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The Los Angeles Angels, to the extent they are discussed at all, have mostly been shamed for having the last two best players in the game over the past decade and doing nothing of substance with either. This has in large part been because they have produced, acquired, and retained a scandalously low number of useful pitchers during that period, although their similar struggles to do that with position players other than Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani haven't helped much, either. They have tried in the determined, strange, deeply ineffective way that the Angels tend to try, signing mid-tier free agents who instantly break in one or more ways and, more recently, spending their entire 2021 draft class on pitchers, an unprecedented admission of need in any sport. The last true impact starting pitcher their system produced was either John Lackey, who spent less than half of his 15-year career with the team, or Chuck Finley, who won 200 games in his career but whose last year as an Angel was 1999. There's a theme here, and that is that the Angels stink at pitcher discovery, development, acquisition, and nurturing. When the team found 17-year-old Jose Soriano in 2016, there was no great reason for optimism, less because of anything Soriano did well or poorly than because of which organization would be paying him to do it. Soriano made it to the bigs and flashed a high-powered and appealingly strange arsenal, but until late last month he was just another Angels pitcher like the 210 others in that decade's worth of work product. And no, that's not really meant as a compliment. It may now be that even that level of bloom is off this one solitary rose, as Soriano was lit up for two homers and three runs in five innings by the ultramodest Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night. But the reason this matters, to the extent that it might, is that those three runs tripled Soriano's ERA from 0.24 to 0.84, and quadrupled his runs allowed on the year from one to four. And in case you're thinking he managed this as a spot starter, long reliever, or recent callup, you cynical swine, this came over seven starts, 42 2/3 innings, and 163 batters faced. Soriano, who pitches for the Angels, has been the best pitcher in baseball all season long—or at least he was until last night, when he was the 19th best.

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com. This week, Albert offers advice on how to handle one of your kids complaining about the other.

Former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones this week became the first person to plead guilty in the far-reaching federal gambling case that has engulfed several former pro basketball players. The plea came a day after prosecutors announced their intention to file additional charges against former Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, connected to the belief that Rozier, per the attorney quoted by The Athletic, "solicited and accepted a bribe." Jones pleaded guilty Tuesday in a New York City federal courthouse to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. One count was connected to bets made with online sports books using information about NBA players and their likelihood to not play provided by Jones; the second was connected to Jones's role in helping attract dumb money to rigged poker games. According to the prosecution, Jones was one of the people used as "face cards" to lure "fish"—weaker or inexperienced poker players—into attending these games, which also were connected to several organized crime families. As for the sports betting, prosecutors said that Jones was among several people who passed along "non-public information related to NBA games" to help other people place bets. (The government has brought similar charges against Rozier, relating to his time with the Charlotte Hornets.) In return for the information, someone like Jones would get a flat fee or a share of the profits. Jones did this multiple times during the 2022–23 and 2023-24 NBA seasons. (Jones worked as an assistant coach for the Lakers during 2022 and 2023.)

This week on the show, we were once again joined by TrueHoop's Henry Abbott. Henry is an era-defining basketblogger, the author of Ballistic, and probably the only NBA media-corps journalist who has dug into the numerous connections between the NBA's rich and powerful and Jeffrey Epstein. We talked about both of those topics this week, in addition to a bunch of other stuff. Importantly, we also debuted the Broke Jumper Tip Line! We are sourcing scouting reports and any other hoops-related anecdotes about celebrities, politicians, and public figures of all sorts. Have you played pickup with Adam Neumann? Does Don Lemon have a busted jumper? Is Lina Khan an amazing rebounder? We need to know. Call (347) 380-6426. This week's debut tip is about Al Gore Jr., and Henry brought a ton of bonus tips with him, including some great anecdotes about how media pickup is organized at the Finals.

