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If you’re wondering how on earth we’re just a day away from June, you’ve come to the right place. With June comes warmer weather, graduation season and of course Father’s Day!
Let’s guess. You’ve been hesitating to find the perfect Father’s Day gift for a long time. Whether you don’t know where to start shopping or can’t find a gift that appeals to you, we’re here to help with this Father’s Day gift guide full of practical, versatile and just plain wonderful tips for every occasion is dad.
Let’s just say obsession is an understatement when it comes to these Father’s Day gift ideas. From compact yet powerful BlackStone griddles, YETI mugs, Nike baseball caps, digital frames, aprons and more, these tips are sure to put a smile on Dad’s face – and make you want to try them for yourself!
Keep scrolling to shop all of our favorite Father’s Day gift ideas that are so good you’ll want to “borrow” them from your dad ASAP.
Damar Hamlin’s on-field cardiac arrest at a Monday Night Football game in January was a moment of national trauma that was televised live. His recovery from the near-death experience and attitude as an individual ultimately inspired the nation. Still, after his decision to play in the National Football League again after his personal medical trauma, many questioned how he had the courage to return.
In a recent interview at the CNBC CEO Council Summit, Hamlin — who attended recent practice sessions with the Bills after being granted full game clearance in April — made it clear that his decision to return to the NFL was never really in question became the approach he has always taken in life, based on what football has always meant to him.
“Football has always been my peace. It was always my escape from the world. And that was sort of where I overcame my fears the most in my life,” Hamlin said at the CNBC CEO event.
Hamlin noted that he also considered statistics when making the decision.
Hamlin suffered from commotio cordis, a rare heart condition that occurs when a blunt blow to the chest occurs at the same moment the heart is preparing to contract. If the physical shock hits during a narrow window of time in the heart’s rhythm — a period of just 20 to 40 milliseconds — it can disrupt the heartbeat and cause sudden cardiac arrest. According to the American Heart Association, there are fewer than 10 cases of commotio cordis per year, and most cases occur in young male athletes, often in youth sports like baseball.
The week after his return to Bills training, the players undertook CPR training. Hamlin has become a prominent heart health spokesperson through a partnership with the American Heart Association and a key supporter of efforts to provide more life-saving essential medical equipment and education in schools. According to the AHA, survival and recovery rates after an episode of commotio cordis are greater than 50% with immediate CPR and defibrillation. Hamlin recently spoke on the subject on Capitol Hill.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is seen outside the US Capitol before a news conference on the Access to AEDs Act, which aims to increase access to defibrillators in schools, Wednesday, March 29, 2023.
Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Doctors are confident Hamlin is in good enough health to play football again. According to the American Heart Association, it’s very rare for someone to have commotio cordis twice, or for survivors to be more likely to have other heart problems. Commotio cordis is not linked to any underlying heart problems or heart disease.
Research from Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as numerous other studies around the world, has found that one in four cardiac arrest survivors can develop severe post-traumatic stress, which often causes them to avoid situations that might remind them of the health crisis.
Hamlin told CNBC he is focused on the future. “You know, try to look at it as an adversity and not get too involved with what happened. Try to focus on growing from what happened, you know, not trying to dominate the situation, just growing out of it.” Hamlin said.
Watch the full video clip of Hamlin’s interview with NBC Sports’ Maria Taylor at the CNBC CEO Council Summit above to hear the football player speak in his own words about what returning to the NFL means to him.
French Open debutant Peyton Stearns scored the biggest win of her career by beating former champion Jelena Ostapenko to reach the third round at Roland Garros on Wednesday.
Stearns, a former University of Texas player, turned pro in June of last year.
Ostapenko won the 2017 French Open but hasn’t managed to get past the third round since. The 17th-seeded Latvian dropped five serves against Stearns and made 28 unforced errors in a 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 loss.
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Ostapenko’s defeat, combined with Barbora Krejcikova’s first-round loss to Lesia Tsurenko, leaves Iga Swiatek as the only former champion remaining in the women’s draw.
Stearns, 21, has climbed the WTA rankings and entered the French Open in 69th place thanks to an encouraging clay-court season.
No.5 Caroline Garcia also suffered an early exit on Wednesday, saving eight match points before falling to an ace in a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 loss to Anna Blinkova in ninth place. Blinkova beat Garcia in the second round of the French Open back in 2019.
Third seed Jessica Pegula progressed after Camila Giorgi retired through injury. The American won the first set 6-2 before her Italian competitor threw in the towel.
