Poeltl: Dick a ‘completely different player’ after finding his game
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Western Conference Play-In Preview: Can Warriors and Lakers survive to make playoffs?
In what has become a tremendous appetizer before the main course that is the playoffs, the NBA Play-In tournament is here and the 2024 edition features the likes of LeBron James, Steph Curry, Zion Williamson and De’Aaron Fox.
That’s right, it’s a sign of the times that both James and Curry are duking it out in elimination games just to make the playoffs (again) and they’ll be going up against the generation that’s trying to put them to bed.
With the Lakers and Pelicans, these are two veteran teams when it comes to the Play-In, both clubs taking the scenic route to the post-season for a third time. The Warriors are in this position for a second time, while the Kings are making their Play-In debut.
Does that mean much in terms of how things will play out over the next few days? Probably not, but below is everything that should:
Western Conference: (7) New Orleans Pelicans vs. (8) L.A. Lakers @ 7:30 p.m. ET.
Season series: Lakers won 3-1.
- Dec. 7, 2023: Lakers won 133-89 (In-Season Tournament Semifinal)
- Dec. 31, 2023: Pelicans won 129-109
- Feb. 9, 2024: Lakers won 139-122
- Apr. 14, 2024: Lakers won 124-108
Betting line: Lakers +1.0 | Pelicans -1.0. O/U: 223.5.
PULSE ON PELICANS (49-33)
After posting a 26-21 record through the first half of the season, the Pelicans looked phenomenal over the next couple months with a 19-7 stretch that included 12 wins by double-digits. Look a little closer, though, and nine of those wins came against sub-.500 teams. Faced with a tough stretch at the end of March and early April, New Orleans lost five of six, including losses against the Thunder, Celtics, Suns, and Magic. The Pelicans also lost to the Spurs and the lone win came against a Bucks team that has been up and down since the hiring of Doc Rivers.
One of the intriguing changes the Pelicans made midway through the season was embracing ‘Point Zion’ and employing Williamson as the team’s defacto point guard while surrounding him with shooting. It left opposing defences with very few good decisions to make. The possibility of Williamson getting downhill courtesy screens up top or being able to find open shooters if there was too much help proved to be lighter fluid for the offence. Trey Murphy struggled through the all-star break but came to life thereafter, averaging 17.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.1 steals while making 3.5 threes a game at a 39.7 per cent clip.
In terms of vitals, the Pelicans finished ninth in offensive rating and fifth in defensive rating after the trade deadline. If you’re in the top 10 in both heading into the playoffs, you’re usually in good shape. That top-five defence is largely due to the team’s versatility, courtesy of rangy, switchable defenders like Herb Jones, Murphy, Naji Marshall, and a bit surprisingly, Williamson. He has generally struggled on the defensive end throughout his career but as his fitness has ramped up over the course of the season, so has his impact on that end of the floor.
PULSE ON LAKERS (47-35)
James said it best when he felt the Lakers were capable of beating anyone or losing to anyone on any given night. The Lakers looked locked in when winning the In-Season Tournament, have faded in and out otherwise including losing 10 of 15 games between December and January, and ramped up for the playoffs by winning 11 of its final 14 games.
You know what you’re getting with the Lakers. This is a team that looks to dominate inside, whether it’s Anthony Davis and James feasting in the paint on the offensive end or Davis protecting the rim on the other. D’Angelo Russell flipped the script on his season once his name became a fixture in trade rumours, rebounding from averaging just 10.2 points in December (including 32.7 per cent shooting from deep) to 22.7 points with 45.9 per cent three-point shooting in January and mostly sustaining that form the rest of the way.
Los Angeles ranked third in offence and 21st in defence after the trade deadline, the defence indicative of a team that has struggled for consistency in its habits all season. This is a team that went from the Play-In to the West Finals a year ago and so this may just be a group that knows how to flip a switch if and only when it wants to.
X-FACTORS
Brandon Ingram (Pelicans): It feels a bit strange to list a borderline all-star as an X-Factor, but Ingram has just returned from a 12-game absence due to a left-knee contusion and his reacquaintance with the Pelicans lineup in such a high-stakes scenario will be interesting to monitor. Averaging 20.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 5.7 assists, there’s no debating his value to this team but his potential rust and reintegration may be coming at the wrong time.
