Sports
With Daytona 500 win, William Byron has arrived as NASCAR's next superstar
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Can’t-miss prospect. Prodigy. Future superstar. These are all labels that were placed on William Byron as he ascended NASCAR’s development ladder. Some drivers who have this heavy praise lavished on them don’t meet the expectations. Somewhere along the way, the rocket fizzles and the once-promising career doesn’t pan out as envisioned. They plateau. The opportunities don’t materialize.
It’s a story that has played out many times throughout NASCAR’s history. But Byron is quite the exception. Already, at age 26, he’s proven to be the can’t-miss prospect that didn’t miss.
He won big in his lone year in the Truck Series in 2016. He won the 2017 Xfinity Series championship as a rookie. Driving for Hendrick Motorsports since his Cup debut, he earned Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors in 2018, then qualified for the playoffs the next season and every season since. And after his Daytona 500 triumph Monday night, he now boasts 11 victories at NASCAR’s top level. Maybe that figure seems low at first blush considering Byron is in his seventh year in Cup, but since 2020 — the season he won his first race — his 11 wins are more than former Cup champions Joey Logano (9), Martin Truex Jr. (8), Kyle Busch (7), and Brad Keselowski (5) have during that same span.
Whatever “it” is that separates great drivers from those merely good, Byron has it in abundance. And he’s only going to get better as he gains additional experience. His initial foray into racing came via iRacing, an online racing simulation, and he didn’t start driving actual race cars until he was a teenager, as opposed to most other Cup drivers who started much younger in Legends or go-karts.
“That talent is one thing, but then the race craft and the work ethic and all these other things that come along with it,” Hendrick vice chairman Jeff Gordon said while celebrating in victory lane. “How you communicate what a race car is actually doing so your team can make it go faster and how you work together as a team. That’s the remarkable thing to me. And clearly, he’s unique and special in a way that …”
Before Gordon could finish his thought, the roar of the ongoing Xfinity Series race interrupted him. Nonetheless, his point was obvious: Byron is a unicorn. A generational talent who every step along the way has risen to meet the expectations before him, regardless of how high the bar is set.
“Everybody said he had natural talent,” Byron’s mother, Dana Byron, said about her son. “He caught on so quickly (when he first started racing) that by a couple of months in, he was beating everybody. At first, he wasn’t and then he just kept studying and studying and practicing.”
Byron maybe didn’t need a Daytona 500 win to cement his status as NASCAR’s next superstar. He already stamped his mark last year in a breakout 2023 season that included winning a series-best six races and ranking first in top-fives, top-10s and average finish, as well as second in laps led.
But one tremendous season does not define a career nor make a legacy. This comes over time, stacking one great season after another, filled with gaudy statistics like Byron racked up last year. If you only do this once, well, people tend to throw around the dreaded “F” word (fluke).
A student of the sport, Byron understands this reality. He’s seen drivers win big one year, stumble the next and never recapture their winning mojo. Those around him say this is part of what motivates him. Team owner Rick Hendrick described Byron as carrying a “chip” with him into the 2024 season, and Byron agreed.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get that chip off my shoulder,” Byron said. “It’s always been there. It’s just I’m very quiet about it. I don’t know. There’s always reasons to find. We didn’t win the championship (last year, when he finished third), and we don’t get talked about the most, and other people get more publicity, things like that, and I feel like I just — whatever I find, I use as motivation.
“It’s just the way I’ve always been internally. I don’t express that a lot. But it definitely burns inside. I feel like that’s what fuels your offseasons a lot of times is just what can I find, what little edge can I find to be the best. There’s still tons to learn. I can be a lot more complete in the car, and I feel like your race craft and things are always evolving, and just trying to be a better version inside the car with my team.”
Even within the Hendrick organization, Byron is often looked at as the “other guy,” something that he readily acknowledges — and that adds motivation. When your teammates include Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, each former Cup champions widely regarded as among NASCAR’s elite, it can be easy to get glossed over.
The only way to change this perception is to win, both races and championships.
“I use it all as fuel, so just keep it coming,” Byron said. “All the preseason predictions and everything.”
