Tiger Woods' up-and-down season took a turn for the worse in the opening round at The Players Championship.

Sitting at par after seven holes, Woods pulled out a 4-iron on No. 8, a 237-yard par-3. His tee shot was a complete miss-hit, landing about 40 yards short of the hole and then kicking into a creek.

One of the Golf Channel announcers said the shot was so bad that in nearly 30 years of covering and attending The Players Championship, he had never seen anybody hit a ball into that area of the creek on the 8th hole.

Hitting into the water on the 8th hole is rare. According to Justin Ray of the Golf Channel, Woods is just the 12th player to do it since 2003.

Needless to say, Woods was not happy with the shot. But rather than his usual anger at himself for a bad shot, he appeared to be completely dumbfounded by what had happened.

This shot tracker doesn't look terrible if you don't know the hole was a par-3.

After a drop, Woods was left with a terrible approach shot with an uneven stance and the ball above his feet.

Woods ultimately took a double-bogey on the hole. He fell to two strokes over par, seven shots behind the clubhouse leader at the time.

Not to be outdone, Phil Mickelson had his own flub earlier, leaving a short chip well shy of the green. It was an extremely rare disaster from one of the best chippers on the Tour.

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The SALT Conference, a gathering of hedge-fund types in Las Vegas, ended yesterday with a modern-day "Murderer's Row."

Major League Baseball Hall of Famers Frank Thomas, Tony LaRussa, George Brett, and ex-New York Yankees manager Joe Torre talked about their experiences chasing records and winning championships before an awed crowd of Wall Street professionals. 

Reds fans might not have taken some of the comments so well, however. 

Here are some of the best moments:

 Joe Torre said Pete Rose doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. "That's testing the integrity of the game," Torre said of Rose, who committed the cardinal sin of betting on the game. "Pete Rose really didn't, maybe, think the rules were for him. It's sad."

Torre also pointed out one thing that could bring solace to some Wall Street pros who have experienced tough times: He's been fired from every managerial post he's held. 

Ex-Chicago White Sox great Frank Thomas talked about how, early in his career, he was made to run after practice for not exercising discipline at the plate. Clearly, the prodding from his coaches paid off for the Big Hurt; his 521 home runs put him among the top-25 sluggers in league history. 

George Brett, who earned his Hall of Fame plaque for nearly two decades of MLB service with the Kansas City Royals, recalled how his historic run at a .400 batting average was ruined with a 1-11 trip to Seattle, during which he was repeatedly robbed of hits by a no-name shortstop on the Mariners.

Guess there can always be a black swan waiting around the corner.

Or, in Brett's case, up the middle. 

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Early in the 2015 NASCAR season, Jimmie Johnson has two wins, seven top-5 finishes — including four straight top-3 finishes — and has made it clear he is once again a serious contender to win his seventh Sprint Cup championship.

Another title that Johnson owns is NASCAR's money leader. Since 2010, nobody has made more racing NASCAR than Johnson who has taken home $40.2 million, more than $4 million more than any other driver over that stretch.

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Some of these phenoms are already on our list of the 50 most dominant athletes alive.

Others, if everything works out, could be in the next few years.

While sports history is of full of examples of athletes that fail to live up to the hype, there are also stars like LeBron James, Tiger Woods, and the Williams sisters who actually met their astronomical expectations.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks player (age 20)

The so-called "Greek Freak" was better in 2014-15 than anyone in the NBA expected. He has the height of a center, the skills of a guard, and an unreal 7'4" wingspan.

His potential is off the charts. He has been compared to everyone from Kevin Durant to Kevin Garnett. He has more raw physical talent than anyone else his age, and if he continues to develop, he could rule the NBA with Anthony Davis once the LeBron era comes to an end.

Martin Odegaard, Real Madrid player (age 16)

Odegaard, a Norwegian prodigy who burst onto the scene at age 15, had every big team in Europe clamoring for his services in January of 2015.

Soccer is full of examples of young players who fail to live up to the hype. Will Odegaard be different?