Rui Hachimura (Lakers): Hachimura has quietly been very good for the Lakers as a starter. He has averaged 16.2 points and 5.3 rebounds per game since the all-star break while shooting 56.4 per cent from the field including an eye-popping 45.1 per cent on threes. With him in the starting lineup alongside Russell, James, Austin Reaves, and Davis, the team has posted a plus-6.6 net rating. That may not jump off the page, but consider that the two previous most used lineups (one with Taurean Prince and another with Cam Reddish) were both net negatives.
KEY TO VICTORY
The one game the Pelicans won in this matchup during the regular season was with Russell injured and Reaves coming off the bench. The manner in which the Lakers won each of its three games suggests a near-perfect performance from New Orleans will be required, and that starts with neutralizing the battle at the rim while making a tonne of threes.
Williamson is yet to make his playoff debut while James is seeking to add to his legacy. How that matchup shakes out will also have a huge bearing on this contest.
Western Conference: (9) Sacramento Kings vs. (10) Golden State Warriors @ 22:00 p.m. ET
Season series: Tied 2-2.
- Oct. 27, 2023: Warriors won 122-114
- Nov. 1, 2023: Warriors won 102-101
- Nov. 28, 2023: Kings won 124-123
- Jan. 25, 2024: Kings won 134-133
Betting line: Warriors -2.5 | Kings +2.5. O/U: 223.5
PULSE ON KINGS (46-36)
Sacramento is in a sophomore slump as far as success is concerned. A year ago, they were the darlings of the NBA and lighting the beam was a league-wide celebration as the Kings came within one win of knocking off the then-defending champ Warriors in the first round. This season’s 46-win team is considered a disappointment after winning 48 games and clinching the third seed a year ago.
Such was the disregard for the Kings this season that both Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox were overlooked for all-star spots despite the former averaging 19.4 points, 13.7 rebounds, and 8.2 rebounds and registering 77 double-doubles in a season. He became the seventh player in league history to accomplish the feat and the first since Moses Malone in 1978-79. Sabonis also had a staggering stretch of 61 straight double-doubles.
The biggest sour spot on the Kings’ season are the injuries to Sixth Man of the Year candidate Malik Monk (ruled out until at least May 1 due to sprained MCL) and Kevin Huerter (out for play-in/playoffs due to shoulder surgery). The league’s best offence a year ago has dropped to 13th this season (post-trade deadline) though the defence has improved from 25th to 12th (post-trade deadline).
PULSE ON WARRIORS (46-36)
It’s a season that has tested the mental fortitude of Steph Curry like no other. Between Draymond Green’s tantrums, Klay Thompson’s decline, and Andrew Wiggins’ struggles, he has had to carry way too heavy a load for far too long this season. It resulted in some of the worst shooting slumps of his career and now he’s left having to extend himself further just to get into the playoffs.
While the stuff that’s gone wrong is easy to go on about, what has helped paper over the cracks is the play of Jonathan Kuminga, Brandon Podziemski, and Trayce Jackson-Davis. The answer to who leads the Warriors in plus/minus this season is not Curry or Green, it’s Podziemski. The rookie has an uncanny nose for the ball and just knows where to be on both ends of the floor. Jackson-Davis has made the struggles of Kevon Looney more muted while Kuminga’s rise to being a 20-point-per-game scorer has been desperately needed in the absence of vintage Thompson.
Coming back to the vitals, Golden State boasts the league’s eighth-best offence since the trade deadline and 11th-best defence. Those numbers aren’t reflective of your regular 10th seed and so this is a team that the Kings will be in tough against.
X-FACTORS
Draymond Green (Warriors): Green can always impact the game in special ways but he only played in 55 games this season largely due to a 12-game suspension for violently swinging at Jusuf Nurkic’s face. Instead of maturing with age, Green has only become increasingly volatile over time and his ability to stay on the court will be crucial to the Warriors’ chances of coming out of the Play-In.
Keegan Murray (Kings): One of the reasons the Kings haven’t continued from where they left off last season is because there’s been a sophomore slump within a sophomore slump. Despite averaging three more points per game, Murray is also taking three more shots as well while his three-point shooting has dipped from 41.1 per cent last season to 35.8 per cent this season. With the absences of Monk and Huerter, Murray needs to have a big night.
