If the Super Bowl marks the end of the NFL season, WrestleMania is when WWE’s year is over.

There is no offseason in WWE, and when waves of departures hit the company, it hits harder than a Gunther knife-edge chop.

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Uncle Howdy, Erick Rowan, Dexter Lumis, Joe Gacy, and Nikki Cross appear during SmackDown at First Horizon Center in Savannah, Ga., on May 23, 2025. (Rich Freeda/WWE)

Fightful and BodySlam both reported several superstars who left WWE on Friday ahead of “Friday Night SmackDown.” Some wrestlers confirmed their departures on social media.

Those who left included: Alba Fyre, Aleister Black, Alex Shelley, Andre Chase, Apollo Crews, Bo Dallas, Chris Island, Chris Sabin, Dante Chen, Dexter Lumis, Erick Rowan, Joe Gacy, Kairi Sane, Luca Crusifino, Malik Blade, Nikki Cross, Santos Escobar, Sirena Linton, Trill London, Tyra Mae Steele, Tyriek Igwe, Tyson Dupont, Zelina Vegas and Zoey Stark.

The WWE roster is loaded as it is with several NXT stars getting called up this week.

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Sol Ruca made her presence felt on Raw on Monday when she challenged women’s champion Liv Morgan. The Fatal Influence faction of Jacy Jayne, Lainey Reid and Fallon Henley took aim at the women’s tag team division on SmackDown on Friday. Ricky Saints and Blake Monroe also had vignettes for their upcoming appearances.

Meanwhile, former NXT champion Oba Femi has been on main WWE programming for the last few weeks and beat Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 42.

Kairi Sane enters the ring during Monday Night RAW at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, Calif., on April 13, 2026. (Rich Freeda/WWE)

Aleister Black and Zelina Vega make their way to the ring during SmackDown at Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 3, 2026. (Craig Melvin/WWE)

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It’s not the end of the road for any of the recent departures. Several former WWE stars have made waves elsewhere. Some have even returned over the course of time.

The Los Angeles Lakers pulled off one of the most unlikely comebacks you’ll ever see on Friday to take a 3-0 lead over the Houston Rockets, who are falling apart (literally in this game) before our eyes. No team has ever come back from 3-0 deficit to win an NBA playoff series. 

Elsewhere, the Celtics and Spurs both took back home-court advantage in their series. San Antonio is up 2-1 on the Blazers after a 120-108 win, and the Celtics outlasted the 76ers 108-100 to go up 2-1 as well. 

Let’s take a look at the big winners and losers from Friday night’s action. 

Winner: Celtics’ 3-point math

The Boston Celtics are the casino. They know they’re going to lose some hands along the way (as they did in Game 2 when they made just 26% of their 50 3-point attempts), but in the end, they trust that the 3-point math will work out in their favor. 

Most of the time, they’re right. That was indeed the case again in Game 3 as they made 20 3-pointers (at a 43% clip) to Philadelphia’s 12 (at 34%). That’s a 24-point disparity in what wound up being an eight-point win that gave them a 2-1 series edge. You do the math. 

This is why I wasn’t concerned with Philadelphia’s Game 2 victory. In that game, the Sixers, a bottom-10 3-point shooting team during the regular season, made 19 3s to Boston’s 13. That’s just not going to happen multiple times, let alone four times to win a series. That’s the drunk guy turning over a blackjack once in a while. If he stays at the table long enough, he’s going broke. 

Barely two minutes into the second half on Friday, the Celtics had already made more 3s (14) than they made in all of Game 2. It has always begged the question: If the math always works out, then why doesn’t everyone launch a million 3s? Because they don’t have Boston’s personnel. 

There’s a fine line between a good and bad 3-point attempt these days, and a lot of teams can’t get near 50 attempts in a game without taking too many bad ones for the math to work. They don’t have enough players who can create the good 3s in the first place, or enough players who can make them. In Boston, everyone can create, and everyone can shoot. On Friday, 10 Celtics made at least one 3-pointer. Philly had four players connect from distance.

Still, the 76ers had a real shot to win this game. They were down two with a little over a minute remaining and had Boston in a straightjacket with the shot clock winding down, only for Payton Pritchard to hit them with an escape-dribble triple to stretch the lead to five.

