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After a 12-game Wednesday slate, the NBA will take Thanksgiving off. When it puts the turkey and stuffing away to get back to work this weekend, though, most of the league’s 30 teams either will have played or will be approaching their 20th game — which puts us about 25 percent of the way through the 2022-23 season. This can mean only one thing: It’s time to hand out some purely fictional, intangible and unable-to-be-displayed-in-a-trophy-case hardware. It’s time, dear friends, for First-Quarter Awards. One quick (but important!) note before we get started: These picks are not intended to serve as predictions of which players or teams will take home the NBA’s official trophies come season’s end. Instead, they’re based solely on performance since opening night — an opportunity to push pause on the breakneck pace of the season, take stock of what’s transpired, and celebrate it. (Well, except for this one category. We’ll get to it.) So let us come together, forming like Voltron, to commemorate the good stuff we’ve seen, starting with a squad that seems to have found the cure for the dreaded Finals hangover.
Heading into the season, I wondered whether Boston — the favorite to win the 2022-23 championship, according to BetMGM — would be able to “withstand the internal upheaval now rocking the franchise” after the suspension of coach Ime Udoka, the elevation of young assistant Joe Mazzulla, and a worrying knee injury to center Robert Williams III. Well, so far, so good: Even with key pieces in and out of the lineup, the Celtics boast the NBA’s best record at 13-4 (with two of those three losses coming in overtime to a tough Cavs team) and its second-best net rating, outscoring opponents by 6.6 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass.
Daniel Weinman was crowned winner of the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on Monday, taking home a record breaking $12.1 million in winnings. Weinman had to outlast the other 10,043 entrants to take home the prize and get his hands on his share of live poker’s largest ever prize pool – a staggering $93,399,900. As well as taking home the prize money, 35-year-old Weinman also got his hands on the WSOP Main Event bracelet. The huge bracelet contains 500 grams of 10-karat yellow gold, as well as 2,352 various precious gemstones.
Daniel Weinman won the World Series of Poker's main event world championship on Monday in Las Vegas, earning $12.1 million along the way. Playing in the tournament for a 16th year, Weinman was tops in a deep pool of 10,043 players vying for $93.39 million. His victory came after just 164 hands at the final table. "I was honestly on the fence about even coming back and playing this tournament," the 35-year-old Atlanta native told reporters afterward. Weinman's final table featured Jan-Peter Jachtmann, who landed in fourth place and took home $3 million, as well as Toby Lewis, who finished seventh and secured $1.42 million. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the main event's entry pool far outpaced the previous record of 8,773 set in 2006. "I've always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible," Weinman said. "And to win this main event, it doesn't feel real. I mean, [there's] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well." Steven Jones finished second, securing $6.5 million. And Adam Walton settled for third and a $4 million prize.
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