It's promising that he started Norway's most recent European Championship qualifier, and he bypassed the typically club progression and jumped straight to Madrid.

Simone Biles, US gymnast (age 18)

If there's one person you'd bet on being a star at the 2016 Rio Olympics, it's Biles.

Biles has been the most dominant force in women's gymnastics in the last two years. She won four golds at the last World Championships and the gold in the all-around competition in both 2013 and 2014. She's better than breakout star Gabby Douglas was when going into the London Olympics, and has a chance to take home a boatload of medals.

NFL quarterback Tom Brady is facing more questions about the "Deflategate" scandal since a new report was released, and he has so far avoided talking about it.

Brady evaded questions about the scandal at a previously scheduled appearance at Salem State University in Massachusetts, but said that he will address the accusations he's facing soon, according to The New York Times.

Earlier this week, Brady's agent released a blistering statement defending Brady after an NFL investigation concluded that he was probably "generally aware" of a suspected plot to deflate footballs before the AFC title game.

At the Massachusetts event, Brady reportedly said: "It’s only been 30 hours, so I haven’t been able to digest it fully, but when I do, I will address it." In response to a question about when he would address the scandal, he said: "Hopefully soon. It’s a process that I’m involved in."

Brady also said that he's "dealt with a lot of things in the past" and is "very fortunate to have people who love and support" him.

The evidence the NFL has against Brady is circumstantial, but NFL investigator Tedd Wells said there was enough to conclude Brady knew what was going on with the ball-deflating scheme.

One of the key pieces of evidence against Brady is the significant uptick in communication between him and equipment assistant John Jastremski in the days after the scandal broke in January. Investigators believe Jastremski and locker room attendant Jim McNally conspired to deflate the game balls before the AFC title game, with McNally physically deflating the balls using a needle provided by Jastremski.

Jastremski hadn't talked to Brady over the phone or exchanged texts with him in six months going into January 19 when the scandal surfaced, but over the next 72 hours, they reportedly talked on the phone eight times and exchanged 15 texts.

The texts show that Brady continually checked up on Jastremski and talked to him multiple times a day. Brady even invited him to the quarterback meeting room to talk for the first time in Jastremski's 20 years with the team.

Tony Manfred contributed to this report.

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Some of the pay-per-view (PPV) sales figures for the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight are starting trickle out, and they are blowing away even the most bullish expectations. As a result, the fighters are going to end up making more money than anyone expected.

Most estimates before the fight set expectations at 3 million pay-per-view buys, which would have easily broken the record of 2.48 million, set by the Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya fight in 2007. As the fight drew closer, however, at least one sportsbook put the over/under betting line at 3.8 million.

Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports now reports that based on some of the early figures coming in, the number of pay-per-view buys for Mayweather-Pacquiao will be closer to 5.63 million and could go even higher.

We already know DirecTV sold 1.15 million PPVs, Dish Network sold 500,000, and AT&T's uVerse and Verizon's Fios combined to sell 600,000. That means the satellite and phone companies combined to sell 2.25 million.

Those numbers alone make Mayweather-Pacquiao the second-biggest PPV draw ever. But we are not even close to being finished. We don't know the numbers for the cable companies yet, and according to Iole they typically account for 55% to 65% of total buys.

Iole estimated that if cable companies made up 60% of the sales, the final number of PPV buys would be about 5.625 million. Even if we take the low end of the percentage estimate, the minimum number of PPV sales would be 5 million, with the high end at 6.43 million.

The implications for the bank accounts of Mayweather and Pacquiao are staggering.

PPV sales account for the bulk of fight revenue.

According to John Branch of The New York Times, 30% to 40% of the PPV revenue goes to the cable/satellite/phone companies and 7.5% of what is left is split by HBO and Showtime, which broadcast the event. Most of what is left over is split 60-40 for the fighters in favor of Mayweather.

With a PPV buys estimate of 5.625 million, Mayweather will make $167 million to $195 million from the PPV sales alone, with Pacquiao taking home $114 million to $133 million.

Again, that is just from the PPV sales. According to Branch, other revenue streams will generate close to $140 million for the fighters to split.