KEY TO VICTORY
In last season’s playoff battle, Sabonis averaged just 16.4 points while shooting less than 50 per cent from the field and 57 per cent from the free-throw line. If the Kings want to win this do-or-die battle, he must take the fight to Green. On the Warriors’ side of things, it comes down to Green, Thompson, and Wiggins being the best versions of themselves.
All signs from last year’s truly epic seven-game series and three games this season being decided by one point each suggest that this should be a classic. What could take away from it are the aforementioned injuries for the Kings, but ultimately the biggest key here may just come down to who has final possession of the basketball.
Try These Secret AirPods Pro 2 Features Now
The AirPods Pro 2 are some of the best wireless earbuds out there, and Apple has added plenty of new features in iOS 17 including Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness and Personalized Volume. We may see even more AirPods Pro 2 features announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10.
In the meantime, there are a bunch of lesser-known AirPods Pro 2 features you can try right now. I’ve been using the AirPods Pro 2 for over a year and a half, both the original model and the “new” version with USB-C charging that launched alongside the iPhone 15.
The best part? Some of these tips will work with earlier versions of AirPods and even AirPods Max headphones. Just make sure you’ve updated to the latest version of iOS 17.
Just some of the options you can access within the Hearing option in Control Center.
Hidden Control Center options
The Control Center is a quick way to access many AirPods settings. With your AirPods connected to your iPhone, press and hold the volume slider, and a list of options will appear underneath, such as noise control mode, conversational awareness and spatial audio toggles.
But there’s even more you can add to the Control Center with just two easy steps. First, add the Hearing option by going to Settings > Control Center. Then, go back to Settings > Accessibility > Hearing Control Center and tap the green plus icon next to any or all of the options, like Background Sounds and Live Listen. Background Sounds plays rain, ocean and other sounds like white noise in your earbuds to help you focus. You can learn more about the Live Listen feature below.
Now, swipe down to open the Control Center again, and you should see the Hearing icon that looks like an ear. You’ll be able to see the battery charge on your AirPods and control all the options you turned on in the previous step, like Live Listen.
Live Listen
Live Listen lets you amplify what your iPhone mic picks up and beam it right into your ears with any AirPods model. It’s primarily an accessibility feature, but you could potentially use it to listen in on what’s happening in a nearby room, say for example as an audio-only baby monitor.
This feature also lives within the Hearing option within the Control Center. Once you’ve turned it on, swipe down and tap the Hearing (ear) icon in Control Center, then Live Listen.
Watch this: Tips and Tricks for the AirPods Pro 2
Customize audio with Headphone Accommodations
Want to change the default sound profile on your AirPods? If you use Apple Music, you can start by adjusting the equalizer by going to Settings > Music > EQ. Other streaming apps like Spotify have their own equalizer tool you can customize to your liking.
Apple’s Headphone Accommodations options also let you tune your audio even more. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Headphone Accommodations. Now, you can choose between balanced tone, vocals or brightness, or boost soft sounds using the slider tool.
There are plenty of settings to adjust within Headphone Accommodations.
You can also add a custom audio setup within the Headphone Accommodations menu. Tap the custom audio option, then your AirPods will switch into noise-canceling mode, and you’ll be asked if you can hear the soft-spoken words. It will play two audio samples and you’ll choose which one you prefer.
Personalized spatial audio
Your iPhone’s TrueDepth camera is good for more than just FaceID. You can actually use it to get personalized spatial audio tuned to the shape of your ears.
Go to Settings > AirPods > Personalized Spatial Audio and then follow the instructions to set this up. You’ll be prompted to hold the phone in front of your face then turn your head left and right to map your ears. Now, make sure spatial audio is turned on from the Control Center, and try it out with supported movies and music.
Share audio with a friend
Remember the good old days of sharing music with a friend with wired earbuds? Here’s the 2024 version. Swipe down to open the Control Center, then tap the AirPods icon in the top right corner within the music playback box. Tap Share Audio.
Bring another pair of AirPods or Beats close by, open the lid, then press and hold the pairing button on the case. Follow the prompts on screen to connect this other pair to your phone, and you can jam out to the same songs.
