A brawl in the NBA, plus early Olympic highlights

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.

Good morning! I have no comment on the king cake baby discussion roiling the food world. Inside this email: 

Fight! Four ejected after melee

We must start this morning in Charlotte, where we saw a full NBA skirmish last night. It came in a gritty 110-104 Pistons win over the streaking Hornets, sparked by a hard foul by Charlotte forward Moussa Diabaté on Pistons center Jalen Duren. Here’s the feistiest moment from the ensuing melee:

Diabaté, Duren, Charlotte’s Miles Bridges (seen instigating above) and Detroit’s Isaiah Stewart (seen rushing in to respond to Bridges) were all ejected. 

Read more on the brawl here. Let’s go overseas:

Games Time: We’re at full tilt already

We are into the brunt of the Olympics schedule, which means there are quite literally more events happening than we can recap in here. Some top-line stories from a busy day yesterday in Milan: 

• Canadian hockey superstar Marie-Philip Poulin left early in Canada’s 5-1 win over the Czech Republic, casting a pall on her country’s medal hopes and on the biggest rivalry in the sport. Poulin, 34, is widely accepted as the best player in women’s hockey. Her potential absence from today’s game against Team USA is unthinkable. Read more on the incident here.
  
  
• In what may be my favorite story from the Olympics thus far, German ski jumper Philipp Raimund won gold. Raimund has never even won a World Cup title and is a first-time Olympian. The wildest part? He withdrew from an event last year due to his fear of heights. And now he’s winning a gold medal in ski jumping. Incredible stuff.
  
  
• On the slopes, a rivalry lived up to its hype. Swiss skier Mathilde Gremaud beat China’s Eileen Gu in the women’s freeski slopestyle to win gold in the same event where she bested Gu in 2022. The story of Gremaud’s journey between those victories is remarkable. 

We have a full Day 3 recap here. Let’s stick with the Olympics for a second:

News to Know

The medals are breaking again
Two summers ago, Olympic medals from Paris lost their shine, quite literally, as the varnish started to degrade in hundreds of medals before the Games even ended. This year, the Winter Olympics already have a medal problem: The medals are detaching from their ribbon with just the slightest bit of jostling, as evidenced by multiple winners losing their medals while celebrating. Just look at this, via German biathlete Justus Strelow:

Maybe we should strive to make Olympic medals that don’t fall apart immediately. See more embarrassing evidence here.

Medvedev’s ball-shape ire
After the first set of his match at the Rotterdam Open yesterday, Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev launched into a tirade about the ball used by the tournament, the Head Tour XT ball, claiming it was “not round.” Medvedev, the No. 4 seed in the tournament, lost his match against Ugo Humbert, too. His quotes were golden. Read them here.

More news:

• YouTube TV announced a sports-focused monthly subscription at a discounted price. Read more.
  
• No. 1 Arizona’s undefeated season is no more after losing at No. 9 Kansas last night — without Jayhawks star freshman Darryn Peterson playing.
• The Celtics assigned Jayson Tatum to their G League affiliate to continue his Achilles rehab. I still can’t believe we’re already talking about his return. See the full update.
  
• A judge ruled Alabama forward Charles Bediako, who had made appearances in the G League before returning to school three years later, is ineligible for college basketball. Read our full story.
  
• Red Sox manager Alex Cora, born and raised in Puerto Rico, told reporters yesterday that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show moved him to tears.
  
• The NYU women’s basketball team won its 82nd straight game last night. It’s obviously a record.
  
• A blast from the past: The Chargers hired Adam Gase, a two-time NFL head coach who’s been out of the league since 2021, as an offensive assistant.

📰 Find more news here 24/7.

Watch Guide

📺 Olympics: Full slate
3:15 a.m. ET on NBC/USA/Peacock
Once again, we have a big day. There are medal events in cross-country skiing, alpine skiing, short-track speed skating, freestyle skiing, biathlon, mixed doubles curling, luge and ski jumping. Canada and the United States also play a women’s hockey preliminary game at 2:10 p.m. ET. See the full schedule. 

📺 EPL: Newcastle at Tottenham Hotspur
2:30 p.m. ET on Peacock
Both of these big-name clubs haven’t had the season they imagined, as Newcastle manager Eddie Howe is facing questions about his future, while Tottenham has to entertain legitimate thoughts of relegation. See who comes out of the scrap heap here. 

📺 NCAAM: No. 13 Purdue at No. 7 Nebraska
7 p.m. ET on FS1
If you haven’t caught the juggernaut Nebrasketball yet, give this a look. Reminder that Indiana is great at football and Nebraska is great at basketball now. This is a fun game.

Get tickets to games like this here.

Pulse Picks

Chris Goduto / Getty Images

I would read anything about Pat Spencer, the Warriors newcomer whose rise to the NBA was fueled by “going apes—.” Read this story from Nick Friedell today and try not to love that guy. 

Was Drake Maye’s Super Bowl nightmare a blip or an exposé? Make time for this Michael Silver column from San Francisco, which was so well done. 

A fun bit I enjoyed from the Super Bowl: Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald being interviewed by NBC’s Maria Taylor on stage after the game. The pair went to high school together. 

David Betancourt might’ve had the best Super Bowl assignment, though, as he watched Bad Bunny’s halftime show in Puerto Rico. Read his dispatch. 

Miles Teodecki had a decision to make in an ice storm. After the clouds parted, he became a rare breed: a Power 4-level recruit who chose to play Ivy League football. I loved this story. 

Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon is not enjoying himself at the Olympics, and that’s on purpose. This will make you even more excited for Olympic hockey. 

Our MLB staff is asking for your opinions on the state of the sport. Answer their questions here. 

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Jake Ciely’s ranking of Super Bowl commercials. 

Most-read on the website yesterday: Brittany Ghiroli’s great story on Amber Glenn’s mixed emotions in her Olympic gold win.

📫 That’s all for now! Say hello at thepulse@theathletic.com, and check out our other newsletters.