At the end of the day, Mayweather is going to take home $250 million to $275 million, with Pacquiao clearing $170 million to $190 million.

Not bad for a fight that took less than an hour.

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Bill Simmons is leaving ESPN, the network's president, John Skipper, told Richard Sandomir of The New York Times.

In a statement, Skipper said he chose not to extend Simmons' contract:

I decided today that we are not going to renew Bill Simmons' contract. We have been in negotiations and it was clear it was time to move on. ESPN's relationship with Bill has been mutually beneficial — he has produced great content for us for many years and ESPN has provided him many new opportunities to spread his wings. We wish Bill continued success as he plans his next chapter. ESPN remains committed to Grantland and we have a strong team in place.

After becoming one of the country's most popular sports columnists while writing for ESPN.com, Simmons founded Grantland.com and worked on the network's acclaimed "30 for 30" documentary series.

His contract with ESPN is up later this year. In an interview with Re/code in March, he questioned ESPN's support for him and his site.

"I think they take it for granted," he said. "Not just how hard I work, but how hard everybody works."

After Simmons was suspended in October for criticizing ESPN in a podcast, industry scuttlebutt was that he wanted out. Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson reported at the time that he made about $3 million a year.

Simmons' relationship with the network was contentious at times. He was suspended three times between 2009 and 2014, all for publicly criticizing ESPN colleagues or ESPN itself. His most recent suspension came when, in a podcast, he dared the network to admonish him behind the scenes for calling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a liar. He said:

I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I'm in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I'm going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner's a liar, and I get to talk about that on my podcast ... Please, call me and say I'm in trouble. I dare you.

ESPN suspended him for three weeks. An ESPN source told Business Insider that Simmons was suspended because he called out ESPN, not just because he criticized Goodell.

Sandomir reports that Simmons' contract is up at the end of September. On recent podcasts, Simmons has said he will appear on ESPN's broadcast of the NBA Draft on June 25.

In a surprisingly candid interview in December, ESPN's outgoing ombudsman, Robert Lipsyte, told The Big Lead that Simmons was expendable:

It's as if sports documentaries and literary sportswriting were Sports Guy inventions. HBO, anyone? Sports Illustrated at its prime? Point is, these are the current extensions of celebrated genres. Should Simmons ankle off, so long as ESPN keeps nurturing them and writers like Bryan Curtis and Wesley Morris stay at Grantland, and producers such as Connor Schell and Libby Geist keep running 30 for 30, all will be well.

Once Simmons decides what he wants to do next, he'll have plenty of suitors.

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LeBron James' sheer talent and force earned him a spot on our annual list of the most dominant athletes alive.

He's a 6-foot-8, 250-pound man who moves like a point guard. He's a once-in-a-generation physical talent. 

But it's his work ethic that has turned that potential into results on the court.

From late-night workout sessions to teaching himself how to play power forward, LeBron is the perfect example of someone who is fully maximizing his genetic gifts.

He gets a special four-page scouting report before every game. His teammates get only a two-page report.

Source: SI

He could run every play in Miami's playbook from all five positions.

Source: SI

He holds an annual "Hell Week" of grueling workouts with other elite athletes at his house in Akron.

Source: ESPN

Tom Brady's agent, Don Yee, unloaded on the Deflategate report on Thursday and accused the NFL of conducting a "sting operation."

Twenty-four hours later, Yee is back at it and is now downplaying the legitimacy of the conclusions reached in the report, saying the investigation could have easily exonerated his client.

On "The Dan Patrick Show," Yee offered his own take on what the report meant when it said it was "more probable than not" that employees deliberately deflated footballs and that Brady was "at least generally aware of" what was going on.

"After three and a half months of an investigation and millions of dollars spent and dozens upon dozens of people interviewed ... the investigators still concluded in their report that it was just more probable than not," Yee told Patrick. "[That] means in lawyer-language, that's 50.1% versus 49.9%, essentially a coin flip."