Connecting another pair of AirPods Pro 2 to an iPhone to share audio.
Siri can describe pictures received in Messages
I’ve recently discovered Siri can describe photos received in the Messages app when I’m wearing AirPods Pro 2 and my phone is locked. For example, I was waiting for a bus one day, and Siri announced that my best friend sent a photo of a brown dog lying on a black and white checkered floor. I pulled out my phone to check, and Siri was spot on.
I haven’t found the magic trick that makes Siri do this with every single photo, but so far it’s worked on images of people and pets that are centered in the frame with a clear background. I’ve reached out to Apple for more information on this feature and will update this story with more detail.
To try to replicate this yourself, make sure “announce notifications” is turned on by going to Settings > Notifications > Announce Notifications, and that the Headphones option is also turned on. Scroll down further on this page to make sure the Messages app is turned on. Now, just get a friend to send you a photo — SMS and iMessages have both worked for me — to see if it works!
Unlock more AirPods settings with the Shortcuts app
The Shortcuts app on iPhone is a powerful tool for getting even more out of your AirPods. One of my favorite Shortcuts is having the AirPods automatically switch to my favorite settings every time they connect to my iPhone: noise canceling mode at 40% volume.
First, make sure your AirPods are in your ears and connected to your iPhone. Open the Shortcuts app > Plus icon > Add action. Here you’ll want to search for “set noise control mode” then tap the gray box that says “route.” Select the name of your AirPods from this menu, then choose your mode (in this example, that’s noise canceling.)
Next, you’ll want to add another action. In the “Search for apps and actions” bar, type “Set volume” and select it. Now, change the volume to 40% (or whatever volume you want). Give your Shortcut a snappy name, and tap Done.
My custom Shortcut (left) and the Automation (right).
Now let’s make this shortcut run automatically when you put the AirPods in your ears. Go to the Automations tab, tap New Automation and find Bluetooth. Where it says device, find the name of your AirPods, make sure “is connected” is on, then “run immediately.” Hit next, and then choose the Shortcut you just created. The next time you put your AirPods in your ears and they connect to your phone, this shortcut should run and you can test it out.
You can find out more about Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 and how they differ from AirPods 3 and find out about all the rumored iOS 18 updates we might get at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The Paris Olympics’ One Sure Thing: Cyberattacks
In his office on one of the upper floors of the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizing committee, Franz Regul has no doubt what is coming.
“We will be attacked,” said Mr. Regul, who leads the team responsible for warding off cyberthreats against this year’s Summer Games in Paris.
Companies and governments around the world now all have teams like Mr. Regul’s that operate in spartan rooms equipped with banks of computer servers and screens with indicator lights that warn of incoming hacking attacks. In the Paris operations center, there is even a red light to alert the staff to the most severe danger.
So far, Mr. Regul said, there have been no serious disruptions. But as the months until the Olympics tick down to weeks and then days and hours, he knows the number of hacking attempts and the level of risk will rise exponentially. Unlike companies and governments, though, who plan for the possibility of an attack, Mr. Regul said he knew exactly when to expect the worst.
“Not many organizations can tell you they will be attacked in July and August,” he said.
Worries over security at major events like the Olympics have usually focused on physical threats, like terrorist attacks. But as technology plays a growing role in the Games rollout, Olympic organizers increasingly view cyberattacks as a more constant danger.
The threats are manifold. Experts say hacking groups and countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran now have sophisticated operations capable of disabling not just computer and Wi-Fi networks but also digital ticketing systems, credential scanners and even the timing systems for events.
Fears about hacking attacks are not just hypothetical. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, a successful attack nearly derailed the Games before they could begin.
That cyberattack started on a frigid night as fans arrived for the opening ceremony. Signs that something was amiss came all at once. The Wi-Fi network, an essential tool to transmit photographs and news coverage, suddenly went down. Simultaneously, the official Olympics smartphone app — the one that held fans’ tickets and essential transport information — stopped functioning, preventing some fans from entering the stadium. Broadcast drones were grounded and internet-linked televisions meant to show images of the ceremony across venues went blank.
