KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If Thursday night’s game was the last one Travis Kelce played at Arrowhead Stadium, he sure tried to make it memorable.

The Kansas City Chiefs tight end had only five catches for 36 yards against the Denver Broncos playing alongside third-string quarterback Chris Oladokun while starter Patrick Mahomes and backup Gardner Minshew were out with knee injuries. But several of those catches came in the closing minutes, nearly rallying the Chiefs to what would have been a stunning upset of the Broncos.

Kelce & Co. wound up losing 20-13 in a game in which they were nearly two-touchdown underdogs. But it was a gutsy display by Kelce in a career filled with them.

The four-time All-Pro, who is expected to announce soon after the season whether he is retiring, could have hung up the cleats a couple of weeks ago, when the reigning AFC champions were eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in a decade.

After going to five Super Bowls — including the past three — and winning three championship rings, the 36-year-old Kelce instead showed he had too much pride to quit on a lost season. He played in a humiliating loss at the lowly Tennessee Titans last week and was one of the few bright spots on Christmas for an offense that finished with 139 yards.

“A whole lot of emotions,” Kelce said afterward. “You’ve got everybody in the world watching you. You get to go out there with the young guys on prime-time television. Young guys getting an opportunity to taste what this NFL life is like.”

As for retirement?

“I’ll let that be a decision I’ll make with my family, friends, the Chiefs organization when the time comes,” Kelce said.

He was the final player introduced Thursday night, following Oladokun out of the tunnel. As red lights flashed across the field, Kelce emerged from the fog with his signature bow-and-arrow entrance gesture toward a festive holiday crowd, and fans predictably roared in delight — perhaps for the last time — as No. 87 took the field.

“You only get a few of those [occasions] where you get to stand there and appreciate [60,000], 70,000 Chiefs fans cheering for you,” Kelce said. “I always embrace that moment.”

In a suite high above, his fiancée, pop star Taylor Swift, watched him perform. So did Mahomes and Minshew, who took in the game together from a suite. Mahomes sustained torn knee ligaments two weeks ago; Minshew did the same last week.

“You feel the generations of happiness and the love that [the fans] have,” Kelce said. “It’s a beautiful thing, man. It’s something I know I’ll cherish forever, whether it’s coming out of the tunnel or just making a big play for them. That’s why we love Arrowhead.”

Kelce has played 97 games inside the stadium over the course of a 13-year career. He has caught 645 passes at Arrowhead, including the playoffs, which is the third most by any player at a single facility (behind Jerry Rice and Larry Fitzgerald) since the AFL-NFL merger.

Now, the question is whether Kelce will play next week in the Chiefs’ season finale at the Las Vegas Raiders.

He needs just 10 yards receiving to reach 13,000 for his career, and he could extend his franchise record — and the longest active streak in the NFL — by catching a pass in his 191st game next weekend. He also could go out with a win, rather than having lost five straight and seven of his past eight games.

Or maybe Kelce will surprise everyone and come back for one more campaign.

“We’ve been through so much together,” Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones said, making his desire clear. “Just one more [season]. Just one more.”

CHRISTMAS DAY GAME memories are a blur for Doc Rivers.

Since 1984, Rivers has played or coached on Christmas a total of 17 times. As he recounted two stories about his favorite Christmas moments, the Milwaukee Bucks head coach naturally turned to the Boston Celtics–Los Angeles Lakers rivalry — but he wasn’t completely sure whether one of the memories was actually on Christmas.

Rivers, the former Boston head coach, told one of his favorite tales: He famously collected $100 from every member of the Celtics’ traveling party on a road trip and stashed the money in the ceiling of the visitors locker room at the Lakers’ home arena. (Rivers’ legendary motivational tactic actually took place after a February regular-season game against the Lakers in 2010, and the Celtics returned to collect that money in the NBA Finals).

He also thought it was possible that the time Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson’s Lakers came out in retro short shorts against Rivers’ Celtics could’ve happened on Christmas. (It was on Dec. 30, 2007, close enough to blend into Christmas). The Celtics and Lakers did play each other on the holiday in 2008.

What Rivers does remember in exact detail is the “love-hate” nature of playing on the holiday.

“I’ve had a lot of Christmas games,” Rivers explained to ESPN. “It’s different. I love it and hate it at the same time because having time with your family, it’s so important.

“But also, there’s nothing better. It’s the most favorite game to win. On a Christmas afternoon, when you finish that game and you win — you come home with your family. It’s just an amazing day. I’ve had some great ones.”

The 10 teams that play on the marquee holiday stage must fit their Christmas Day family traditions around their game-day routine at home or sacrifice opening gifts with loved ones on Christmas if they are on the road.

That is why when the Golden State Warriors — who will be playing for a 13th consecutive time on Christmas against the Dallas Mavericks at Chase Center — are on the road Dec. 25, they will have family members fly and join them on the trip. While LeBron and Bronny James have the opportunity to play together on Christmas again, the Lakers’ father-son duo still has to schedule the James family’s festivities around their matchup.

The NBA tries to make working on the holiday feel as celebratory as possible by giving the coaches and players a present, like a nice leather wallet, a bag or an electronic gift.

“You wake up in Room 736 and you forget that it’s Christmas,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told ESPN of what it’s like to play a road game on Christmas. “And you look at your text from Eric Hausen [Warriors vice president of team operations] saying, ‘Merry Christmas.’ And you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s Christmas.’ You go down for your meeting in the third-floor ballroom, and everybody says ‘Merry Christmas’ and you do the scouting report and it’s just bizarre.