Just hours after husband Gael Monfils won a five-set thriller on Tuesday night, Elina Svitolina prevailed over qualifier Storm Hunter 2-6, 6-3, 6-1.
Daria Kasatkina, semifinalist at last year’s French Open, advanced to the third round with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Marketa Vondrousova.
“It’s fun to watch but playing against Marketa is very tough,” said Kasatkina. “Physically, it was a big fight. The second set was so hard.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
A UK startup has used ChatGPT to develop a text-to-music playlist generator.
The AI system is the brainchild of Upbeat, a Leeds-based audio platform. Aimed at content creators, the feature finds copyright-free titles for video soundtracks. Uppbeat claims it’s the first tool that lets people use their own language to find the songs they want.
“Generative AI music is fraught with copyright and general quality issues,” Upbeat CEO Lewis Foster said in a statement. “Our catalog is full of incredible artists and AI doesn’t matter. But we asked ourselves, “What if we could use AI to help creators find the perfect copyright-free music for their content?”
“That ‘what if?’ moment has grown into our groundbreaking AI playlist generator and I’m excited to share it with the world. We believe it will have a positive impact on the way creators use AI to voice their content. Try it!”
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To use the tool, just enter a description of your video, scene, music mood, or personality. The system then returns a custom playlist of games from Upbeat’s catalog of tracks.
Since the tool is currently available in a freemium version, we decided to give it a try.
The system can handle a variety of prompts. Photo credit: Upbeat
We asked for a playlist to match a scene: “A tech boss uses AI to take over the world.” Within seconds, the machine spat out a mix titled “Tech Takeover Tunes.”
We were impressed with the selection. Though it lacked big hits, it was a fitting soundtrack for a cyborg Musk making his way across the planet.
You can try the tool yourself on the Upbeat website.
Imagine being curled up in a 90 cm (36 inch) ball of fabric with a small window and a small air tank while dangling from the Canadarm. As your tiny sphere shifts, through your tiny window you see Earth, then the Space Shuttle, which was damaged in an accident requiring rescue, and then Earth again. Panic would set in pretty quickly.
But that’s exactly where Space Shuttle astronauts could have found themselves in an emergency if NASA’s Personal Rescue Enclosure (PRE) had been put into practice.
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NASA developed the PRE simultaneously with the Space Shuttle program. Also called the rescue ball, it was designed to transport a single astronaut from a damaged shuttle to a rescue shuttle. NASA made a prototype, but it never went on a mission.
“Should a shuttle orbiter become incapacitated, the commander and payload specialist are placed in a personal rescue zone. The pilot and mission specialist will put on their spacesuits.”
From NASA Facts: Space Shuttle
The PRE was only 0.33 cubic meters or 12 cubic feet. It consisted of three layers of fabric: urethane, kevlar and an outer thermal layer. It had a small Lexan window and zips for getting in and out. A single astronaut could fit inside, and it had a carbon dioxide scrubber/oxygen supply that would last an hour.
If this unit sounds weird to you, akin to the school emergency drill “Hide under your desk during a nuclear attack,” who can blame you?
A demonstration of the PRE. Photo credit: NASA. Source: Kenneth S. Thomas, Harold J. McMann: US Space Suits. 2nd Edition.
The PRE was designed for a scenario where there weren’t enough spacesuits for everyone. Before the Challenger disaster, space shuttle crews did not wear space suits. In the event of an accident and if there was enough time to launch a rescue shuttle, the PRE system would be deployed.
The PRE remained attached to the Space Shuttle until the airlock was depressurized. A suitable astronaut from the rescue shuttle then transported the PRE and the astronauts in it to the rescue shuttle. It could also be moved with the Canadarm, or along a line connecting the two shuttles, like a shirt on a clothesline. NASA planned to transfer an entire crew from a damaged shuttle to a rescue shuttle in this way.
This image shows a rigid demonstration version of the PRE, complete with breathing holes. The astronaut in it doesn’t look too happy and is wearing an orange Skylab uniform for some reason. Photo credit: NASA
NASA, as always, was keen to let the general public know about their work. The PRE was no exception. In a 1979 brochure entitled “NASA Facts,” they spoke with confidence about the upcoming space shuttle program and how it “…will convert massive and costly space missions into routine, economical operations that will affect people everywhere.” bringing the greatest possible benefit to the world.” In this brochure they showed the PRE and explained its relevance.