But the ceremony went ahead, and so did the Games. Dozens of cybersecurity officials worked through the night to repel the attack and to fix the glitches, and by the next morning there was little sign that a catastrophe had been averted when the first events got underway.
Since then, the threat to the Olympics has only grown. The cybersecurity team at the last Summer Games, in Tokyo in 2021, reported that it faced 450 million attempted “security events.” Paris expects to face eight to 12 times that number, Mr. Regul said.
Perhaps to demonstrate the scale of the threat, Paris 2024 cybersecurity officials use military terminology freely. They describe “war games” meant to test specialists and systems, and refer to feedback from “veterans of Korea” that has been integrated into their evolving defenses.
Experts say a variety of actors are behind most cyberattacks, including criminals trying to hold data in exchange for a lucrative ransom and protesters who want to highlight a specific cause. But most experts agree that only nation states have the ability to carry out the biggest attacks.
The 2018 attack in Pyeongchang was initially blamed on North Korea, South Korea’s antagonistic neighbor. But experts, including agencies in the U.S. and Britain, later concluded that the true culprit — now widely accepted to be Russia — deliberately used techniques designed to pin the blame on someone else.
This year, Russia is once again the biggest focus.
Russia’s team has been barred from the Olympics following the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, although a small group of individual Russians will be permitted to compete as neutral athletes. France’s relationship with Russia has soured so much that President Emmanuel Macron recently accused Moscow of attempting to undermine the Olympics through a disinformation campaign.
The International Olympic Committee has also pointed the finger at attempts by Russian groups to damage the Games. In November, the I.O.C. issued an unusual statement saying it had been targeted by defamatory “fake news posts” after a documentary featuring an A.I.-generated voice-over purporting to be the actor Tom Cruise appeared on YouTube.
Later, a separate post on Telegram — the encrypted messaging and content platform — mimicked a fake news item broadcast by the French network Canal Plus and aired false information that the I.O.C. was planning to bar Israeli and Palestinian teams from the Paris Olympics.
Earlier this year, Russian pranksters — impersonating a senior African official — managed to get Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president, on the phone. The call was recorded and released earlier this month. Russia seized on Mr. Bach’s remarks to accuse Olympic officials of engaging in a “conspiracy” to keep its team out of the Games.
In 2019, according to Microsoft, Russian state hackers attacked the computer networks of at least 16 national and international sports and antidoping organizations, including the World Anti-Doping Agency, which at the time was poised to announce punishments against Russia related to its state-backed doping program.
Three years earlier, Russia had targeted antidoping officials at the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. According to indictments of several Russian military intelligence officers filed by the United States Department of Justice, operatives in that incident spoofed hotel Wi-Fi networks used by antidoping officials in Brazil to successfully penetrate their organization’s email networks and databases.
Ciaran Martin, who served as the first chief executive of Britain’s national cybersecurity center, said Russia’s past behavior made it “the most obvious disruptive threat” at the Paris Games. He said areas that might be targeted included event scheduling, public broadcasts and ticketing systems.
“Imagine if all athletes are there on time, but the system scanning iPhones at the gate has gone down,” said Mr. Martin, who is now a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
“Do you go through with a half-empty stadium, or do we delay?” he added. “Even being put in that position where you either have to delay it or have world-class athletes in the biggest event of their lives performing in front of a half-empty stadium — that’s absolutely a failure.”
Mr. Regul, the Paris cybersecurity head, declined to speculate about any specific nation that might target this summer’s Games. But he said organizers were preparing to counter methods specific to countries that represent a “strong cyberthreat.”
This year, Paris organizers have been conducting what they called “war games” in conjunction with the I.O.C. and partners like Atos, the Games’ official technology partner, to prepare for attacks. In those exercises, so-called ethical hackers are hired to attack systems in place for the Games, and “bug bounties” are offered to those who discover vulnerabilities.
Hackers have previously targeted sports organizations with malicious emails, fictional personas, stolen passwords and malware. Since last year, new hires at the Paris organizing committee have undergone training to spot phishing scams.
“Not everyone is good,” Mr. Regul said.
In at least one case, a Games staff member paid an invoice to an account after receiving an email impersonating another committee official. Cybersecurity staff members also discovered an email account that had attempted to impersonate the one assigned to the Paris 2024 chief, Tony Estanguet.