“You go to the arena, there’s always a gift from [NBA commissioner] Adam Silver, which is nice. And then you play and everybody in the arena is festive because they’re coming from their Christmas morning and you’re thinking about your own family and wishing you were at home. But that’s the deal. That’s what we sign up for.”

Players and coaches who have games on Christmas agree with Kerr and Rivers that it’s an honor. But playing on the holiday, especially on the road, can also leave some feeling like the Grinch.

“We do a huge dinner if it’s an afternoon game,” Rivers said. “If it’s the last game of the day, it’s just a s—ty day. As far as you spend time waiting around during the day at home and then you go to the game.”

As this Christmas approaches, stars and coaches share with ESPN their Christmas tales, yuletide feelings and even gripes about playing on Santa’s day.

Jump to a tale:
A James Family Christmas
The Kerr Nightmare (on) Christmas
A Green Christmas Miracle
All I want for Christmas is a PJ
Mitchell’s Holiday Special

BRONNY JAMES, 21, doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t watch his father play on Christmas. Like Bronny, an entire generation has grown up watching LeBron James play a record 19 times on Dec. 25 since his 2003 debut season, including the past 18 Christmas Days.

That also means the James family has shared their patriarch with the world every holiday.

“You just tried to hope that game was home so we could have him home for Christmas,” Bronny told ESPN. “But we always go home to our house and open presents in the morning. If he’s not there, then we’ll wait or do it the day before. So, it’s always been kind of like a coin flip. But we try to make it happen [on Christmas Day] as much as possible.”

Last Christmas was historic: The father-son duo became the first to be teammates for a game on the holiday. While Bronny did not play, he watched Dad outshine Stephen Curry at Golden State with 31 points, 10 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 block.

“I’d much rather be at home with my family,” LeBron said Saturday. “But it’s the game. It’s the game I love. It’s the game I watched when I was a kid on Christmas Day, watching a lot of the greatest to play the game. It’s always been an honor to play it. Obviously, I’m going to be completely honest, I would like to be home on the couch with my family all throughout the day. But my number is called, our numbers are called, so we have to go out and perform. And I look forward to it.”

No matter what day the James family celebrates Christmas every year, Zhuri, the youngest daughter, always gets the festivities started.

“Zhuri will be up at 6 in the morning and already downstairs waiting for us,” Bronny said. “We’ll come down like an hour later, and she’ll be mad that we’re so late. Just sitting there staring at the presents.”

LeBron has the most points (507), second-most assists (137) and sixth-most rebounds (143) on Christmas Day, but it has come at the price of having to fit the family’s Christmas celebration around the games.

“I never really was bummed out [too much],” Bronny said. “I mean, I was, kind of, but I knew why. So it wasn’t really a problem for me, and we always found a way to celebrate it somehow when he was back. But of course, every family wants to be together on Christmas. It was difficult sometimes. Especially for my mom [Savannah], just having to plan something else.

“… My siblings and my mom are always together on Christmas. But just having to plan something else to where we can all be together at the same time. It’s just something extra that a lot of people don’t got to deal with that. So it was definitely a little stressful on the whole family, but we made it happen.”

Whenever LeBron, 40, decides to retire and end his Christmas streak, perhaps Bronny will have to go through what his father has had to do almost every Christmas of his playing career.

“Time is about to come where I might be the one away and these guys are going to be home [without me],” Bronny said. “So, it’s something that we got to figure out.”

OVER THREE DECADES later, one of the best finishes to a New York Knicks–Chicago Bulls game is still a Christmas nightmare for Kerr.

With 3.3 seconds left on the clock and the Bulls clinging to a 100-97 lead in Chicago on Dec. 25, 1994, Anthony Mason sent his full-court inbounds heave sailing straight to Kerr, who was to the right of the basket. The then-Bulls shooter jumped to catch the basketball but was worried he was going to fall and be called for a travel.

So he tried tapping the ball to a teammate.

“I threw it right to [Knicks guard] Hubert Davis,” Kerr told ESPN, still disgusted with himself all these decades later. “And he made a 3 to send it to overtime. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. It was a huge gaffe. It was just dumb.

“One of the biggest nightmares of my career.”

play

Flashback: Steve Kerr slaps ball to Knicks’ Hubert Davis for tying 3

On Dec. 25, 1994, Bulls guard Steve Kerr tapped a long inbounds pass away, but it went to Knicks guard Hubert Davis for a tying triple.

Fortunately for Kerr, Scottie Pippen saved him with one of the best Christmas performances. Pippen scored all seven of Chicago’s points in overtime and had two game-clinching blocks at the end to hold off the Knicks 107-104. Pippen, who had 36 points, 16 rebounds and 5 steals while playing all 53 minutes, hugged an almost apologetic Kerr after the game.

Michael Jordan, who would come out of retirement later that season, might not have been as forgiving.

“I would’ve been the goat,” said Kerr, who played in five Christmas games. “Not the good GOAT. The bad goat. It worked out, but it was humiliating. It was just the dumbest play. I still don’t quite know why I did it.

“The problem is now every Christmas Day when they start playing [vintage] games on NBA TV, they still show that. I’m like, f—, would you guys leave me alone?”

LIKE SO MANY, Curry’s Christmas tradition growing up was to spend the day watching basketball.

So when it was his turn to play on the Christmas stage, Curry understood the moment.

