What’s New

This has been a year of tremendous changes at the top for Chicago theaters, with Susan V. Booth taking over at the Goodman after Bob Falls’s 35 years as artistic director and Braden Abraham, formerly the artistic director for Seattle Rep, poised to take over as AD at Glencoe’s Writers Theatre in February. Cody Estle, formerly the AD for Raven Theatre, just moved to Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee; a search for his successor will be underway shortly. And we’re awaiting news for who will be replacing Chicago Shakespeare founder and artistic director Barbara Gaines (who plans to depart mid-2023) and longtime executive director Criss Henderson, who leaves at the end of this year.

Redtwist Theatre is also making some staff changes. Founded in 1994 as Actors Workshop Theatre by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Colucci and Jan Ellen Graves, they changed their name to their current moniker in 2001 and moved to their storefront home at 1044 W. Bryn Mawr (smack-dab in the center of the Bryn Mawr Historic District and just down the street from City Lit Theater) a year later. The company has mostly focused on American classics (Arthur Miller and Edward Albee have been particular favorites) alongside contemporary writers like Lucas Hnath and Lauren Gunderson. 

Colucci and Graves stepped aside in 2019 and Charlie Marie McGrath took over as AD—just in time for the COVID-19 shutdown to put a screeching halt to live theater. McGrath steered the company into virtual productions and helped pave the way for reopening shows after COVID, but she too decided to step aside in May of 2022. 

Longtime ensemble member Brian Parry has served as interim artistic director for the past few months, but now the board has announced that Dusty Brown will be the new AD. Brown, a nonbinary director from Atlanta whose resume includes work with Georgia Shakespeare and Georgia Ensemble Theatre, has an MFA in directing from Ohio University and directed Macbeth for Three Crows Theatre at Redtwist earlier this fall. 

Brown will be joined by Eileen Dixon as community director and Michael Dias as development director. Dixon’s background includes acting and directing with a particular focus on new play development, and Dias is an actor and mime with deep experience in independent production. 

Redtwist will be announcing its next season shortly. 

Steep Theatre wins major city grant

Big news for another Edgewater theater company: Steep Theatre, which lost its longtime rental home on Berwyn Avenue in 2020, and then bought a former Christian Science reading room down the street, has been awarded the largest grant in the company’s 21-year history—a $2.988 million Community Development Grant from the City of Chicago.

The funds will help the company build out what is currently a pretty raw space in their new venue into a black-box theater and enhance public space for community engagement projects. (The company ran the Boxcar, a bar and performance space adjoining their former home, and frequently made that space available for other artists and neighborhood organizations for a couple of years before losing their lease.)

In a press release, Steep’s artistic director Peter Moore said, “We recognize that this is an investment not only in our company, but in our Edgewater community and our theatre community, which has been hit so hard these last two years by the pandemic. We take those responsibilities very much to heart. Chicago isn’t Chicago without its theatre, and we’re proud that our city recognizes theatre as both an indispensable cultural asset and an undeniable economic catalyst.”

Steep is also searching for a new executive director; Kate Piatt-Eckert, who held that role for nine years, left the company last month.

Jenn Freeman (Po’Chop) in Litany. Freeman is one of five Chicago artists receiving a fellowship from Dance/USA this year. Credit: Jordan Phelps

Chicago artists recognized by Dance/USA

Each year, Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance, awards fellowships to artists. This year’s cohort recognizes 30 artists “representing an array of modalities rooted at the intersection of social and embodied practices. These include community-building and culture-bearing practices, healing and storytelling practices, activism and representational justice practices, and more.”

Of those 30, five are based in Chicago: footwork artist Jemal “P-Top” Delacruz; Jenn Freeman, also known as Po’Chop; cat mahari; Vershawn Sanders-Ward; and Anna Martine Whitehead.

Delacruz cofounded The Era footwork crew in 2014, and (among many other accolades) he received a National Dance Project Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts in 2019. 

Freeman’s work has focused on elements of storytelling, striptease, and dance, and she’s also the creator of the digital zine The Brown Pages. She’s collaborated on video projects with Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville and also created the dance-film series Litany in association with Rebuild Foundation.

Afrofuturism, body history, and exploring the “informal legacy of Blk liberation through documentation” are intertwined parts of mahari’s practice. A past recipient of the 3Arts Award in dance, along with other awards, one of mahari’s current projects, Blk Ark: the impossible manifestation, is “a multimodal reflective of marronage, anarchism, Hip Hop, and play to be completed [in] 2025.” 