About 40 seconds later, the Sixers had it back down to three only for Jayson Tatum to deliver this dagger. 

This is what the Celtics do. They just have too many guys who can shoot. And over time, the three or four guys on the other side just can’t keep up. — Brad Botkin

Loser: 76ers’ late-game rebounding

One of the ways the Celtics generate so many 3-pointers is by grabbing a ton of offensive rebounds, which often lead to either immediate kick-out 3s as shooters are lost in the shuffle, or at least another possession for a team like Boston to get up yet another shot. It killed the Sixers on Friday. 

That Tatum 3 above? That never would’ve happened had the Sixers been able to rebound the initial miss by Nikola Vučević. Instead, Derrick White flew in for the offensive board, and a few seconds later, a three-point Celtics lead turned into six. 

Earlier in the fourth quarter, Vučević missed from the other corner. But again, the Sixers were unable to corral the board, and again it led to a Celtics second-chance bucket. 

Jaylen Brown‘s lone 3-pointer of the game? Off an offensive rebound …

Derrick White’s lone 3-pointer of the game? Off an offensive rebound …

All told, the Sixers allowed Boston to grab 15 offensive rebounds, which led to 22 second-chance points (to be fair, the Sixers had 17 second-chance points of their own, but that’s another five-point deficit on top of the 24-point 3-point disparity). 

It’s not easy to keep Boston off the glass. They’re definitely going to get their share, in part because the 3s they take lead to a lot of long caroms that become more loose balls than rebounds. But the two at the end were particular killers. Both times, the Sixers had a chance to get the ball back late in a close game and tie or take the lead, and both times they failed to get the rebound, allowing Boston to convert a second-chance bucket. 

Playoff games often come down to a few possessions. Giving Boston two extra ones at this juncture was too much for Philly to overcome. — Brad Botkin

Winner: The James family

Even by his own lofty standards, Game 3 against Houston was a memorable playoff performance by LeBron James. A game-tying steal and 3-pointer to send the game to overtime. A historic 29-point, 13-rebound, six-assist performance. A 3-0 lead in a series that many assumed the Lakers would lose handily. James doesn’t exactly need to burnish his legacy any further. He’s already in the eyes of most either the best or second-best player in the history of the sport. 

But as his retirement nears, moments and series like this are going to be an effective bookend. He’s not the same basketball superhero he once was. He can’t singlehandedly lift teams to the Finals anymore. But even now, in his 40s and with a diminished roster, he’s still the absolute definition of a winning player, someone who can lift a team further than anyone imagined possible through his immortal basketball genius. He had nothing left in the tank by the end of Game 3, but he got the Lakers across the finish line.

And if you asked him what his most memorable moment from the game was? He’d probably tell you it was the alley-oop that he threw to his son Bronny. Yes, Bronny James, the player critics accused of being a nepo hire, is now playing real, impactful postseason minutes. He scored his first five playoff points in Game 3, and he did well enough in his first-half stint that JJ Redick trusted him to play a few minutes in the fourth quarter. The Lakers won his minutes by four points.

Is he ever going to be the player his dad is? No, but that’s an unfair standard for basically anyone. If the goal here is to prove that he can be a real NBA player and sustain a career even after his father retires, well, that’s growing more and more achievable by the day. James has always been a capable defensive guard, but he’s starting to look more confident as a shooter after dealing with several early offensive issues. He still has work to do, but however small it is, he’s surviving on the floor of a playoff series, and that’s something he can build on. — Sam Quinn

Loser: Reed Sheppard

Reed Sheppard has spent this entire season struggling to convince Ime Udoka to put him on the floor. As one of the few genuine shooters on this roster, he’s one of the only players capable of making the Rockets look offensively functional. Udoka still needed convincing. Even after the Rockets closed the season with a 17-4 record with Sheppard as the starter, Udoka pulled him after only 11 minutes in Game 2. The Rockets, unsurprisingly, were held below 100 points in an upset loss.

