So in February he declared the

The Pacers were 10-15 through the first 25 games of the season — then went 40-17 to finish the regular season. They are the fourth team to start 10-15 or worse and go on to win a conference title, joining Seattle in 1977-78 (8-17), the 1956-57 St. Louis Hawks (10-15) and the 1958-59 Minneapolis Lakers (10-15). None of those teams went on to win the NBA title.“In 49 states, it’s just basketball,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “But this is Indiana. ... Our guys earned this. Congratulations to our guys.”

Oklahoma City swept the season series with Indiana 2-0, part of a regular season where the Thunder — who finished with the NBA’s best record — went 29-1 against the Eastern Conference. That doesn’t include a loss to Milwaukee in the NBA Cup final, a game that didn’t count in any standings.So, the matchup is set. It’s the Paul George finals, albeit without Paul George — who had arguably the best season of his career with the Thunder, averaging 28 points and finishing third in the MVP voting for 2018-19 — starting at OKC on Thursday.“Obviously, he wasn’t here long but he had great years here,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Saturday when asked about George’s impact. “I mean, one of the best years of his career was here, one of the best individual seasons a player’s had here — which is saying something here with the guys they’ve had. So, I have a lot of respect for him.”

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Marina Mabrey scored 15 of her 26 points in the third quarter, Tina Charles added 18 points and the Connecticut Sun snapped a five-game, season-opening losing streak with an 85-83 victory over the short-handed Indiana Fever on Friday night.Indiana was without star Caitlin Clark, who missed her second game

. Clark was injured while

Connecticut led 74-59 early in the fourth quarter before the Fever stormed back and scored 16 straight points to take the lead.“We’ll soon be left with just a dusty rubble pile,” astrophysicist Karl Battams with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory said in an email.

Comets are balls of frozen gas and dust from billions of years ago. Every so often, a comet passes through the inner solar system.“These are relics from when the solar system first formed,” said Jason Ybarra, director of the West Virginia University Planetarium and Observatory.

The newest comet was discovered by amateur astronomers, who spied it in photos taken by a camera on a spacecraft operated by NASA and the European Space Agency to study the sun.The comet won’t swing close to Earth like Tsuchinshan-Atlas did last year. Other notable flybys included