Sanders-Ward, the founding artistic director of Red Clay Dance Company, has also received numerous plaudits for her company’s work. In 2019, Red Clay opened its own community studio space in Woodlawn. Her upcoming site-specific choreographic project set to premiere in June 2023, Rest.Rise.Move.Nourish.Heal, was also selected for a 2021 National Dance Project Award from New England Foundation.

Martine Whitehead’s work, both collaborative and solo, has “‘embodied epistemologies of Black in FORCE! an opera in three acts, created with Ayanna Woods, Angel Bat Dawid, and Phillip Armstrong, the waiting room of a prison provides the setting for a piece that, as Martine Whitehead says, is “a structure for resourcing ourselves to dream of a world beyond the prison-industrial complex and all its impoverished tentacles that reach into our lives and make it almost or actually impossible to live.” 

Each artist receives a $30,167 grant from Dance/USA (provided in partnership with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) to be used at their discretion.

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There’s conflict, grief, helplessness, loss, and also joy, camaraderie, and loyalty that inhabit artist Roman Villarreal’s south-side neighborhood and, consequently, the work he’s made there. All of this is on display in his first retrospective, “South Chicago Legacies,” at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.  

Villarreal grew up in the Bush neighborhood on the southeast side, among steelworkers, of which he was one, and gang members, of which he was also one. He started his art practice in the army during the Vietnam War by making drawings and selling them to fellow soldiers. Villarreal served his term without getting deployed to Vietnam, a fate that few men in his community shared. In fact, his parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is believed to have suffered the highest per capita death rate of men sent to war during that era. This was the first of two devastations that would mark his community worse off; the second was the closure of the steel mills.

In the years following the war, Villarreal started sculpting what he saw on the streets out of material he salvaged. In the late 1970s, he constructed The Rainbow Lounge, the oldest piece on display at Intuit. It’s a three-dimensional wooden panel painted in bright acrylics that depicts a band performing at the eponymous hangout. The women’s lips flash bright red lipstick, the men’s carry heavy handlebar mustaches. It’s warm and jovial. As Villarreal told me, “You have to show the good and the bad.”

The decade that followed The Rainbow Lounge brought national tragedy, and many of Villareal’s 1980s works chosen for display deal straight-forwardly with drug abuse, addiction, and a community in mourning. Side-by-side paintings They Die On The Throne and Habits show a man with a needle in his hand and a woman with a bottle to her lips, respectively. Though to reduce these paintings to drug awareness PSAs would be a huge disservice. They imbue the space with its most glaring displays of color—colors were associated with gangs and were very important to the community, Villarreal told me—and showcase his skill with acrylics.

“The way I see it, we were this middle-class neighborhood while the steel mills were open,” he says. “Then came the closures and the downfall. So now we have this whole generation that grew up during a time when all they saw was a middle-class neighborhood falling through the cracks—it hasn’t been the same since.” Villarreal bore witness to it all: “Vietnam, death, fatherhood, closures, and the street art movement…” he says, skimming through a half-century’s worth of history in a few seconds. He consolidates it all as naturally as he might give his address. He knows the stories well because he’s spent his life telling them. 

Roman Villarreal (American, b. 1950). The Parade, early 2000s. Acrylic on foam, 12 x 6 x 35 in. Courtesy of the Villarreal Family. Credit: Joseph “Fugie” Almanza

“I tell people I’m an urban anthropologist,” he says. “All I’m doing, really, is showing you my experiences from the 80s, 90s, [and so on]. I have to make sure there’s an even balance. I don’t only want to show bad, because it’s not only bad.” A painting from the 1990s, Porch, shows his signature blocky figures—friends, kids, pets—gathered on the front steps of a house, drinking beer, listening to music, and enjoying the weather. He adds: “They’re all wearing gang sweaters.” Villarreal lived on a block called “the beehive” where a lot of Latin Kings, the gang he belonged to, also lived. All summer they got together on porches before “the bloody 90s,” as he puts it. “Then we all moved to the backyards.” The painting itself holds all of these aspects: the love, the warmth, the moment, as well as the loss, the violence, the change. 

Porch wasn’t, in fact, meant to be viewed. It was a sketch for a clay piece. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned. An alabaster sculpture called Dogs (2019) started out as a lion and her cubs. He hadn’t even finished it when Intuit’s exhibition curator Alison Amick decided they wanted it in the show. “You never know what people are going to see in your work,” he says and seems genuinely interested in the various ways that the show could have played out. 