Millions more attempts are coming. Cyberattacks have typically been “weapons of mass irritation rather than weapons of mass destruction,” said Mr. Martin, the former British cybersecurity official.
“At their worst,” he said, “they’ve been weapons of mass disruption.”
Sabres fire head coach Don Granato after playoff drought hits 13 years
The Buffalo Sabres have fired head coach Don Granato, one day after the 13th consecutive season without a post-season appearance came to an end.
The Sabres also dismissed assistant coach Jason Christie and video coordinator Matt Smith.
“I would like to thank Don for his time in Buffalo and commitment to the Sabres organization,” said general manager Kevyn Adams. “He has been integral in the development of many of our players and has undoubtedly been the right coach to bring us to where we are now, but I felt it was necessary to move in a different direction at this point in time. My expectation is to be a consistent contender and unfortunately that goal has not been met.”
Buffalo closed the season with a win over the Lightning on Monday, but missed the playoffs with a 39-37-6 record.
Granato, 56, was promoted to interim head coach from assistant coach in March 2021 when the Sabres fired Ralph Krueger.
The interim tag was removed prior to the 2021-22 season. The Sabres made a 16-point leap in 2022-23 with a young, talented roster, but couldn’t duplicate that success this season.
Granato broke into the NHL coaching ranks as an assistant with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2017. Previously, he was head coach of the U.S. National Team Development Program and an assistant for the Wisconsin men’s NCAA team.
The Sabres have had a revolving door in the coaching office under owner Terry Pegula. Granato is the seventh head coach the team has had since Pegula purchased the Sabres in 2011.
AirPods Pro foam tips from KeyBudz improve sound and usability
Today, KeyBudz is releasing its new HyperFoam Tips for AirPods Pro users, claiming it can offer “ultimate comfort” while taking advantage of AirPods crystal clear sound.
The company says that the HyperFoam tips distinguish itself as the only memory foam that integrates ComfortCore, a patented flexible sound bore designed to adapt to ear shape and size variations. While Apple offers four different ear tips with AirPods Pro 2, and we loved the sound of these earbuds in our AirPods Pro 2 review, not all users feel they fit perfectly in their ears. But KeyBudz thinks it can change that with these new foam tips.
KeyBudz HyperFoam features heat adaptive foam tips that conform to the shape of your ear for a soft feel while delivering clear, crisp audio quality and blocking out any unwanted outside noise. All of that comes without ear fatigue or foam degradation.
Key features of this new foam tip for AirPods Pro users include:
- Custom-fit: The ComfortCore integrates a patented, flexible audio tube crafted from German Kraiburg ThermoPlastic Elastomer, contouring to your inner ear for a customized fit and great acoustic seal.
- Pillowy soft: Heat adaptive foam gently expands and molds to your ear to ensure a snug but comfortable fit without ear fatigue.
- Listen longer with no ear fatigue: Created with a proprietary BASF formulation, HyperFoam offers extended listening sessions while delivering clear, crisp highs and deep, rich lows, guaranteeing unmatched clarity.
- Secure grip: Nanocoated to enhance comfort, ear retention, and secure grip compared to basic silicone tips.
This new foam tip for AirPods Pro is compatible with both generations 1 and 2, so you can upgrade your AirPods and continue using these foam tips. The KeyBudz HyperFoam ear tips are available in three sizes (small, medium, and large) on Amazon for $29.95. A three-pack of single sizes is coming in the near future.
U.S. to Limit Deadly Mining Dust as Black Lung Resurges
Federal regulators on Tuesday will issue new protections for miners against a type of dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments — changes recommended by government researchers a half-century ago.
Mining companies will have to limit concentrations of airborne silica, a mineral commonly found in rock that can be lethal when ground up and inhaled. The new requirements will affect more than 250,000 miners extracting coal, a variety of metals, and minerals used in products like cement and smartphones. Tuesday’s announcement is the culmination of a tortuous regulatory process that has spanned four presidential administrations.
Miners have paid dearly for the delay. As progress on the rule stalled, government researchers documented with growing alarm a resurgence of severe black lung afflicting younger coal miners, and studies implicated poorly controlled silica as the likely cause.
