Less than two years after leading the Kings to their first playoff berth in 16 seasons, De’Aaron Fox may be on his way out of Sacramento.

The Kings have opened up trade talks for Fox, who drafted him with the No. 5 pick in 2017, with just over a week left until the Feb. 6 trade deadline, according to ESPN senior NBA insider Shams Charania. Multiple reports have indicated the All-Star point guard already has a preferred destination.

According to The Athletic, a marriage between Fox and Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio is the likely outcome. It’s worth noting that Fox’s wife, Recee, grew up in San Antonio.

Other interested teams will reportedly be discouraged from trading for Fox, who will be an unrestricted free agent in 2026, according to NBA insider Chris Haynes.

Fox is in the fourth season of a five-year, $163 million maximum rookie extension he signed in 2020. His $34.8 million salary this season is still relatively light for a player of his ability.

But Fox turned down a three-year, $165 million maximum extension late last year to aim for a larger deal this offseason, which could have been a five-year, $345 million supermax deal if he stayed in Sacramento and made an All-NBA team. However, it was unlikely Fox would qualify for an All-NBA team, partially because the 24–22 Kings sit at 10th in the West. Instead, he will be eligible for a four-year extension worth $229 million.

If he chooses to wait through next season and become an unrestricted free agent, Fox can either sign a five-year, $296 million extension with a team that has his rights or a four-year, $219 million deal with another team, according to ESPN front office insider Bobby Marks.

Last month, Sacramento fired head coach Mike Brown, who won Coach of the Year with the team in 2023. Brown had been publicly critical of the lack of effort given by his star guard.

A Jimmy Butler Update

On the other side of the country, the Heat have been unable to trade away disgruntled star Jimmy Butler. On Monday, Miami handed an indefinite suspension to Butler after he walked out of the team’s shootaround ahead of a game against the Magic.

It’s the third time in a month that Butler has been suspended. The first was for seven games and the second was for two. But the Heat have struggled to find a deal for Butler as Phoenix, his desired destination, has been unable to convince Bradley Beal to waive his no-trade clause.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported Tuesday that the Heat have lowered their asking price for Butler. The Warriors are now reportedly in the mix to try to trade for the six-time All-Star, according to Yahoo Sports NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy were unable to significantly boost TV ratings for their new indoor team golf league in the first match the TGL cofounders’ clubs played against each other.

ESPN drew an average of 864,000 viewers for Jupiter Links Golf Club’s 4–3 overtime victory against Boston Common Golf. That’s up from last week’s audience of 682,000 viewers, but down from the league’s debut broadcast (919,000) and the first match Woods played in (1 million).

Monday night’s match started at 6:30 p.m. ET, while the previous three began at either 7 p.m. or 9 p.m. The TV audience did peak at 1.1 million during overtime, mirroring the peak figure of the Jan. 14 match involving Woods, whose Jupiter Links lost 12–1 to Los Angeles Golf Club. 

TGL is now averaging 874,000 viewers through four matches on ESPN. 

The Tiger effect that has impacted golf TV ratings for the past 25 years is perhaps not as large as one might expect, so far at least. The two matches involving Woods averaged 932,000 viewers, while the two without him drew an average of 800,500.

Monday night’s match was the closest competition TGL has seen so far, as Jupiter Links and Boston Common ended regulation tied at 3. (Each hole of the 15-hole match is typically worth one point, with no points awarded for a tie.) In overtime, Jupiter prevailed in a best-of-three closest-to-the-pin chipping contest.

Once again, TGL ran over its allotted two-hour time slot on ESPN, which was 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. ET this week. The NC State–Duke broadcast began on ESPNU, with ESPN picking the game up at about 8:49 p.m. ET, with 16 minutes remaining in the first half.

Woods’s Jupiter Links will be back in action Feb. 18, but he won’t play McIlroy’s Boston Common again in the regular season. Four of the league’s six teams will make the playoffs, which will take place in March.

MLB’s Rangers were already going well against the grain with their 2024 plans for local broadcasting, and now it’s becoming more clear just how much so. 

Less than two weeks after the Rangers struck a live-streaming deal with the upstart Victory+—eschewing both a return to regional sports network operator Main Street Sports and MLB’s in-house model for local media—the club announced the creation of both a local media venture and a new holding company. 

The newly formed Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company will house two major assets: the Rangers Sports Network and the preexisting Rev Entertainment. The latter is a sports and entertainment company that exclusively books events at both Globe Life Field and Choctaw Stadium and also has ancillary production and marketing capabilities. Those facilities are the Rangers’ current and former home ballparks.

Rangers Sports Network will produce and distribute the club’s local television broadcasts and is pursuing various cable and over-the-air deals. One arrived late Tuesday with DirecTV, giving the fledgling effort a big boost with the No. 3 U.S. pay-TV provider.

The effort is already serious enough, though, that Neil Leibman, the club’s president of business operations and COO, will leave that role to chair Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company and focus on that position fully. Rangers CRO Jim Cochrane will become the club’s EVP and chief business officer and have oversight of many of the areas being vacated by Leibman.

“We determined that the best path forward toward providing our fans with more options is to handle many of the broadcast obligations in-house,” said Rangers majority owner Ray Davis. 

The club’s moves also further the status of Dallas as a major test case in a U.S. sports media business being dramatically remade. In addition to the Rangers’ efforts, the NBA’s Mavericks distribute their games through their MavsTV streaming platform and over-the-air TV stations owned by Tegna. The NHL’s Stars, meanwhile, show their games locally through Victory+.

The Senators are still reestablishing themselves under new owner Michael Andlauer, but the NHL club is already looking well beyond their home market of Ottawa—and angering fans back home in the process.

The NHL club said it will play two preseason games this fall in Quebec City, and spend four days in total there also practicing and participating in community initiatives. The plans are the beginning of what could be a larger presence there for the club with some regular-season games. 

“We’ll start with the two preseason games and we’ll go from there,” said Andlauer, who purchased the Senators in late 2023 for $950 million, then a league record. “For me, that’s the vision.”

Quebec City previously had the NHL’s Nordiques—originally a World Hockey Association franchise—from 1979 to 1995, when they relocated to Colorado and became the Avalanche. 

The Senators’ planned presence in the provincial capital arrives as the Senators are still attempting to build a new arena in downtown Ottawa, most recently striking an agreement with Canada’s National Capital Commission to purchase 10 acres in the city’s LeBreton Flats for a potential new venue.  

Ruffling Feathers

The team’s announcement of the planned activity in Quebec City, however, went over very poorly in Ottawa, where the Senators under prior ownership regimes often teetered on the brink of financial disaster, and even fell into bankruptcy in 2003. Leaders in Quebec City, meanwhile, have actively pushed to gain an NHL expansion franchise, even while league commissioner Gary Bettman continues to downplay the likelihood of any imminent process for that. 

Further agitating Senators fans was the presence of the team’s mascot, Spartacat, at the Quebec City announcement wearing a half-Senators/half-Nordiques jersey. The immediate blowback led Senators president Cyril Leeder to acknowledge on Ottawa’s TSN 1200 radio that “if we had a do-over on that one, would we do that one differently? We probably would. I get the sensitivities.”

Leeder further clarified the team has no plans to leave the Ottawa area, but rather, is seeking to expand its regional presence.

“It’s a move on our part designed to help us expand our broadcast footprint, especially with francophone fans,” he continued on the radio station. “Our broadcast territory goes from Kingston [Ont.] to Newfoundland. … So this has been in the works for us to help grow that footprint and that fan base.”