Comment on GENE PHELPS: No surprise, really, in either Final Four trip

MIAMI – You can’t spell Miami Heat without meh. Which is exactly where Erik Spoelstra’s team stands at the midpoint of the 82-game regular-season schedule, at 21-20. And you can’t find the 2024-25 Miami Heat without looking all the way down to – once again – the play-in portion of the Eastern Conference standings. So, no, everything is not fine at midseason. Because as much as anything, you can’t have a read on where this is headed over the second half of the schedule until you find out where Jimmy Butler is headed. Yes, there was intrigue in Sunday’s victory over the San Antonio Spurs with Spoelstra relenting and playing Bam Adebayo and Kel’el Ware together for an extended stretch for the first time. But that also came in a game Butler scored eight points. Against the Spurs, you can win with eight-point Jimmy Butler. Against the top of the East, you cannot. But that’s also the rub, because by body language and “no comment,” it remains clear that Butler wants out.

By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press CONCORD, N. H. (AP) — Cecile Richards, a national leader for abortion access and women’s rights who led Planned Parenthood for 12 tumultuous years, has died. She was 67. Richards died Monday at home “surrounded by family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie,” her family said in a statement. “Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives,” the family said. FILE – Cecile Richards, former President of Planned Parenthood and daughter of the late Texas Gov.

By ZEKE MILLER, COLLEEN LONG and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Minutes before leaving the presidency, Joe Biden pardoned his siblings and their spouses, saying Monday that his family had been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics.” “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” he said as his presidential term was ending. The family pardons were the surprise finale in a series of unprecedented presidential actions by the Democrat, who has been known as an intuitionalist during his half-century in politics. Biden also pardoned Dr.

By COLLEEN LONG and ZEKE MILLER, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Just moments before leaving office, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents. Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and wasn’t eligible for parole again until 2026.

By JEFF MARTIN, Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — A massive 70-member choir belted out “Hallelujah” to open a Martin Luther King Jr. Day service Monday at his former congregation in Atlanta, followed by a stern message from his youngest daughter warning against anti-woke rhetoric. The service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta was among the most prominent commemorations of King planned across the country Monday.

By GEOFF MULVIHILL, AYANNA ALEXANDER and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, Associated Press President Donald Trump will sign executive orders Monday rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government in what he described in his inauguration speech as a move to end efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” Both are major shifts for the federal policy and are in line with Trump’s campaign promises. One order would declare that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. The definition will be based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes.