<p>Down 58-41 at halftime on Sunday, the San Antonio Spurs were facing the most pressure they had in the brief but spectacular Victor Wembanyama playoff era. That said more about the team's inexperience with this kind of pressure than it did about needing to avoid a 2-2 first-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers, a team they should easily put away. While Wembanyama is the focal point of everything the Spurs do, somebody else on the team needed to step up to overcome such a deficit in Game 4. Yesterday, it was De'Aaron Fox, for a 114-93 victory and 3-1 series lead.</p> <p>Correlated with the concerns about pressure management is the matter of how Wembanyama would hold up against the ravages of the NBA playoffs. Game 4 marked his return from <a href="https://defector.com/the-scariest-part-of-a-concussion-is-the-uncertainty">a concussion</a>—which he <a href="https://apnews.com/article/victor-wembanyama-spurs-trail-blazers-nba-playoffs-ac2c32bf8e9916a453eafad06d21f119">obliquely indicated</a> was mishandled, though he did not specify in what way—and though he announced himself with a huge dunk in the game's opening minutes, his team's offense was flat in the first half. San Antonio shot 16-for-46 over the first two quarters, struggling to get to the rim or finish there as Portland's sludgy defense gunked up the works. Toumani Camara and Jrue Holiday hounded ballhandlers and blew up actions early, and a bunch of nasty veterans supported them for 48 minutes of solid rim protection.</p> <p>The impact of all that defensive excellence was applied unevenly through the first three games; while Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle have both been balling, Fox's first three playoff games as a Spur were underwhelming. His young charges have gotten to go at Scoot Henderson and Jerami Grant, while he's been stalked by Camara and Holiday almost the entire time he's been on the court. Harper was scorching in Game 3, briefly and spectacularly materializing the lofty comp of Ethical James Harden With Bounce.</p>

<p>The Boston Red Sox are owned by the same people who own Liverpool FC, and are therefore acutely aware of the crucial soccer rubric that managers should be fired every few months in order to keep the job tender and supple on the grill. And yet, despite that, they hadn't fired a Liverpool manager since Brendan Rodgers got the sack in 2015. Those owners have, however, given us the first firing of the 2026 baseball season, and potentially the most incendiary one in years, by cacking Red Sox manager Alex Cora and multiple members of his staff. The finer details of this can be found in the latest installment of "<a href="https://defector.com/the-red-sox-cant-even-clean-house-with-dignity">Comrade Xu Watches Shitty Baseball</a>"; the broad strokes can be gleaned with a glance at the American League standings.</p> <p>But we're not concerned with the Red Sox and their seminal role in creating a three-way tie for 12th with the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox. We're thinking more of the two teams currently worse than those three, and why they haven't done the performative kneejerkery of firing their own manager. Your friends and compatriots at the bottom of the coal chute are the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets, and their broader circumstances are both similar and similarly dire.</p> <p>The Mets' issues are obvious. Owner Steve Cohen has spent eleventy skillion dollars on a team that just powered through a 12-game losing streak, beat the Twins twice and then got swept over the weekend by <em>THE COLORADO ROCKIES, FOR BAAL'S SAKE! </em>They currently feature the league's highest payroll, its fourth-oldest roster, and the sport's worst figures for fewest runs scored and OPS. Carlos Mendoza still has his job because, as near as we can tell, Cohen is pissed that he didn't think of doing that before John Henry thought of firing Cora, let alone firing him so spectacularly.</p>

JFC. This is going to be worse than trying to get a shot when they first became available.

<p><em>Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? </em><a href="mailto:funbag@defector.com"><em>Email the Funbag</em></a><em>. You can also read Drew over at </em><a href="https://www.sfgate.com/author/drew-magary/"><em>SFGATE</em></a><em>, and </em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/232152/drew-magary/"><em>buy Drew’s books</em></a><em> while </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087HC32K2/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&#38;psc=1"><em>you’re at it</em></a><em>. Today, we're talking chopsticks, dated nicknames, robots, and more.</em></p> <p>Your letters:</p> <p>Joe:</p>

<p>Connor McDavid is a hair away from being branded the worst greatest player in hockey history because, fans being raging nitwits on things like this, that's how it works in the legacy game. "You're only as good as the last thing I remember,” is the creed, “and I drink during games."</p> <p>Nevertheless, them's the rules, Pookie, and right now McDavid, the best player of his generation, is a game away from being ushered out of the postseason by the weird but plucky Anaheim Ducks, because of this:</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGtTMKPMPC0 </div></figure>