Yee went on to argue that "if you draw a couple of inferences here and a couple of other conclusions here slightly differently, you get a completely different result."

The problem with this argument is that it is overly simplistic.

Yes, "more probable than not" can mean 50.1% versus 49.9%, but it can also mean 100% versus 0% and anything in between. To call it a "coin flip" implies that the report was inconclusive.

Later, ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio, who is also a lawyer, was also a guest on "The Dan Patrick Show," and countered Yee's claims.

Florio explained that the legal standard is 50.1%. "All they have to find is more probable than not. The evidence in this case is somewhere between 50.1% and 100%. All they have to find is 50.1%. Billions of dollars have changed hands in courts of law over the years based on the 50.1%-49.9% standard he is trying to downplay."

Earlier, on his own website, Florio went further, explaining that "'more probable than not' equates to a 'preponderance of the evidence,' the standard that applies in most civil lawsuits." He also argued that this standard is actually higher than the one used by the NFL in other cases where players are accused of violating the Personal Conduct Policy, which only requires "credible corroborating evidence."

The lesser standard has been used on many occasions as justification for suspension in the NFL, so it is hard to imagine that "more probable than not" will deter the NFL from suspending Brady.

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Contract negotiations between Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks have been ominously quiet this offseason.

Though it was reported early in 2015 that the Seahawks were looking to give Wilson a contract extension "bigger and crazier" than anything in the NFL — with some estimates between $126 million and $132 million — it now seems the two sides are far apart.

Danny O'Neil of 710 ESPN Seattle reports that the Seahawks' current offer to Wilson is a four-year, $80 million extension, far short of what he wants and expects. Kelly says the two sides are "closer to 10s of millions" apart on a salary number.

CBS's Jason La Canfora also reports that the Seahawks are offering Wilson a contract that's comparable to those of Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick, not top-tier quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger.

La Canfora writes:

"What I know is the Seahawks' initial offer looked very much like the sort of band-aid bridge contracts that went to Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick, according to sources, with signing bonuses more in line with the $11 million Seattle handed out recently to Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas, and a pay-as-you-go structure like the lesser Dalton/Kaepernick deals. The average per year is nowhere close to the range of the top quarterbacks in the NFL, and with Ben Roethlisberger recently joining that club and Andrew Luck and Cam Newton poised to do the same in the next 12 months, I would be absolutely shocked if Wilson did any deal that wouldn't put him among the best in the game."

As O'Neil points out, you can understand the stalemate from both sides. For the Seahawks, paying Wilson $20 million or more would take away their biggest competitive advantage — namely, their ability to use their salary cap money elsewhere because Wilson's rookie contract is so cheap. With guys like Bobby Wagner up for new contracts, the Seahawks are trying to do everything they can to retain that advantage.

On the other hand, Wilson has had a historically successful run in his first three years in the NFL. No other quarterback has posted as many wins as Wilson or led their team to two Super Bowls in their first three years in the league. By accolades alone, Wilson may be one of the NFL's best quarterbacks, and he's within his right to want to be paid as such.

However, according to La Canfora, the negotiations have been so fruitless that the extension may not happen at all. Though training camp is more than two months away, the two sides are so far apart that La Canfora believes Wilson would table negotiations altogether to focus on the season.

If the Seahawks and Wilson don't reach an extension this summer, the Seahawks may have to place the franchise tag on Wilson in 2016 (and maybe even 2017), which would pay him about $25 million, according to La Canfora. 

"And if he played that out, he could potentially hit free agency before age 30, he would have finally made some real NFL money over two seasons, and, if he stays on anything close to the career arc he has been on, you're looking at potentially the most coveted free agent in NFL history."

There's no doubt Wilson is going to get paid in the near future — it's a matter of when and by which team.

Of course, months ago, it seemed like his record-breaking extension was close to being done. With several more months left in the offseason, negotiations could take a positive turn as quickly as they took a negative turn.

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The numbers are in from the first college football playoff, and to the surprise of nobody the so-called Power Five conferences raked in the money.