Intuit is dedicated to outsider art, but the museum has the hardwood floors and white walls of any West Town gallery. When the exhibition opened in June of this year, Villarreal says he was “really, really surprised to see it all together in that space.” Villarreal was used to seeing his work in group shows or outdoors (his two most well-known sculptures, a mysterious mermaid at 41st street beach and a steelworker and his family at Steelworkers Park, live in public spaces). 

Villarreal left the steel mills in the late 1980s and has been making art full-time ever since. He proudly identifies as an outsider artist; his auto-didacticism granted him a freedom that he doubts he’d have found by studying art in an institution. He attempts to describe the freedom that he feels when he’s working, fumbling around with the words before settling on: “There’s nothing as beautiful as a blank canvas.” He works almost every day, sketching and painting when it’s cold, sculpting when it’s warm. Between his three studios, he has 900 works. 

There are drawbacks to his outsider position, though. Namely, what happens to the art after the show closes or, ultimately, once the artist dies. There aren’t established places for preservation in the outsider art world, let alone continued sales. “We don’t have a traditional outlet, there’s a lot to learn from trial and error. Technique, how to promote work, how to network. But we’ll learn to survive,” he says. And isn’t that the truth. 

“Roman Villarreal: South Chicago Legacies” Through 1/8/23: Thu-Sun 11 AM-6 PM, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, (312) 624-9487, art.org

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Brian Windhorst and a team of ESPN Insiders sort out life and the news from in and around the NBA world.

NBA owners quietly made a move last month that has potentially big ramifications.

A few weeks ago, the Board of Governors approved a rule change that allows sovereign wealth funds to buy stakes in teams in addition to other institutional funds, such as endowments and pension funds, a change first reported by Sportico and confirmed by ESPN.

This opens a door for something not seen in American sports: an arm of a foreign government buying into a league. Such investments are not permitted in other major U.S. leagues — at least not yet.

Under the just-adopted policy, a foreign fund could buy up to 20% of a team. Any such transaction would be subject to significant vetting, league sources said. Such a situation calls to mind the nine-month approval process the NBA put former Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov through before he became the first foreign controlling owner in 2009.

The new guidelines restrict sovereign funds, which are broadly found in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, to so-called “passive” ownership, meaning for now they can’t become controlling owners. This is a significant position change. And it comes on the heels of the NBA taking preseason games to Abu Dhabi for the first time in October, an event that now has a more transparent underlying purpose.

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The league also recently opened a brick-and-mortar store in the United Arab Emirates, a relatively small but symbolic choice of expanding the relationship there.

Currently the world sports team market is flooded with expensive properties on offer. The Los Angeles Angels are for sale. American-owned English soccer powerhouses Liverpool FC and Manchester United are for sale. The Washington Commanders are for sale. And, of course, so are the Phoenix Suns.

When these big-brand franchises find buyers in the near future, there is likely going to be a run of record-setting sales. Sovereign funds are seen as possible bidders in one or both English soccer teams. And the NBA is signaling it could follow suit.

With team values potentially reaching historic levels — there is a belief within league leadership a potential Suns sale will break the $3 billion barrier — the reality is there might be a shallower pool of individual buyers at such price points, team sales advisers told ESPN.

There remain some interested billionaires in such a market. There was a group of bidders willing to go to the $4 billion mark on the recently sold Denver Broncos, and none were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has since been linked to a possible bid for the Commanders. There were also multiple American groups that bid for Chelsea FC, which sold for more than $5 billion to a group led by Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Lakers co-owner Todd Boehly.

But to keep franchise values on the rise, the NBA knows it might need to look further for deeper-pocketed entities. It’s one of the central mandates for commissioner Adam Silver, who has made seeking new revenue streams a central part of his decadelong tenure.

Silver was a first-mover when it came to the gambling space. He announced a reversal of the NBA’s long-standing position against sports betting in an op-ed in The New York Times more than three years before the Supreme Court ruled to legalize it. He was first among major sports to move to have teams sell jersey patch ads.

And the NBA was first to allow private equity funds to buy into teams. Opening that window in 2020 has led to a shift as dozens of partial team owners liquidated their shares when values jumped. Three NBA-approved funds — Arctos Sports Partners, Dyal Homecourt and Sixth Street — own pieces of seven different teams. Two of the funds, for example, own about a quarter of the Sacramento Kings. Last year, Arctos paid more than $400 million for 8% of the Golden State Warriors, moving its share in the team to 13%.

Now Silver and the NBA are aiming to be the first American league to tap into the ocean of sovereign wealth, a segment that has hugely increased the values of European soccer clubs.