Though recently one of the best players in the NBA, and perhaps one of the best two-way bigs the sport has ever seen, Joel Embiid was an obscure character in this past regular season. That's because the main agenda for the Philadelphia 76ers was his long-term preservation. No point in rushing anything: Their franchise center ended the 2024-25 season with arthroscopic surgery on his left knee—another injury in a career defined by them—and the team didn't seem bound for big things in his absence. But they wound up securing the seventh seed in a wide-open Eastern Conference anyway, and on Tuesday found themselves in a must-win road game in their first-round series against the Boston Celtics. Despite starting this playoff run with yet another surprise health scare, Embiid returned to former glory with a second-half scoring burst that pushed his team to a 113-97 victory. The immediate medical context makes Embiid's feat all the more impressive. Last fall, he reported to camp a little slimmer and eased back onto the court, with restrictions on overall minutes and back-to-back games. By January, he was inching toward relevance, logging heavier minutes and handling them well, if not yet approaching the all-time-great peaks of his recent past, averaging nearly 30 points per game. An oblique strain sidelined him for most of March, but he came back in early April—only to contract appendicitis, which necessitated emergency surgery while the team was on the road in Houston. The Sixers had three games to go in the regular season, and poor Embiid was still adding to an already exotic list of career maladies. Led by a young, speedy backcourt of Tyrese Maxey and rookie VJ Edgecombe, Philadelphia still breezed through the play-in tournament to lock up the seventh seed. But who knew if Embiid would be back in any condition to help them? No matter how carefully the team tried to prepare him for a playoff push, there was no accounting for an exploding appendix, or the complications after surgery. After an April 9 appendectomy, Embiid was, incredibly, back on the floor on April 26 for Game 4, where he had 26 points (on 9-of-21 shooting), 10 rebounds, and six assists in a 128-96 blowout loss. Embiid looked clunky and out of place in that game, negating the things the Sixers had been doing well with smaller, faster lineups in his absence, and his team was down 3-1 in the series. It would've been tempting to tell him to just rest up some more for next season.

In soccer, great offense does not necessarily imply terrible defense. It's a hard truth to retain in the face of a scoreline like 5-4, but what Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich did in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal was one of the purest distillations of attacking soccer ecstasy that I, or you, or anyone, has ever seen, and no amount of hemming and hawing about defensive lapses will ruin the memory of watching the two best teams in Europe throw everything they had at each other. It was simply glorious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxzqIzEVQNE It makes sense that a semifinal between teams that feature the two best attacks in the world, attacks so terrifying at full health that it's possible to argue that the one that just hit 100 combined goals this season—only the fifth time that has happened, and only the third trio to do it, ever—is the weaker one. That would be Bayern's trident of Harry Kane (how wild would it be to see him win the Champions League the same season Tottenham Hotspur gets relegated?), Michael Olise, and Luis Díaz, all of whom scored on Tuesday night in Paris. You could do much, much worse even at this stage of the Champions League than that trio, but it's also theoretically possible to do better, and I'm relatively sure, though not certain, that PSG's striker-less trinity of Désiré Doué, Ousmane Dembélé, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the one combination that is better. (For their part, the PSG trio did not all score, as Doué only had two assists, but both Dembélé and Kvaratskhelia notched two a piece, so it just about balances out.)

Ever since the people who run college football crushed the NCAA and replaced it with an unworkable new economy based entirely on fraud-coated banditry, the old mall cops in Indianapolis have not really known what to do with themselves. There's still plenty of money in big-time college sports, but a vacuum where their old authority used to be. The basketball tournament is that failed state's principal cash cow, and it still delivers, but the horse has otherwise departed the barn for life on a crowded interstate, which will ultimately be bad for the horse. And so, with nothing better to do while they watch the old structure slowly collapse under the weight of a shifting foundation and dry rot, the NCAA's powers-that-were mostly seem to be concerning themselves with putting a series of painted concrete hats on the cash cow that remains—you know, to make it "better." And so they are expanding the tournaments, both men's and women's, to 76 teams; the decision has not yet been voted on, but is reported to be a virtual lock. It's what nobody asked for, and the eight new at-large teams in the field will be worse than the teams that currently make it. It's tough to find much appeal in it, but also that doesn't matter. These days, the best way to get something you didn't know you didn't want is simply to wait awhile, until it shows up in batteries-not-included type somewhere on your property tax bill. The logistics of the jumbo tournament are simple enough. Instead of having four play-in games, they'll have 12: half in Dayton and half in Something-Something Flats, Utah. The NCAA will tell you that those aren't actual tournament games, because they too believe in the basic sanctity of the 64-team bracket that has nourished them for 40 years. And because these aren't tournament games per se, they will be treated by the general public with the same essential disdain currently afforded the play-in games, which is mostly to say that they won't include them in their office pools. If there is a greater example of nothing of worth being performed nowhere in particular, it is the annual NFL schedule release, but that's still a couple of weeks away.