Cover photo from the 1979 NASA brochure “NASA Facts: Space Shuttle”. Photo credit: NASA
It’s always interesting to go back to a time when the shuttle program hadn’t even started yet. Some of the hopes related to the program have been fulfilled, and people around the world were probably hopeful too. That gives you hope for humanity. But it’s a little amusing to see the PRE being presented in the same breath.
“Should a shuttle orbiter become incapacitated,” the 1979 pamphlet stated, “the commander and payload specialist will be placed in a personal rescue area; The pilot and mission specialist will put on their spacesuits.”
Two more images from NASA Facts: Space Shuttle. Photo credit: NASA
In the run-up to the shuttle program, the trade press reported extensively on the program. The PRE even made it into the Popular Mechanics column, ads for competing cigarettes, and ads for wood-paneled station wagons.
In the end, the PRE was abandoned. Common sense prevailed and every passenger on the space shuttle was given a space suit. In hindsight, the PRE seems more like a brutal ritual of bullying than emergency preparation. The thing only closed on the outside, the window was tiny, and the poor person who was rescued was completely at the mercy of another astronaut. You can imagine sorority boys putting deposits in and pouring Pabst Blue Ribbon through the air hose connector. But we should not be too harsh on our predecessors.
The type of spaceflight the shuttles would participate in was unknown at the time, and the shuttle program changed everything. If there were a few missteps along the way, then what? Nobody got hurt. You don’t get where NASA is without trying ideas, testing them, and then abandoning those that deserve to be abandoned.
These groundbreaking women are the first six female NASA astronauts to be featured with the PRE. Maybe they smiled because they knew the PRE was deserted and they never had to curl up in it. Left to right: Margaret R (Rhea) Seddon, Kathryn D Sullivan, Judith A Resnik (RIP), Sally K Ride (RIP), Anna L Fisher and Shannon W Lucid.
Astronaut safety is of paramount importance to NASA and they have developed much better technologies to protect astronauts. All astronauts working outside the ISS now wear the Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) system. It is a jetpack that will allow astronauts to return to the ISS if their tether fails or they become separated from Canadarm 2 and Dextre. It has been in use since 1994.
Left: The SAFER system and its control. Right: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio with the SAFER system. Image Source: L: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1082118 R: By NASA – http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts- 131/html/s131e009470.html, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10007723
The shuttle program is now in the history books and the PRE would not have helped in accidents of this nature that the program suffered. But if there is an accident in the future where astronauts are forced to travel to a rescue ship, the SAFER system is better than stuffing them in a cloth bag like dirty laundry.
ti And Tameka “Tiny” Harris have lost a lawsuit against a toy company over the resemblance of the company’s LOL Surprise Dolls to the couple’s musical group OMG Girlz.
On Friday (May 26), after a ten-day trial and just a few hours of deliberation, a jury finally ruled in favor of MGA Entertainment. Law 360 reports that the couple had sought $100 million in damages.
The jury concluded that MGA Entertainment’s OMG Dollz did not infringe the trademark or misappropriate the couple’s name or likeness OMG Girlz rap group that featured TI and Tiny’s daughter ZonicPullinsand co-owned the Atlanta rapper.
Lil Wayne’s daughter Reginae Carter and sisters Bahja and Lourdes Rodriguez were also members of the group.
Friday’s ruling marks the end of a bitter legal battle involving allegations of extortion and racism.
RELATED: Judge voids court cases in TI & Tiny’s lawsuit against toymaker MGA Entertainment over popular LOL surprise dolls
While Tip said he respected the jury’s verdict, his wife described the result as “terrible”.
“It’s awful, but whatever,” Tiny told Law360 after the verdict. “[I would]hear what the jury had to say,” Tip added.
MGA Entertainment CEO says he feels “great” after confirming the verdict
Meanwhile, Isaac Larian, MGA’s chief executive officer, said he felt “great,” adding that the ruling validated his claims that the lawsuit was “a shakedown.”
“I’m glad they came to that verdict so quickly,” Larian told the outlet.
Tiny formed teenage pop girl group OMZ Girlz in 2009. In January, she sued MGA for allegedly stealing the group’s likeness for their LOL Surprise OMG Girls dolls.
The couple claimed that in 2010, MGA announced its plan to launch a line of dolls modeled on the OMG Girlz. However, according to the lawsuit, the company failed to secure the necessary licensing deals and refused to negotiate compensation.