The funds from the Middle East have been pouring billions into soccer teams for roughly the past 15 years. Abu Dhabi was the leader, bankrolling the 2008 purchase of English club Manchester City behind royal family member Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sovereign wealth funds and their various subsidies have been buying shares of teams across the continent ever since the Qatari Royal Family’s purchase of Paris soccer giant PSG in 2011.

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In the past year, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has poured hundreds of millions into buying English club Newcastle United and backing LIV Golf, which pulled some of the world’s best players off the PGA Tour with massive guarantees. Now, the Saudis are reportedly chasing the 2030 World Cup.

The Qatari Investment Authority is deeply involved in global soccer ownership and funded the current hosting of the World Cup. The Kuwait Investment Authority and Mumtalakat Holding Company, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, also have sports investments and have been rumored to be looking for more.

Currently there are no sales to sovereign funds that the league has under review, sources said. But the league and its owners aren’t doing this in a vacuum, they have a reason.

Dealing with pension funds and endowments isn’t new territory. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan was the primary owner of the Toronto Raptors for 14 years, and the team is now primarily owned by two media companies. The New York Knicks, Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers were owned by corporations (the Knicks still are, though owned by MSG Sports, which is controlled by the Dolan family).

Whether this is the beginning of a new era in NBA ownership, as it certainly was in European football, isn’t possible to ascertain now. But there’s no question this step is opening opportunities to a new world of nearly endless money.

NBA reporter Tim Bontemps catches up with the Miami Heat, who are oozing confidence despite their place in the standings:

Erik Spoelstra: ‘Our record is probably deceiving’

The Heat are two games under .500 following Monday’s 101-93 loss to the shorthanded Memphis Grizzlies. But it isn’t felt it in the locker room, where confidence remains.

Last season the Heat were doubted for much of the year, even as they sat at the top of the East standings, and were considered underdogs all the way until the last moments of Game 7 of the conference finals when only a missed Jimmy Butler 3-pointer kept them from the Finals.

So judgment of their sluggish start isn’t sticking.

“You got to think about it,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said with a smirk. “We were No. 1 in the East [last season], and people didn’t even pay us any mind.

“Then being where we’re at now, they’re definitely not talking about us.”

The “now” Adebayo was referring to was an hour after Miami pulled off an overtime victory over the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics last Friday. Regardless of some up-and-down play so far, there was belief emanating from the Heat after that statement win.

“We never lost confidence in this group, in ourselves,” Butler said. “We know what we’re capable of. We just have to go out and prove it. We’re not worried about anybody else, just the guys in our locker room and coaching staff, ownership, management. We have a long way to go, but we can get there.”

Bam Adebayo (15 points) and the Heat lost to Memphis on Monday, dropping Miami to 11-13. Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports

None of this is to say this Heat team is perfectly built. Caleb Martin (6-foot-5) has carved out a solid career for himself, but being deployed as Miami’s starting power forward has left the Heat vulnerable to size upfront.

They’ve quietly been hurt by the loss of big man Omer Yurtseven, forcing Dewayne Dedmon into a much bigger role. Victor Oladipo, whom the Heat believed was healthy enough to give a one-year, $11 million deal to last summer, has yet to play in a game because of injury.

Butler missed seven games because of knee soreness before returning for Friday’s win, Lowry has had to take on a massive minutes load, and the Heat still haven’t successfully replaced P.J. Tucker.

And, for those who doubt this team has what it takes to be a factor, look no further than Monday night. After having two days off between games, and with Memphis missing Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr. and John Konchar, among others — the Heat got handled by the Grizzlies in what was far from the kind of follow-up Miami wanted.

But there are reasons Miami has consistently won with rotating casts of characters for more than a quarter century. It still has team president Pat Riley. It still has coach Erik Spoelstra. It still has Butler, Adebayo, a resurgent Lowry and Tyler Herro — a quartet Spoelstra has dubbed Miami’s “big four.”

And, after their projected starting lineup took the court together for just the eighth time this season Friday in Boston, the Heat still have the internal belief that, if they’re healthy come playoff time, they can go toe-to-toe with anyone.

“Our record is probably deceiving to everybody on the outside,” Spoelstra said. “[But] we have something good going on.”

Here is Warriors reporter Kendra Andrews on the team’s surprising two-way savior:

In like a lion, balling out like a Lamb

Anthony Lamb didn’t make the preseason trip to Japan with the Warriors. He didn’t even know he had made the team until a couple of days before the season, when he signed his fourth two-way contract in less than two years.

But when the Warriors were looking for solutions for their early-season sputter — which saw them start the season 3-7 — Lamb became an unexpected yet essential part of the defending champs’ roster. The undrafted wing out of Vermont has since become one of the league’s best early-season stories.

