76ers forward Paul George will miss the rest of the season to recover from his injuries

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76ers forward Paul George will miss the rest of the season to recover from his injuries

2025-03-18 06:57 Last Updated At：07:01

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Paul George will miss the rest of the season to recover from his injuries, ending a difficult first year in Philadelphia for the nine-time All-Star.

The 76ers announced Monday that George had received injections in his left adductor muscle and left knee, following consultations with specialists.

“Following the procedure, George is medically unable to play and will be out for at least six weeks,” the team said in its statement.

Philadelphia carried a 23-44 record into Monday night's game at Houston. Its last game of the regular season is on April 13.

George, who turns 35 on May 2, signed a $212 million, four-year contract in free agency last summer. But his first year in Philly was marred by injuries that resulted in the forward having one of the worst years of his NBA career.

He averaged 16.2 points in just 41 games, easily his lowest scoring average in a full season since he averaged 12.1 points for Indiana in his second NBA season.

The 76ers last month shut down center Joel Embiid so he can focus on treatment and rehabilitation of his left knee. Without George and Embiid, the 76ers potentially can lose more games down the stretch and increase their odds of keeping their first-round pick. The 76ers’ first-round pick is top-six protected or else it goes to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Sixers began the year with NBA championship hopes after signing George to pair him with fellow All-Stars Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. All three have missed chunks of time with injuries.

Coach Nick Nurse said it has been a disappointing season.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “You’ve got expectations, you’ve got some good players and we just don’t seem to have much luck health-wise. And it just never really ended.”

With Embiid’s return next season uncertain, the 76ers are stuck with a big, expensive problem with an unproductive George.

George — who averaged 20.8 points over his first 14 seasons — wanted to move on from the Los Angeles Clippers and declined a player option in his contract for $48.8 million in 2024-2025. That ended a five-year stretch with the team in which he averaged at least 21.5 points each season.

The Clippers’ attempt at winning it all with their Big Three of George, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden fell flat.

Somehow, it got worse in Philly with Embiid, George and Maxey.

The 76ers and team president Daryl Morey believed they hit the jackpot with George, a six-time member of the All-NBA Team. He’s a four-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team and was the league’s most improved player in 2013. He was a finalist for both NBA MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in 2019, when he led the league with 2.21 steals per contest.

George’s problems started in the preseason when he suffered a hyperextended left knee and missed the first five games of the season. He missed more games with injuries ranging from a bone bruise to tendon damage to the little finger on his non-shooting left hand to groin injuries. Nurse also rested George, who has never played in an NBA Finals, for some games.

“My biggest thing is ... we are where we are with it,” Nurse said. “And with him and with all the other guys too, as I mentioned the other night, it’s just getting them fixed up first and then healed up and back to being able to get working at their craft again and physically back 100 percent.”

George is owed an average of $54.1 million over the next three seasons, opening the possibility the 76ers could shop him in the summer. Yes, he’s old and expensive, but a contender could take a flyer on him that he might be a missing piece to a title team.

The 76ers would certainly listen to offers.

The 6-foot-8 George announced last month he was putting his Podcast P With Paul George on hiatus so he could focus on rehabbing his injuries and salvaging the Sixers’ season.

Now, the 76ers are playing to lose, and George can join his podcast on the sidelines.

AP Sports Writer Kristie Rieken contributed to this report from Houston.

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Trump says his administration is set to release JFK files with no redactions

2025-03-18 23:38 Last Updated At：23:40

DALLAS (AP) — President Donald Trump says files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy will be released Tuesday without any redactions, making good on a promise he made during his campaign.

Trump told reporters Monday that his administration will be releasing 80,000 files, though it’s not clear how many of those are among the millions of pages of records that have already been made public. He did not give further details on the release.

“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

He also said he doesn’t believe anything will be redacted from the files. “I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact,’” he said.

Many who have studied what's been released so far by the government say the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations from the newly released documents, but there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.

Here are some things to know:

Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.

He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration's top health official. He's the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle's assassination.

When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.

But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn't quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.

Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.

The National Archives says that the vast majority of its collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have already been released.

Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part. And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.

There are still some documents in the JFK collection that researchers don’t believe the president will be able to release. Around 500 documents, including tax returns, weren’t subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.

Some of the documents already released have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.

One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban Embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.

Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September. The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.