What Byron is, though, and what Larson and Elliott are not yet, is a Daytona 500 winner. Within Hendrick, only Byron carries this distinction. He also has more wins than Larson and Elliott since the start of last season.
“Today was a major step,” Gordon said. “I think the Championship Four last year and then following that up with the Daytona 500, he’s well on his way.”
This point Byron drove home Monday night before a national television audience, emphatically announcing his status as NASCAR’s next superstar. Not only has he arrived, it’s also clear that he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Jeff Robinson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Sports
Aldridge: Timberwolves are using throwback defense to stump the Nuggets
One suspects Michael Malone isn’t surprised by what he’s seeing.
The Denver Nuggets coach was taught first-hand about championship-level defense by his late father, Brendan, a lifer in the game and a longtime assistant coach for the Detroit Pistons. He was on Chuck Daly’s staff for the 1989 and 1990 championships. Most relevantly, Brendan Malone was the defensive mind behind “The Jordan Rules,” the Pistons’ blueprint for how to keep Michael Jordan from dominating playoff games, the way Denver’s Nikola Jokić does now.
The Rules were pretty simple, actually.
Detroit’s Hall of Fame guard Joe Dumars, one of the best on-ball defenders of that era, would do everything he could to keep Jordan from getting to his favorite spots on the floor, contesting when Jordan rose for a jumper. If and when Jordan beat Dumars or other Detroit defenders off the dribble, they would funnel Jordan into the paint, where any number of long-limbed and ornery Pistons defenders were waiting: Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, John Salley, Dennis Rodman, James Edwards. They would converge on Jordan like a pack of jackals, forcing him to shoot over their length. If Jordan tried to elevate, one or more of them would send him hurtling to the ground.
Over the course of a six- or seven-game series, the overt physicality would wear Jordan down. If Jordan didn’t get offensive help from elsewhere, the frustration between him and his Bulls teammates would only grow. It took Chicago years of playoff futility before it finally vanquished Detroit in 1991.
Accordingly, Michael Malone knows full-well the psychological underpinnings of what the Minnesota Timberwolves have done to his defending NBA champion Nuggets in the first two games of their Western Conference semifinals series.
Minnesota hasn’t just won the important moments in the first two games in Denver to take a 2-0 series lead back to Minnesota, where a raucous crowd at Target Center awaits Friday and Sunday nights. The Wolves have taken the Nuggets’ heart as well, the way the Pistons — and, ultimately, Jordan’s Bulls — used defense to demoralize and rattle opponents.
“You can’t lose the game and the fight. You have to win one of them,” Denver’s Reggie Jackson said after Game 2.
There were the long, seemingly limitless arms of Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, jumping Denver’s Jamal Murray at midcourt in Game 2, attacking him with relentless energy and movement — while not fouling him. They forced a 24-second violation early in the second quarter Monday night.
There was Rudy Gobert’s defensive paint presence in Game 1, before Gobert missed Game 2 to be with his girlfriend for the birth of their first child and before he won his fourth NBA Defensive Player of the Year award. In Game 2, without Gobert, the Wolves didn’t miss a beat, with Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid, neither of whom was known as a shutdown defender before this season, each putting a physical body on Jokić all game.
For someone who has lamented the surgical, years-long campaign by the NBA to remove all but the most rudimentary elements of defense from the game, culminating in not-watchable All-Star Games in recent years, watching the Wolves harass and disrupt the Nuggets has been delightful. It is like putting a VHS tape into a Panasonic PV-V4522, watching NBC’s vaunted Thursday night lineup, circa “A Different World”/”Cheers”/”L.A. Law,” and washing down dinner with a Bartles and Jaymes cooler.
Mama, I’m home.
You can still play defense in the NBA, if you’re allowed to do so.
The league’s de-emphasis on calling every little bit of contact, as its officials did the first half of the season, hasn’t harmed the game one bit in the postseason. In fact, the playoffs have been spectacular, with plenty of offensive wizardry on display, starting with Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards. But there’s also been Jalen Brunson, Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyrese Maxey, Paolo Banchero, Tyrese Haliburton … do I need to go on?