This is the week where all of the chaos gets started. The 2022 MLB Winter Meetings are in full effect, and there is plenty of news to discuss in the Windy City. For the Chicago White Sox, some of the recent news includes a big name currently on the roster.

Over the past two seasons, Liam Hendriks has been one of the best closers in all of baseball. The 33-year-old pitcher has been named an American League All Star two years running, and three out of the last four years.

Now, it appears as though the White Sox could end up parting with their star arm.

During the Winter Meetings this week, MLB insider Mark Feinsand has learned that Hendriks’ name has come up in trade discussions, which would be somewhat of a surprise considering the veteran has a specific no-trade clause in his contract.

A trade involving closer Liam Hendriks would be a surprising move for the Chicago White Sox.

Regarding his no-trade clause, Hendriks would be able to veto a potential deal to up to five teams. But, why would the White Sox make such a move? This is a team that’s been to the postseason in two of the last three seasons, after all.

Going into this last season, the White Sox had high hopes and were a World Series favorite to some, before disaster ensued. Still, the roster is chock full of talent at certain positions and, if healthy, the team could absolutely make some noise in 2023.

As has been rumored in past weeks, the Sox will likely prioritize trades over free agent signings this offseason. So, a Hendriks trade wouldn’t be off the table entirely.

If the Sox did indeed trade Hendriks, though, they could get quite the haul for him. As one of the league’s best closers, Hendriks is also under team control through 2024. So, he would be far from just a short-term type of acquisition. Many times, especially during the season and right before the trade deadline, there are deals made for players who end up being a half-season rental for World Series hopefuls.

But, that’s not the case here with Hendriks. Any team that trades for him will have his services for a minimum two years.

That fact, in and of itself, would mean the White Sox could get a huge return for him. If Chicago were to have a backup plan in the wake of a Hendriks trade, their roster and future could look far different after landing a haul like they’d receive in that deal.

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The Chicago Bears are one of the worst teams in the National Football League. The Green Bay Packers are also bad but they have just a little bit more than the Bears in the year 2022. The difference is that the Bears are bad on purpose and the Packers are bad on accident.

Chicago came into this year knowing that they wanted a top-five pick and to develop their quarterback. 2023 is when they hope to start turning the tide in the NFC North Division. So far, they are looking like they will accomplish that goal.

As for Green Bay, they came in with Aaron Rodgers on back-to-back MVPs. They were expecting to try and get one more Super Bowl out of him and his Hall of Fame career but they have been brutal.

Okay, the Packers came back and won a game against the Bears in Chicago. Now they have five wins and are well below the playoff line with five weeks left in the season. They are a terrible team with a long rebuild ahead of them.

The Chicago Bears didn’t change their vision for the Green Bay Packers game.

The Bears lost this game but that doesn’t change the outlook for the future. Would it be nice to beat the Packers? Yes. Of course. However, it would be even nicer to draft a better player than them in the 2023 NFL Draft instead of losing stock over a meaningless game for both teams.

Nobody will remember this loss. They will remember that Justin Fields looked great for most of the game and the impact that this season had on the future of the organization. There are a few players coming out of the draft that would make this team better right away.

Would you like to see Fields avoid two interceptions down the stretch of the game when they were trying to win it? Yes. However, one pick was a bad route run and one was him trying to make a play to win the game late. If he had better protection and receivers, he wouldn’t have been in that situation.

Now, the Bears enter the bye with a chance to get some people (including Fields) healthy. They are 3-10 and have a really good chance of getting a high-value draft pick.

With the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills coming up, that stock will only continue to rise (you’d think). This loss to Green Bay was more bad than good. Draft night can’t come soon enough.

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The 2022 MLB Winter Meetings are in full effect, which means the rumor mill is swirling. Finally, it seems as though things could be on the upswing for the Chicago Cubs.

With movement already happening around the league, the Cubs and their fan base are simply wondering whether or not the front office will be allowed to spend enough dough to improve the team.

It has been too many seasons in a row of mediocre play, and shipping talent off to other organizations. Now, it should be the Cubs’ time.

And, if these last couple of days are any indication, the Cubs are going to be spending some cash. This is, indeed, the Cubs’ time to improve the roster. According to NBC Chicago’s David Kaplan, multiple sources have confirmed the thought that the Cubs will be spending major money.

Finally, the Chicago Cubs fan base can get excited about improving and not dismantling a roster. The Cubs appear ready to spend money.

