Los Angeles Lakers forward Darius Bazley appeared to suffer a serious leg injury Thursday night during the second quarter of an NBA Summer League game against the Boston Celtics.

Bazley went down after his leg appeared to give out on him as he was driving toward the basket with two defenders on him.

He was on the ground for a few minutes while he was being evaluated. He was eventually put in a wheelchair and was taken to the locker room. The severity of the injury has not been disclosed.

Who is Darius Bazley?

Bazley entered Summer League with five NBA seasons under his belt, for four different teams. He last played in the NBA during the 2023-24 season.

He was drafted by the Utah Jazz with the 23rd overall pick in the first round of the 2019 NBA Draft, before he was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder. He did not play college basketball, opting to play in the NBA’s G League Ignite program.

Bazley has averaged 8.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game during his NBA career. He has started 118 of the 237 games he’s played in.

One of the more prominent and previously outstanding matters of league-wide NFL business ahead of training camps, which open en masse next week, was checked off the list Thursday afternoon when Pittsburgh Steelers superstar pass rusher T.J. Watt agreed to a long-awaited contract extension, per reports, with the only professional team he’s ever known.

And while this deal was largely expected to materialize at some point this summer and may not necessarily create a seismic impact throughout the football world, it could have some broader implications than you might think.

So we thought about it and now present you with the winners and losers from Watt’s big bag of loot:

WINNERS

T.J. Watt

But of course. His three-year, $123 million extension makes him the top-paid non-quarterback in league history, in terms of average annual value, for the second time in his career. It also means Watt, 30, will almost certainly finish out his football days with the Steelers, who drafted the eventual four-time All-Pro and 2021 Defensive Player of the Year 30th overall in 2017. Pittsburgh’s all-time leader with 108 career sacks, Watt is currently sixth among active players but could vault all the way up to second with one of his typically dominant seasons in 2025. He’s certainly got 123 million reasons worth of incentives to do so.

Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan

The conclusion of negotiations with Watt would seem to mark the end of a wildly successful offseason, one when the Steelers’ longtime head coach and recently extended general manager, respectively, practiced patience while fans and some league observers practiced panic. But now Watt has returned to the fold, which he always seemed destined to do, and will soon meet new teammates like QB Aaron Rodgers, who also took his sweet time signing on, WR DK Metcalf, DB Jalen Ramsey and TE Jonnu Smith along with the incoming rookie class. Expectations are justifiably growing for a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season.

Jalen Ramsey

The perennial Pro Bowler was acquired (along with Smith) at the end of June in a summertime blockbuster that reshapes the back end of Pittsburgh’s defense with S Minkah Fitzpatrick headed back to the Miami Dolphins. It’s currently unclear as to how Ramsey might divide his time between covering receivers out wide, manning the slot or even putting in some work at safety with Fitzpatrick out of the picture. What is certain is that Ramsey’s best years were spent with the Los Angeles Rams, with whom he won a Super Bowl ring four years ago and was consistently at the top of his game playing behind demonic Aaron Donald, who caused so much havoc for opposing quarterbacks. Watt might not quite be Donald, but his presence is almost certain to benefit Ramsey, whether it means less time required in coverage, more opportunities to go ball hawking or even the ability to freelance more once he’s comfortable in his new system and surroundings.

Micah Parsons

With Watt’s contract done, it’s almost certainly just a matter of time before the Dallas Cowboys’ top defender − and one of the NFL’s very best − becomes the next top-paid non-quarterback of all time, whether it’s for $41.1 million a year, $44 million or whatever. But Parsons’ money is coming, and his boss, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is probably only too happy to generate that headline in due course now that he basically knows where the target is.

(Also, Detroit Lions DE Aidan Hutchinson stands to benefit − at some point − from Watt’s newly realized riches, though he might be waiting longer given his rookie deal doesn’t expire until after the 2026 season.)

LOSERS

T.J. Watt

Bro, why are you signing this paper now? It’s supposed to be in the high 80s, humid and wet when you report to training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, six days from now – where you’ll be moving into dorm rooms at Saint Vincent College. And if that’s not a darkness retreat … (Also, if the answer is evading compulsory fines for missing camp, I’d like to introduce you to Michael Strahan. But I digress.) Watt must really be missing his buddies after skipping the Steelers’ offseason training program given he could have let this drag out another couple weeks while holding in or even simply remaining at the crib or beach or wherever. In addition, no chance brothers J.J. and Derek are ever picking up another dinner check.

Cincinnati Bengals

They have yet to placate their own holdout pass rusher, All-Pro DE Trey Hendrickson waiting for his financial situation to be resolved. Hendrickson, 30, who has 35 sacks over the past two seasons – 4½ more than Watt over the same period – hasn’t necessarily been looking to reset the market. But given he’s due to make $16 million in the final year of his deal, it’s apparent to him and anyone else outside of Cincinnati that he’s (over)due for a raise and isn’t merely 39% the player Watt is (when you crunch the salary figures anyway). And given how everything is seemingly falling into place in Pittsburgh – and already was basically set in Baltimore – the Bengals would be doing little more than undercutting their playoff hopes yet again by letting business matters impede their football operation. Pay the man.