“It should shock the conscience to know that there’s people in this country that do incredibly hard work that we all benefit from that are already disabled before they reach the age of 40,” said Chris Williamson, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is issuing the rule. “We knew that the existing standard was not protective enough.”
The new requirements are to be announced by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su at an event in Pennsylvania Tuesday morning. They come eight years after a sister agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, issued similar protections for workers in other industries, such as construction, countertop manufacturing and fracking.
Both mine safety advocates and industry groups generally support the rule’s central change: halving the allowed concentration of silica dust. But their views on the rule, proposed last July, diverge sharply over enforcement, with mining trade groups arguing that the requirements are unnecessarily broad and costly, and miners’ advocates cautioning that companies are largely left to police themselves.
The dangers of breathing finely ground silica were evident almost a century ago, when hundreds of workers died of lung disease after drilling a tunnel through silica-rich rock near Gauley Bridge, W.Va. It remains one of the worst industrial disasters in U.S. history.
In 1974, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal research agency, recommended reducing the existing limits on silica in the air workers breathed. For years, the report languished.
The agency reiterated its recommendation in 1995, and a Labor Department advisory committee reached the same conclusion the following year. Both also advised overhauling the existing enforcement for coal mines — a complicated arrangement in which regulators tried to control silica levels by reducing dust overall.
In 1996, work began on a rule to empower regulators to police levels in coal mines. The effort was later broadened to include lowering the silica limit for all miners, but it repeatedly stalled during George W. Bush’s, Barack Obama’s and Donald J. Trump’s presidencies.
In interviews, the heads of the agency during the Clinton and Obama administrations described a mix of politics, industry opposition and competing priorities that impeded progress on a silica rule. Both said they had prioritized a separate rule to regulate overall dust levels in coal mines, which also took years to complete and was finalized in 2014.
“I regret that we didn’t get many things done, and silica is one of those,” said Davitt McAteer, who ran the agency from 1994 to 2000.
Joe Main, who led it from 2009 to 2017, said his agency had planned to draw on work by O.S.H.A., which also faced lengthy delays before issuing its 2016 silica rule. “But the clock ran out on our administration,” he said.
Meanwhile, after years of declining rates of black lung, caused by breathing coal and silica dust, rates of the severe form of the disease had surged. In the 1990s, less than 1 percent of central Appalachian miners who had worked at least 25 years underground had this advanced stage of illness. By 2015, the number had risen to 5 percent.
Because of changes in mining practices, workers were cutting more rock, producing more silica dust. The effects began showing up on chest X-rays and in tissue samples taken from miners’ lungs. Clinics in Appalachia began seeing miners in their 30s and 40s with advanced disease.
“Each of these cases is a tragedy and represents a failure among all those responsible for preventing this severe disease,” a team of government researchers wrote in a medical journal in 2014.
While the rule to be issued Tuesday adopts the limit recommended in 1974, some miner-safety advocates worry that its benefits will be undercut by weak enforcement. The regulations largely leave it to mining companies to collect samples showing they are in compliance, despite evidence of past gamesmanship and fraud. Miners have described being pressured to place sampling devices in areas with far less dust than where they actually worked, leading to artificially low results.
Mr. Williamson said his agency protects miners who blow the whistle on unsafe conditions and works with the Justice Department to pursue criminal cases if they learn of sampling fraud.
Industry groups, meanwhile, argued after the rule was proposed that it was too strict. They asked the agency to scale back the sampling requirements and allow greater flexibility in approaches to reducing dust levels.
The provisions remained mostly unchanged in the final rule.
Companies mining materials other than coal have expressed particular concern about the cost of a new program requiring them to provide free periodic medical exams to workers. A similar program already exists in coal mining.
Mr. Williamson defended the program as a key way for miners to track their health and for researchers to track disease.
The rule’s effectiveness may not be clear for years, as lung disease can take time to develop. Mr. McAteer and Mr. Main said they were dismayed by the recent resurgence of disease and expressed regret that they had not enacted a silica rule.
“We could have done more,” Mr. Main said. “I wish we did more.”
NHL business booming ahead of Stanley Cup playoffs
NEW YORK (AP) — Arenas are full, the NHL is a fixture on TV screens across North America, highlight-reel goals are talking points on a near-daily basis and “The Pat McAfee Show” even has a segment called “Hockey is Awesome.”