In 2019, the dolls finally hit shelves.
Oops! Zonnique slams the OMG Dolls brand for similarities in their products that look like their group, the OMG Girlz! Roommates, what do you think?! 📷:(@gettyimages) pic.twitter.com/sh296gg13t
— TheShadeRoom (@TheShadeRoom) April 18, 2022
The verdict comes months after the mistrial in which the judge ruled against the cultural appropriation argument
Judge James V. Selna, who presided over TI and Tiny’s lawsuit, declared the case a mistrial in January.
Selna said her “cultural appropriation” argument was “irrelevant and outrageous” to the actual legal issues of the case and should not be brought before the jury.
The mistrial was decided after MGA Entertainment argued that the allegations of cultural appropriation had ruined their chance of a fair trial.
TI and Tiny tried to convince the jury that the dolls were an example of “cultural appropriation and outright intellectual property theft.” They also accused the toy company of stealing the looks of “young multicultural women”.
At the time, the toy maker said it was disappointed with the outcome of the court case. It added that diversity has “always been a core value” at MGA.
“Diversity has always been a core value,” MGA said after the mistrial in January. “We are disappointed that the process was abandoned but look forward to enforcing our rights in the next process.”
I mentioned this in my newsletter and I’m surprised it hasn’t garnered more attention, but a trial begins this week in LA over whether a doll line detracts from the look of a real girl group. LOL Surprise OMG! pic.twitter.com/ZVWSGQ3Kkn
Federally funded scientists have proposed a definition of long-Covid based on symptoms identified in a large study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The definition is based on 12 symptoms that most differentiate people with long Covid six months or more after they were infected from people who did not have the coronavirus.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, many people have suffered from a myriad of symptoms, some of them debilitating, that persist long after they have been infected with Covid-19.
Patients have adopted the name Long Covid. Scientists call the condition post-acute episodes, or PASC.
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However, there is still no systematic, widely accepted definition of long-Covid for research that could serve as a basis for future tools to diagnose the condition.
“It’s really about finding a concrete, reproducible specific definition for Long Covid,” said Dr. Leora Horwitz, study author and professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, looked at nearly 10,000 participants at 85 hospitals, health centers and community centers in 33 states.
More than 8,600 patients who had Covid were compared to more than 1,100 patients who did not have the virus.
The research is part of the NIH’s extensive $1.15 billion RECOVER research initiative, which aims to define Long Covid, understand the causes of the condition, and develop treatments for it. RECOVER is an acronym for Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery.
key symptoms
Symptoms most noticeable in long-Covid participants included loss of smell and taste, discomfort after exertion, chronic cough, brain fog, thirst, palpitations, chest pain, fatigue, changes in sexual desire, dizziness, gastrointestinal issues and abnormal movements and hair loss.
The scientists awarded points based on how much each symptom distinguished participants with long Covid from those who had not contracted the virus.
A participant who scores 12 or more points is considered to have probably had long-term illness with Covid.
For example, loss of smell and taste and discomfort after exertion were more noticeable than other symptoms and were rated 8 and 7 points, respectively. Palpitations and dizziness, which are characteristic of long covid but also common in many other diseases, were given 2 and 1 points, respectively.
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Future clinical use
Horwitz, author of the study, said the proposed definition of Long Covid could help develop a way for doctors to diagnose patients.
However, Horwitz said that the definition presented in the study is an early working definition that still needs to be refined and is not yet ready for clinical use.
In the absence of a universally accepted definition, many patients with long-term illness from Covid-19 face difficulties in obtaining appropriate medical care, especially in the early stages of the pandemic, as some symptoms can also occur with other conditions and make a diagnosis difficult.
There are no tests that can diagnose Long-Covid using markers in the blood. Scientists participating in RECOVER are trying to understand the underlying biology causing Long Covid, which could potentially lead to such testing in the future.
Horwitz said the proposed definition could help create a rubric to diagnose long-Covid patients in a similar way to lupus. There is no single blood test that can diagnose lupus, so doctors also rely on a collection of common symptoms to determine if a patient has the disease.
Horwitz said the goal is to give researchers a more systematic definition that could be used to answer questions about risk factors and the likelihood of how long Covid lasts after repeat infection, among other things, and between different variants of the virus.
Biological samples from patients who developed Long Covid during the study could be used to study the causes of the condition and potentially help identify treatments and guide enrollment in future clinical trials, the study said.