Minnesota has dominated, and won, its first six playoff games with its ferocious defense, just as Oklahoma City and Boston have. Minnesota defenders aren’t pushing and shoving or hacking; they’re moving their feet, beating the Nuggets to their favored spots on the floor and not giving up those spots easily. The Wolves aren’t doing anything dirty. They’re just making manifesting misery for their opponent.
This was Denver’s second possession of Game 2.
“He threw it away,” said TNT’s all-world play-by-play man, Kevin Harlan, of Jokić. But Jokić didn’t throw it away — Kyle Anderson punched the ball out of Jokić’s hands with his off hand, just as the Joker started his post-up move.
This Denver possession was three minutes into the game.
Murray is limited with his calf injury. But he, like all the Nuggets, feast off opponents who double-team Jokić. That’s Denver’s whole raison d’être: Jokić’s brilliance with the ball, slicing up defenses with his 360-degree view of what’s happening on the floor. This time, Towns inhaled Murray’s drive, with guard Mike Conley swiping at the ball down low.
David Adelman, who’s been Michael Malone’s right-hand man as his top assistant coach, has surely seen this before.
His father, Hall of Fame coach Rick Adelman, had to try to traverse the Pistons and the Bulls with his great Portland Trail Blazers teams, led by Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler, in the 1990 and 1992 NBA Finals, respectively. Portland got both the best of Detroit’s defense and the Bulls’ venerated “Dobermans” — the moniker for Chicago’s defense, conjured up by Bulls assistant coach Johnny Bach.
The Dobermans, initially, featured Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. When Grant left for Orlando in free agency after Chicago’s first three-peat, Chicago reached for Rodman — who, by then, had worn out his welcome in San Antonio. Rodman, in a totally different way from Grant, lifted the Bulls’ defense even higher; Chicago led the league in defensive rating in his first season (1995-96), and the Bulls were top five in each of his three seasons there, all of which ended in championships.
Jordan was, especially early in his career, amazing in his defensive anticipation. He was Defensive Player of the Year in 1988, using his long arms like a scythe, cutting the ball away from opposing ballhandlers.
Pippen, though, made Chicago impenetrable.
His length, smarts, physicality and ability to jump passing lanes made him one of the best all-time defenders. Chicago used him everywhere, against anyone, from Magic Johnson to Charles Barkley.
The Wolves have played like those Pistons and Bulls teams. They’ve made it hard for their opponents to do what they want. They haven’t given an inch. The game is at its absolute best when a simple question is answered: Who can, with their talent and will and coaching and toughness, overcome the physical objections of their opponent?
Minnesota’s defense has been sophisticated in its planning and well-executed in real time. Like other teams in the Jokić Era, the Wolves often aren’t guarding him with their center.
In Game 1, they dropped Gobert into a roaming position off Denver’s power forward — usually Aaron Gordon — and let Gobert stray to protect the front of the rim. That led to Gobert, in what may have been the key play in Minnesota’s win Saturday, being free to tip and steal a Jokić lob to Gordon out of the dunker spot with three minutes left and the Wolves clinging to a five-point lead. The Wolves got out in transition, and Edwards got fouled, making two from the free-throw line. What could have been a three-point game was instead a seven-point game.
Minnesota’s had the top-ranked defense in the league all season. It allowed the fewest points in the league (106.5 points per game) and was No. 1 in opponents’ effective field goal percentage (51.5), which accounts for the extra value of 3-pointers.
Different sites have different ways to determine stats like defensive rating. No matter the source, the Wolves are top-ranked in that category.
StatMuse has Minnesota No. 1 in defensive rating at 109.0, an edge of more than two full points over second-place Orlando (111.3). It’s the biggest gap between the top- and second-ranked defense in that category as StatMuse determines it, in eight years, since the 2015-16 San Antonio Spurs held a 2.4-point edge on the second-place Atlanta Hawks (101.4). Minnesota had the best defensive rating this season at 108.4, according to NBA.com’s calculations, 2.2 points ahead of the Boston Celtics. Basketball-Reference.com has Minnesota at the top in both its unadjusted and adjusted (for schedule) defensive ratings metrics.
