This felt like so many of Oklahoma City’s games during the regular season. In particular, the 68 wins. The Thunder’s elite pressure defense forced 19 turnovers and turned that into 31 points. Oklahoma City’s defense also took away the paint, giving up just 20 points on 43.5% shooting in the key. The Timberwolves tried to shoot over the top of that defense and it got them an early lead when they shot 8-of-19 to start the game. Eventually, the math caught up with them, and Minnesota shot 7-of-32 (21.9%) the rest of the way. Then came the run. Sparked by that defense, the Thunder took the lead with a 10-0 run using their small-ball lineup in the third quarter. That was stretched out to 17-2 with Kenrich Williams hitting some big shots off the bench. By the start of the fourth, Oklahoma City was up by 10, 76-66, and from there they started to pull away. Oklahoma City won the second half 70-40. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, after a rough 2-of-13 first half, found his groove, shot 8-of-14 in the second half, drew fouls, and finished with a game-high 31 points. “I didn’t particularly change my mindset, honestly. I just tried to continue to be aggressive, trust my work,” Gilgeous-Alexander said postgame. The result was a comfortable 114-88 win at home, which has Oklahoma City up 1-0 in the Western Conference Finals. Game 2 is Thursday night in the same building. Defense is why Oklahoma City is the title favorite, and it held Anthony Edwards to zero points in the fourth quarter, and the Timberwolves team to a 92.6 offensive rating for the game. It’s not just that the Thunder have elite defenders like Lu Dort and Alex Caruso, it’s their teamwork — they can have two or three players swarming the ball trying to force a turnover, yet still seem not to leave anyone else open. By the end, the swarming defense had the Timberwolves hesitant and second-guessing before making a pass. OKC’s defense led to offense. Also in the second half, the Thunder started to get inside the Timberwolves’ stout defense (something they didn’t do well in the first 24 minutes), which led to dunks and open 3-pointers. It was a rough night for Minnesota’s leader Edwards, who picked up a foolish early technical for tossing the ball at Gilgeous-Alexander. Later in the first quarter, Edwards went back to the locker room after turning his ankle on a landing. Fortunately, he returned to the floor midway through the second quarter and looked like nothing had happened. Julius Randle was Minnesota’s offense in the first half, scoring 20 points and shooting 5-of-6 from 3. Minnesota was an impressive 7-of-17 on above-the-break 3-pointers in the first half, but that dried up after the break. The Thunder’s defense focused more on Randle, who scored eight points in the second half, and nobody else stepped up. Edwards finished with 18 for Minnesota as only he and Randle scored in double figures. “I definitely got to shoot more. I took 13 f***** shots,” Edwards said. “But I’ll say probably just get off the ball a little more. Play without the ball. I think that would be the answer, because playing on the ball, they’re just going to double and sit in the gaps all day. So I’ve got to go watch some film and take it apart and figure it out.” Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren came on in the second half for the Thunder, finishing with 19 and 15 points, respectively. “It’s Game 1,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “They won at home. Congrats to them. They played really well. There’s another game in two days.”

Seahawks third-round pick Jalen Milroe signed his rookie contract on Tuesday, the team announced. He is the ninth of Seattle’s 11 draft picks to sign. Last week, the Seahawks signed first-round pick Grey Zabel, fifth-rounders Rylie Mills, Tory Horton and Robbie Ouzts, sixth-rounder Bryce Cabeldue, and seventh-rounders Damien Martinez, Mason Richman and Ricky White III. The only unsigned members of the 2025 draft class are second-round picks Nick Emmanwori and Elijah Arroyo. “It’s definitely a great feeling,” Milroe said after signing, via John Boyle of the team website. “To be able to have an organization that’s behind you — they selected me out of all the individuals that were placed in the draft — I was one of their selections in this year’s draft. So I’m tremendously happy that I have the support of the organization, but now it’s all about putting our best foot forward moving forward for the organization and for the guys in the locker room.” Milroe is participating in the team’s voluntary offseason workouts. “For me it’s all about relationships, building relationships with everyone in the locker room, offense and defense,” Milroe said. “What’s big when it comes to that offseason period before you get into the season is the relationship phase. Secondly, mastering us on offense. Who’s our guys offensively, in the receiving corps, tight ends, fullback, running back, quarterback room, just understanding everyone as a whole, because this is a new phase in my life on a new team, so that’s big. Xs and Ox are Xs and Os, but it’s all about the relationship factor right now.” Milroe, the 92nd overall pick, was a two-year starter at Alabama. He threw for 5,678 yards and 39 touchdowns with 17 interceptions the past two seasons, while also rushing for 1,257 yards and 32 touchdowns. He joins the quarterbacks room that includes Sam Darnold and Drew Lock.

Joe Burrow declined to appear on Season 1 of the Netflix series Quarterback. He is featured in Season 2, which debuts in July. So what changed? “They caught me on a good day,” Burrow joked Tuesday, via Jay Morrison of SI.com. It actually was Peyton Manning, the show’s executive producer, who changed Burrow’s mind about being a part of it along with Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins. “A big part was Peyton being involved in it,” Burrow said. “I have a lot of respect for him, obviously. What he did, does, as a person, when that guy reaches out to you and asks you to do something . . . most of the time I’m going to say ‘yes.’” Burrow said, because he trusts Manning, he sees the opportunity as a high-reward, no-risk scenario. “Only positive things could come out of it,” Burrow said. “He’s going to protect me, protect our team, protect our organization. I have trust in him for saying that and trust that he’s going to do that. I probably wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t involved, but I have a lot of trust and faith in him to not do anything that would hurt me or the team.” Hard Knocks cameras already were filming the Bengals in 2024 anyway, so it made it easier for Burrow to accept Manning’s invitation. But Quarterback will address the burglary of Burrow’s home in December, something not mentioned in Hard Knocks after the Bengals nixed it. “That was definitely a curveball I didn’t quite expect throughout the whole process, but the people involved in it, working on it day to day, were great and weren’t too intrusive,” Burrow said. “I worked with some good people with that.” Burrow had his final interview with the show last week and has watched screenings of the first few episodes. But he said he will leave it to viewers whether it’s any good or not.

As of late March, the league office had some work to do to get the owners to get behind the idea of loaning active players to Olympic flag football. The NFL got it done, and then some. PFT has confirmed that the vote on the resolution allowing active players to participate in the tournament passed with a vote of 32-0. Per a source with knowledge of the voting, the unanimous outcome happened on the first ballot, and not through the not-uncommon device of holding a second vote for P.R. purposes aimed at creating the impression that everyone was on the same page. Regardless, it seems that not everyone was on the same page. But with a maximum investment of one player per team (plus the team’s international player), the league was able not only to get to 24 votes but also to create a unified front. Hell, even Bengals owner Mike Brown — who often votes no when everyone else votes yes — was with the “ayes.” There’s still a lot of work to be done. And plenty of questions to be answered. But the league has decided that exporting active players to the Olympics advances the greater greed. I mean the greater good. (No, I don’t.)

Eagles receiver A.J. Brown is very good at tackle football. And that’s good enough for him. Meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Brown made it clear that he has no interest in pressing pause on his primary gig to play flag football in the Olympics. “I heard the Olympics is during camp,” Brown said, via Zach Berman of allphly.com. “So, yeah, that would be tough. . . . That would be fun just to compete. Me personally, no, because of camp. [The media] would be complaining, ‘A.J. Brown is not in camp.’ So would the fans. So I’m going to keep the main thing the main thing.” That’s going to be the biggest question for plenty of players. Are they willing to miss camp time (and possibly offseason workouts) to practice and play a very different type of football? Ultimately, only 12 NFL players will be participating in the 2028 Olympics, with up to six alternates. The league, and USA Football, will have no problem finding enough players to volunteer to do it. Even if plenty of them, like Brown, won’t be interested in distracting themselves from the more important task at hand.

During a recent interview with The Pivot Podcast, North Carolina coach Bill Belichick took a sudden turn to share some alternative facts regarding the disconnect between UNC and the Hard Knocks franchise. As Belichick told it, it wasn’t a fit because “Hard Knocks is training camp and we’re not training camp.” And we’re not buying that. Multiple reports indicated a deal was done on Friday, February 28. By Monday, March 3, NFL Films had cut and run. TheAthletic.com previously reported that Jordon Hudson, Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend/handler/publicist/idea mill/creative muse, “played an instrumental role in stopping the production, related to her request to be heavily involved in the project.” Earlier today, Katherine Rosman of the New York Times reported that Hudson “demanded she be granted content approval and partial ownership of the show.” Per the report, Hard Knocks producers later learned that Hudson separately was negotiating with EverWonder to make a similar series. It’s ultimately more evidence to prove that, whatever Hudson’s current role may be, she was very involved with North Carolina football — and she apparently had some sort of responsibility for blocking a reality series that would have increased the profile of the UNC program, boosting its recruiting efforts and enhancing its overall interests.

