The Lakers have found a playoff riser against the Thunder

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Success in the regular season doesn’t always carry over to the playoffs.

The difference is bigger than ever, as lower seeds are advancing more often. The games get tougher, players play harder and defenses focus for all 48 minutes.

A playoff riser is a term for players who elevate their game and perform at their best when the stakes are highest. Rui Hachimura, through eight games this year and continuing from previous playoff runs, has done just that as he’s transformed into one of the most reliable jump shooters in basketball.

Putting up a valiant fight, the Lakers fell to OKC on Thursday and now trail 2-0 in the series. The results are no surprise as, without superstar Luka Dončić, the purple and gold were heavy underdogs against the deepest team in the league.

OKC will remain heavy favorites even as the series shifts to Los Angeles for Games 3 and 4.

The final score didn’t reflect the competitiveness of either of the first two matchups. The Thunder pulled away in the fourth in Game 1 to win by 18. The start of Game 2 looked like a continuation as OKC scored the first seven points and LA missed its first five shots.

As they’ve done many times, the Lakers found their “release valve” who made something out of nothing.

Watch below as Marcus Smart drives into the congested lane with no advantage and kicks out at Hachimura. Defended by the Chet Holmgren, runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year, Rui attacks him in isolation and gets to his patented mid-range pull-up to break the ice for LA.

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Called a lost art and a shot that’s maligned during the 82-game grind, the mid-range jumper becomes essential once teams game plan to take away attempts at the rim or 3-point line.

Among players who attempted a minimum of two per game, Hachimura led the league in the regular season from mid-range, shooting 55.6% on those jumpers.

Where he’s become irreplaceable for LA during the playoffs is the 3-point shooting. Hachimura is currently at a blistering 57.1% on over five attempts per game this postseason after shooting 48% last year in five games against Minnesota.

That number leads the Lakers and ranks second among players who take at least three per game in the entire playoffs.

With LA still reeling to start Game 2, trailing 11-4, watch below as Hachimura catches it in the corner off a LeBron James pass and hits the 3-pointer over an outstretched Holmgren.

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His main value remains being a player you can’t tag off of in the corner while the Lakers run on-ball actions. Watch below as Austin Reaves, who scored 31 points in Game 2, collects one of his six assists with a skip pass to the wide-open Hachimura.

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Hachimura’s 57.1% from three jumps to an automatic 70.4% on wide-open attempts.

Taking into account the Lakers’ storied history as a franchise, Hachimura is already ninth all-time in 3-pointers made. He still holds the record for the highest playoff 3-point percentage in NBA history at 51%.

He’s not a perfect player by any means. The defensive foot speed, lack of athletic tools at his position as a three or four and finishing at the rim leave a lot to be desired.

With that being said, he’s scored in double digits every game this postseason. He’s shot above 50% in seven of the eight games and reliably played over 40 minutes in the Lakers’ first three contests against Houston to help upset the Rockets in the first round.

Being tagged as one of the best shooters in the league, or a “laser” as head coach JJ Redick calls it, is an extremely valuable piece, especially considering the needs around Luka this summer.

Hachimura is in the last year of a deal that will send him into unrestricted free agency. While they have his Bird rights, the Lakers have a ton of players to evaluate and are not in a position to let talent walk out the door without getting anything in return.

The grass could always be greener when it comes to wings in the NBA. No matter how this season ends, LA has one that’s shown to be a playoff riser, making for tough decisions to come this summer.

You can follow Raj on X at @RajChipalu

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Supreme Court is only way to end Trump’s control of midterms

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What if Trump tries to overturn election results while ignoring court orders? ‘I have such a hard time believing that would happen,’ one judge said. ‘But I think you have to consider the possibility.’

North Carolina will start sending out the first general election mail ballots on Sept. 4 for the Nov. 3 midterms. Whether the voters who use those types of ballots in that state and across the country get disenfranchised will likely soon be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump and his administration have been battling in federal court with voter rights groups and 24 states that are trying to prevent him from what clearly seems to be an unconstitutional federalization of our elections.

Trump, in an executive order in March, directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of eligible voters and then have the U.S. Postal Service develop rules about who can vote using mail ballots.

As always with Trump overreach, this has become a mess in every kind of way.

Trump is fighting a legal battle for control over mail-in voting

A federal whistleblower involved in the development of those rules has warned that they could cause “major disruptions” in voting and that the Trump administration seemed intent on hiding that, according to a letter to the Postal Service from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat.

And there is also a major legal problem with Trump’s executive order: The U.S. Constitution says states run elections, not the president. Trump can’t just decide he has a new power and then act on it.

That prompts three very serious questions. Will the conservative-heavy Supreme Court stop Trump? Will Trump follow judicial orders? And will the Republican-controlled House and Senate force Trump to obey the courts?

To sort out where this goes next, I spoke to three former federal judges from the Article III Coalition, a good-government effort from Keep Our Republic to preserve an independent judiciary.

Will the Supreme Court eventually stop Trump’s election antics?

Former Judge John E. Jones III, who was chief judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, predicted a swift return to the Supreme Court for Trump’s executive order.

Procedural issues prompted a majority of the Supreme Court justices on Aug. 24 to block a federal judge in Boston from temporarily pausing Trump’s executive order. But by week’s end, that judge’s temporary restraining order was back in place – and Trump’s administration was appealing it.

Jones told me he expects the federal courts at every level to find Trump’s executive order unconstitutional.

“I struggle to find a scenario where the Supreme Court does anything other than find that this is a violation of Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, in that these are executive agencies, and absent lawmaking by the Congress, the executive branch simply doesn’t have the authority to do this,” Jones said.

Retired Judge Liam O’Grady, who served in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, told me the Supreme Court might take control of the case directly, skipping over the appellate court, because the subject already reached the high court once and the midterms are looming.

“They may look at 60 days before an election and say, we now should decide this issue,” O’Grady said. “You would hope they would, because the states need direction.”

Former Judge Jeremy Fogel, who served in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was leery of handicapping the Supreme Court on this because the justices could have put an end to the executive order the first time it reached them.

“I think they’re sending ambiguous signals,” Fogel told me. “That may be just because you’ve got justices in a lot of different places.”

Trump has spent years fighting the US voting system

Jones, who was still a judge when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election in more than 60 court cases, said the federal judiciary had prepared back then for the potential wave of legal filings and will be ready again. And he pointed to recent controversies – aggressive federal agents demanding to inspect Wyoming’s primary election in August, the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County earlier this year – as potential harbingers for future cases.

“I think past is prologue, and given the administration’s repeated attempts to, in effect, federalize election administration, almost anything goes from this point on,” Jones said, adding that Trump is trying to drive a narrative that “elections are inherently fraudulent.”

O’Grady noted that the federal judge in Boston, while pausing Trump’s executive order with an Aug. 27 temporary restraining order, pointed out “that the government didn’t put in any evidence of fraud occurring in mail-in voting to substantiate the need to act so quickly.”

Fogel sees a Trump-led public influence campaign to question election integrity as a “coordinated effort to suppress the vote,” recalling how judge after judge in 2020 threw out Trump’s legal challenges for lack of evidence. He expects more of the same in November.

“I think it’s likely they’re going to use all of the levers available to prevent losing control of Congress,” Fogel said.

My last question for the judges worried Fogel: What if Trump tries to overturn the results of the midterm elections while ignoring court orders meant to stop that?

“I have such a hard time believing that would happen,” Fogel said. “But I think you have to consider the possibility that it might.”

Fogel and Jones saw two off-ramps for that kind of chaos.

For Fogel, it depends on “how much integrity” Trump’s Republican allies in Congress will show if he tries to defy court orders. Will Congress step in? “That’s the big question,” he said.

For Jones, he recalls the consequences that Trump’s attorneys faced for their actions in 2020. One big example: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led Trump’s 2020 legal challenges, was disbarred in 2024 for actions he took in that effort.

“Lawyers are going to have to think hard about whether they want to jeopardize, as we call in the trade, their ticket to practice law,” Jones warned. “I think lawyers are likely to be much more circumspect about diving into some of these potentially ill-considered cases because of the experiences in past elections.”

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.

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Tornado warning canceled in Burlington County, New Jersey, as severe storms hit Philadelphia region

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A tornado warning in Burlington County, New Jersey, was canceled Tuesday night as severe storms hit the Philadelphia region.

A severe thunderstorm watch for the Philadelphia region expired, but some severe thunderstorm warnings remain in effect for parts of the Delaware Valley.

Some of those storms will have heavy rainfall, gusty winds and frequent lightning. Heavy rain, damaging winds, hail, lightning, and even an isolated tornado are possible.

We are not yet at the point where you can shut down the air conditioning. In fact, it will likely be running quite a bit in the coming days.

NEXT big weather changes

The heat and storm chances will continue Wednesday and Thursday.

Storms will form each day and generally move from the northwest to the southeast as they ride around a large ridge of high pressure to the south.

Atmospheric conditions will be in place for severe storms at some point each day, but mainly through the afternoon and evening time frame.

All weather threats are possible across most of the region each day.

The ridge will slowly sink southward. By Thursday, a strong cold front will be able to cross the area and looks to start to push the threat for severe weather to the south, but it still includes Philadelphia and areas south.

The NEXT Weather team will be monitoring atmospheric conditions, and we’ll keep you updated with timing and impact throughout the week.

The good news is that the unsettled pattern looks to begin breaking down by Friday to make way for a relatively nice first weekend of September with highs near 80 degrees under partly cloudy skies and lower humidity levels.

Here’s your 7-day forecast:

Tuesday: NEXT Weather Alert for storms/heat. High 92

Wednesday: NEXT Weather Alert for storms. High 84, Low 73

Thursday: NEXT Weather Alert for storms/heat. High 90, Low 72

Friday: Showers south. High 87, Low 73

Saturday: Partly cloudy. High 82, Low 68

Sunday: Mostly sunny. High 79, Low 65

Monday: Mostly sunny. High 80, Low 61

NEXT Weather Radars

Hourly Forecast

Get the latest weather info on the CBS News Philadelphia app.

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‘Wheel of Fortune’ Announcer Jim Thornton Suspended

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‘Wheel of Fortune’
Announcer Jim Thornton Suspended

Published
September 1, 2026
2:05 PM PDT
|
Updated
September 1, 2026
4:08 PM PDT

Jim Thornton — the longtime “Wheel of Fortune” announcer — has been suspended by Sony Pictures Television Studios … TMZ has learned.

The studio tells TMZ … “We have recently been made aware of allegations concerning Jim Thornton. He has been suspended from Wheel of Fortune and we are recasting while we conduct a thorough investigation.”

Sony Pictures Television did not provide a reason for his suspension from the show.

However, we’ve learned the alleged incident arose while Thornton was on a commercial flight back in May, and a passenger complained to a flight attendant about Thornton.

Sources with direct knowledge tell us the pilot called ahead to have law enforcement meet Thornton when they arrived at the gate.

We’re told officers questioned Thornton — who was wearing a ‘Wheel’ jacket at the time — but he was eventually released.

American Airlines tells us, “On May 14, American Airlines Flight 1276 was met by law enforcement upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport following concerns reported by a customer onboard.”

Thornton joined ‘WoF’ in 2011 after the death of longtime announcer Charlie O’Donnell — who was with the show from 1975 to 1980 and 1989 to 2010.

While mostly heard and not seen on the program, Thornton did host one segment of a 2023 program when one of the contestants — a woman named Sarah Ward — wanted to meet him. Pat Sajak, then the host of the show, served as an announcer for the round.

Thornton also served as an announcer briefly on “The Price Is Right,” “The Soup,” and “The Cleveland Show.” He also lent his voice to Pixar for the classic animated movie “Monsters, Inc.” … serving as a commercial announcer in the flick.

We’ve reached out to Thornton … so far, no word back.

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