The big position of need for the Cubs this offseason is at shortstop, which you’ll find in the majority of rumors revolving around the team over the past few weeks. Already, the shortstop market is seeing movement.

The rich get richer, as they say, and the Philadelphia Phillies were able to swoop in and sign one of the Cubs’ primary targets in shortstop Trea Turner. Now, the Cubs will likely turn their attention to a couple of other big names on the shortstop market.

According to MLB insider Mark Feinsand, the Cubs could end up doing something a little unorthodox, but exciting.

Feinsand tweeted on Monday night that the Cubs are looking at signing multiple top names on the shortstop front, most likely Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson. As Feinsand noted, the Cubs would be following a similar move that the Texas Rangers made last offseason when they signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.

The Cubs, then, would try and convince Bogaerts to move to third base.

At that point, Chicago would have landed two of the top free agent prizes early in the swing of this busy part of the offseason.

Additionally, let’s not forget the Cubs are also mentioned in the Carlos Correa sweepstakes.

Will any of these things happen? We’ll have to wait and find out. But, the good news is, the Cubs are set to spend big this offseason. Finally, we won’t have to deal with the frugality of the Ricketts.

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The Chicago Blackhawks have been one of the worst teams in the NHL over the course of this season. They have won one game out of their last ten and are now 7-13-4 on the season.

That is good for 18 standings points which is good for 31st out of 32 in the league. Only the Anaheim Ducks have fewer points.

Surprisingly, the Hawks went 1-1 over the weekend in New York. They found a way to beat the New York Rangers by a final score of 5-2.

A night later, the New York Islanders absolutely destroyed the Blackhawks. The final score was only 3-0 but Arvid Soderblom kept them in the game even though they were outshot 40-21. The Hawks showed how bad of a hockey team they were in that game.

The Chicago Blackhawks have a very big test ahead of them on Tuesday.

Now, they have to play against the team near the top of the NHL standings in the New Jersey Devils. That is a team that is fast, skilled, and extremely smart. At 20-4-1, they are tied for the league lead the league with 41 standings points.

This is a team that is mostly led by their top three forwards. Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Nico Hischier are all above point-per-game which has helped New Jersey rank near the top of goal-scoring.

Their top defensive pair of Dougie Hamilton and Jonas Seigenthaler leads a very good group of blueliners. Behind them, is some really good goaltending from Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid so the Hawks would really need to bring their best in order to win the game.

In order to match New Jersey’s game, you need to match their speed and intensity which is very hard to do. When they get a power play, the big three go to work and it is very difficult to contain. It is just as fast at even strength too which is going to be an issue.

Guys like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane know what it is like to play against a team like New Jersey because they used to play on a team just like New Jersey. Hischier’s game resembles that of Toews and Hughes’s game is pretty similar to Kane’s from the middle of the ice.

Regardless of the result, you can probably expect a very entertaining game between the two teams and there are going to be some goals scored. If the Hawks aren’t smart, however, this is the type of team that can make it ugly quickly.

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Brian Windhorst and a team of ESPN Insiders sort out life and the news from in and around the NBA world.

NBA owners quietly made a move last month that has potentially big ramifications.

A few weeks ago, the Board of Governors approved a rule change that allows sovereign wealth funds to buy stakes in teams in addition to other institutional funds, such as endowments and pension funds, a change first reported by Sportico and confirmed by ESPN.

This opens a door for something not seen in American sports: an arm of a foreign government buying into a league. Such investments are not permitted in other major U.S. leagues — at least not yet.

Under the just-adopted policy, a foreign fund could buy up to 20% of a team and purchase stakes in up to five teams. Any such transaction would be subject to significant vetting, league sources said. Such a situation calls to mind the nine-month approval process the NBA put former Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov through before he became the first foreign controlling owner in 2009.

The new guidelines restrict sovereign funds, which are broadly found in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, to so-called “passive” ownership, meaning for now they can’t become controlling owners. This is a significant position change. And it comes on the heels of the NBA taking preseason games to Abu Dhabi for the first time in October, an event that now has a more transparent underlying purpose.

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The league also recently opened a brick-and-mortar store in the United Arab Emirates, a relatively small but symbolic choice of expanding the relationship there.

Currently the world sports team market is flooded with expensive properties on offer. The Los Angeles Angels are for sale. American-owned English soccer powerhouses Liverpool FC and Manchester United are for sale. The Washington Commanders are for sale. And, of course, so are the Phoenix Suns.

When these big-brand franchises find buyers in the near future, there is likely going to be a run of record-setting sales. Sovereign funds are seen as possible bidders in one or both English soccer teams. And the NBA is signaling it could follow suit.