Long Covid more common before Omicron
The study also found that long-Covid was more common among infected people before the Omicron variant swept the US in December 2021.
About 17% of patients admitted during Omicron therapy more than 30 days after their infection developed Long-Covid. In contrast, about 35% of those infected before the omicron era developed long-Covid.
But patients who became reinfected during the Omicron phase were more likely to develop long Covid than those who reported infection when the variant was on the rise. About 21% of those with repeat infections who enrolled after 30 days developed long-term Covid illness, compared to 16% who developed Covid once.
People who were fully vaccinated had a lower risk of contracting Long-Covid regardless of when they were infected.
Approximately 16% of vaccinated participants who became infected while on Omicron therapy developed Long-Covid, compared to 22% who did not receive their immunizations. Before Omicron, 31% of people who had been infected and were aware of their vaccinations contracted Long-Covid, compared to 37% who were unvaccinated.
BOSTON — JIMMY BUTLER had the ball and surveyed the scene.
It was early in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, and the Miami Heat had absorbed everything the Boston Celtics — and the raucous crowd inside TD Garden — had thrown at them. Miami’s playoff hero was going in for the knockout blow.
Butler got the matchup he had spent all series hunting — a switch with Celtics big man Robert Williams III getting matched onto him — and he rose up for a step-back midrange jumper. Swish.
At the other end, Celtics forward Jaylen Brown started a drive to the hoop, only for Butler, snaking in behind him, to tip the ball away.
Fatefully, it landed in the hands of Caleb Martin — who during the series turned into a cross between Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant — who threw it ahead to Butler for a casual two-handed dunk and a swing on the rim for good measure. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was already on the court to signal for a timeout.
Nearly 11 minutes remained in Boston’s season, but the outcome had already been assured. Fans who serenaded the Celtics with boos as they trudged to the bench knew it, too.
Boston’s hopes of a return trip to the NBA Finals — and to become the first team in NBA history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit — were gone.
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“We got punked,” Celtics forward Grant Williams told ESPN. “We didn’t play our game from start to finish. Defensively, we just lost it all and then offensively we were scrambled and trying to do everything ourselves and just didn’t go our way.
“You hate to have that be the end of your season, especially with the fight that we’ve shown.”
A short while after Butler’s dagger, the Heat celebrated a 103-84 victory, sending the franchise back to the Finals for a second time in four seasons — both at the expense of the Celtics. That Miami did make history — the Heat became the first team to advance out of the play-in tournament and reach the Finals — was of little consequence to anyone inside the arena.
Instead, the overwhelming feeling was of an opportunity lost. The Celtics’ slogan for this season’s playoff run — Unfinished Business — played off their trip to the 2022 NBA Finals, falling two wins short of a title and the organization’s focus to get one step further.
But rather than finishing their business, the Celtics are now headed into a summer of soul searching, unpacking what went wrong and what it will take to fix it.
Year 1 of the Celtics’ unexpected coaching change
“I just didn’t have them ready to play.”
Those were the first eight words of Mazzulla’s news conference after the Celtics were trounced in Game 3 of the East finals.
Mazzulla shielding his players wasn’t a surprise. Throughout the season, Mazzulla had gone out of his way to never take aim at his team — a trend that had only ratcheted up throughout the playoffs. It was also the latest example of how Mazzulla presented a stark contrast in coaching styles over the past season.
Mazzulla — who, at 34, is the NBA’s youngest coach — was an assistant on Ime Udoka’s staff last season before being thrust into leading the team just three days before the start of the regular season after Udoka was suspended for multiple violations of team rules.
On media day, Mazzulla said he hoped to continue with the formula that had worked under Udoka, which resulted in Boston reaching the Finals for the first time since 2010.
“It’s not about carrying on from one person,” Mazzulla said. “It’s about carrying on the identity of our players. So we had our struggles early last season, but at our best we knew what our identity was. … It was our buy-in from a defensive standpoint, and then it was sharing the ball and moving quickly on the offensive end.
“So as much as we can stick to the things we were great at last year, and then find areas to improve along the way, I think is the right way to go.”
The differences between Mazzulla and Udoka’s approaches quickly became clear.
Udoka, throughout his one season in Boston, would offer blunt assessments of his players to the media. Udoka blasted his team for a lack of mental toughness in January 2022 after Boston blew its fourth lead of at least 19 points that season.
The same could be said for Boston’s on-court approach. Udoka typically leaned on bigger, stronger, more defensive-oriented lineups. The pairing of Al Horford and Robert Williams became a lineup staple and the bruising Grant Williams was the team’s lead reserve.