Udoka had no choice in Game 3. With Kevin Durant out, He needed Sheppard’s offense, and to Sheppard’s credit, his presence did provide a modicum of space in an otherwise cramped paint. Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson had their best games of the series, combining for 59 efficient points, probably not coincidentally in the same game they were able to share the floor with a high-level shooter.

But Sheppard himself yet again struggled. He shot 6 of 21 from the floor and 4 of 13 from deep while committing five turnovers, including the biggest of the game to set James up for his game-tying 3. 

Udoka’s hesitance to give Sheppard consistent playing time is motivated by his defensive limitations. Sheppard is small. He gets picked on. And the Lakers did quite a bit of that yet again in Game 3. Considering how bleak things now look, Udoka probably can’t limit Sheppard to 11 minutes again in Game 4 even if Durant is back. But he hardly earned his coach’s trust, either. — Sam Quinn

Winner: Spurs’ non-Wemby youth

If any other team had used its last two lottery picks to take Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper they would be doing organizational cartwheels. That the Spurs have Victor Wembanyama and these two guys is beyond an embarrassment of riches. 

With Wembanyama sidelined for Game 3 with a concussion, Castle and Harper combined for 60 points. SIXTY. They shot a collective 63% and made seven of their nine 3s to join Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook as the only teammates age 21 or younger to each score 25 points in the same playoff game. 

Castle is a little more established. He’s a starter. He won Rookie of the Year last season. He feels like a 10-year veteran. A no-frills rock on both sides of the ball. He is cut from Jimmy Butler cloth in all the right ways. Same kind of sturdy athlete. Loves to play off two feet. Wins angles and with his body. Competes like crazy. Great footwork. Never sped up. You’re forgiven if you had no idea he’s just 21 years old as you were watching him put 33 on the Blazers on Friday. 

Harper is a little different. Those of us who watch NBA basketball every night have known pretty much since Day 1 that he’s awesome, but to the casual fan tuning in for the playoffs, you must’ve been shocked when Harper started going crazy in the third quarter. Like, who the hell is this guy? He scored 22 of his 27 points in the second half. The dude was a teenager two months ago, and he was in total control of an NBA playoff game in the most poised fashion imaginable. 

Let’s take another look at that baseline hammer. My god. 

Harper is going to be so good so quickly. It’s already happening, but the leap is going to come fast. Throw in Carter Bryant, San Antonio’s second lottery pick from last summer (No. 14 overall), and now it’s just silly how bright San Antonio’s future looks. Bryant was a plus-17 in 23 minutes on Friday. He defended all over the floor and tallied six rebounds and four assists. He only made one shot, but man was it a beauty. 

That these three guys and Wembanyama are all under 22 years old is hilarious. Good luck, every other team in the NBA over the next decade. You’re going to need it.  — Brad Botkin

The New York Giants stayed aggressive during Day 2 of the NFL Draft. After starting the night with only one scheduled pick, the Giants executed a bold trade to secure Notre Dame wide receiver Malachi Fields.  

​Head coach John Harbaugh and general manager Joe Schoen traded back into the third round to snag Fields at No. 74 overall. To move up, the Giants sent their fourth-round pick (No. 105), fifth-round pick (No. 145), and a 2027 fourth-rounder to the Cleveland Browns.  

​Fields brings massive frame and vertical ability to the offense. The 6-foot-4, 218-pound receiver averaged 17.5 yards per catch last season. He provides a large target for quarterback Jaxson Dart and fills the void left by free agent departures like Wan’Dale Robinson.

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A New York Giants helmet is seen during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 1, 2023. (Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire)

​Earlier in the evening, the Giants addressed the defense with the 37th overall pick. They selected Tennessee cornerback Colton Hood.  

​Hood is a physical, high-motor defensive back who recorded 20 solo tackles and 13 pass breakups in 2024. Analysts praise his ability to disrupt routes and challenge receivers at the catch point. He joins a revamped secondary featuring Deonte Banks and Paulson Adebo.

‘SPECIAL’ PLAYER JEREMIYAH LOVE GOES TO CARDINALS

The Giants have become one of the most discussed teams of this year’s draft, after surprising many fans with the selections of linebacker Arvell Reese at No. 5 and offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa at No. 10.