“It’s a blessing because you understand being one of the 10 teams that play means you’re marketable,” Curry told ESPN. “The experience of playing in the game is fun. … Before the in-season tournament, that was the NBA’s biggest moment before the turn of the calendar year. Definitely felt like a different energy around it.”

This Christmas will mark the Warriors’ 13th consecutive year playing on the holiday, with Curry playing in all but three of them over that span. But until recently, Curry couldn’t find his shot on Christmas. In his first eight Christmas games, Curry shot a combined 35-for-116 (30.2%), including just 10-for-49 (20.4%) from 3. His first two Christmas outings saw him miss 23 of 27 shots.

“I don’t have a favorite,” Curry said when asked about his favorite memory of playing on the holiday. “I have traditionally not played great on Christmas Day, so bringing up great memories.”

One of Draymond Green’s favorite Christmas memories came during his indefinite suspension for striking Jusuf Nurkic in 2023. Green was frustrated, contemplated retirement and had to rediscover his drive for basketball.

But during that 12-game suspension, Green got to spend a truly merry Christmas at home with his kids and family — something he said was good for his soul at the time.

“That was great. It was actually f—ing amazing,” Green told ESPN. “Usually it’s weird because Christmas Day is not like what you remember as a kid, where you spend with your family. We’ve been on the road [five times, once when Green was suspended]. I know my 5-year-old’s first Christmas, I was gone.”

Instead of being with his team in Denver that Christmas in 2023, Green got to open gifts with his kids at home. The only other time he did not suit up when the Warriors played on Christmas came in 2020 when a foot injury kept him on the bench in street clothes in Milwaukee.

Green said that when he has to play on Christmas, he sometimes will “scratch the itch” and let his kids unwrap a gift before fully celebrating once he is home after the game. But even though Green is just one of 10 players to record a Christmas Day triple-double, playing on the holiday can often make him feel as miserable as Scrooge.

“As an NBA player, you want to be on that stage — marquee games and everybody’s watching,” Green said. “But as a human, it f—ing sucks, if I’m honest.

“… I absolutely loved as a kid watching NBA games on Christmas Day. Kobe Bryant and the white [Lakers] jerseys. I loved [Shaquille O’Neal]. … But the NFL has started having games on Christmas Day, so maybe they take Christmas over and we go home.”

play

Luka Doncic: My first focus is a championship, not MVP award

Dave McMenamin sits down with Lakers star Luka Doncic to discuss his NBA goals and personal life.

WAKING UP EARLY for a noon tipoff on a regular-season weekend game can be the worst for many NBA players. For Josh Hart, the Knicks’ traditional early start is the perfect time to play on Christmas, especially now that he has two boys who are 2½ years old.

“Now Christmas is magical,” Hart told ESPN. “The best Christmas game is the 12 o’clock because you get the morning obviously consumed about the game, basketball and stuff like that. I love it. You wake up, get some breakfast, head to the Garden, get your work, hopefully get a win, and then you get to celebrate Christmas.”

This will be Hart’s seventh Christmas game. He has played in the holiday game as a Laker, Pelican and now Knickerbocker.

His most memorable Christmas game was with the Lakers when they knocked off the Warriors 127-101 in 2018. It was James’ first Christmas game with L.A., but the star sustained a groin injury in the win. Rajon Rondo stepped in with 15 points, 10 assists and 5 rebounds off the bench.

“We beat that Warriors team with Steph, Klay [Thompson], [Kevin Durant], Draymond,” Hart said. “LeBron got hurt. Rondo turned into Playoff Rondo and kind of led us to that win. He unfortunately broke his [finger]. I gave him an ’09 bottle of Harlan [Estate wine] that he opened on the plane. That kind of really got me into wine.”

The following year had Hart saying “Bah humbug.” After being traded from the Lakers to New Orleans, Hart, Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram had the Pelicans on the Christmas stage, but they were the final game of the night against the Denver Nuggets. While the Pelicans won 112-100, they remained in Denver after the game. The Pelicans, like many road teams, opted not to fly until the next day to get some rest rather than arrive home at 3 in the morning.

While the team did fly family members to Denver and had a Christmas party at the hotel the night before the game, Hart said all he and some Pelicans players wanted for Christmas was a private jet to fly them back home to New Orleans after the game.

“The 8:30 [p.m.] game in Denver, it was the worst game,” said Hart, who is 4-2 on Christmas. “We were thinking, how could we get back? We were going to ‘PJ’ after the game to get back home. But the team stayed the night. So yeah, it was by far the worst game of the season.”

IT HAS BEEN four years since Donovan Mitchell last played on Christmas Day.

He scored 33 points and outdueled Jalen Brunson, who had 27 points, in the Utah Jazz‘s 120-116 Christmas win over the Mavericks in 2021.

This Christmas, they will go at it again when Mitchell’s Cleveland Cavaliers visit Brunson’s New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

“Man, I love playing on Christmas,” Mitchell told ESPN, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. “It means you are doing something right as a team, right?

“I remember being at my grandmother’s, getting up at 12 and being up until 12, watching basketball all day. So to be a part of that is truly special.”

Mitchell’s routine during his first two Christmas Day games with the Jazz was to keep everything as normal as possible. He prepared like it was a typical game day, and that meant celebrating Christmas either the day before or the day after, which he said is his mother’s birthday.

But with the Cavs-Knicks game tipping off as the first game of the day, Mitchell will get to celebrate and open gifts with his family afterward at his New York area home.

