Tag: timely

5 Rams players whose contracts could be restructured

The Rams need cap space and these 5 players could have their contracts restructured to save the team a lot of money in 2021.

The salary cap is set to decrease in 2021 as a result of lost revenue from last season due to the pandemic. The Rams are projected to be over the limit by about $35 million if the cap comes in at around $180 million, which the NFL says is the floor for it.

Needing to get under the cap by March 17, the Rams are expected to restructure at least a few of their players’ contracts before then. Restructuring converts either base salary or bonuses into a signing bonus, which is prorated over the remaining years of the contract.

It’s not a pay cut, and oftentimes it means a player can get more money up front rather than waiting until future years. It’s a common move made by teams, especially this offseason with the cap dropping.

Here are five Rams players whose contracts could be restructured soon.

Andrew Whitworth explains why he wasn’t completely shocked by Jared Goff trade

Andrew Whitworth says players were more surprised by the timing of the Jared Goff trade, not the deal itself.

Though the trade isn’t official yet, the Los Angeles Rams will have a new quarterback in 2021 after agreeing to swap Jared Goff and draft picks for Matthew Stafford at the end of January. It was the first big move of the offseason, coming just two weeks after the Rams’ season ended in the divisional round of the playoffs.

For the most part, Rams players who were asked about the deal said they were surprised by it. However, Andrew Whitworth read the tea leaves from Les Snead and Sean McVay, so he could tell something might be on the horizon.

What shocked him more was the timing of the trade and how quickly it came together.

“After hearing some of the press conferences and understanding kind of where we stood as a team, and what things were being said, you knew that there’s obviously some things there where it’s an open door for whatever,” Whitworth said, via the Los Angeles Times. “So, I mean, you’re more just shocked at the timing and how fast that whole thing came about and all of those type things.”

Players understand better than anyone else that the NFL is a business. And so Whitworth knows just about anyone can be cut or traded at any moment.

Being in the NFL for 15 years, Whitworth has seen his share of teams get broken up, watching the front office move on from players each offseason.

“So, I think as players you’re shocked by it, but I think it’s less shocking to the players only because that’s the nature of what we do,” he continued. “I try to explain to people that ask me around town, it’s like every August I show up I’m looking around the room like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right this guy’s not here anymore. Oh, that’s right, he left in free agency.’”

Whitworth and Goff are good friends, often playing golf together. Goff grew close with Whitworth’s kids, too, so their connection runs deep off the field.

Whitworth said he’ll be “supporting him and wishing him nothing but the best” as he starts his next chapter in Detroit, but he’s also excited about the arrival of Stafford. Whitworth says he knows Stafford through former Bengals lineman Clint Boling, and they all play golf in their free time.

“I think that will be a pretty easy transition and, obviously, he’s a heck of a football player,” Whitworth said.

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Doc Rivers wants Sixers to help Joel Embiid find answers on offense

Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers wants the team to help Joel Embiid to find the answers on offense.

The Philadephia 76ers brought on coach Doc Rivers to be the new headman of the team due to a large amount of success he has had in his coaching career. He has a title on his resume with the Boston Celtics, and he has coached a few different collections of talents.

With the Sixers, he is taking on a team led by the unique star duo of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Philadelphia added a lot of different pieces to their supporting cast around them as they have been looking to help their stars succeed.

The shooters they have added have helped Embiid greatly with his post passing. He now has outlets to pass to when he has waves of defenders coming at him and that is something he has not had in the past.

“I’ve always thought the job of us as a staff, a coaching staff is to make sure that we give the players the answers,” said coach Doc Rivers. “As far as when they do get trapped and where the ball should go. I think that’s something that we have to work on every day, but we almost invite traps because it usually leads to 3s or easy 2s for us so it’s been all good thus far. We still have a lot of work to do.”

Philadelphia has been a bit up and down when it comes to their offense, but it has been making progress. This has been a pretty brand new group when it comes to the supporting cast around Embiid and Simmons as well as a new coach in Rivers.

All of that takes time to get guys to buy into a system and to know their roles within the system. The Sixers have been working through all of that and they have shown an ability to never quit when the chips are down. They continue to put up a fight.

“I am very happy and very comfortable with where we’re at right now,” Rivers added. “We have won a ton of games this year in the fourth quarter down the stretch through our execution. We have shown all of them, how well we can space the floor and Joel has really improved his post passing.”

The Sixers sit at the No. 1 seed in the East and they will be looking to keep it going when the season gets back underway on Thursday against the Chicago Bulls.

This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!

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Team LeBron, Brown beat Team Durant, Tatum 170-150 in 2021 All-Star Game

Brown and Tatum both played significant roles in their team’s overall efforts, with the elder Celtic’s squad taking the night.

Team LeBron defeated Team Durant 170 – 150 in the Elam-ending finish to the 2021 NBA All Star Game punctuated by a Damian Lillard 40-foot pull up 3-pointer. Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo would win the Kobe Bryant NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award with his perfect 16-of-16 shooting performance that netted him 35 points to lead all players.

Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum represented the Boston Celtics in the annual event, with Tatum scoring 21 points, 7 assists and 4 steals and Brown putting up 22 points and 5 rebounds as the latter helped lead Team LeBron to the win.

In an extraordinary event reflecting one of the most unusual seasons in league history, the NBA managed to pull off the event with few hitches, and the Celtics representatives managed an excellent showing in it.

The Boston Celtics return to action to start the second half of their 2020-21 season on Thursday, March 11th at 7:30 p.m. ET as they take on the Brooklyn Nets on the road.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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Tatum, Brown fall to Curry in NBA 3-point contest; Brown ‘fouled’ by rack

Neither Celtic won it all, but Tatum advanced.

While Boston Celtics teammates Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were the first such Celtics teammates to participate in the NBA All-Star 3-Point Contest in a decade — the last being Ray Allen and Paul Pierce in 2011 — neither Brown nor Tatum would come away with the title for 2021.

That honor would fall to Golden State Warriors sharpshooter Stephen Curry, who won the event with a 28-point performance that beat the Utah Jazz’ Mike Conley by a single point. Brown would be eliminated in the first round, with Tatum advancing to the second round, but falling with a score of just 17.

Brown had an unintentional moment of levity after being “fouled,” colliding in a shooting motion with the ball rack, but the ice-cold shooting of one of the greatest to ever heave the rock ultimately won out in the end.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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WATCH: Jaylen Brown guarded by Jayson Tatum in 2021 All-Star Game

The Boston Celtics teammates squared off for a moment in the annual exhibition.

Hopefully, the only game we ever see Boston Celtics All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum defending his Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown is the All-Star Game, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t here for it.

In a defensive sequence in the game’s second frame, Brown ended up squaring off with his Boston teammate Tatum, the latter clearly relishing in the matchup. The Duke product even went so far as to slap the floor as the elder Celtic sized up his — just for the exhibition game — opponent, a matchup both had spoken to the press about ahead of taking the floor that day.

You will have to watch the video for yourself to see how it ended up going down, but it was an instant classic worth a few moments of your time.

Watch the clip embedded above courtesy of Forbes Sports’ Chris Grenham to see how Tatum guarded Brown in the 2021 NBA All-Star Game.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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Joel Embiid reacts to not being able to play in ASG after haircut issue

Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid reacts to not being able to play in the All-Star game.

The NBA All-Star game is happening on Sunday night at Stage Farm Arena in Atlanta as the league looks to have a successful midseason event amid the global pandemic. They are packing every event into a one-night thing as they look to have everything go safely.

Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid, as well as Ben Simmons, were slated to play in the game. Embiid was set to be a starter for Team Durant and Simmons was set to be a reserve for Team LeBron, but both of them were ruled out for the game after a barber they got a haircut from tested positive for COVID.

Embiid took to Twitter to react to all of the fresh haircuts that the players in the game all have and how disappointing it is that he is the one who has been ruled out.

Embiid and Simmons will now most likely have to enter a 7-day quarantine due to the contact tracing protocols that the NBA has in place. That means the two of them would miss Philadelphia’s first three games of the second half of the season starting on Thursday against the Chicago Bulls.

This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!

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Jaylen Brown rocks advice from Tracy McGrady on his All-Star kicks

Boston’s Jaylen Nrown shared the story of his Tracy McGrady-inspired sneakers worn to his first All-Star appearance.

Boston Celtics All-Star forward Jaylen Brown took a page from his past, and paid respect to an NBA star from another era who gave him a word of advice while he was still a high school basketball prospect.

That star was a one Tracy McGrady, who tweeted to a young Jaylen Brown on Twitter to “remember humble and hungry” in 2014. The Georgia native would reply “I got you,” and seven years later, he absolutely did. Brown decided to dig deep and pay homage to McGrady with a pair of throwback red and blue Adidas emblazoned with McGrady’s words “Humble & Hungry”

The occasion was of course the Cal-Berkeley product’s first All-Star appearance, the fruit of Brown’s humility and hunger over the years since McGrady offered up that advice.

First shared by Brown in his Instagram story, take a look at the kicks in the images embedded above.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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Every Boston Celtics All-Star for each season the game was played (photos)

Every single Boston Celtics All-Star in franchise history.

The 2021 NBA All-Star Game is set to kick off this evening of March 7 in Atlanta, Georgia with two new Boston Celtics suiting up to participate in the event on the seventieth anniversary of its creation, the first held in Boston, Massachusetts at the old Boston Garden of all places.

Celtics star wings Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum will become the 57th and 58th Boston players elected to the annual exhibition game to set the Celtics as the second-most so honored team in the history of the NBA. Initially created to improve the image of professional basketball after a point-shaving scandal in NCAA ball besmirched the sport in the eyes of the public, the event has taken on a life of its own as one of the league’s most anticipated events.

Only longtime rival Los Angeles Lakers can lay claim to more all-time All-Stars, and the Detroit Pistons are now one game behind Boston with 57, per Statmuse.

C/O Statmuse

Let’s take a look at the history of the Celtics in the event from its start in 1951 right up to the present day:

Oklahoma looks to split week in Frisco against Dallas Baptist after blowout of Missouri

Oklahoma is looking for a split of the Frisco College Baseball Classic against Dallas Baptist after blowing out Missouri on Saturday night.

Oklahoma is looking for a split at the Frisco College Baseball Classic this week after dropping the first two games to Arizona and blowing out Missouri on Saturday night.

The two games against the Wildcats were characterized by poor pitching with Arizona putting up an astonishing 32 runs over the course of the two games. On Saturday night, it was the Sooners putting up the gaudy run total as they hung 16 on the board their win over Missouri.

It was a tightly contested game with the old Big 12 foe, but Oklahoma exploded in the late innings scoring 10 of their 16 in the final three innings. It was a win that was sorely needed to try and salvage what had started out as a disastrous week in Frisco.

The Sooners now turn their attention to Dallas Baptist on Sunday night with left-hander Jake Bennett on the mound. The  Patriots have done the reverse of Oklahoma so far, winning the first two games over Missouri behind really good pitching before allowing 15 runs to Arizona yesterday to take their first loss of the event.

With the way the week began, getting out of town with a split would be huge before returning to Norman for home games next week. This is a big game for the Sooners.

The matchup with the Patriots is set for 6:00 p.m. CT tonight and can be watched on FloBaseball.tv and heard on Sportstalk 1400 AM/99.3 FM and the Tune In App.

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