Dak Prescott’s right hamstring tore off the bone in a Week 9 game against the Falcons. He underwent surgery Nov. 13 and started his rehab soon after. Six months later, the Cowboys quarterback is close to being all the way back. The team’s medical staff has yet to fully clear Prescott, but he is participating in voluntary offseason workouts. “Pretty much can do it all. Feel good,” Prescott said Tuesday, via Schuyler Dixon of the Associated Press. “Yeah, I think I’m just not cleared for contact, which we’ve got a while for that anyways. Yeah, I’m out there in the team activities. Feel good. Just trying to stay that way. Yeah, feeling great.” Prescott downplayed concerns about the fact that he isn’t fully healed yet. “People say a lot of things about me, man,” Prescott said. “I just show up and control what I can control [to get] healthy. Trying to stay healthy. Feels good. Yeah, just trying to push the energy and make sure I continue to get better.” He also said he is ahead, not behind, in his offseason work. “Am I behind? No,” Prescott said. “Left the [2024] season early. I mean f—k, I was hurt. Excuse me. My offseason started way earlier. Sorry for the language, but my offseason started way earlier, so that’s really essentially why I’m ahead, on top of working with director of rehabilitation Britt [Brown], working with this training staff.” Prescott, 32, has missed a total of 26 games the past five seasons with ankle, calf, thumb and hamstring injuries. He also had a shoulder injury that caused him to miss practice time in training camp in 2021.

Brock Purdy officially signed his five-year contract extension through the 2030 season, the team announced Tuesday. “Brock is a tremendous leader and a fantastic representative for the 49ers organization, and we are ecstatic to get this deal done,” General Manager John Lynch said in a statement. “When we took him with the last pick in the draft, we knew he had potential to succeed in this league, but we had no idea how special of a player he would become. He has played at an exceptionally high level since taking over the starting job, and we look forward to seeing him continue to lead this team for years to come.” Purdy, 25, was the final pick of the 2022 draft but won the starting job late in his rookie season after injuries to Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo. He has not let go of the position, going 23-13 as the starter in three seasons with a 4-2 postseason record. Purdy ha completed 67.5 percent of his passes for 9,518 yards with 64 touchdowns, 27 interceptions and a passer rating of 104.9.

