Yahoo Sports AM is our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it every weekday morning.

🚨 Headlines

🏀 Cavs clinch: The Cavaliers beat the Heat to win their 12th straight game and become the first NBA team to clinch a playoff spot. This will be Cleveland’s third straight trip to the postseason, their longest streak since reaching four straight Finals from 2015-18.

🥊 New boxing venture: TKO Group, the parent company of UFC and WWE, is establishing a new boxing promotion in partnership with Saudi Arabia. After years of speculation, Dana White is officially in the ring.

🏀 No Tara, no tourney: Stanford women’s hoops is set to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1987 after losing in the first round of the ACC tournament. Legendary coach Tara VanDerveer had led the Cardinals to 36 straight appearances before retiring last April.

🏈 NFL offseason moves: The Chargers released five-time Pro Bowl DE Joey Bosa, the Raiders made DE Maxx Crosby the NFL’s highest-paid non-QB, Seahawks WR DK Metcalf requested a trade, the Chiefs traded All-Pro G Joe Thuney to the Bears, and more.

⚽️ World Cup halftime show: The 2026 World Cup Final at MetLife Stadium will feature a first-of-its-kind Super Bowl-style halftime show. Coldplay will produce the show, but won’t perform.

🏀 A midseason exit at Duke? Blame the portal

Duke associate head coach Jai Lucas has agreed to become Miami’s new head coach and will officially join the Hurricanes this weekend, leaving the Blue Devils on the eve of the postseason.

The new normal: Abrupt exits are nothing new in the coaching profession. But an assistant coach leaving a title contender and the possible No. 1 overall seed a week before Selection Sunday? That’s definitely new — and you can blame the transfer portal.

• Lucas, the son of longtime NBA coach John Lucas II, was one of Jon Scheyer’s first two major hires upon succeeding Mike Krzyzewski in 2022, and the 36-year-old was reportedly hesitant to depart Durham in the middle of a potentially storybook season.

• But Miami — which sits in last place in the ACC, didn’t qualify for the conference tournament and has been without a permanent head coach since Jim Larrañaga retired in December — wanted to get a jumpstart on the offseason, which begins before the season actually ends.

A flawed calendar, with no easy fix: The college basketball transfer portal opens on March 24, which is the day after the conclusion of the NCAA tournament’s second round. It’s a similar situation in college football, where the portal overlaps with bowls and the College Football Playoff.

• Anybody with a brain can see that this makes no sense. That said, institutions of higher learning operating what are essentially professional sports franchises also makes no sense. And therein lies the problem.

• As amateur athletics (which aren’t so amateur anymore) and education collide, conflicts arise: How do you design a transfer window around an academic calendar? How do you handle college sports’ version of free agency when kids need to enroll in classes?

What they’re saying: Basketball and football coaches have advocated for the transfer period to be pushed until their respective postseasons conclude. Maybe they’ll get their wish, but there’s no easy fix. “I get that it’s a challenging calendar, [but] everybody is still going to college,” said NCAA president Charlie Baker. “It’s really important that we not lose sight of that.”

Big picture: Ultimately, major college athletics being tethered to academic institutions is probably untenable, and Lucas’ departure is a perfect example. He didn’t want to leave like this, and he wouldn’t have had to if Duke and Miami played in a sports league with a logical calendar. But Duke and Miami are universities, and so the calendar is based on, ya know, school.

Bottom line: Team sports is about coming together as a group in the pursuit of winning. That’s why players play. That’s why coaches coach. If you have a system where people are leaving teams that have a real shot at winning a national championship — whether it’s Penn State’s backup QB days before the CFP or Lucas days before March Madness — the system is broken.

📊 By the numbers

🏀 40-40

The Celtics have had their fair share of dynamic duos, but no Boston teammates had ever scored 40+ points in the same game until Payton Pritchard (43) and Derrick White (41) combined for 84 of their team’s 128 points in Wednesday’s win over Portland. The two guards also combined for 19 three-pointers, the most ever by a pair of NBA teammates.

🏒 885 goals

Alex Ovechkin scored again in the Capitals’ 3-2 (OT) win over the Rangers, moving him within 10 goals of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time mark of 894. Ovechkin has averaged 0.6016 goals per game for his career, while Gretkzy averaged 0.6012. The two best to ever do it.

⚽️ 29.5% of possession

Soccer is a funny game. Liverpool were outclassed for much of Wednesday’s Champions League match against PSG, managing just 29.5% of possession and one shot on target. But that shot found the back of the net, and the Reds walked away with a 1-0 win.

🎾 24 years

It’s been 24 years since an American woman won a singles title at Indian Wells (Serena Williams in 2001). With three Americans in the top five (No. 3 Coco Gauff, No. 4 Jessica Pegula, No. 5 Madison Keys), could this be the year they end the drought at the “fifth Grand Slam”?

🏀 52nd player

Giannis Antetokounmpo has reached 20,000 career points, making him the 52nd player in NBA history to join the club. Coincidentally, the most recent player to get there was his teammate, Damian Lillard, who did so last season.

🏈 NFL draft: Dueling big boards

The 2025 NFL Draft is seven weeks away. To set the stage, we’ve got two fresh big boards (top 50 players) from Yahoo Sports’ Nate Tice and Charles McDonald.

Nate’s Top 10:

1. Travis Hunter, CB/WR (Colorado)

2. Abdul Carter, Edge (Penn State)

3. Tetairoa McMillan, WR (Arizona)

4. Will Campbell, OT/OG (LSU)

5. Armand Membou, OT (Missouri)

6. Ashton Jeanty, RB (Boise State)

7. Jalon Walker, Edge/LB (Georgia)

8. Mason Graham, DT (Michigan)

9. Will Johnson, CB (Michigan)

10. Cam Ward, QB (Miami)

Charles’ Top 10:

1. Travis Hunter, CB/WR (Colorado)

2. Will Johnson, CB (Michigan)

3. Ashton Jeanty, RB (Boise State)

4. Abdul Carter, Edge (Penn State)

5. Tetairoa McMillan, WR (Arizona)

6. Will Campbell, OT/OG (LSU)

7. Mason Graham, DT (Michigan)

8. Cam Ward, QB (Miami)

9. Tyler Warren, TE (Penn State)

10. Colston Loveland, TE (Michigan)

Top 50 players: Nate | Charles

📸 In photos: Football cathedrals

European soccer stadiums are cavernous and beautiful, akin to cathedrals of sport, and the four that hosted Champions League matches on Wednesday are no exception.

Munich — Bayern beat Leverkusen, 3-0, at Allianz Arena, which opened in 2005 and hosted Germany’s first regular-season NFL game in 2022.

Paris — Liverpool beat PSG, 1-0, at Parc des Princes (“Park of the Princes”), which is located a few blocks from Roland Garros, home of the French Open.

Lisbon, Portugal — Barcelona beat Benfica, 1-0, at Estádio da Luz (“Stadium of Light”), which features a unique roof design that makes it appear as though its floating above the stands.

Rotterdam, Netherlands — Inter Milan beat Feyenoord, 2-0, at the 88-year-old stadium known as De Kuip (“the tub”), so named due to its elliptical shape reminiscent of a bath.

📺 Watchlist: Round 1 at Bay Hill

The 60th Arnold Palmer Invitational tees off today at Bay Hill* in Orlando (7:30am ET, ESPN+; 2pm, Golf), where 72 golfers will compete for a $20 million purse.

The favorites: Scottie Scheffler, whose victory a year ago kicked off his historic nine-win season, is the favorite to finish atop the leaderboard (+350 at BetMGM). He’s followed by Rory McIlroy (+850), who has six career top-10 finishes at Bay Hill.

More to watch:

• 🏀 NBA: Sixers at Celtics (7:30pm, TNT); Knicks at Lakers (10pm, TNT) … The Lakers (39-21) have won a season-high seven straight games to climb to No. 2 in the West.

• 🏀 NCAAM: No. 8 Michigan State at Iowa (8pm, FS1) … The Spartans can clinch the Big Ten title outright with a win.

• 🏒 NHL: Sabres at Lightning (7pm, ESPN); Sharks at Avalanche (9:30pm, ESPN) … Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon leads the NHL with 93 points (23 goals, 70 assists).

*A formidable foe: Bay Hill is consistently one of the toughest challenges on tour. Last year’s scoring average (72.331) marked the eighth consecutive year that the course played over par.

⚽️ World Cup trivia

The U.S. has emerged as a heavy favorite to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup, which would be the third time it has hosted the tournament.

Question: Which two years did the U.S. host?

Answer at the bottom.

⚾️ Well, that was awkward

In-game interviews rarely get more awkward than this. While chatting with ESPN during Wednesday’s spring training game against the Tigers, Phillies manager Rob Thomson watched his team give up three home runs on three straight pitches, creating a hilarious on-screen dynamic.

From Yahoo Sports’ Jack Baer:

Speaking with ESPN in the second inning with Jesús Luzardo on the mound, Thomson was discussing preparations for Opening Day when a bases-loaded, two-out jam turned into an opposite-field grand slam off the bat of Jahmai Jones.

Thomson’s lone comment: “Looked like a changeup.” He was correct. Those would also be his last words for the next couple minutes, as Andy Ibáñez and Gleyber Torres each followed up with first-pitch home runs to make it three straight dingers on three straight pitches from Luzardo.

Trivia answer: 1999 and 2003

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AM, our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.