The NBA's $125M real estate mogul | Best- and worst-case free-agency scenarios

Also: College football win totals

SportsMoney Playbook

BASEBALL

The Rays will face several legal hurdles if they actually try to split their season between the Tampa area and Montreal. Another issue to consider: how to keep players happy as their tax bills rise.

For this weekend's Yankees-Red Sox series in London, Major League Baseball has to build a baseball diamond on top of a soccer field. That requires 10,201 square meters of field green, 2,426 square meters of field terra cotta and 450 square meters of turf, all of which has been shipped from France.

COLLEGE SPORTS

UConn's move to the Big East means even more challenges for the American Athletic Conference. Jim Boeheim is pretty excited, though.

Nearly two dozen college programs had athletes picked in each of the NFL, MLB and NBA drafts, but only one school had a first-round selection in all of them.

TENNIS

Winning a tournament isn't as lucrative as it might seem. John Isner, a Forbes contributor and the world's 12th-ranked player, lists the expenses of a pro player in this detailed accounting. (One expense he forgot: the laundry bills to keep those Wimbledon outfits nice and white.)

Wimbledon is on the hunt for its first Chinese champion.

SOCCER

Fox Sports has been using IBM's Watson to create highlight reels for its Women's World Cup broadcasts.

Barcelona has made it clear it wants Neymar back in the fold. But a deal doesn't make sense for the club for a number of reasons.

Featured Stories

The NBA's Unlikely Real Estate Mogul: Inside Luol Deng's Towering $125 Million Portfolio

Luol Deng has been in the NBA for 15 years, and all along he's been playing a completely different game: building a $125 million real estate portfolio. Deng, learning from mentors like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, began by investing in East Africa and London in 2004 and has since pivoted to U.S. real estate, investing in hotels, resorts, condos and apartments through his company, D3N9. A reunion with Derrick Rose in Chicago is in the works, too—just not on the Bulls. The pair are on the verge of closing a deal to acquire 23 buildings for $25 million. For more on how Deng pads his portfolio, read the full story here.

NBA Free Agency Preview: The Best-Case And Worst-Case Scenarios For All 30 Teams

Free agency has the potential to drastically shift the balance of power across the NBA this summer, and with the dominoes set to begin falling on Sunday, the league faces a slew of big questions: Will Kawhi stay, or will Kawhi go? Will Klay Thompson's and Kevin Durant's injuries dampen their markets? Will the 76ers bring back Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris? (With limited cap space, do they even want to? Or should they consider a sign-and-trade instead?) Will the Bucks be able to keep their core intact, or will Khris Middleton prove too expensive? Will the Knicks strike out on their big-name targets and have to build around R.J. Barrett? Forbes.com's SportsMoney contributors weighed in on those questions, and more; check out the best-case and worst-case scenarios for each NBA team.

Hot Reads

Tipsheet

9.5

There is plenty to like about Tom Herman’s Texas Longhorns after they went 10-4 last year, with all three of their regular-season losses coming by 5 points or fewer. But sportsbooks have pegged their 2019 win total at 9.5—can they get to 10 victories again after losing a ton of experience?

Number To Watch: Sportsbooks expect the Oklahoma Sooners to win either 10 or 10.5 games this college football season. The program has averaged 10.75 wins over the last four regular seasons.

Last week, we highlighted the 3-1 odds that the new-look Lakers will win next season's NBA championship. There's still time to place that bet: The line hasn't moved.

Upon Further Review

The U.S. women's national team may consistently light up the World Cup, but wins don't always translate to astronomical earnings. Only one woman places on Forbes' list of the world's highest-paid athletes, with the huge disparity in earnings largely due to the booming value of TV deals for live men's sports content.

The Last Word

"You're not having guacamole and beer and 20 friends over at 7 a.m."

Richard Young

While soccer and basketball are solidly the most popular sports in China, football is rushing forward. Beijing is 12 hours ahead of New York, but that doesn't stop frenzied fans: Last season's Super Bowl drew more than eight million viewers in mainland China⁠—on the eve of Chinese New Year. The time difference does create different consumption habits, however, as over 90% of viewers watch alone and choose to share their thoughts over chat apps rather than a barstool. But with live-game viewership increasing 72% over the previous season, Chinese fans seem to be okay with that. “We want to have the foundation of the sport growing,” NFL China managing director Richard Young said. “We’re not here for five years or 10 years. We’re here for hundreds of years." For more on the NFL's expansion into China, read the full story here.