ended in a Super Bowl LX defeat.
With NFL training camps across the country set to kick off at the end of the month, Diggs, who will be entering his 12th season, made quite the statement during a recent YouTube video on his channel.
Diggs stated that he is the best No. 2 receiver in the league, and he explained why.
New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs (8) walks to the podium to speak to the media after a minicamp held in the WIN Field House at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on June 10, 2025. (Eric Canha/Imagn Images)
“Everybody got a 1,,” he said. “Opportunities aside, people might say there’s seven real 1s. In my opinion, I can compete with anybody, but take those as your 1s. You can’t name a No. 2 better than me. There’s not a No. 2 on a team. Let’s presumably give people the credit and just say, ‘OK, you want to take the No. 1 spot away.’ Name your No. 2 receiver right now. Tell me how much he makes. My last question is: Is he better than me?”
Diggs put up 1,013 yards in his 11th season, his first and only with the Patriots, on 85 receptions (102 targets) with four touchdowns from breakout star quarterback Drake Maye . It marked Diggs’ seventh 1,000-yard season in the NFL, which have come in seven of the last eight seasons.
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The 32-year-old did note being a No. 2 option, which means he could be willing to take a pay cut to join a squad that he could help get back to the playoffs and, as ever player hopes, the Super Bowl. But no team has pulled the trigger just yet.
Could Diggs’ off-the-field issues be a factor? He faced some serious allegations in December after being charged with felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault in a dispute with his private chef.
New England Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs speaks during his introductory press conference on March 28, 2025. (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
However, Diggs was found not guilty by a jury, with the NFL closing its review on the matter, stating there was insufficient evidence to warrant a suspension for violating its personal conduct policy. Diggs’ attorney said that “professional athletes have a target on their back” following the non-guilty verdict.
“We have taken these allegations seriously from Day One and that’s exactly why we were eager for the facts to come to light through the legal process,” Mitch Schuster of Meister, Seelig & Schuster, the firm that represented Diggs, said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital in May.
The Patriots released Diggs in March, but he has been staying in shape and looking for the next opportunity since the league cleared him last month.
New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs plays against the Seattle Seahawks during Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2026. (Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images)
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Teams to watch could be the Los Angeles Chargers, New York Giants, Washington Commanders, Kansas City Chiefs, or even a Buffalo Bills reunion with Josh Allen, who built such a rapport with him to earn four straight Pro Bowls from 2020-23.
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