With team values potentially reaching historic levels — there is a belief within league leadership a potential Suns sale will break the $3 billion barrier — the reality is there might be a shallower pool of individual buyers at such price points, team sales advisers told ESPN.

There remain some interested billionaires in such a market. There was a group of bidders willing to go to the $4 billion mark on the recently sold Denver Broncos, and none were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has since been linked to a possible bid for the Commanders. There were also multiple American groups that bid for Chelsea FC, which sold for more than $5 billion to a group led by Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Lakers co-owner Todd Boehly.

But to keep franchise values on the rise, the NBA knows it might need to look further for deeper-pocketed entities. It’s one of the central mandates for commissioner Adam Silver, who has made seeking new revenue streams a central part of his decadelong tenure.

Silver was a first-mover when it came to the gambling space. He announced a reversal of the NBA’s long-standing position against sports betting in an op-ed in The New York Times more than three years before the Supreme Court ruled to legalize it. He was first among major sports to move to have teams sell jersey patch ads.

And the NBA was first to allow private equity funds to buy into teams. Opening that window in 2020 has led to a shift as dozens of partial team owners liquidated their shares when values jumped. Three NBA-approved funds — Arctos Sports Partners, Dyal Homecourt and Sixth Street — own pieces of seven different teams. Two of the funds, for example, own about a quarter of the Sacramento Kings. Last year, Arctos paid more than $400 million for 8% of the Golden State Warriors, moving its share in the team to 13%.

Now Silver and the NBA are aiming to be the first American league to tap into the ocean of sovereign wealth, a segment that has hugely increased the values of European soccer clubs.

The funds from the Middle East have been pouring billions into soccer teams for roughly the past 15 years. Abu Dhabi was the leader, bankrolling the 2008 purchase of English club Manchester City behind royal family member Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sovereign wealth funds and their various subsidies have been buying shares of teams across the continent ever since the Qatari Royal Family’s purchase of Paris soccer giant PSG in 2011.

In the past year, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has poured hundreds of millions into buying English club Newcastle United and backing LIV Golf, which pulled some of the world’s best players off the PGA Tour with massive guarantees. Now, the Saudis are reportedly chasing the 2030 World Cup.

The Qatari Investment Authority is deeply involved in global soccer ownership and funded the current hosting of the World Cup. The Kuwait Investment Authority and Mumtalakat Holding Company, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, also have sports investments and have been rumored to be looking for more.

Currently there are no sales to sovereign funds that the league has under review, sources said. But the league and its owners aren’t doing this in a vacuum, they have a reason.

Dealing with pension funds and endowments isn’t new territory. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan was the primary owner of the Toronto Raptors for 14 years, and the team is now primarily owned by two media companies. The New York Knicks, Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers were owned by corporations (the Knicks still are, though owned by MSG Sports, which is controlled by the Dolan family).

Whether this is the beginning of a new era in NBA ownership, as it certainly was in European football, isn’t possible to ascertain now. But there’s no question this step is opening opportunities to a new world of nearly endless money.

NBA reporter Tim Bontemps catches up with the Miami Heat, who are oozing confidence despite their place in the standings:

Erik Spoelstra: ‘Our record is probably deceiving’

The Heat are two games under .500 following Monday’s 101-93 loss to the shorthanded Memphis Grizzlies. But it isn’t felt it in the locker room, where confidence remains.

Last season the Heat were doubted for much of the year, even as they sat at the top of the East standings, and were considered underdogs all the way until the last moments of Game 7 of the conference finals when only a missed Jimmy Butler 3-pointer kept them from the Finals.

So judgment of their sluggish start isn’t sticking.

“You got to think about it,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said with a smirk. “We were No. 1 in the East [last season], and people didn’t even pay us any mind.

“Then being where we’re at now, they’re definitely not talking about us.”

The “now” Adebayo was referring to was an hour after Miami pulled off an overtime victory over the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics last Friday. Regardless of some up-and-down play so far, there was belief emanating from the Heat after that statement win.

“We never lost confidence in this group, in ourselves,” Butler said. “We know what we’re capable of. We just have to go out and prove it. We’re not worried about anybody else, just the guys in our locker room and coaching staff, ownership, management. We have a long way to go, but we can get there.”

Bam Adebayo (15 points) and the Heat lost to Memphis on Monday, dropping Miami to 11-13. Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports

None of this is to say this Heat team is perfectly built. Caleb Martin (6-foot-5) has carved out a solid career for himself, but being deployed as Miami’s starting power forward has left the Heat vulnerable to size upfront.