The top five conferences in college football (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC) took in between $58.3 million and $69.3 million each from the inaugural college football playoff, with the Pac-12 taking in the most, according to Kristi A. Dosh for FoxSports.com. The so-called Group of Five conferences (American, Mountain West, Conference USA, Mid-American, Sun Belt) took in between $12.0 million and $23.5 million each, with the Sun Belt taking in the least.

While not all conferences distribute their postseason revenue evenly, we can see that the Big 12, which has just ten schools, were the big winners, with the schools taking in an average of $6.5 million, up from $3.4 million in the last year of the BCS. Meanwhile, Pac-12 schools saw the biggest jump, going from $2.3 million per school under the BCS to $5.8 million per school this past year.

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Photo agency Getty Images is celebrating an anniversary this year. They've been supplying the world with stock, news, and celebrities images for 20 years and have become one of the foremost places for publications to go to get quality photos when they need them.

In celebration of this milestone, Getty has teamed up with ad agency AlmapBBDO to create an ad campaign to mark the occasion. Mining their massive archive of over 80 million images, the company found images of some of our favorite well-known personalities, to see how they have changed along with Getty over the past 20 years.

The result is a fascinating look at aging, as well as a testament to the depth of Getty's library. Scarlett Johansson's is especially telling.

SEE ALSO: Here's what it actually means to die 'of old age'

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Tom Brady will be suspended by the NFL for his role in the Deflategate scandal, and an announcement is expected next week, according to Gary Myers of the New York Daily News.

While the NFL's investigation focused on the actions of two employees, locker room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski, the Wells report also concluded that Tom Brady "was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls."

According to Myers, who spoke with several key sources, "there is little doubt that Goodell considers Brady’s role in Deflategate a serious violation."

Myers later added that, according to sources, "connecting all the dots of the evidence supplied by Ted Wells leads to one conclusion: Brady cheated."

It is still not known how many games Brady will be suspended. It was already well accepted among NFL insiders that Brady would be suspended for at least one game.

Myers expects a two-game suspension, noting that the Wells Report is believed to have supplied enough evidence to suspend Brady for both ordering the deflation of footballs and for not cooperating with the investigation by refusing to turn over his cell phone.

Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk guessed that Brady would be suspended four games for deflating footballs, something he called an "integrity of the game of football" issue, plus additional punishment for refusing to cooperate.

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Some of these athletes are right in their primes, some have a long track record of sustained success, and some are athletes just beginning their dominance.

We recently ranked the most dominant athletes in sports in general, but we also chose the most dominant in each sport individually.

From the NFL and NBA to soccer, tennis, golf, track and field, and more, we selected the 31 athletes who stake a claim as the best in the world at what they do.

Men's soccer: Cristiano Ronaldo

Real Madrid forward

Age: 30

Ronaldo took home the Ballon D'or in 2014 and carried Portugal to the World Cup despite being knocked out in the first round. He has 18 goals in 2015 and 50 goals in 47 games for the 2014-15 season.

Women's soccer: Nadine Kessler

German national team midfielder

Age: 27

Kessler won 2014 FIFA's women's player of the year and was leading a German team that's one of the favorites going into the 2015 Women's World Cup. In October she hurt her knee and will now miss the World Cup.

Men's tennis: Novak Djokovic

Serbian tennis player

Age: 27

Djokovic is the No. 1-ranked tennis player in the world, and seems poised to dominate in the near future. He's the first player to win the year's first three Masters 1000 tournaments — the biggest outside the Grand Slams — and has a 5,000-point lead over Roger Federer for the No. 1 rank.

In the NFL's massive report concluding that the New England Patriots probably deflated balls on purpose before the AFC title game, investigator Tedd Wells goes into great detail on what happened to the balls on gameday.

The NFL investigation found that there was "no set of reliable environmental or physical factors" that could have caused the balls to deflate by themselves.

The Patriots' footballs were all measured at 12.5 PSI before the game. When they were remeasured at halftime, all of them were below the legal range.

The NFL's suggestion — which the Wells report lays on pretty thick — is that a Patriots employee, who was seen on a surveillance video taking the balls into a bathroom by himself 20 minutes before kickoff, deflated them.