Thursday Game 1: Heat at Nuggets, 8:30 p.m.
Sunday Game 2: Heat at Nuggets, 8 p.m.
Wednesday, June 7 Game 3: Nuggets at Heat, 8:30 p.m.
Friday, June 9 Game 4: Nuggets at Heat, 8:30 p.m.
*All times Eastern
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Mazzulla spent this season hewing to smaller and faster lineups with more shooting. After Robert Williams had knee surgery just before the start of training camp, the Horford-Williams pairing hardly saw the court until late in the second round against the Philadelphia 76ers, with Mazzulla instead preferring to start Derrick White. Grant Williams flitted in and out of Boston’s rotation, with Mazzulla instead leaning on offseason addition Malcolm Brogdon in a move to provide a more dynamic offensive attack.
“The 3-point attempt rate is the most important stat in the game of basketball,” Mazzulla said after a loss to the Brooklyn Nets in March, in part explaining his approach to the game, “because of the pace of play, because of the shot selection and because of the ability to go on runs.”
Boston finished the season 38-2 when it hit at least 40% of its 3-pointers, and 30-32 when it didn’t. That’s why, in a way, it was fitting Boston’s season slipped away thanks to an awful shooting night. The Celtics went 9-for-42 from behind the arc in Game 7, tied for the second-worst shooting performance of Boston’s season. Over their final two games, the Celtics shot a combined 16-for-77 from 3. Miami went 28-for-58.
“No,” Mazzulla said after Game 7 when asked if Boston was too reliant on the 3-point shot.
For much of the season, Mazzulla’s approach worked. The Celtics went from ninth in the league in 3-point attempts two years ago to second this season. White was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive Team. Brogdon was named the league’s Sixth Man of the Year.
The Celtics boasted the NBA’s best net rating during the regular season. They were second in both offensive and defensive rating, the first team to finish top-2 in each since the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors.
Boston was exposed in the postseason. The Celtics dropped to 10th in defensive efficiency among playoff teams, struggling with the inconsistent play that plagued them during their run to the Finals last season. The three losses to Miami at TD Garden in this series dropped Boston’s record to 11-12 at home over the past two playoffs, the most home losses over a two-year span in NBA playoff history.
Late-game execution was a problem throughout the playoffs, and particularly the first two games against the Heat, during which Boston committed multiple turnovers inside the final three minutes and had two long scoreless droughts down the stretch. (Boston also let Game 5 slip away at home against the Atlanta Hawks and dropped the opener to Philadelphia in a game where Joel Embiid sat with a knee injury.)
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Jayson Tatum: Ankle injury made me ‘shell of myself’
Jayson Tatum discusses the impact of his injured ankle on his Game 7 performance.
“We just got to continue to put defense first,” Celtics guard Marcus Smart said after Game 7. “We were so bad on offense last year that that was a main focus for us this year. Unfortunately, our defense took a hit from it. We picked it back up, but it happens.”
Celtics players have praised Mazzulla for his performance throughout the season and did so again after Boston’s run came to a sudden halt.
“It was his first year, we got to [Game 7 of] the conference finals,” Tatum said of Mazzulla. “I don’t think people give him or us enough credit that, two days before the season starts, we find out we’re going to have a new coach. …
“Obviously, we wanted to win the championship. Didn’t happen. … But I think Joe did a great job this year.”
Boston likely runs it back, but massive star contracts loom
After struggling throughout the first 42 minutes of Game 6 of the East semifinals, and with Boston trailing by two to Philadelphia in a game it had to win to keep its season alive, Tatum suddenly turned his game — and at the time, the Celtics’ season — around, hitting four 3-pointers and scoring 16 points in those final six minutes to lift Boston to a win.
“I’m one of the, humbly, one of the best basketball players in the world,” Tatum told ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth in the postgame on-court interview.
When Tatum then followed that performance with 51 points in Game 7, setting a record for the most points in a Game 7 in NBA history, it looked like it could be a storybook moment on the way to a title for Boston.
Then the series against Miami started. Tatum — who wore a T-shirt with “HUMBLY” splashed across to warm up for Game 2 — didn’t make a field goal in the fourth quarter of either of the first two games of the series before sitting the entire fourth quarter of the Heat’s blowout Game 3.