Jesper Wallstedt is earning the first half of his surname. The 23-year-old Swede stopped another 20 shots, more than half of those in the third period against an increasingly frantic and frustrated Dallas offense in Tuesday's 4-2 win over the Stars that put the Wild up 3-2 in the series. With both of the goals coming at five-on-four, Wallstedt still has not allowed an even-strength goal since the opening minutes of Game 3—a stretch that has featured several overtimes and many deceptively good chances. How on-point has Wallstedt been? Tuesday's performance lowered his save percentage in this series, to a still-sparkling .926. The Wild have a reputation. It's one of competence, which is a fine thing to have, but it's also one of underachievement. They've made eight of the last 10 postseasons, and been eliminated in the first round in all eight. This is a function of often having a team that's just OK, and also of the luck of the bracket sending them up against some first-round buzzsaws. That latter trend was not broken this year, the Wild drawing one of the other two real contenders in the West. But these Wild already feel a little different than their predecessors. Part of that was the midseason trade for Quinn Hughes, a bold and expensive move that only real Cup hopefuls tend to pull off. An even bigger part was the emergence of Wallstedt, looking like he might be cut out for being this generation's rookie Cam Ward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvAONFVKgi8

ROCKFORD, Ill. — Every April, more than 250 athletes representing over 50 schools descend on a third-tier city to play the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) National Championships. This year, Nationals took place in Rockford's UW Health Sports Factory, a concrete hangar wedged between the Rock River and a lifeless train track. Inside, state-of-the-art cameras swiveled above professionally pipe-and-draped stadium courts. Wood floors gleamed beneath 40 tables, barriered into a crisp blue grid. Live draw monitors faced a table of 2025 championship photos and 3D-printed 2026 trophies. All of it was assembled by 75 gray-poloed officials, who deploy from a 500-square-foot command station to referee, umpire, and livestream. Over three days and a whopping seven events—men’s doubles, women’s doubles, coed teams, women’s teams, men’s singles, women’s singles, and a new hardbat format called PeakaPong—they would facilitate over 600 matches for one of North America’s biggest table tennis events. Big does not mean glamorous, or most important. This tournament is not the World Championships, and it’s definitely not the Olympics, but it occupies a special place in the world of high-level table tennis in the Americas. It’s a tournament where pros and national team players can face off against enthusiasts and relative beginners, where senior citizens work side by side with children, and where alumni return to coach, network, or just soak in the atmosphere. Nobody gets paid, and nobody plays for all that much, either. Players receive neither prize money, world ranking points, nor international tournament qualifications; most teams pay their own way. The tournament organizers are also volunteers. Everyone shows up for love of the game—and they play and administrate it ferociously.  As the first of three days began, hundreds of flat-soled shoes and tacky rubbers sent the sport’s characteristic pops, clicks, stomps, and squeaks into the rafters. They were soon joined by celebratory shouts from competitors and teammates, baritone PA implorement to clear trash from the expeditiously cluttered aisles, giddy laughs as uniformed packs strolled to submit their match sheets at the control desk or buy food at concessions. The atmosphere was intent but buoyant. Something special was being manufactured here.

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking chopsticks, dated nicknames, robots, and more. Your letters: Joe: