The Sports Report: Dodgers spent a lot, but did they spend wisely?
From Dylan Hernández: DodgerFest, the $10-to-enter iteration of what the Dodgers used to call FanFest, will be staged Saturday. The event will feel like a celebration. Following years in which they exercised a degree of financial restraint that limited their World Series prospects, the Dodgers finally won an offseason.
They kept together the nucleus of a 100-win team and bolstered it by signing the best player in baseball. The addition of Shohei Ohtani was just the start of a $1.2-billion winter splurge, with a significant part of that directed toward addressing the obvious shortcoming of the roster, starting pitching.
The Dodgers will have a luxury-tax payroll well over $300 million, which has obscured an uncomfortable reality: As much as they invested, they still might not be the World Series favorites.
The team will reach the postseason. There’s a very real possibility, however, the Dodgers could enter the playoffs similar to how they did last year, with virtually no chance of winning a championship.
To be clear, the Dodgers were right to spend as much as they did. They owed their loyal fans that much. What’s less clear is whether they were smart in how they spent their money.
quarter to beat the Washington Wizards 125-109 on Wednesday night.
The Clippers outscored Washington 39-19 in the third after leading by 10 in the first half.
Harden’s pullup three from the top of the arc stretched the lead to 20 for the first time with 5:42 left in the period. Later, Leonard’s emphatic dunk off a driving, spinning feed from Russell Westbrook pushed it 25, and Norman Powell’s basket made it 106-79 at the end of the third.
Leonard and Harden each had nine rebounds. And Harden hit five three-pointers to help the Clippers snap out of a long-range shooting slump on a night they rested eight-time All-Star Paul George because of groin soreness.
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