Myles Garrett

Feels like it was just five minutes ago that he became the first non-quarterback to break the $40 million per year contractual barrier. Then he was overtaken by Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase and now Watt, who both play for (better) division rivals of Garrett’s Cleveland Browns. And, after explicitly stating he was the league’s best defensive player last season after the Browns beat the Steelers in Cleveland – a remark clearly directed at Watt – doesn’t it have to irk Garrett just a little bit that he’s now the second-best paid defender … and for a team that’s probably going to stink?

New York Jets

The Steelers’ Week 1 opponents will now be catching the full T.J. Watt Experience as they unveil an offense led by new QB1 (and former Steeler) Justin Fields. And just when the NYJ might have started to hope they’d be catching a guy trying to knock off rust and possibly playing on an opening day pitch count given how negotiations can sometimes drag late into the process with Pittsburgh players …

Aaron Rodgers?

The Steelers are Watt’s team, and he’s been the face of this franchise for a minute … though maybe you could argue it’s actually Tomlin. Regardless, Rodgers will definitely be the story as long as he’s amongst the yinzers, and the spotlight is about to be completely re-trained onto the four-time league MVP. No more time spent fretting about Watt’s bank account or whereabouts or questions posed to Rodgers about what No. 90 means to the team and how important it is to reward him. Nope, nope, nope. This is now all about No. 8 and what he can do to end Pittsburgh’s playoff failures and stabilize a position – temporarily anyway – that has effectively undermined this team since even before Ben Roethlisberger retired in 2022. Have fun with that, Mr. Rodgers!

NEW YORK — On a roster which includes the iconic Aaron Judge, and fellow All-Stars Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Max Fried, perhaps the most pivotal player in the New York Yankees’ pursuit of a 28th World Series championship just may be Devin Williams.

After some rough patches, Williams, a two-time All-Star and 2020 NL Rookie of the Year, has been on a roll – reclaiming the closer spot, and in the process displaying the moxie which enticed the Bombers to acquire him from the Brewers in December.

Williams started his Yankees career off poorly with a 9.00 ERA through his first 12 outings (10 earned runs in 10 innings), nothing like the 1.83 ERA he posted across his first 241 career games.

He lost the Yankees’ ninth-inning job temporarily, but has looked like himself in recent weeks, racking up 33 strikeouts to just four walks with a 1.90 ERA in his last 25 games, notching nine saves and five holds.

Closing inherently forces you to face excruciating losses head on. But, contrary to the popular belief that the closer must possess a short memory, Williams digests each of his outings.

“I remember everything – good or bad,” Williams told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s being able to compartmentalize and move on from that more so than necessarily having a short memory.”

It was a big adjustment moving from Milwaukee to starring on the brightest stage in New York.

“I think the outside noise can obviously be louder here,” said Williams. “That’s just New York in general. There (are) more opinions here, and if you feed into that, it can lock you up mentally. I think that’s what the good ones do – they just block out everything.”

And while there have been vocal detractors, fans and media alike, Williams seems mostly happy with the way he has been received, “It’s been good and bad, (but) for the most part it’s been good,” said Williams. “In person, people are very encouraging.”

Williams said that encouragement has positively impacted his play.

“I always have a little bit of butterflies in every appearance until I get to the mound and throw my first warmup pitch, and then I’m good,” said Williams.

“They (the fans) bring a lot of energy and I feed off of that. I feel like internally I’m very amped up, but on the outside, it looks very calm, almost nonchalant, I guess. But yeah, definitely, I feed off the energy they have here.”

Of late, the performances from the man dubbed “The Airbender” because of his signature changeup, have provided the Yankees faithful with a myriad of reasons to supply additional energy.

“I’m extremely confident,” said Williams. “I think it took a little bit of an adjustment period here – wanting to show what I can do, how I can help. I think I just tried to do a little too much and kind of lost who I was in the process. I’ve gotten back to that over the last two and a half months.”

Yankees broadcaster Paul O’Neill noticed the change in Williams, and is bullish on the future of the 30-year-old St. Louis native.

“He’s in a much better spot now than he was earlier in the year,” said O’Neill, who began his career in Cincinnati, before winning four World Series with the Yankees. “There’s always a transition coming to New York, but believe me, I think coming down the stretch here, he’s going to be as good as ever.”

Williams’ dominance is linked to his primary pitches – the masterful changeup, which features an extremely high spin rate, and an effective fastball.

His impressive arsenal of pitches, which also includes a cutter and sinker, has allowed Williams to post strikeout rates of around 40% during the past three full seasons.