Mitchell, who grew up in the New York and Connecticut area, will be living out a Christmas dream playing at the Garden.

“Just something that I never take for granted,” Mitchell said. “Because not everybody can say they played on Christmas Day, let alone playing Madison Square Garden like we are.

“It’s going to be special.”

ESPN’s Jamal Collier and Dave McMenamin contributed to this story.

ON NOV. 12, the United States Treasury Department shut down its 232-year run of producing pennies. This wasn’t a big deal to me (and I’m almost certain wasn’t to you). Most people don’t think about pennies that often and use them even less, which is precisely why the government stopped making the coins in the first place.

The gripes about pennies are familiar: There’s no such thing as penny candy any more. Many stores won’t even take them. They cost four cents to make but only have one cent of value. They’re annoying.

Essentially, pennies are worth nothing.

But before you forget about them entirely, consider this:

What if they’re worth everything?

DALE EARNHARDT SR. was stressed. It was Saturday, Feb. 14, 1998, the final day of practice before the Daytona 500, and Earnhardt’s car was having problems. An engine issue. His team was debating whether to swap in one of the backups, but with less than 24 hours until the race, there was no consensus. Only anxiety.

This was standard for Earnhardt at Daytona. Despite being the biggest star in NASCAR and an all-time legend, Earnhardt had never won his sport’s most famous prize. Can you imagine if Tiger Woods accomplished everything he did except he never won a single Masters? That was Earnhardt. It wasn’t just a glaring hole in his legacy; it was the only hole.

It didn’t help that he had lost the 500 in what seemed like every way possible. He had finished second four times. He wrecked. He had equipment fail. In 1986, he was charging toward the front and ran out of gas with three laps to go. In 1990, he ran over a piece of debris on the final lap and blew a tire to lose the lead at the wire. In 1991, he hit a seagull, and no, that is not some kind of NASCAR euphemism; Earnhardt literally collided with a low-flying bird, muddying his car’s aerodynamics, before later crashing. Nineteen previous starts in the Daytona 500, 19 heartbreaks. The engine trouble on that Saturday in 1998 felt like the beginning of No. 20.

So, yeah, Earnhardt was a little edgy as he left the garage’s main area and walked toward a small conference room. His longtime adviser, JR Rhodes, was alongside; everyone else on the team kept working on the car.

A handful of children greeted him in the conference room. They were Make-A-Wish kids. Earnhardt put on his best face and was gracious. He squatted down to be at the same eye level as the children as he talked to them, then popped back up to shake hands with the parents. He gave them his attention in addition to his time.

Near the end, he came to a little girl. Her name was Wessa Miller. She was from Kentucky. She was 6 years old and had been born with spina bifida, a condition where the back doesn’t form correctly, leaving the spinal cord and surrounding nerves exposed instead of covered. In the hospital, doctors told Wessa’s mom, Juanita, it was the worst case of spina bifida they had ever seen and it wasn’t likely Wessa would survive long enough to go home. Six years later, Juanita and her husband, Booker, were treating each day with Wessa as a gift. Wessa was paralyzed from the waist down, had a shunt in her head to reduce fluid and was in a wheelchair. Earnhardt kneeled next to her.

Wessa loved Earnhardt. Juanita had grown up rooting for Darrell Waltrip, but Booker was born the exact same day as Earnhardt — April 29, 1951 — and followed him closely. Wessa would sometimes say, “I’m Dale Earnhardt!” as she played with a toy car. She was dutiful about watching his races.

Wessa and Earnhardt talked for nearly 15 minutes. They giggled. Then Wessa said, in her slow, syrupy speech, that she had something to give Earnhardt. She pushed her tiny hand into his. He looked down. It was a penny. A lucky penny, she said.

“What’s this for?” Earnhardt asked. People would sometimes give him cards or pictures to autograph, but no one had ever given him a coin. He was confused. “What’s this for?” he said again.

“That’s for you,” Wessa told him, “to win the Daytona 500.”

IT SHOULD BE SAID: Earnhardt was not a deeply superstitious man. He had a couple of hoodoos like most drivers — peanuts anywhere near a race car were verboten, and Earnhardt steadfastly avoided $50 bills because, it was said, an old-time driver died in a crash with two of them in his pocket.

But beyond those, Rhodes told me, there wasn’t much. That was why it was so surprising to Rhodes that Earnhardt, after leaving Wessa and walking out of the conference room, looked so determined.

If a fan handed Earnhardt a gift — whatever it was — he’d usually just pass it to Rhodes. This time, though, Earnhardt squeezed Wessa’s penny in his fist and headed immediately for the garage.

Jerry Hailey, who worked on Earnhardt’s crew, figured Earnhardt was hurrying back to rejoin the conversation about what to do with the engine. But Earnhardt blew past everyone and started rifling the shelves. “I remember he was like, ‘I need glue,'” Hailey said.

Ron Otto, another crew member, grabbed a bit of epoxy and began mixing it for Earnhardt, but Earnhardt didn’t want to wait. He snatched a tube of yellow Gorilla Glue, took it over to the car and tried to stick the penny to the dashboard.

“And this stuff is stringy and it’s everywhere,” Hailey said. “It’s all over his hands, all over his gloves. When he pulled his hand back, the penny came off. So he’s like, ‘Give me some more glue,’ and he puts it back on there.”

Hailey laughed. “You can still see his fingerprint on it,” he said.