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The selections prompted mixed reactions by fans and pundits, as some argued the team should have taken star safety Caleb Downs with one of their top 10 picks, as Downs was later taken by the rival Dallas Cowboys at No. 11. 

The Giants are entering year one of the Harbaugh era, looking to get back to credibility after a decade plus of ineptitude.

Sergeant Major holds a Listed triumph on record, but assistant trainer to Ciaron Maher, Johann Gerard-Dubord, maintains the best is still ahead for the four-year-old.

Gerard-Dubord accepts that the gelding has not fully delivered since his South Pacific Classic (1400m) conquest in last autumn’s Sydney series, yet he is firmly in the horse’s corner.

“If he finally puts it all together, he’s got a lot of ability. We haven’t seen the best of him yet,” Gerard-Dubord said.

Complementing his Sydney autumn carnival win, the horse earned two stakes placings during his three-year-old campaign before faltering in four spring appearances.

An extended break followed his midfield finish at Eagle Farm come November, and Gerard-Dubord views that Queensland stint as ultimately positive despite the racing disappointments.

“In his work, he looks like he could be anything, but he has been a bit disappointing at the races, even though he is a Listed winner,” he said.

“Last prep, we felt he wasn’t going as well as he could and he’s a gelding, so he is always going to keep improving. We stopped, reset and came back at this time of year.

“The trip to Queensland seems to have done the job, like it did with Gringotts and Jimmysstar.

“He has changed physically and mentally. He has done really well.”

Gerard-Dubord sees echoes of Gringotts in Sergeant Major, with the latter peaking later and winning consecutive The Big Dance (1600m) features.

He envisions the gelding potentially stepping up to that level in due course.

“He has always shown a lot of ability, and I have always compared him to Gringotts,” Gerard-Dubord said.

“He could be a Big Dance horse at some stage. We’ll play it by ear. But he is back at a good time, and there are good races in Queensland at the back-end of the carnival if he’s going well enough.”

Betting interest has sparked early for Sergeant Major, who has firmed from $16 to $11 and gets in light at 57kg courtesy of apprentice Mollie Fitzgerald’s 3kg claim.

Head to the racing betting markets for competitive prices on his Randwick comeback in 2026.

Nottingham Forest made it back-to-back Netball Super League wins with a 68-63 victory over an NIC Leeds Rhinos side who fell to an eighth straight defeat.

Forest, in fourth, earned a fifth victory of the campaign to move within one point of AO Manchester Thunder in third.

“Speed is our best friend,” said Forest head coach Chelsea Pitman after the win.

“We play the game really quick with rapid transitions. That’s when we are at our best and Rhinos were really good at disrupting that.

“Kudos to them. They really took it to us. But I am really proud of us for grinding out the result.”

South Africa shooter Rolene Streutker led the scoring for Forest with 34 goals with Anya Williams adding nine while Paige Reed finished with 31 for Rhinos.

The Los Angeles Lakers appeared dead in the water on April 5. They’d just lost to a tanking Dallas Mavericks team despite LeBron James coming one rebound shy of a 30-point triple-double. With Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves out with injuries that, at the time, appeared likely to keep them out longer than the Lakers were expected to last in the postseason, the onus fell entirely on the 41-year-old James to keep the team afloat. 

If he couldn’t do it against the Mavericks, well, the odds that he’d be able to do it against a playoff opponent didn’t look promising. When asked what the Lakers would need out of him in order to survive, James responded, simply, “everything.” He delivered that and then some in Friday night’s miraculous 112-108 overtime victory over the Houston Rockets that put the Lakers up 3-0 in the first-round series.

If we rewind nearly three weeks ago to when he said that, we had a reasonable idea of what “everything” might entail. James outlined it himself. “Nothing changes for me,” James added after that initial, single-word response. “Just back to the old ways.” 

We’ve seen him singlehandedly lift lesser rosters through postseasons before. He once scored 29 of his team’s last 30 points in an Eastern Conference Finals game. He played all 48 minutes and scored or assisted on two-thirds of his team’s points in another conference finals clincher. We’re talking about someone who once averaged a 33-point triple-double in the Finals. 

James has performed plenty of basketball miracles. The Lakers seemingly needed four more to make it through the first round against the Rockets. Four more games in which James contributed in every imaginable way. Four more games in which less was needed out of his supporting cast because his team had the one player in the history of basketball who really could do everything.

The first two games of the Lakers vs. Rockets series were a bit more subdued. James was excellent, but he was reserved. He monitored his energy output cautiously, hitting the gas only when necessary. Luke Kennard‘s shot was hotter than the surface of the sun. Marcus Smart made every winning play. James was the conductor, but the first two victories belonged to the entire orchestra. Everyone played their part in Game 3. Smart was spectacular again, and so was Rui Hachimura. Even Bronny James had the most significant performance of his NBA career as Lakers coach JJ Redick trusted him enough to play fourth-quarter minutes.

But in a long lineage of historic playoff performances, this one is going to stand out for the elder James. Even if everyone chipped in, this was his “everything” game, even if it didn’t quite come in the manner we imagined. The stat line would look remarkable attached to any other name: 29 points, 13 rebounds, six assists and three steals. It’s probably only above average by LeBron’s lofty standards. This wasn’t the “everything” game because James did everything. It was the “everything” game because he gave everything.

We’re used to James feeling superhuman, and there were indeed moments that felt superhuman, like the alley-oop dunk from Smart and the game-tying steal and 3-pointer. But there were vulnerabilities too, and they didn’t just show up on the stat sheet as his eight turnovers did. 

Two of those turnovers came in the final minute. On the first, James was so visibly exhausted that Alperen Sengun managed to zoom right past him as the trailer, catch a pass from Reed Sheppard on the run and extend the Houston lead to four with a layup with 49.6 seconds to play.

On the second, James made an earnest attempt at a play we’ve seen him make so many times — a chase-down transition block on Sengun. He couldn’t close the gap. He couldn’t get enough air on his jump to meaningfully contest a center 18 years his junior.

That’s what will ultimately make this game feel so memorable. James felt mortal. He felt every one of his 41 years as he competed not just with the Rockets, but with Father Time. He didn’t get the sports movie ending. He missed his buzzer-beating attempt to win the game in regulation. It was the sort of gritty rock fight the Rockets specialize in. James felt every minute of it and came through anyway.

That comes across in the box score. The Lakers don’t win this game without every point James scored or created. But the defining moment came with around a minute and a half left on the clock in overtime. Sheppard attempted a transition layup and missed. James flew in from the wing to attempt a rebound. He grabbed it, but as he was falling out of bounds, he had to fling the ball back into play before he careened into a cameraman. He immediately picked himself up, got back into the play, stripped Sengun, and dove back onto the ground to try to secure possession. Eventually, a jump-ball was called.

James lined up for the jump-ball against Jabari Smith Jr., a player whose father lined up against him in his NBA debut all the way back in 2003. It was a fitting moment in a game in which James threw an alley-oop to his own son, and a gassed James managed to win possession despite barely jumping. All he seemingly had left was a brief hop.

The Lakers weren’t surprised. “That motherf*****’s been in this 23 years, right?” Smart joked after the game. “We know he’s gonna come up with that ball.”

You’ll see all of the records that inevitably come with a game like this at his age. He became the oldest player in NBA history to lead his team in scoring in a playoff game, breaking the record he set three days earlier. The game-tying 3-pointer will live in his playoff highlight reel forever, and the steal that led to it is an eternal testament to his situational awareness against a less seasoned opponent. The numbers, the big moments, they speak for themselves, and they fall into a nearly never-ending pile. We weren’t exactly short on legendary LeBron James playoff games.

But as we draw closer to the end of the greatest overall career in the history of the sport, there’s something special about the sort of game that could only come at this specific point. It was less an incredible James playoff game than it was an incredible old James playoff game, a somewhat unique position in his archives. We’re so used to James feeling inevitable that seeing him win when he isn’t is a different sort of satisfying, and perhaps a more relatable one for those of us not blessed with the one-of-a-kind physical gifts James has enjoyed for most of his career. 

This was a basketball genius summoning every last ounce of basketball left in his body to take down a younger, fresher opponent, and after more than two decades of superheroics, it’s just a different flavor of excellence. 

He promised the Lakers everything, and he delivered.