The Patriots employee in question, a 48-year-old officials' locker room attendant named Jim McNally, referred to himself as "the deflator" in a text message to team equipment manager John Jastremski before the 2014 season.

The Wells report states, "We believe that McNally and Jastremski were aware that the inflation level of the Patriots game balls following pre-game inspection by the game officials would be approximately 12.5 psi and planned for McNally to deflate the balls below that level following the pre-game inspection using a needle provided by Jastremski."

In a text message from earlier in the year, Jastremski referenced providing McNally with a needle:

With that in mind, here's the timeline of what went down with the balls on gameday, according to the report:

3:45 p.m. (two hours, 55 minutes before kickoff) — Referee Walt Anderson starts inspecting the footballs. The NFL isn't required to log inflation data, but Anderson says the Patriots' balls were all set to either 12.5 PSI or 12.6 PSI. While he was measuring them, Anderson says McNally told him something along the lines of, "Remember, Walt, Tom likes them at 12.5."

6:25 p.m. (25 minutes before kickoff) — McNally is seen sitting on a trunk near the two bags of game balls in the officials' locker room. The officials' look room is packed, with everyone waiting around to go to the field after the game's kickoff was pushed back from 6:40 to 6:50 because the NFC title game went to overtime.

6:30 p.m. (20 minutes before kickoff) — McNally takes the two bags of balls into a single-toilet bathroom that's at the end of the tunnel that leads to the field, surveillance video shows. He doesn't tell the referee or anyone on the officiating crew. He locks the door and stays in there for one minute, 40 seconds, which the NFL says was long enough to deflate the balls with a needle. 

6:32 p.m. (18 minutes to kickoff) — McNally is seen on video leaving the bathroom and walks to the field with the balls.

6:35 p.m. (15 minutes before kickoff) — The refs realize the balls are missing. According to the report, "Anderson was visibly concerned and uncharacteristically used an expletive when the game balls could not be located."

6:36 p.m. (14 minutes before kickoff) — The refs send NFL security representative Richard Farley to look for the balls and take the field themselves. Shortly after, they discover that McNally had already taken the two bags of balls out onto the field without their knowledge.

The rest is history. The Colts intercepted a pass in the first quarter, thought the ball was a little light, and had the refs re-measure them at halftime, the report says. When they did, the balls were under-inflated.

According to the report, McNally told NFL Security in an interview the night of the game that he walked the balls directly to the field from the officials' locker room. It wasn't until a second interview a day later that he mentioned that he went to the bathroom.

The report says McNally told NFL investigators in February that it's not unusual for him to take the balls to the field alone, and that he was never told he had to inform the officials when he was doing so. According to the report, that characterization was contradicted by numerous other people familiar with how these procedures work, concluding, "Indeed, all of the officials interviewed disagreed with McNally‟s description of the standard practice at Gillette Stadium."

The reason the report softened its conclusion by saying it's only "probable" that the Patriots tampered with the footballs is obvious: they still don't know what happened in the bathroom.

Based on the report, we know the balls were properly inflated before the game, McNally took them to the bathroom without the referee's knowledge in an unusual move that broke protocol, he stayed in there for two minutes with the door locked, and when the balls were remeasured at halftime, they were deflated.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft released a statement saying, "To say we are disappointed in its findings, which do not include any incontrovertible or hard evidence of deliberate deflation of footballs at the AFC Championship game, would be a gross understatement."

Read the report in full here >

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Novak Djokovic is currently the No. 1 tennis player in the world, and the highest-ranked men's player on our list of the most dominant athletes alive.

And he might also be the quirkiest.

From eating the grass at Wimbledon to handing out chocolates to the media, Djokovic's definitely a colorful person — who happens to be the best in the world at his sport.

He only drinks warm water. He says cold water inhibits blood flow.

Source: WSJ

He's eaten grass after every win at Wimbledon. He says it tastes like sweat.