JUANITA SAYS THAT, originally, Wessa was going to be named either Lynetta Jo or Joetta Lynn. She and Booker just weren’t sure. But Booker had an uncle everyone called Uncle Wess and, shortly before Juanita gave birth, Uncle Wess died from a heart attack. Juanita knew how much Uncle Wess was looking forward to having a new grandniece, she said, “so I just came up with Wessa after he passed. Truthfully, it’s a made-up name.”

Wessa was born at Pikeville Medical Center, but immediately after delivery, doctors told Juanita they weren’t equipped to try to save a child with this level of spina bifida. She was transferred to the University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington, almost 150 miles away. Juanita had never heard of spina bifida; she just knew something was very wrong with her baby.

“They told us when she was born she’d never be nothing but a vegetable,” Booker said. “I said, ‘OK, this is how I feel about it: You tell me she’s not going to live, I’ll take her home and bury her if she dies. And if she does live, I’ll take her home and take care of her. But we’re going to try.”

At UK, there were tests, so many tests. Unlike most babies, Wessa couldn’t lie on her back, so she was always on her stomach. No one could hold her. Every time surgeons tried to close her spine, brain fluid would drain and the covering would burst open again. Juanita and Booker were told to call loved ones and have them come to the hospital more than once because doctors expected that Wessa was about to die. Juanita took photos of everything, no matter how jarring and graphic Wessa’s wounds were, because, she said, “I knew it was all I would have.”

Even after Wessa survived five surgeries and was discharged from the hospital after three months, no one expected a day might come when Wessa would be 6 years old and attend the Daytona 500. Specialists told Juanita and Booker that Wessa would live a year, maybe two. When they linked up with Make-A-Wish for the trip to Daytona in 1998, Juanita and Booker told each other how lucky they were to have even made it this far with their daughter. As they talked with Wessa before making the 750-mile drive from Kentucky, Juanita clearly remembers asking Wessa whether she had anything she wanted to bring to her favorite driver so that he might always remember her.

“She kept saying, ‘I want to give him a penny,'” Juanita said. “I don’t know why. She just kept saying that’s what she wanted.”

Booker and Juanita handed over a penny. But over the course of the drive through Virginia and Tennessee and the Carolinas and Georgia, Wessa — as little girls often do — dropped it in the car and lost it. Booker and Juanita gave her another one and, well, she lost that one too.

So, they gave her a third. (This was back when change was in everyone’s cup holder.) Wessa managed to hold on to that one until Saturday afternoon in the conference room, and Juanita has always loved that it ended up that way. She likes the symbolism, likes that the coin Wessa gave Earnhardt was actually her third lucky penny.

Why? Because of Earnhardt’s car number.

The No. 3.

EARNHARDT CRIED WHEN he won the next day. His nickname was “The Intimidator,” but even he admitted that, as he circled the track on the last lap, “My eyes watered up.” Sitting with her parents on the backstretch of the oval, Wessa’s emotions were overflowing, too.

“I think they both got their wish,” Juanita said. “She got hers and Dale got his.”

In that moment, the Millers had no idea Earnhardt had glued the penny to his dashboard. They only knew what they had seen: Earnhardt leading for 107 laps including the last 61. Earnhardt zooming his car inside and outside, squeezing into tiny gaps like they were freeways. Earnhardt somehow avoiding all the bad breaks and unlucky moments that had dogged him for two decades as 185,000 fans went delirious with joy.

Juanita and Booker loved it. Their little girl had been able to go to a race and see her favorite driver finally win the trophy that meant more to him than any other. They screamed as Earnhardt did a doughnut on the infield in celebration. They shouted as dozens of men on the other teams’ pit crews climbed over the retaining wall to clap for Earnhardt and congratulate him.

Then, as Earnhardt headed inside to talk to the media and celebrate some more, they headed toward the track exits. There was more to do. They wanted to take full advantage of their trip, unsure how many more there would be.

“We drove to Disney World,” Juanita said. “Wessa wanted to meet Mickey, too.”

ONE CHILLY MORNING last month, Juanita made ham biscuits. She wrapped the biscuits in paper towels and handed them out as she chattered to me and Booker about Thanksgiving and the construction on the road that winds past their slender, one-story house in Phyllis, a sliver of a community tucked into the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Kentucky.

Then Juanita turned to her daughter.

“Wessa,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

Wessa smiled and shook her head. “No, Mama.”

Wessa is 34 years old now. Thirty-four. The doctors still tell Juanita they can’t believe it. Wessa has had 22 more surgeries over the years, and her health is, as Juanita put it, “up and down.” When Wessa was 10, she began having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. At 12, she was diagnosed with a Chiari malformation, a condition where brain tissue extends into the spinal canal — a condition that Juanita said affected Wessa physically but also cognitively, impacting her memory and attentiveness.

Now, Wessa swallows a dozen pills and watches as Juanita changes her catheter four times per day. She averages one or two epileptic seizures each week, episodes that are sometimes frightening, her body locking up as she tips back in her chair. In a recent procedure, she had most of her teeth removed because of issues with her mouth and gums. Lately, her shoulder has been bothering her. “Mama,” she whispered as Juanita cleaned up the biscuits. “It hurts.” Juanita got her an Advil and rubbed her arm.

Juanita and Booker still take the same approach with Wessa as they always have: They do things right up until the moment she can’t anymore, and they revel in all of it. Juanita’s photo books overflow: Wessa going to grade school and high school and sitting in her chair with a sash and a tiara because she was voted homecoming queen one year. Wessa at her cousin’s football game. Wessa lying on a dolly next to Booker as he works on a car. “She’d get up there and help me change the oil,” Booker told me. He was proud.