After helping Boston claw its way back into the series with three straight wins, Tatum turned his ankle on the first play of Game 7 and never looked right after it. “It was frustrating to be a shell of myself,” Tatum said.
While Tatum’s injury and Boston’s poor shooting will be lingering reminders of why the Celtics lost Game 7, they were not to blame for the Celtics’ 3-0 deficit. Those issues have a familiar ring.
With open air space and a 10-point lead, Boston can look unbeatable. But that crispness goes away often in close games, replaced by frenetic play that creates both forced and unforced errors to fuel the opposition — like what happened in the final minutes of Game 6, only for Boston to be saved by White’s last-second putback.
And that goes back to the team’s best players, Tatum and Brown, who have now played in a combined 199 playoff games and who scored a combined 15 points on 15 shots in the fourth quarters of Games 1 and 2 then didn’t play in the final frame of Miami’s Game 3 blowout as Boston fell into too massive a hole to overcome.
Tatum struggled to 14 points on 5-for-13 shooting, while Brown had as many turnovers as made field goals in Game 7, finishing with 19 points on 8-for-23 shooting.
“Just a terrible game,” Brown said. “When my team needed me most … [Tatum] hurt his ankle, first play of the game, and you could see it swelling up on him. He couldn’t move out there. It was tough for him.
“My team turned to me to make plays and I came up short. I failed. It’s tough.
“I give credit to Miami, but just a terrible job.”
This summer, Boston can offer Brown — after he made his second All-Star team and first All-NBA appearance — the richest deal in NBA history: a five-year, $295 million contract extension. (Had Brown not made All-NBA, he would’ve been eligible to sign a four-year, $189 million pact instead.)
And, if either Brown or the Celtics are unwilling to agree to an extension, the Celtics will be in a position in which they could lose Brown as an unrestricted free agent for nothing next summer.
“I don’t even really know how to answer that question right now, to be honest,” Brown said when asked how he expects extension talks to play out. “Take it one day at a time, focus on getting better. Focus on what the future holds and see where we are from there.”
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are in line for massive extensions over the next two summers. Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images
Assuming Brown agrees to a supermax extension, however, his future would be tied to Boston through the 2029 season, while Tatum — who by being named to a second straight All-NBA team qualified for his own five-year, $310 million extension next summer — is set to be under contract until the summer of 2030.
Under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement — one the Celtics ironically helped play an outsized role in getting done, considering Grant Williams, Brogdon and Brown are all on the National Basketball Players Association’s executive committee — having two players combining for more than $100 million per season could make team building difficult.
With the remainder of Boston’s core — Robert Williams, Smart, Horford, White and Brogdon — all under contract for at least the next two seasons, the Celtics are as well-equipped in the short term as any NBA team to compete for championships now.
The future of Grant Williams is murkier. After being a stalwart of Boston’s playoff run last year, his role fluctuated wildly under Mazzulla, including in these playoffs. Williams will be a restricted free agent this summer, giving the Celtics the ability to match any offer or move on via sign-and-trade.
“Just focused on today. We planned on making it to the Finals, and it didn’t go that way,” Williams said.
“So I’ll figure [free agency] out when time comes.”
Boston’s championship window remains open. That’s always going to be the case when a roster features two of the league’s elite wing players who are entering their primes and likely remain under contract through the rest of the decade.
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But the past several seasons already feel, to some degree, like missed opportunities. Since Brown entered the NBA in 2016, the Celtics have played a league-leading 112 playoff games, the most by any team over a seven-year period in NBA history without winning a title. Their 61 playoff wins during that span are more than any team not named Golden State.
Over that same time frame, four teams — the Warriors (three), Toronto Raptors, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers — have won championships, while the Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers have made multiple Finals appearances.
But the Celtics keep falling short, with Butler and the Heat becoming the latest group to face them down when it matters most. That Boston pulled itself to the brink of the greatest escape in NBA history only adds to the misery.
As a result, instead of this battle-tested group finishing their business this season, the Celtics head into the offseason with no assurance they ever will.
“We’ve shown that we can get [to the Finals],” Tatum said. “S—, we got to the conference finals. It’s my fourth time in six years — been to the Finals once.
“We know we had a special opportunity this year. We just fell a little bit short. It’s not like we’re not capable [or] we don’t have the talent. We do. Just didn’t go our way this year.”
Labor has confirmed that it will block all new domestic oil and gas developments if it takes power, proposing instead to invest heavily in renewable energy sources such as wind power and also in nuclear power.