They’ve quietly been hurt by the loss of big man Omer Yurtseven, forcing Dewayne Dedmon into a much bigger role. Victor Oladipo, whom the Heat believed was healthy enough to give a one-year, $11 million deal to last summer, has yet to play in a game because of injury.

Butler missed seven games because of knee soreness before returning for Friday’s win, Lowry has had to take on a massive minutes load, and the Heat still haven’t successfully replaced P.J. Tucker.

And, for those who doubt this team has what it takes to be a factor, look no further than Monday night. After having two days off between games, and with Memphis missing Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr. and John Konchar, among others — the Heat got handled by the Grizzlies in what was far from the kind of follow-up Miami wanted.

But there are reasons Miami has consistently won with rotating casts of characters for more than a quarter century. It still has team president Pat Riley. It still has coach Erik Spoelstra. It still has Butler, Adebayo, a resurgent Lowry and Tyler Herro — a quartet Spoelstra has dubbed Miami’s “big four.”

And, after their projected starting lineup took the court together for just the eighth time this season Friday in Boston, the Heat still have the internal belief that, if they’re healthy come playoff time, they can go toe-to-toe with anyone.

“Our record is probably deceiving to everybody on the outside,” Spoelstra said. “[But] we have something good going on.”

Here is Warriors reporter Kendra Andrews on the team’s surprising two-way savior:

In like a lion, balling out like a Lamb

Anthony Lamb didn’t make the preseason trip to Japan with the Warriors. He didn’t even know he had made the team until a couple of days before the season, when he signed his fourth two-way contract in less than two years.

But when the Warriors were looking for solutions for their early-season sputter — which saw them start the season 3-7 — Lamb became an unexpected yet essential part of the defending champs’ roster. The undrafted wing out of Vermont has since become one of the league’s best early-season stories.

Chicago four-piece C.H.E.W. played D-beat hardcore with the intensity of a house fire. It has to be tough to maintain that level of energy, focus, and combustibility, and when C.H.E.W. called it quits in 2021, I was thankful we’d gotten to enjoy them for as long as six years. Earlier this year I noticed that three-fourths of C.H.E.W.—bassist Russell Harrison, drummer Jonathan Giralt, and guitarist Benyamin Rudolph—had formed a new band called Stress Positions with vocalist Stephanie Brooks. In May, the band self-released their debut EP, Walang Hiya, and local punk label Open Palms Tapes issued it on cassette in July. Stress Positions barrel through most of these songs at such blistering speeds that they almost become airborne, leaving scorch marks on the ground. Giralt’s dense, thundering drumming ignites the band’s riffs and gives them their core character—they’re relentless and frantic, though they can jump from pulverizing to swinging like flicking a light switch. Stress Positions are as loud as you’d expect—Rudolph’s seesawing guitars alone can fill a room—but Brooks’s voice is somehow even louder, so that her sharp holler punctures the avalanche of noise like a giant spike. On the slow-churning “Unholy Intent,” her scream shoots into its hoarse extremes, embodying the vitriolic power that Stress Positions unlock together.

Stress Positions Ganser headline. Thu 12/8, 9 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $18, $15 in advance, 21+

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Chicago four-piece C.H.E.W. played D-beat hardcore with the intensity of a house fire. It has to be tough to maintain that level of energy, focus, and combustibility, and when C.H.E.W. called it quits in 2021, I was thankful we’d gotten to enjoy them for as long as six years. Earlier this year I noticed that three-fourths of C.H.E.W.—bassist Russell Harrison, drummer Jonathan Giralt, and guitarist Benyamin Rudolph—had formed a new band called Stress Positions with vocalist Stephanie Brooks. In May, the band self-released their debut EP, Walang Hiya, and local punk label Open Palms Tapes issued it on cassette in July. Stress Positions barrel through most of these songs at such blistering speeds that they almost become airborne, leaving scorch marks on the ground. Giralt’s dense, thundering drumming ignites the band’s riffs and gives them their core character—they’re relentless and frantic, though they can jump from pulverizing to swinging like flicking a light switch. Stress Positions are as loud as you’d expect—Rudolph’s seesawing guitars alone can fill a room—but Brooks’s voice is somehow even louder, so that her sharp holler punctures the avalanche of noise like a giant spike. On the slow-churning “Unholy Intent,” her scream shoots into its hoarse extremes, embodying the vitriolic power that Stress Positions unlock together.

Stress Positions Ganser headline. Thu 12/8, 9 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $18, $15 in advance, 21+

Read More