Wessa’s speech can be slow and halting at times, but her mind is sharp. She remembers names and dates and faces better than most. Juanita is sometimes still surprised in the mornings when she comes into Wessa’s purposely darkened bedroom to help her out of bed and Wessa will already know whether it’s a nice day out. “She tells by how much light comes in under the crack in her door,” Juanita told me.

Wessa’s laugh is contagious, too. Years ago, on their first airplane flight to visit Juanita’s family in Florida, Wessa was stunned by how high in the air they were and turned to her grandmother as the plane rose above the clouds. “I said, ‘Grandma, where’s Jesus at?'” she said through a grin. “She told me, ‘Honey, you have to go far beyond to see him!'” Booker and Juanita roared.

Wessa’s room is filled with posters and pictures and cards and knickknacks. Most have to do with her family, Earnhardt and other NASCAR drivers, or the Bible (her bedspread has the verse from John 3:16 on it), as well as — of course — pennies.

Earnhardt mentioned Wessa’s lucky penny being glued to his dash in his postrace comments in 1998, and it was the beginning of a true connection between Wessa and Earnhardt. He invited the family to a race at Bristol Motor Speedway a month later, then told them he wanted to meet them at one of his car dealerships, where he gave them a new van to help them take Wessa to all her doctor’s appointments. Wessa picked a blue one. “My favorite color,” she says.

Even after Earnhardt died in a crash in 2001 (Wessa went to the funeral), the story of her penny kept growing in NASCAR lore. Fans sent her Earnhardt shirts or hats or pictures as gifts, not to mention handfuls of pennies. Strangers dropped by the house and left No. 3 jackets or sweatshirts. David Poole, a longtime reporter for The Charlotte Observer who wrote about Wessa and became a family friend, started a charity, Pennies for Wessa, that raised enough money to replace the Earnhardt van once it conked out after nearly 200,000 miles. When Poole died in 2009, Wessa went to his funeral too.

In 2018, Juanita and Booker took over a classic country store located right next to their house in Phyllis. They called it Wessa’s, and the sign out front proclaimed it, “Home of the Lucky Penny.” There was an “Intimidator” burger on the deli menu — three half-pound patties plus Swiss, bacon and barbecue sauce — as well as “Wessa fries,” which came with cheese, bacon bits and ranch.

Sometimes, as a joke, Juanita put a giant cardboard standup of Earnhardt in the restroom to surprise customers (“Wessa would laugh,” she said), and as she showed me the store and we walked past the ice cream freezer, Juanita stopped at the cash register near the front door. The register was on top of a counter, and you could see a picture beneath the glass of Wessa and Earnhardt from that first meeting in the conference room. Pennies surrounded the photo, hundreds of them that customers had left, creating a sort of beautiful, copper-colored mural that stretched the entire length of the cabinet.

“We have a different outlook on pennies,” Juanita told me. “It was always, heads up, pick it up, tails up, leave it down. But then I seen a thing that said, ‘Pennies was a blessing from heaven,’ and I thought, boy, that is true. So even if it’s tails up, I still pick it up.”

JUST A FEW months ago, Juanita and Wessa loaded the van and drove to the Richard Childress Racing Museum in Welcome, North Carolina. Earnhardt’s car from 1998 is on display there, and Juanita lifted Wessa out of her chair so she could peer inside. She saw the harness and the switches and, also the pennies that visitors flip through the window onto the driver’s seat as a sort of 425-horsepower wishing well. She saw her penny, still stuck to the dashboard, just below the steering wheel.

“I thought it would have already fallen off,” Wessa exclaimed, and Juanita shook her head and held her closer. Some glue is strong.

The Millers don’t take as many trips as they once did. In addition to Wessa’s health demands, Booker retired from working in the coal mines after 47 years and is enduring constant lung issues, while Juanita came through her own thyroid cancer and now spends most of her days taking care of everyone else. She closed the store two years ago so she could help her mother, who has dementia.

Juanita relies on Wessa, who is devoted to Facebook and spends hours on her phone each day, to keep her updated on what’s going on in the world. Weather, war, politics — whatever comes across her feed. But when stories about production of the penny being stopped were all over the internet for a day, that news rippled differently. How could it not?

Dale is gone. David Poole is gone. The penny is nearly gone.

Wessa is still here.

She isn’t mad about what we all think about the penny. She gets it. She just sees it differently. When I told her I had a gift for her and offered her a penny that I had brought from home, her face lit up. She reached into her pocket.

“Pennies,” Wessa whispered to me, “are the best thing ever,” as she pushed one of her own into the palm of my hand.

THE GRANDIOSE 8,000-SQUARE-FOOT Manhattan Beach mansion that Luka Doncic purchased this past offseason from tennis star Maria Sharapova, cementing his new home in Los Angeles, was designed with a minimalist motif.

Tall walls of bare concrete, massive glass doors and black metal accents in the five-bedroom residence guide dwellers through an open floor plan, with plenty of balconies and curated outdoor spaces to take in the pristine Pacific Ocean view.

Tucked inside the basement, there is a premium man cave amenity that doubles as an irresistible lure for competition junkies: a two-lane bowling alley.

The pins and wooden planks might not seem like an architectural fit with the rest of the home’s interior, but it serves an important purpose: something to sustain Doncic’s legendary competitive drive, even when he’s off the floor.

So when a text from Doncic popped up on Austin Reaves‘ phone on an off night in early December, inviting the Lakers guard to visit Doncic’s place, the itinerary was not just to turn on League Pass, eat dinner and shoot the breeze.

There would, of course, be competition involved.

“He was like, ‘Come over. We’re bowling,'” Reaves told ESPN.

Reaves made the 10-minute drive to his teammate’s crib, where he found not only Doncic, but two of Doncic’s friends, plus Lakers assistant coach Greg St. Jean and L.A.’s head video coordinator, Michael Wexler, awaiting his arrival.

Three-man teams were formed. Games were played. Scores were kept.

“But it all really came down to the 1-on-1 at the end,” Reaves said.

This is where Reaves’ and Doncic’s accounts of the night diverge.

“I won,” Doncic told ESPN.

“We bowled for, I think, maybe three games,” Reaves said. “And, yeah, I’m 3-0.”

“I’m sure he said he won,” Doncic said when informed of Reaves’ answer.

With no wiggle room to further protest Reaves, short of calling him a liar, Doncic took a different tact.

“I let him, you know, get comfortable,” Doncic said. “It was his first time in the house, so I let him get comfortable.”

And so goes the relationship between the Lakers’ starting backcourt mates.

Equal parts sarcastic and real, Doncic and Reaves’ budding bromance has set the tone for a Lakers team that has shot up to No. 4 in the Western Conference standings to begin the season, despite LeBron James missing more than half of L.A.’s games because of injuries.

The irreverence between Doncic and Reaves has not only kept the locker room loose, but also it has helped turned down the noise on potential pressure points that could distract a team: James’ career winding down; the franchise’s sale and Jeanie Buss’ subsequent decision to fire her brothers, Joey and Jesse, in the front office; and even Reaves’ contract status after turning down an $89 million extension in June.

Perhaps most importantly, it has established a culture for a Lakers group that appears to be as close knit as they come.

“We all know we have love for each other, but we can still be each other’s biggest critics,” Lakers rookie Adou Thiero told ESPN. “You always hear Austin and Luka, they’re always going back and forth about who is better at what. Oh, ‘You suck at this,’ ‘You suck at that,’ but you get on the court and … they’re sticking together, we’re all sticking together.”

WHILE DONCIC AND Reaves shared some success on the court last season — the Lakers were 16-10 when the duo played together — they didn’t have much of a relationship off of it.

“Bron said that he acted like I acted my rookie year: never talked,” Reaves said. “Kind of just stayed to himself. Which is understandable. I mean, with the crazy events that happened, you know it’s going to take time to get used to a new situation.”

After spending the first 5 ½ years of his career in Dallas, Doncic gravitated toward people he already knew when he first got to L.A., sources told ESPN.

He worked out with St. Jean, who previously had been an assistant for the Mavs. He sat near Maxi Kleber, who was included in the deal for Anthony Davis.

He conversed with coach JJ Redick, who had been his teammate, briefly, in Dallas and whom he had stayed in touch with as Redick embarked on a media career. (“I really respect him,” Doncic said of Redick during his introductory press conference. “You don’t see me go on podcasts. I went on his podcast twice.”)

And he would get most animated when he was around Dorian Finney-Smith, another former teammate with the Mavs, whom L.A. acquired in a trade a couple months before Doncic’s arrival.

A typical interaction would start with Doncic teasing Finney-Smith about his belly button being an “outie,” and Finney-Smith sparring right back by wondering how Doncic could be slower than him when he was six years younger.

Even after the disappointment of the Lakers’ first-round playoff loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves — a series in which a stomach bug derailed Doncic in Game 3 and Reaves missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have forced overtime in Game 4 — the duo still hadn’t developed a connection.

So when Doncic signed a $165 million extension in August and celebrated the occasion by going on a trip with teammates, coaches and staffers to a Backstreet Boys concert at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Reaves missed a perfect opportunity to become closer with the Lakers’ new poster boy.

While Doncic was belting out the lyrics to “I Want It That Way,” Reaves was overseas, fulfilling an endorsement obligation for his signature Rigorer sneakers.

At the end of the night, Doncic posted to Instagram, showing him and a handful of teammates dressed in white for the show and going backstage, where he autographed one of his trading cards for Nick Carter and made a reel where it appeared he was deep in conversation with Brian Littrell — only for the camera to pan out and show the 5-foot-7 Littrell needing to kneel on top of a ping pong table to be eye level with the 6-foot-8 Doncic.

Wanting to show support, even from afar, Reaves posted a congratulatory message in response.

It didn’t take long for Doncic to see it.

“He slid [in my direct messages] and was like, ‘Thanks for coming to Vegas,'” Reaves recalled.

Reaves sent back a selfie from Xiamen, China.

“I could tell, like, the joking spirit that he had,” Reaves said. “Like, it was, just, a breath of fresh air. I could tell at that moment that we were going to have a good relationship.”

And Doncic’s response to the selfie? “I said he’s too big [for me],” Doncic said. “He’s selling shoes in China now.”

With their personalities beginning to mesh off the floor, they both knew the next step needed to be meshing their similar games on it.

Both players are three-level scorers and creators who thrive with the ball in their hands.

While their overlapping skill sets could have created tension over who would have control of the offense, the 27-year-old Reaves and 26-year-old Doncic have worked together seamlessly — which was especially important with James sidelined all of training camp, preseason and the first 14 games because of sciatica.