You can’t implement “The Jordan Rules” now; the NBA has legislated most of the physicality that was at the heart of them out of the game. That’s OK. Everything has to evolve. But the relentless defense, in spirit and body, that was at the heart of Detroit’s championship teams — and then Chicago’s — is still applicable. Minnesota’s showing that it can coexist with the incredible offensive talents in today’s game.
It’s a fight. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Required Reading
(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
Sports
Ex-Knicks star Charles Oakley continuing MSG holdout amid beef with owner James Dolan
Former New York Knicks stars have been sitting courtside, cheering on their old team throughout the playoffs – but Charles Oakley has been absent.
Oakley’s highly-publicized beef with the Knicks hit its peak in 2017 when Oakley was ejected from a Knicks game and hit a security official near owner James Dolan’s courtside seat.
The incident remains a he-said, he-said – the team said Oakley was yelling continuously at Dolan, but Oakley has denied that, and instead said he was asked to leave the arena shortly after taking his seat at the game for no reason.
Well, Oakley hasn’t been back to the Garden since, and even with the Knicks having their best season since Oakley’s playing days, he’s holding onto his boycott.
Oakley was arrested for, but eventually cleared of, assault, but there is still an ongoing legal battle between the two of them.
Despite that, Oakley says Dolan’s lawyers called his and invited him to a recent game. But it’s a hard no.
“They’ve got to apologize,” he said to The Associated Press. “We’ll go from there. Can (Dolan) be man enough to say, mistakes happen. And he made one.”
Oakley brought assault and battery claims against Dolan and an amended lawsuit was filed just last month. An order Thursday assigned it to Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron to handle going forward.
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“Just be honest,” Oakley said. “Just be transparent over what you put someone through and how you changed their life. This definitely changed my life. My daughter Googled me, they show them pulling me out of the Garden, that’s bad. That’s hell for a kid to see that.”
MSG has denied all claims.
“There’s no kind of agreement. There’s no kind of, `Let’s make this go away,’” Oakley said. “They’re not being transparent about what happened.”
Oakley “would love to go” to MSG to see a Knicks game – as long as Dolan made things right.
“I think it’s a bad time to ask me to come to a game,” Oakley said. “The case is still going. You ain’t trying to settle a case. The case is still pending. Take care of your business with the case and let the game worry about the game, you know what I’m saying? You’re not doing anything special. If you were trying to do something special, you wouldn’t have done this.”
Oakley did admit he is rooting for the Knicks – just from home.
“I don’t want to get in their way, they’re playing great,” Oakley said. “I’m going to cheer at the guys to do well. I’m not mad at nobody on the floor.”
The Knicks currently lead their series against the Indiana Pacers, two games to one. They are aiming for their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance since 2000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Sports
High school softball and baseball playoff results and pairings
CITY SECTION
SOFTBALL
Friday’s Results
Division II
Second Round
Chatsworth 18, Lincoln 0
Franklin 2, Santee 0
Sylmar 9, Northridge Academy 4
Taft 11, Orthopaedic 0
LA Wilson 11, Roybal 0
North Hollywood 5, Harbor Teacher 0
King/Drew 8, Mendez 6
Marquez 17, LA Hamilton 6
Division IV
Second Round
LA Leadership Academy 24, Westchester 9
Saturday’s Schedule
(All games at 3 p.m. unless noted)
Division III
Quarterfinals
#9 VAAS at #1 Torres, 1:30 p.m
#5 Rancho Dominguez at #4 Bell
#19 Huntington Park at #11 Sotomayor
#7 Maywood Academy at #2 Narbonne
Division IV
Quarterfinals
#8 LA Academy of Arts & Enterprise at #1 Community Charter
#5 LA University at #4 Dymally
#11 Fulton vs. #3 LA Leadership Academy at Cypress Parks & Recs, 2:30 p.m.
#10 LACES at #2 CALS Early College
Monday’s Schedule
(All games at 3 p.m. unless noted)
Division I
Quarterfinals
#9 Bravo at #1 Garfield
#5 Verdugo Hills at #4 San Fernando
#6 Eagle Rock at #3 Granada Hills Kennedy
#15 Palisades at #10 LA Marshall
Division II
Quarterfinals
#8 Franklin at #1 Chatsworth
#12 Sylmar at #4 Taft
#11 North Hollywood at #3 LA Wilson
#7 King/Drew at #2 Marquez
Tuesday’s Schedule
(All games at 3 p.m. unless noted)
Open Division
Semifinals
#5 El Camino Real at #1 Granada Hills
#3 Carson at #2 Birmingham
SOUTHERN SECTION
BASEBALL
Friday’s Results
Division 1
Quarterfinals
Corona 6, Aquinas 4
Huntington Beach 3, Santa Margarita 2
Orange Lutheran 9, La Mirada 4
Harvard-Westlake 5, San Dimas 4
Division 2
Quarterfinals
Arcadia 2, Westlake 1
Hart 3, Arlington 0
Ayala 7, Anaheim Canyon 4
Moorpark 2, Crean Lutheran 1
Division 3
Quarterfinals
South Torrance 5, Arrowhead Christian 4
St. John Bosco 8, El Segundo 2
Los Alamitos 2, Mission Viejo 1
Beckman 6, Newbury Park 1
Division 4
Quarterfinals
Camarillo 4, Cerritos 0
Culver City 3, Oak Hills 2
Ontario Christian 1, Palm Desert 0
St. Francis 4, Paraclete 1
Division 5
Quarterfinals
Santa Monica 5, Adelanto 2
Oxnard Pacifica 9, Riverside Prep 1
Chino 9, Santa Ana Calvary Chapel 1
Chino Hills 7, Montebello 0
Division 6
Quarterfinals
Village Christian 7, West Covina 1
Diamond Bar 4, Alhambra 3
Rancho Mirage 3, Salesian 0
Colony 5, Viewpoint 1
Division 7
Quarterfinals
Buena Park 10, Rancho Christian 8
South El Monte 4, Oakwood 3
Lancaster Desert Christian 5, Santa Ana 2
Oxford Academy 13, Jurupa Valley 1
Division 8
Quarterfinals
Orange County Pacifica Christian 12, New Roads 0
San Bernardino 5, Coachella Valley 3
Edgewood 11, Arroyo Valley 8
Azusa 9, Santa Clarita Christian 1
Tuesday’s Schedule
(All games at 3:15 p.m. unless noted)
Semifinals
Division 1
Huntington Beach at Corona
Harvard-Westlake vs. Orange Lutheran at Hart Park, 6 p.m.
Division 2
Arcadia at Hart
Ayala at Moorpark
Division 3
St. John Bosco at South Torrance
Beckman at Los Alamitos
Division 4
Culver City at Camarillo
St. Francis at Ontario Christian
Division 5
Oxnard Pacifica at Santa Monica
Chino Hills at Chino
Division 6
Diamond Bar at Village Christian
Colony at Rancho Mirage
Division 7
South El Monte at Buena Park
Oxford Academy at Lancaster Desert Christian
Division 8
San Bernardino at Orange County Pacifica Christian
Azusa at Edgewood
SOFTBALL
Friday’s Results
Division 2
Quarterfinals
California 7, Whittier Christian 5 (14 innings)
Saturday’s Schedule
(All games at 3:15 p.m. unless noted)
Semifinals
Division 1
Orange Lutheran at Murrieta Mesa
Garden Grove Pacifica at JSerra
Division 2
Mater Dei at Gahr
Valley View at California
Division 3
Etiwanda at West Torrance
King at Agoura
Division 4
Chaminade at JW North
Orange Vista at Paraclete
Division 5
Liberty at Quartz Hill
Cerritos Valley Christian at St. Bonaventure
Division 6
Ganesha at Lakewood St. Joseph
Canyon Springs at Viewpoint
Division 7
Oxford Academy at Riverside Prep
Eastside at Muir
Division 8
Hesperia Christian at Temecula Prep
Excelsior Charter at Jurupa Valley
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