Editor's note: only the marquee game carries a Vegas line for now. Everything else on this slate is a viewing recommendation, not a pick. Full slate and start times live at watch.uristocrat.com.
Saturday is a stacked one. The last Fever-Liberty meeting of the regular season tips at 7pm ET in Brooklyn with playoff seeding on the line, fifteen MLB games run from early afternoon into the night, and the NFL closes out its preseason with ten games nobody will remember by Labor Day. Start with the basketball.
Marquee: Indiana Fever at New York Liberty, final regular-season meeting (7:00pm ET, Prime Video)
Indiana is 24-13 and New York is 22-15, so this one moves seeding. The Fever dropped a 95-91 game to Dallas on Thursday that ended a five-game winning streak, but Kelsey Mitchell went for 37 and extended her WNBA record to 21 straight games of 20-plus points. Caitlin Clark leads the league in assists at 8.3 and sits third in scoring at 21.7. New York has gone 9-3 since late July while missing Satou Sabally to concussion protocol, and Jonquel Jones rolled her left ankle Tuesday against Chicago, though she is expected to play. The Fever have won two of three in this series and the home team has taken every one of them, which is the whole argument for the number below.
Vegas line: New York -3.5, total 186.5, Liberty -148 / Fever +124 (DraftKings, via ESPN).
Also today
- Atlanta Braves at Milwaukee Brewers (2:10pm ET). The best record in baseball against a Braves team at 75-54 and still climbing. Milwaukee is 80-49 and has spent the summer daring the National League to catch up. This is the closest thing to an October preview on the board today.
- Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees (1:35pm ET). First pitch beats everything else today. The Yankees are 73-55, Toronto is 63-67 and running out of runway in the AL East. If the Jays are going to make August interesting, it starts in the Bronx.
- Tampa Bay Rays at Baltimore Orioles (7:05pm ET). Tampa is 76-52 and quietly one of the best teams in the league. Baltimore at 62-67 is playing out the string. Watch it for the Rays, not the standings.
- Chicago Cubs at Seattle Mariners (7:15pm ET, FOX). The Cubs are 74-55 and the national window is theirs. Seattle at 61-68 has been a disappointment all year, which makes this a showcase game for Chicago more than a matchup.
- Atlanta Dream at Phoenix Mercury (10:00pm ET). Atlanta is 23-13 and one of the better stories in the WNBA this season. Phoenix at 13-23 is not going anywhere, so this is a late-night look at a team that could make noise in the playoffs.
- Kansas City Chiefs at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7:30pm ET). Preseason Week 3, which means the starters play a series or two and then hand it over. Useful if you want a look at roster bubble guys before cuts. Not useful for much else.
The thread today is teams auditioning for what comes next. The Fever and Liberty are sorting out a playoff bracket, Milwaukee and Atlanta are measuring themselves against October, and the NFL is running its last dress rehearsal before anything counts. Full slate with start times is at watch.uristocrat.com.
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