“I didn’t have very good numbers (against) him,” said Yankees teammate Paul Goldschmidt, who is 1-for-10 with six strikeouts against Williams. “That changeup obviously is his calling card, but he throws 95 miles an hour too. He does a good job of keeping you off balance.”

Goldschmidt called Williams “a great teammate,” and the reliever has been thrilled to team up with the seven-time All-Star first baseman, as well as the rest of his Yankees teammates in New York.

“I am happy, I love New York City,” said Williams.

Still, it may be one and done for Williams in New York.

He will be an free agent after this season, and what his 2026 work address will be is anybody’s guess.

But while he is here, Williams will work hard to have his New York tenure remembered less for being the guy who busted the Yankees-imposed beard ban, and more for closing big games.

“I would love to be the guy to finish off the World Series; and bring another championship to New York” said Williams. “That’s the goal, right?”

The NFL Players Association is going to need a new leader.

NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. announced his resignation Thursday evening.

‘It’s clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day. For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately,’ Howell said in a statement. ‘I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season.’

A message was also sent to the NFLPA membership from the executive committee and was obtained by USA TODAY Sports. It read:

‘This evening, Lloyd Howell informed us that he is stepping down as Executive Director of the union. We accepted his resignation and are grateful for his service. The Board will convene as soon as possible for a meeting on next steps and will be in touch with our membership soon.’

Howell had come under intense scrutiny in recent days and weeks following the ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ podcast’s release of a 61-page arbitration report.

In January, Christopher Droney, an independent arbitrator, dismissed a grievance raised by the NFLPA, ruling there wasn’t sufficient evidence of collusion by NFL owners. However, the contents of his report included a finding that the NFL encouraged owners ‘to reduce guarantees in future contracts with players at the March 2022 annual meeting.’

ESPN had reported that the NFL and NFLPA made an ‘unusual confidentiality agreement’ to keep the findings of the arbitration report secret.

‘By agreeing to a confidentiality agreement, the union purposefully blocked the players from receiving crucial information about the operations of the NFL,’ attorney Peter Ginsberg said via ESPN. ‘The NFL and the union should not be conspiring together to keep important information from the players.’

ESPN reports Lloyd Howell has side job with conflict of interest

Further controversy surrounding Howell emerged on July 10.

ESPN reported that Howell, in addition to his job as head of the players’ union, was working as a ‘paid, part-time consultant for The Carlyle Group,’ a private equity firm that the NFL approved to seek minority ownership stakes in its teams. Howell had started the consulting gig months before starting his role as the NFLPA’s executive director.

He refused to step down from his role with The Carlyle Group after taking the NFLPA job, ESPN reported.

‘It would be an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL,’ NFLPA’s former lead outside counsel Jim Quinn said, via ESPN. ‘The relationship between a labor organization and the employer organization is adversarial by definition, and as a result, as a leader, you have to be absolutely clear and clean as to having no even appearance of conflict.’

A representative for The Carlyle Group told ESPN in a statement that Howell ‘had no access to information about the NFL and Carlyle process’ and that she was unaware of the union’s request he leave his consulting position.

USA TODAY Sports had also confirmed an ESPN report that the NFLPA hired law firm Wilmer Hale last month to look into Howell’s actions as the union’s executive director.

Lloyd Howell involved in previous legal controversies

Prior to Howell’s election as the union’s new executive director, he served as the chief financial officer for technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton between 2016 and 2022.

In July 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Booz Allen paid out a $377 million settlement resulting from a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged the firm had been overcharging the federal government.

The Washington Post reported that the whistleblower had notified top executives, including Howell, of the overcharging issue for months.

The NFLPA had hired Howell as its executive director just one month before the announcement of Booz Allen’s settlement.

Eighteen holes of golf are in the books at Royal Portrush Golf Club, and that means The Open Championship has reached Cut Day for the 156-player field.

So, who is missing the cut line? And how many?

That is the question that will soon be answered as second-round competition resumes in Northern Ireland on July 18 starting with the first group hitting the links bright and early.

Here’s what to know about the cut line rules at The Open:

How many golfers make the cut at The Open?

Those that finish in the top 70 — including ties — following the second round of competition will make the cut line at The Open Championship.

The Open cut line rules

Noted above, the cut line at the 2025 Open Championship is those who finish in the top 70, including ties, following the second round of competition at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland. Additionally, the ’10-shot rule,’ where those within 10 shots of the lead after the opening two rounds will make the cut line, is not in use.

The cut line at The Open is different than some of the other majors on the PGA Tour schedule, as the U.S. Open has a cut line of top 60 and ties, while the Masters has a cut line of the top 50 and ties. Only the PGA Championship has those who finish in the top 70, including ties, make the cut line.

When is 2025 Open Championship? Full schedule

• Dates: Thursday, July 17 – Sunday, July 20
• Where: Royal Portrush Golf Club (Antrim, Northern Ireland)

The 153rd edition of The Open Championship began on Thursday, July 17 and runs through Sunday, July 20 at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland.