SI:AM | Giannis Had His MVP Moment Against the Sixers

Plus, a wild day of World Cup qualifying around the globe.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I love a good game-saving block. 

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This might have been the best game all March

The Bucks and Sixers faced off last night in Philadelphia in a matchup between teams jockeying for position atop the Eastern Conference and both teams’ top stars put on a show.

Joel Embiid had 29 points on 11-of-21 shooting while adding 14 rebounds and seven assists. Giannis Antetokounmpo was even better, dropping 40 points on 16-of-24 shooting with 14 rebounds and six assists.

This time of year, the MVP race is always one of the NBA’s dominant story lines. And while Nikola Jokić and Embiid lead SI Sportsbook’s MVP odds, Antetokounmpo is still in contention—and he looked every bit like an MVP candidate last night.

Whether he wins the award, Giannis made the most valuable play last night in an enormous game for his team.

In the closing seconds of the game, with the Bucks up by two, James Harden took a step-back three-point shot that was (as Mike Breen would say) way off. The ball clanged off the bottom corner of the backboard but caromed directly into the hands of Embiid right below the basket.

That’s when Giannis made the play of the game. He took one step and leaped into the air as Embiid went up for a layup and swatted the ball off the backboard. The play was initially called goaltending, which would have tied the game, but a review confirmed that Antetokounmpo blocked it cleanly, and Milwaukee held on to win.

The two teams entered last night’s game with identical 46–28 records. The Bucks’ win puts them a half game behind the Heat for first place in the East.

Elsewhere in the NBA last night:

• Paul George had 34 points in his first game since Dec. 23 as the Clippers overcame a 25-point deficit against the Jazz.
• Kevin Durant scored 41 in the Nets’ win over the Pistons, but the bigger story might have been Detroit’s Cade Cunningham, who had a career-high 34 points (including 29 in the second half) despite injuring his tailbone in the second quarter.
• The Lakers lost. Again.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Speaking of Embiid, he’s the subject of today’s Daily Cover by Chris Mannix:

“What he’s done, by any account, has been impressive. Philadelphia, without a three-time All-Star in [Ben] Simmons for more than half this season, remained among the top contenders in the Eastern Conference. Embiid was a night-in, night-out force and continued to evolve as a deep threat. While L’Affaire Simmons was daily fodder for debate shows, Embiid declined to engage in it, refusing to criticize Simmons while insisting the Sixers, even without their 6'11" point guard, had enough to win.”

A special Final Four edition of SI Weekly features Conor Orr on the questionable anatomy of mascots, Wilton Jackson on the South Carolina women’s hoops team and the story of a bettor from New Jersey who made a very lucky wager. … Conor also wrote about what makes the NFL’s new overtime rules disappointing. … Chris Herring argues the Lakers are better off not qualifying for the postseason in this week’s edition of The Playmaker newsletter.

Around the Sports World

Roger Goodell addressed the Deshaun Watson case for the first time but didn’t say much of substance. … Tiger Woods has arrived in Augusta amid speculation that he could play in the Masters. … Colts owner Jim Irsay called Carson Wentz’s time with the team a “mistake.” … Jazz forward Trent Forrest was taken to the hospital after being hit in the face with an accidental elbow. … The new elements of baseball’s CBA designed to discourage service time manipulation apparently didn’t work on the Pirates. They sent top prospect Oneil Cruz to the minors.

The top five...

… sports moments from overseas yesterday:

5. Luis Suárez’s bicycle kick goal for Uruguay

4. Mohamed Salah misses penalty kick with lasers shining in his face as Egypt fails to qualify for the World Cup

3. The frantic final minutes of the Algeria-Cameroon World Cup qualifier

2. Nippon-Ham Fighters manager Tsuyoshi “Big Boss” Shinjo enters his first game on a hovercraft

1. Christian Eriksen’s goal for Denmark in the same stadium where he went into cardiac arrest in June

SIQ

When the women’s Final Four tips off Friday in Minneapolis it will mark UConn’s 14th consecutive appearance in the national semifinals. That’s the longest streak in college basketball. Which school had the second-longest Final Four streak, and how long was it?

Yesterday’s SIQ: What was the state of Maryland’s last-ditch effort to keep the Colts in Baltimore in March 1984?

Answer: Threatening to seize the team through eminent domain.

Colts owner Robert Irsay had been negotiating with the state and the city of Baltimore to renovate or replace the aging Memorial Stadium while also flirting with other cities to relocate the team (to destinations such as Phoenix, Memphis, Birmingham and even New York).

The Maryland government, sensing that Irsay was likely to move the team elsewhere, drafted a bill that would allow the city of Baltimore to seize the Colts through eminent domain (a law that allows the government to seize private property if it provides adequate compensation to the owner). The bill was approved by the Maryland Senate on March 27, 1984, but needed to be approved by the House of Delegates and signed by the governor before it could go into effect. But the bill wasn’t finalized until after the moving trucks had left for Indianapolis. It isn’t clear whether the state’s bold gambit would have worked, anyway.

If there was any upside for the people of Baltimore it’s that they were finally free of Irsay, who succeeded in running the team into the ground since purchasing it in 1972. (Maybe that’s why attendance at Colts games was lagging, not the outdated stadium.)

“A man who could screw up professional football in Baltimore would foul the water at Lourdes or flatten the beer in Munich,” Frank Deford wrote in the following week’s issue of SI. Deford spent 587 words lamenting the departure of his hometown football team and blasting Irsay.

The franchise died not in 1984 but in ’72, Deford wrote, “For that was when the NFL allowed a man like Irsay to buy a city’s heart. The Baltimore Colts have been playing games all these years since then, but they’ve been brain dead.”

From the Vault: March 30, 1981

Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated

This photo of Virginia’s Ralph Sampson, leaping high above two BYU opponents, is a work of art. Sampson and the Cavaliers held off No. 9 seed Villanova in their first game of the tournament and then advanced fairly easily past Tennessee and BYU to reach their first Final Four in school history.

The story of the East Region, though, was Danny Ainge. Frank Deford’s recap of that segment of the bracket devoted plenty of space to Ainge’s heroics for the Cougars.

​​“The fuzzy-cheeked Ainge is a mythic figure who will get $500,000 over three years playing third base for the Toronto Blue Jays starting this season,” Deford wrote.

But before going off to play baseball, Ainge led No. 6 seed BYU to upset wins over No. 3 UCLA and No. 2 Notre Dame. Against the Irish, he raced up the floor in the closing seconds, dribbling behind his back through three defenders, to score the game-winning layup just before the buzzer.

Virginia lost to ACC rival North Carolina in the national semifinal, and the Tar Heels lost the title game to Indiana, while the Cavaliers defeated LSU in the third-place game.

Ainge went on to join the Blue Jays for his third season in the majors (yes, he had been playing major league baseball as a college student) and told the team he was committed to baseball despite overtures from the NBA.

On June 9, the Celtics took him with the 31st pick in the NBA draft. On June 10, he told Toronto team president Peter Bavasi he wanted to play basketball instead. Most teams would have had no problem letting go of a guy who batted .187 and slugged .228 in 86 games in 1981, but the Jays believed Ainge had potential and engaged in a long legal battle with the Celtics over interfering with Ainge’s baseball contract by negotiating with him.

The Blue Jays wanted $1 million from the Celtics to buy out Ainge’s three-year, $525,000 contract, according to a later SI article. The case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount, and Ainge signed with Boston in late November.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.