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said details would be forthcoming.
“What we’re going to do in the coming weeks is set out how we’re going to invest in the green jobs of the future, cut costs and create a more sustainable energy supply,” he said on Sky’s Sunday show Sophy Ridge.
“We’ll be laying out that in a significant mission in the coming weeks and then we’ll announce more details.
A party source said: “We are opposed to the granting of new licenses for oil and gas in the North Sea.” They will do nothing to cut the bills, the Tories have admitted; They undermine our energy security and would push through our climate goals by horse and carriage.
It’s like chatting to a trader at a European port more than a century ago as I ask Jorne Langelaan, founder and CEO of Dutch shipping startup EcoClipper, how his ship’s maiden voyage is going.
“In the beginning, the winds were really favourable,” he says of the progress of the 1912-built De Tukker, which has recently been sailing regularly to ports across Europe. The first loads include chocolate, olive oil and wine.
En route from the Netherlands to Portugal, De Tukker’s crew, like many thousands of seafarers in centuries past, had to sail close to the Atlantic winds to get south past the west coast of France.
“Otherwise,” says Langelaan, “you can easily get pulled into the Bay of Biscay because of the currents there and the prevailing winds.” half of this consists of loans.
Captain Jorne Langelaan on board the sailing ship De Tukker
Decarbonization ahoy
Does the future of shipping look confusingly similar to its past? Perhaps. The industry certainly faces a major challenge when it comes to becoming greener. Global,Shipping is responsible for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions — but that’s more than it sounds, as shipping is very difficult to decarbonize as huge merchant ships have long relied on highly polluting bunker fuel.
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Up to90% of the goods are transported by ship and demand is increasing, so the potential climate impact of shipping will only increase in the future unless cleaner fuels or zero-emission technologies emerge as viable alternatives.
One hurdle is scaling. De Tukker can carry a maximum load of around 80 tonnes – eclipsing the 200,000 tonnes or more that the largest container ships can carry. But Langelaan says he has received interest from companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint and take advantage of zero-emission transport. For example, several construction companies have recently been in contact, as some are under pressure to reduce their emissions.
Langelaan points out that De Tukker is not only an emission-free ship, but also extremely quiet, so there is practically no dangerNoise pollution known to have a negative impact on marine life. The ship actually has an engine, but the crew hardly ever uses it. She travels about half as fast as modern large merchant ships.
Langelaan and his colleagues hope to deploy a whole fleet of newly built sailing ships in the coming years, with designs inspired by classic Dutch cargo ships. Clipper ships – among them the famous Cutty Sark – have been refined over many years of maritime development, Langelaan points out.
“We don’t really have the resources to do a lot of research and development, so we just took what worked and used it,” he explains, referring to theEcoClipper Prototype500 ship conceptwhich would have a loading capacity of 500 tons.
Langelaan already has a Dutch shipyard in mind that he thinks could build the first of these new ships, but adds that the project will require investment. If that happens, he plans to launch a newly built clipper-style ship as early as 2026.
Sails are back
For Joe Banks, Lecturer in Naval Science and Marine Engineering at the University of Southampton, EcoClipper’s approach is certainly passionate. “These historic ships were beautiful and there was a nostalgia, a romance,” he says.
However, he argues that it is the vast existing fleet of giant merchant ships that deserves the most focus. Shipping companies can reduce their climate impactAdding miniature sails ordragon to their ships so that they can use the wind. Automation can also help to make them as efficient as possible, he adds.
“My instinct is that if we consider retrofitting existing vessels with modern automated systems, we will have a greater impact,” says Banks.
He and his colleagues from the University of Southampton will start a project to test the effects ofAdding a 20m retractable sail to a cargo ship The so-called Pacific crested grebe has been used for many yearsto transport nuclear waste.
However, EcoClipper could still play an important role in highlighting the benefits of shipping cargo under sail, argues Banks: “There is […] Raising awareness and demonstrating the benefits is important.”
Langelaan also makes another point: One way to reduce emissions is simply by shipping less and reducing humanity’s overall impact on the planet. “As a ship owner, I shouldn’t really be saying that,” he jokes.
At the moment, De Tukker has the wind in its sails and has a busy schedule to meet. Langelaan lists the various places she will be calling in the coming weeks, including the UK, France and back to the Netherlands. From tall ship parties to lugging around building materials.
“Then it starts all over again,” he says, again with the air of a tough old sailor. “The ship will be constantly underway.”