When the Lakers coaching staff huddled over the summer, whatever concerns they had about how to maximize each player without undercutting either of them quickly subsided.

“It helps so much that they both look to pass,” a Lakers coach told ESPN.

That trust in their fundamentals informs the offensive system the Lakers put in place.

“A lot of the, ‘How do we make this work’ was utility plays and then not overthinking like, ‘Oh, we got to run all this action,'” Redick said. “It’s like, ‘No, let’s get the ball to the best players and try to create advantages that way through a very simple system.’ We don’t have to overcomplicate things.”

So far, that simplicity has reaped considerable rewards. Doncic’s and Reaves’ combined scoring average of 61.4 points per game is the second-most by a duo in the last 60 years, according to ESPN Insights. James Harden and Russell Westbrook combined for 61.6 points per game in 2019-20.

They both constantly pressure defenses and draw fouls when they do. The Lakers lead all teams in points per direct drive per game, which is fueled by Reaves, who ranks first among all players with at least 200 drives this season. Doncic is second, according to GeniusIQ.

Doncic leads the league in free throw attempts per game, while Reaves is fourth. They are in range to become the first teammates to each average 9.0 or more free throw attempts per game since Harden and Dwight Howard did so for the Houston Rockets in 2013-14.

While they have joint command of the offense — in the games they’ve played together, Doncic and Reaves have scored or assisted on 288 of the 402 shots the Lakers have made (72%) — they’ve both had stretches where they’ve starred solo.

Doncic, for his part, scored 92 points in the Lakers’ first two games of the season.

After the second game — in which Doncic scored 49 points on 14-for-23 shooting, corralled 11 rebounds and dished out 8 assists in the Lakers’ 128-110 win over the Timberwolves — Reaves told ESPN that he thought Doncic could average 40 for the whole season.

When Doncic was told of Reaves’ opinion, he issued his own.

“Austin’s stupid,” he said.

Doncic then sat out the Lakers’ next three games with a left finger sprain and lower left leg contusion, and it was Reaves’ turn.

He averaged 40 points, 10 assists, 5.3 rebounds and 2.3 steals while guiding L.A. to a 2-1 record, punctuating the stretch with a game-winning floater at the buzzer to secure another victory against that same Wolves team that had ended their season a few months back.

If Doncic wasn’t sold on Reaves by that point, watching him dominate — and win — while he and James were in street clothes more than did it.

“He’s realizing, ‘F—, Austin is good!'” a team source told ESPN. “It was the same way he loved [Jalen] Brunson and loved Kyrie [Irving]. There’s an appreciation for great players.”

Luka Doncic on if he can average 40 points per game this season:
“That’s going to be tough …”
I followed up by saying that Austin Reaves told me he thinks he could.
Luka, with a big smile: “Austin’s stupid.” pic.twitter.com/jnLjKfe4CE

— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) November 1, 2025

THE COMPETITION BETWEEN the two knows no bounds. And neither does the incessant ribbing.

“I saw that we had — I don’t love saying this — many similarities in how we like to compete in all different things,” Reaves said. “Not just basketball. Whatever. Cards, bowling, darts … which he hasn’t beaten me at either.”

Reaves doesn’t watch football, but he picked the Minnesota Vikings in Week 15 in a wager against his teammate, just because he wanted Doncic’s beloved Dallas Cowboys to lose.

While they each are loath to concede any ground to the other, Reaves admits that Doncic is the favorite in foosball, and Doncic isn’t trying to see Reaves on the golf course.

“I’m ducking him,” Doncic said. “I can’t golf.”

Where they both agree, though, is what the Lakers need to do to be real contenders in the West.

Despite the Lakers’ 19-9 start, they rank 24th in defense. The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Detroit Pistons, which sit atop the West and East standings, respectively, rank No. 1 and No. 2.

“For the start of the season, I was playing great defense,” Doncic, who is hoping to play on Christmas Day after dealing with a left calf contusion, told ESPN. “Trying to get back to that.”

Reaves, who recently missed three games with a mild left calf strain before coming off the bench Tuesday in Phoenix, agrees.

“I think we just got to get healthy and log minutes together and guard with all five guys on the court,” he said. “You have to be locked into every little detail, every little rotation. When you do that, that’s when you become a good defense.”

It figures to be a season-long challenge for this Lakers team, especially with the roster as presently constructed.

But it’s one that Doncic and Reaves won’t shy away from. And one in which Doncic and Reaves can channel their competitive spirits together — including on Thursday against the dynamic Houston Rockets.

Meanwhile, their relationship continues to grow.

Reaves has been back to Doncic’s house for additional rounds of bowling since their initial playdate — not a small gesture, or typical. (Consider Derek Fisher famously told GQ in 2010 that he’d never been to Kobe Bryant’s house in the nearly 15 years since joining the Lakers together as rookies in 1996.) And they used another recent off night to sit courtside for a South Bay Lakers game to cheer on Thiero and some of their other younger teammates.

“We act like we’re probably 10-year old best friends,” Reaves said. “You have a deeper care for one another than just basketball. And then that bleeds into basketball, because you don’t want to let that person down. … You don’t want to not give it your all.”

Doncic said: “We kind of understand each other — what the other is going to do. So I would say it’s a little bit natural.”

Still, whenever earnestness begins to creep in, they’re just as quick to revert back.

“I tell him all the time, I’m like, ‘Yo, you got to grow up,'” Reaves said. “And he’s like, ‘The day I grow up, fight me, because I never want to grow up.’

“I was like, ‘I love that.'”