Day 797

• Charles Barkley does not like San Francisco.  Before Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, Barkley picked Dallas to beat Golden State in 7 games, then punctuated it with a "Let's go Mavs" chant to a large group of Warriors fans near the Inside the NBA position outside the new Chase Center.
• Golden State wins Game 1 by 25.
• So Barkley gets a lot of "Chuck, you suck!" chants in the postgame show, to which he responds with "Hey, you're right, and y'all suck too!"  As he's talking about overreacting to Game 1 and the 25-point blowout.
  
• Later, he said how much he hates the San Francisco area.
• Of course, the Mavs may be in the NBA doghouse for the moment.  Twice, during the Phoenix series, the Mavericks were fined for bench decorum violations:  $25,000 after a Game 2 loss, double that after a Game 7 win.
• The Pac-12 and ACC have abolished division play in football after the NCAA no longer will require it for conference championship play.
• Bryson DeChambeau's injuries have not healed -- he won't play in the PGA Championship starting tomorrow.
• Nick Saban openly charges that Texas A&M, who had the #1 recruiting class to Bama's #2, bought every player on the team with NIL deals as part of the recruiting.  And the reality of college sports indicates this is a problem to you...  WHY?  I can understand if a smaller FBS-I school wants a problem with that, but you?  COME ON!      
• Jake Sanford was fired from the Yankees organization today.  The former third-round pick was stealing equipment to resell it.  WOT???    
• And scamming fans by selling them autographed materials he never sent!
• For the first time in 57 years, a high-school track runner has run an unpaced four-minute mile, when Gary Martin of Pennsylvania ran the mile in 3:57.98, the 3rd fastest outdoor mile ever and the 14th recorded high-school sub-four minute mile.
• Martin intends to go to Virginia, and is probably targeting LA 2028.   
• Most such attempts use "rabbits" to help with the pace of the event in all but the highest of competitive events, runners not intended to even finish, but to set a pace so that the event can have a marketable result.
• This can backfire.  If the field, for whatever reason, refuses the pace, the "rabbit", if they can complete the race, can win -- and it's not unheard of that to happen!