Source: The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated

He's inseparable from his pet poodle Pierre. When Pierre wasn't allowed in Wimbledon in 2011, a source told the Telegraph, "Whenever he can he takes the dog with him, he is genuinely upset. For him this is a very serious issue."

Source: Telegraph

.

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LeBron James came through with his biggest shot of the 2015 NBA Playoffs to tie his team's series with the Chicago Bulls.

With 14 seconds left, Derrick Rose hit a tough layup to tie the game at 84-84. Without any timeouts, James went the length of the floor and had his layup attempt blocked out of bounds. 

The Cavs inbounded from the sidelines with 1.5 seconds remaining and found James in the corner:

This came after a relatively poor game in which LeBron shot just 10-30 with eight turnovers, two of which were in the final two minutes.

After the game, James told reporters that he drew up the play to take the shot, scratching David Blatt's original play:

James said:

"To be honest, the play the way drawn up, I scratched. I just told coach, 'Give me the ball.' We're either going to overtime or I'm winning it for us. It was that simple.

"I was supposed to take the ball out. I told coach, 'There's no way I'm taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in. I told him, 'Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.'"

This is the second buzzer-beating shot to decide a game in this series. Friday night, Derrick Rose banked in a three-pointer at the buzzer to win the game for the Bulls.

The series is now 2-2 and heads back to Cleveland for Game 5.

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LeBron James saved the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday, hitting a buzzer-beater to tie the series with the Chicago Bulls at two games each.

Preceding that shot, however, was a hectic 19 seconds in which the Cavs nearly fell apart because of a series of errors and coaching blunders.

With 18.8 seconds left and the Cavs up 84-82, Cleveland had to burn its final two timeouts to draw up an inbounds play. When the Cavs finally got the ball in to LeBron at half-court, he was immediately swarmed by Bulls defenders trying to force a turnover.

In the process, James swung an elbow and got called for an offensive foul with 14.3 seconds left, giving the Bulls possession:

On the next possession, Derrick Rose made a fantastic drive to the hoop to tie the game at 84-84 with 8.4 seconds left. As ESPN's Brian Windhorst notes, James was late with his help defense, setting up another scenario in which he would be the scapegoat for the Cavs' loss.

After the layup, Cavs coach David Blatt nearly made the most crucial mistake of all. As the Cavs set up the inbounds, Blatt tried to call time out, even though the Cavs had burned all of them on their previous possession:

Assistant coach Tyronn Lue had to grab Blatt, who was walking onto the floor trying to signal the timeout, and stop him. By rule, calling a timeout when you don't have any left results in a technical-foul shot for the other team, plus the ball. If the refs noticed Blatt, the Bulls would have gotten a free throw, plus the ball on the final possession.

The refs missed the attempted timeout, and the Cavs inbounded the ball. LeBron went the length of the court and attempted a layup, only to have it blocked out of bounds with 0.8 seconds left. He wanted a foul:

The refs reviewed the play to make sure the ball did go off the Bulls.

During the review, the Cavs basically got the timeout they didn't have. They huddled and drew up an inbounds play. The refs also added another 0.7 seconds to the game clock, leaving 1.5 seconds remaining in the game.

After the game, LeBron came out with a stunning revelation about that huddle: He constructed the final play himself, overruling Blatt's original play call. James said:

To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched. I just told coach, 'Give me the ball.' We're either going to overtime or I'm winning it for us. It was that simple.

I was supposed to take the ball out. I told coach, 'There's no way I'm taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in. I told him, 'Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.'

The Cavs ran a simple play, and LeBron hit his biggest shot of the season:

The win was huge for Cleveland. With a beat-up roster, going down 3-1 to the Bulls could have been devastating. While it's not unheard of for teams to come back from 3-1 deficits, it has happened just eight times in NBA history. If the Cavs had lost Game 4, the odds were against them to win the series.

Amid LeBron's turnover, poor late defense against Rose, and failed layup attempt and Blatt's failed timeout and original play call, the Cavs had several chances to blow this game. Instead they stole a game from Chicago and tied the series at 2-2 heading back to Cleveland for Game 5.

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