The Cincinnati Bengals are utilizing the franchise tag for the second consecutive season on the same player as wide receiver Tee Higgins has been hit with the tag once again. The Bengals, who announced the move Monday, do not want to allow Higgins to hit free agency, and will now turn their attention to negotiating a long-term deal.
Cincinnati has until July 15 to reach a new multi-year deal with Higgins, or he will make a fully guaranteed $26.2 million in 2025. Since this is the second time Higgins has been tagged, he will make 120% of his 2024 salary, bringing it up to the $26.2 million. The franchise tag Cincinnati utilized was either the exclusive, or non-exclusive tag. Here’s a rundown on what those are:
Exclusive franchise tag: This tag guarantees the player a one-year salary equivalent to the average of the top-five salaries at the player’s position, or 120% of his previous salary, whichever is greater. It also prohibits any contract discussions between the tagged player and other NFL teams. Non-exclusive franchise tag: This tag also guarantees the player a one-year salary equivalent to the average of the top-five salaries at the player’s position, or 120% of his previous salary. It does permit the tagged player to receive contract offers from other teams; however, the original team has the right to match any offer, and must receive two first-round draft picks from the acquiring team if the player departs. The decision to tag Higgins also has an impact on the Bengals’ cap number. Cincinnati was projected to have $43,342,057 in available free agency funds, but $26.2 million is now automatically on the books for the Bengals.
Higgins reacted to the news on social media, simply posting the word, “tag.”
Higgins is the second player to be hit with the franchise tag this offseason, as the Kansas City Chiefs placed it on star offensive guard Trey Smith just last week. Another situation we are keeping an eye on is with Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa. Tuesday, March 4 is the deadline to place the franchise tag on players.
It’s disappointing déjà vu for Higgins. The star wideout wanted long-term security last year, and didn’t get it. Now, he has been tagged again. The Bengals are in a tough spot this offseason, as fellow wideout Ja’Marr Chase is due a record-breaking extension and the NFL’s reigning sack leader Trey Hendrickson wants more money or a trade. Chase is the priority this offseason, but the two sides remain far apart in contract talks, according to The Athletic. Still, Bengals de facto general manager Duke Tobin and head coach Zac Taylor have been consistent in saying they want to keep Higgins in the fold.
The Philadelphia Eagles got things going with their offseason Monday with the news that they’re releasing longtime cornerback Darius Slay. Slay, 34, is being designated as a post-June 1 cut, so the Eagles will save $4.3 million against the 2025 salary cap and $17.8 million for 2026.
Slay is coming off one of his best seasons, as opposing quarterbacks targeting him competed just 47.1% of their passes. While Slay didn’t have an interception, he allowed a 63.6 passer rating as the primary defender in coverage, recorded 13 pass breakups and allowed just two touchdowns. He also posted career-bests in completion rate (47.1%), yards allowed (371), 20-plus-yard completions (three), first downs allowed (15), and pass-breakup rate (19.1%).
In the playoffs, Slay allowed a 70.1 passer rating and had an interception with four pass breakups as the Eagles went on to win Super Bowl LIX.
With Slay released, what is the Eagles’ plan at cornerback going forward? Is there a possibility Slay could return to Philadelphia on a new contract?
Cooper DeJean moving to the outside Releasing Slay paves the way for DeJean to move to outside cornerback in base defense, keeping the second-year man on the field at all times. In nickel personnel he would still be in the slot, where he didn’t allow a touchdown in coverage last season. This would be an expanded role for DeJean, but one the Eagles envisioned when they traded up in the second round last year to acquire him.
Decision on Isaiah Rodgers The Eagles have to make a call on whether or not to bring back Isaiah Rodgers, who’s set to hit free agency next week. Rodgers was solid last season, as opposing quarterbacks targeting him as the primary defender completed just 46.4% of their passes. He also allowed just a 77.1 passer rating in coverage.
Rodgers would get a crack at the outside cornerback job when DeJean goes back into the slot in nickel defense. Rodgers would compete with 2023 fourth-round pick Kelee Ringo, a special teams ace due for an expanded role on defense. He has allowed just a 46.3 passer rating as the primary defender in coverage over the last two seasons (170 snaps).
Could Slay return? The Eagles could just bring Slay back at a reduced rate with his previous contract off the books. If he does return, he’ll again start opposite Quinyon Mitchell and DeJean would remain primarily in the slot.
Slay returning to the Eagles for what could possibly be his final NFL season would be a big boost, as he was a veteran mentor for Mitchell and DeJean and vital toward their immediate success.
The Eagles are restructuring enough of their defense in 2025. They don’t need to move on from Slay if they don’t have to, even though he’ll have options to play elsewhere.
A Philadelphia 76ers win (126-119, their first since Feb. 4) wasn’t the only rare feat witnessed by those who tuned in for their marquee matchup against the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night. In the middle of the fourth quarter, the league’s all-time leading 3-point shooter Steph Curry dunked for the first time in six seasons.
In the middle of the fourth quarter, Tyrese Maxey missed a 3-pointer which was temporarily recovered by Guerschon Yabusele. Before the Frenchman could make a play, however, he was stripped by Buddy Hield, who looked up and saw Curry all alone on the other end of the court. Hield hit Curry in stride, and the veteran guard powered up for the slam.
Curry said after the game that this will “for sure” be the last dunk of his career.
“I’m calling it right now,” Curry said. “That was the last one you’re gonna see. Ironically, this morning at shootaround, [assistant coach Jerry] Stackhouse said he wanted to see a dunk. He hadn’t said that all year and I haven’t heard that in years, and it happened tonight. Kinda funny. It was a very random comment this morning, and the fact that it happened was hilarious.”
The last time Curry had dunked in a game was the Warriors’ win over the Sacramento Kings on Feb. 21, 2019. It was so long ago that he got free along the baseline via a screen from Demarcus Cousins (who played his last NBA game in 2022) and was assisted by none other than Kevin Durant. Look at the elevation!
Curry’ dunk on Saturday accounted for two of his team-high 29 points. He also grabbed five rebounds and dished out 13 assists in another strong outing. All told, he either scored or assisted on 23 of the Warriors’ 46 field goals, but that wasn’t enough as Golden State’s five-game winning streak came to an end.
The Warriors’ defeat to the Joel Embiid-less Sixers was proof of just how important Jimmy Butler has become to this team over the last few weeks. Since Butler’s arrival in a blockbuster deadline deal, the Warriors are 7-1 with him in the lineup, and their only loss was by four points to the Dallas Mavericks.
Butler sat out on Saturday due to back spasms, which coach Steve Kerr said were the result of a hit he took during the team’s win over the Orlando Magic on Thursday. Kerr could not give a definitive timeline for Butler’s return, but was optimistic that it won’t be a long-term absence.
“I hope not and I don’t think so, but you never know what these things,” Kerr said prior to the loss to the Sixers. “But it’s just day to day for now.”
After Saturday’s defeat, the Warriors are 32-28 on the season, which has them in seventh place in the tightly-bunched Western Conference standings. They are just half a game behind the Los Angeles Clippers for the sixth and final automatic playoff spot, but also just half a game ahead of the 10th-place Mavericks for the final Play-In Tournament spot.
The Denver Nuggets tried to trade for Luka Doncic on draft night in 2018 and came close to acquiring Jrue Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline, per Mike Singer, formerly of the Denver Post and now the Nuggets’ director of intelligence and strategy. In an appearance on ESPN’s “The Hoop Collective with Brian Windhorst,” Singer discussed the two what-ifs, as the details of both proposed trades appear in his forthcoming biography of Denver’s franchise player, “Why So Serious?: The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokic.”
Could the Nuggets really have paired Jokic with Doncic? According to Singer, at least one person involved on Denver’s side thought so.
“I don’t know, I was not in the room, I was not in the front office at the time,” Singer said. “All I know is that it was considered, explored, vetted, and I have somebody saying anonymously, ‘For 30 seconds, we thought we had Luka.'”
Singer’s story is pretty straigtforward: Entering the 2018 NBA Draft, Denver had the No. 14 pick and was high on both Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. It didn’t end up getting Gilgeous-Alexander, as the Los Angeles Clippers took him with the No. 11 pick. Doncic was nowhere near the Nuggets’ range, but they thought they had a chance to get him because “they knew that [then-Sacramento Kings lead executive] Vlade Divac was not particularly high on Luka Doncic and they tried to exploit it.”
Denver “had designs on pairing Nikola Jokic with Luka Doncic,” Singer said, so it made a proposal: Gary Harris and two first-round picks for the No. 2 pick.
At the time, Harris was 23 years old and coming off a career year. In retrospect, it would have been one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history, but it also would have been better for the Kings than what they ended up doing with their pick. They selected Marvin Bagley III, who had a rocky, three-and-a-half-year tenure in Sacramento. Doncic wound up with the Dallas Mavericks via their trade with the Atlanta Hawks, and the Nuggets used their pick on Michael Porter Jr.
For years, Divac has denied that he was low on Doncic and maintained that they thought Bagley was a better fit next to point guard De’Aaron Fox. “I like Luka,” Divac told Zach Lowe, then of ESPN, in 2019, “but we didn’t want to overload with players who — maybe they don’t have the exact same characteristics, but if you want to develop the guys you have, you have to make sure they have room to develop.” Two months ago, in an interview with Index, a Croatian outlet, Divac said he might have made the wrong decision, but explained it the same way.
“I could’ve taken Luka, but then I would’ve had to trade Fox,” Divac told Index, as translated by Dallas Hoops Journal.
Divac said he thought that Fox could develop into a franchise player. Fox made the All-Star team and the All-NBA team in 2023, but has not become a perennial MVP candidate like Doncic.
“Time will tell if I was wrong,” Divac said. “As things stand now, it looks like I am, but I have faith in Fox that he will have a better career.”
What happened with Holiday? According to Singer, Denver was “closer than has ever been known” to acquiring Holiday at the 2020 trade deadline.
Holiday was a member of the New Orleans Pelicans at the time. This was before the NBA shut down the 2019-20 season and restarted it at Walt Disney World because of COVID-19. In November 2020, before the 2020-21 season began, the Pelicans traded Holiday to the Milwaukee Bucks.
“The Jrue Holiday trade was very real,” Singer said, “and it ultimately would have meant that Aaron Gordon doesn’t come to Denver.”
Singer said that he’s under the impression that the Nuggets were closer to getting Holiday than they were to getting Doncic.
“Somebody told me that if there was a little bit more time … it would’ve gotten done,” Singer said.
Leading up to that trade deadline, Shams Charania, then of The Athletic, reported that Denver was interested in Holiday, but New Orleans’ asking price was high and Holiday didn’t want to be traded. Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix reported the same thing days later, adding that the Nuggets had made Harris “very available” and would include guard Malik Beasley in a deal, but wouldn’t give up Porter. In the immediate aftermath of the deadline, The Athletic’s David Aldridge reported that Denver was “looking for some way to pry” Holiday away from the Pelicans until the end, but could not get a deal done.
The following offseason, before Holiday became a Buck, the Nuggets were again a rumored destination according to multiple outlets. Singer wrote that November that guard Monte Morris could be the swing piece in a potential Holiday deal, and The Athletic’s John Hollinger wrote that they’d likely have to give up three first-round picks.
The Pelicans ended up getting two first-round picks and two pick swaps from Milwaukee. Months later, before the 2021 trade deadline, Denver sent Harris, R.J. Hampton and a first-round pick to the Orlando Magic for Gordon.
Holiday played an enormous role in the Bucks winning the 2021 championship, and did the same for the 2024 champion Boston Celtics after Milwaukee let him go in the Damian Lillard deal. Gordon, meanwhile, was a huge part of the Nuggets’ 2023 title run. In this context, Denver reportedly being “very close,” as Singer put it, to landing Holiday — and thereby taking themselves out of the mix for Gordon — in 2020 qualifies as a sliding-doors moment.
the Maine Celtics, so he can practice with them at the Auerbach Center on Monday afternoon. Boston big man Xavier Tillman will also practice with Maine, the team announced.
Porzingis, who suffered a rare ankle injury in last season’s NBA Finals, had surgery in late June and has been rehabilitating since. With this assignment, he has begun “the next phase in his recovery,” according to the Celtics. It is unclear what exactly this means, though, for his return-to-play timeline. Boston has reportedly targeted December for his return, but Porzingis said in September that he was hoping to play earlier than projected.
Despite Porzingis’ absence, the Celtics have started the season 11-3 with the second-best offense and fourth-best net rating in the league. Al Horford has started all 12 games in which he has played, and while the 38-year-old doesn’t quite have Porzingis’ several-feet-behind-the-arc range, he has made 45% of his 3-point attempts.
Boston has also gotten good minutes from reserve bigs Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta, the latter of whom started next to Horford and logged 33 minutes in the Celtics’ 126-123 overtime win against the Toronto Raptors on Saturday.
Do not expect Porzingis to be in the lineup when Boston hosts the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have started the season 15-0, on Tuesday. He’s getting closer, though, and the Celtics have held up extremely well without him.
The Miami Heat are set to host the Philadelphia 76ers at 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday at Kaseya Center. Miami is 5-7 overall and 1-3 at home, while Philadelphia is 2-10 overall and 1-5 on the road. The Heat have won nine of their past 12 home games against the 76ers. Tyrese Maxey (hamstring) has been ruled out of Monday’s contest, while Joel Embiid (illness) is doubtful.
This time around, the Heat are favored by 4.5 points in the latest Heat vs. 76ers odds, and the over/under is 212.5 points. Before entering any 76ers vs. Heat picks, you’ll want to see the NBA predictions from the advanced computer model at SportsLine.
The SportsLine Projection Model simulates every NBA game 10,000 times and has returned well over $10,000 in betting profit for $100 players on its top-rated NBA picks over the past six-plus seasons. The model enters Week 5 of the 2024-25 NBA season on a sizzling 109-74 roll on all top-rated NBA picks dating back to last season, returning more than $3,000. Anyone following at sportsbooks and on betting apps has seen huge returns.
The model has set its sights on Philadelphia-Miami. You can head to SportsLine to see its picks. Here are several NBA betting lines for the game:
Heat vs. 76ers spread: Heat -4.5 Heat vs. 76ers over/under: 212.5 points Heat vs. 76ers money line: Heat -202, 76ers +168 Heat vs. 76ers picks: See picks here Heat vs. 76ers streaming: FuboTV (Try for free) Why the Heat can cover On Sunday, the Heat couldn’t handle the Pacers and fell 119-110. The loss doesn’t tell the whole story though, as several players had good games. One of the most active was Tyler Herro, who went 7 for 11 from beyond the arc en route to 28 points. What’s more, he also posted a 63.6% 3-point shooting accuracy, which is the highest he’s posted since back in December of 2023. For the season, Herro is averaging 24.8 points, 5.2 assists and 4.8 rebounds per game.
Offensively, the Heat are scoring 111.3 points per game this season. Miami is connecting on 39.1% of its 3-point attempts, which ranks third in the NBA.
Why the 76ers can cover Meanwhile, the 76ers’ recent rough patch got a bit rougher on Friday after their third straight loss. They took a 98-86 hit to the loss column at the hands of the Magic. The contest marked Philadelphia’s lowest-scoring match so far this season. Jared McCain put forth a good effort for the losing side as he went 10 for 17 en route to 29 points. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the score, the 76ers struggled to get the ball back on offense and finished the game with only six offensive rebounds.
The 76ers are 1-8 in their last nine games, but they are 4-1 against the spread in their past five games played on a Monday.
How to make Heat vs. 76ers picks The model has simulated Heat vs. 76ers 10,000 times and the results are in. We can tell you that the model is leaning Over, and it also says one side of the spread hits in well over 60% of simulations. You can only see the pick at SportsLine.