At a time when some of the most powerful people in the country have made “DEI” into a four-letter word, the NFL claims it’s standing firm in its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Recent developments make it fair to ask whether the NFL is truly committed, or whether the NFL is simply trying to thread a needle that is getting smaller all the time. The latest news came from the league’s cancellation of the 2025 version of the accelerator program, which puts minority candidates in front of owners during the May meetings. The NFL issued a statement last week that attempted to create a “nothing to see here” vibe, explaining that the program was stopped for a year in an effort to make it better next year. Another view would be that doing it is still better than not doing it, and that it could have been held in its current form in 2025 as usual and changes could still be made for 2026. Jarrett Bell of USA Today has taken a closer look at the league’s mixed signals. On a subject where the league tries to say all the right things, the actions aren’t completely meshing with the words. “I realize that people are going to look at [the cancellation of the 2025 accelerator program] and say, ‘These people are backing off,’” Steelers owner Art Rooney II told Bell. “That’s not going to happen. There’s nothing I can really do about that perception, except to say that we’re still not satisfied with where we are, and we recognize that we still have work to do.” Both the perception and the reality when it comes to the league’s hiring practices for key positions like coach and General Manager have been equally bad over the years. Not long before former Dolphins coach Brian Flores put his career on the line by filing a landmark racial discrimination case against the NFL and multiple teams, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent provided a damning admission that was highlighted in Flores’s civil complaint. “There is a double standard, and we’ve seen that,” Vincent said. “And you talk about the appetite for what’s acceptable. Let’s just go back to . . . Coach [Tony] Dungy was let go in Tampa Bay after a winning season. . . Coach [Steve] Wilks, just a few years prior, was let go after one year . . . Coach [Jim] Caldwell was fired after a winning season in Detroit . . . It is part of the larger challenges that we have. But when you just look over time, it’s over-indexing for men of color. These men have been fired after a winning season. How do you explain that? There is a double standard. I don’t think that that is something that we should shy away from. But that is all part of some of the things that we need to fix in the system. We want to hold everyone to why does one, let’s say, get the benefit of the doubt to be able to build or take bumps and bruises in this process of getting a franchise turned around when others are not afforded that latitude? . . . [W]e’ve seen that in history at the [professional] level.” Since Flores filed his lawsuit in 2022, the NFL has been trying to change its ways. The problem, as of 2025, is that a full-throated commitment to DEI can result in an executive order at worst — and a rambling, nonsensical, all-caps social media assault at best. Speaking of rambling and nonsensical, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones provided some quotes to Bell regarding the impact of the political assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I don’t want to . . . I think it just makes us all aware,” Jones told Bell. “The emphasis the president puts on it just makes us all aware and thinking about it.” What’s there to think about? Whether to remain committed to diversity? Or whether to find a way to tiptoe through a field full of mines planted by those who would like to 86 DEI? “I know you’re saying, ‘Was this a reaction to that? And the timing of it?’” Jones told Bell regarding the cancellation of the accelerator program for 2025. “I don’t believe and have seen nothing from talking to anybody, that this is a reaction to that. I think you’d be naïve if you didn’t think the Supreme Court decisions have impacted decisions all over the country. The issue of technically, how and what you’re doing, I think that’s a lot more influenced than anything our president is talking about. . . . You see what I’m saying? The overall direction the Supreme Court took, that whole area would be a bigger impact.” Jones is referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling from 2023 limiting race-conscious admissions practices for colleges and universities. Which is one of the unsurprising outcomes of a Supreme Court that has been stacked with the kind of conservative, business-friendly justices to whom someone like Jones would gift a Super Bowl ring and then act like it’s not part of a broader effort to ensure that the Supreme Court’s body of work will be favorable to the interests of America’s oligarchs. The challenge for the NFL is to create a P.R. strategy that pushes the idea that they’re trying to increase and promote diversity, while also discreetly waging legal battles aimed at minimizing liability. It’s one of the reasons why the league always tries to pull any civil action against it from the true independence of the court system and into the secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration, where the Commissioner is the one who hands out (and sometimes wears) the black robe. Here’s the NFL’s apparent DEI playbook: Say one thing, do another. And then, when the thing you do gets noticed and criticized, say whatever you have to say to explain it all away. That approach works, until it doesn’t. With the top of the executive branch currently going scorched earth on DEI, the tentpoles of the NFL’s P.R. effort are being quietly knocked down. Beyond the decision to abandon the accelerator in 2025 under the guise of making it better for 2026, the NFL didn’t conduct during the 2025 annual meeting (as Bell notes) a media briefing from the diversity committee, which Rooney chairs. The reason for that seems obvious. Anything the NFL would have said during the briefing to pat itself on the back when it comes to DEI efforts could (and quite possibly would) have been used against it, if/when the Commander-in-Tweet had happened to notice it while scrolling through his phone from the golden throne with a hole in the middle of the seat.

The 49ers and linebacker Fred Warner have made it across the goal line. According to multiple reports, Warner and San Francisco have agreed to a three-year extension, keeping the linebacker under contract through 2029. It was reported on Sunday that the two sides were close to a deal. The initial Monday afternoon reports indicate Warner will make $63 million on his new contract with $56 million guaranteed. Warner, 28, was seeking a new deal despite having two years remaining on his previous contract. But with a $29.2 million cap hit in 2025, it behooved both sides to get an extension done. A third-round pick in 2018, Warner has become one of the league’s best at his position. He’s been an AP first-team All-Pro for three consecutive seasons and four times overall. He also has not missed a game since 2021, playing 94 percent of San Francisco’s defensive snaps in 2024. In 115 career games, Warner has recorded 36 tackles for loss, 30 QB hits, 10.0 sacks, 15 forced fumbles, and 10 interceptions. The 49ers have now reached extensions with Warner, quarterback Brock Purdy, and tight end George Kittle over the last few weeks.