The Thunder’s anonymous dominance, plus a NASCAR controversy

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The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.

Good morning! Gather some assets today.

While You Were Clinching: The Thunder have found their final form

For years, the NBA had an inside joke of sorts about Sam Presti. The Thunder general manager was always building, always hoarding assets, always making the smart move — but what was it all for? Kevin Durant, Paul George, Russell Westbrook. Superstars all out the door with no rings to show. 

Now, a ring sits four wins away after Oklahoma City thundered past the Timberwolves in a decisive 124-94 Game 5 win at home last night. Consider this arc: 

• Entering last season, the joke was very much valid. Oklahoma City started the 2023-24 year with a ragtag group of young, talented players no one knew what to do with. Vegas had them winning 44.5 games — they won 57. They leaped ahead of Presti’s originally theorized timeline to contention. He went out and acquired Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein in the offseason to turn a surprise contender into a legitimate behemoth.
  
  
• And, voila, this year’s Thunder — which still entered the year as the NBA’s youngest team — won 68 games, tied for the fifth-best season in league history. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a return piece from the Clippers in the George trade, just won MVP. The future is fully built. 

Not so suddenly, the Thunder are both the NBA’s best team and the clear favorite entering next week’s finals. They are terrifying to play against. BetMGM has them -750 to win it all. 

OKC isn’t flashy, either, and I’d wager this might be our most anonymous elite team/MVP pairing in recent memory. 

More eyes than ever will be on the Thunder next Thursday when they face the winner of Indiana-New York in Game 1 of the finals. I can’t wait. 

• Not so surprising? In the NHL, the Panthers advanced to their third straight Stanley Cup final with a boffo win in a tight Game 5 on the road. The last three minutes of this game were a microcosm of Carolina’s entire series: down 4-3, on a power play, unable to score, with the penalized Sam Bennett racing out of the box to score an empty-netter for Florida with less than a minute left to seal the series. Brutal. 

We have two more clinch possibilities tonight. Onward:

News to Know

Vrabel addresses Diggs video
If you have logged on to any slice of sports social media in the last 24 hours, you’ve seen the video of new Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs on a boat partying, handing women a bag of an unknown pink substance. New England coach Mike Vrabel acknowledged yesterday he had seen the video and emphasized he wants players to “make great decisions on and off the field.” Diggs was not present at OTAs yesterday. More on this developing story here.

France scraps NASCAR plan after backlash
Jim France, NASCAR’s co-owner and CEO, was close to a deal that would’ve funded a car in an upcoming Cup Series race before intense backlash led him to step away. According to an exclusive report from The Athletic, France scrapped the deal after our reporters started asking around about the arrangement, which would present pretty obvious ethical hurdles. Owning a series and a team/car is not wholly unheard of — see the Penske dynasty/debacle in IndyCar — but France’s proposed involvement here still made people quite angry. Read the full report here.

More news

• Baylor redshirt freshman defensive lineman Alex Foster died at just 18. Read our full report.
  
• Former Sonic Shawn Kemp could face jail time in connection to a 2023 assault. More details here.
  
• Roland Garros has not been nice to Casper Ruud. His French Open exit headlined yesterday’s action, which you can catch up on here.
  
• Marlins second baseman Ronny Simon was grateful for the outpouring of support after his three-error game Tuesday. It’s a nice story.
  
• The Wrexham documentary series was renewed for a fifth season, which I already assumed was happening.

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Phenoms: The teenager has fully taken over

Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images

In the sports world, there will always be phenoms. Young, shooting stars that take our breath away before making us say, “Wait, how old?” LeBron James posed on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16. Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur at 15. 

Lamine Yamal is different. 

• Over the last two years, we have seen Yamal go through the awkward stages of adolescence while taking over the soccer universe. Before his 18th birthday, Yamal helped Spain win Euro 2024 and become FC Barcelona’s best player. So much for plebeians like myself, who tended to plants at a local nursery for minimum wage at 17.
  
• There is an argument to be made that Yamal is the best soccer player in the world at 17 years old. Many in the sport agree. Yamal has scored 18 goals and dished 21 assists while helping Barca win La Liga this year. He will soon take his talented left foot back to the Spanish squad for Nations League next week. Trust me, watch any game and his play will jump off the screen.
  
  
• This week, Barcelona signed Yamal to a new contract that will keep him at the club until 2031 and pay him $45 million per year, which makes him the team’s highest earner before the U.S. would allow him to buy cigarettes. Off the pitch, he is the emerging face of a brand worth billions. 

Pol Ballús, our excellent Barca reporter, has the inside story of how the club signed Yamal to such a remarkable deal. It’s worth a read this morning. 

And try to catch this kid on TV soon if you can. 

• In other phenom news: Woods’ son, Charlie, won his first junior golf tournament at 16 years old yesterday. He beat the top-ranked junior in America by six shots. Watch out.

What to Watch

📺 NBA: Pacers at Knicks
8 p.m. ET on TNT/Max
Do-or-die for the best Knicks season in 25 years. Indiana can book its first finals trip of this century. The atmosphere should be buzzy. This is why we watch sports. 

📺 NHL: Oilers at Stars
8 p.m. ET on ESPN
Copy and paste from above. The road team can clinch a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. The home team plays for its season in front of a home crowd. Fun night. 

Get tickets to games like these here.

Pulse Picks

Mike Sando picked his favorite offseason moves for each NFL team. Hooray for a QB retiring. 

Also, Dane Brugler revisited his 2025 NFL Draft top 50 rankings. See the hits and misses here. 

🎥 The “No Dunks” guys ranked Tyrese Haliburton’s flawless Game 4 among the best playoff performances so far. Watch it here. 

The Pirates don’t want to trade Paul Skenes but … they’d have to consider these five packages. 

Women’s golf has a new star in 16-year-old Asterisk Talley, as Brody Miller writes. The sport is wrestling with how to protect her. 

Great guest spot: Matt Antonelli was a first-round MLB bust. He gave us five lessons he learned. 

Sam Blum bought a ticket to attend a Sacramento A’s home game as a fan, and it doesn’t sound like anyone is happy there. 

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Antonio Morales’ ranking of every five-star QB in the recruiting era. 

Most-read on the website yesterday: Our latest 2025 NHL Mock Draft.

Ticketing links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Top photo: Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)

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