Piece it all together, and more eyes are on the puck than ever before with the playoffs beginning this weekend.
Business is booming for the NHL, which has bounced back in a major way from the pandemic. Backstopped by new media rights deals, digital dasher boards and helmet and jersey ads, and buoyed by an overlap of generational stars, ratings are up, attendance is on track for a record and revenue is at an all-time high — an estimated $6.2 billion annually.
“The league is going through a bit of a renaissance,” said Tom Gargiulo, chief marketing officer at Bodyarmor, whose deal to be the NHL’s official sports drink is the latest sponsorship agreement inked in recent years. “This sport is moving into the next phase of its evolution and is on a tremendous trajectory.”
Commissioner Gary Bettman says it starts with the game on the ice, which he believes has “never been more exciting, more competitive, more skillful, never been faster.” There are nearly six goals a game on average, and while Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin are still producing, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Nathan MacKinnon are in their prime with another wave of talent led by the likes of Connor Bedard not far behind.
NEW FANS
Showcasing star players better than before in the team-first sport has helped. League officials are quick to credit ESPN and Turner for buying in, and viewership is up 7% for the most-watched NHL season on cable in 30 years.
“We’ve seen an influx and a growth of female fans, diverse fans,” senior VP of North American business development Kyle McMann said. “They’re finding our product, they’re falling in love with it, they’re starting to watch more.”
Trying new things, including puck and player tracking and cartoon versions of games to draw in younger fans, has set the table for this success. Decades since the experiment of the glowing puck, experts credited the league for attracting and retaining a bigger audience in a crowded sports marketplace.
“They keep doing stuff that’s innovative to keep their audience engaged,” said Lauren Anderson, director of the Warsaw Sports Business Center at the University of Oregon. “The NHL could’ve fallen back on being pretty traditional, and I think they haven’t been afraid to try some things and pivot even when it didn’t work.”
Salvatore Galatioto, who runs a sports finance and advisory firm and is a marketing professor at Columbia, said the league has done a good job reaching beyond traditional markets, overcoming some of the unavoidable shortcomings of being expensive to play.
“It’s not rocket science: It’s the number of eyeballs watching your product,” he said. “They have done a really good job of expanding their fanbase, and that’s the key.”
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SELLING THE GAME
Chief NHL Content Officer Steve Mayer has made that his life’s work since joining in 2016, coming up with new and different ways to present a more-than-century-old sport, from the 2020 playoff bubble to outdoor games and a reimagined All-Star weekend.
“We’re not here to change the game,” Mayer said. “We’re here to enhance what is out there and to get it in front of more people because we know that if people watch our game, they’re going to fall in love with it.”
Central to the game are the players, and none of this would be possible without a constructive working relationship with the NHL Players’ Association, which may be at its most cooperative stage in decades. The league and union found common ground in extending the collective bargaining agreement through 2026, getting back to the Olympics and launching another international competition next year featuring the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland.
“It’s a key to moving forward,” union executive director Marty Walsh said. “When I first started, I had a conversation with Gary Bettman, and our teams talked about working together and growing hockey-related revenue, growing the sport. … We’re all vested in one direction.”
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WORK TO DO
The NHL still has work to do to catch up with the NFL ($18.6 billion in revenue in 2022), NBA ($10.6 billion) and Major League Baseball ($11.6 billion), but it’s not unrealistic to think $10 billion is attainable before the end of the decade.
“We plan on getting there — how and when, obviously, will take some time,” chief business officer Keith Wachtel said. “Looking at hockey a bit differently than perhaps it was looked at a decade ago. It’s still the ultimate team sport, but we have such great players and personalities.”
One challenge is getting fans who are focused on their own team to watch others. There’s evidence that is also starting to turn, with Bedard (Chicago) and Artemi Panarin (New York Rangers) jerseys the highest-selling this season and good ratings even when Canadian teams are on national television in the U.S.
Executive VP Marketing Brian Jennings, who has been at the NHL for 33 years, said there is no shortage of people “knocking on the door” to get in on the boom.
“The constellation of those stars have aligned,” Jennings said. “When we look at our glide path and say, ‘Hey, how bright is the future?’ It’s really bright.”
