AUTO RACING

Alex Bowman works

overtime to win the Cup

race at Las Vegas. D6

MEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL

Navy advances to the

Patriot League title game

with an overtime win. D4

HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL

The DCSAA Class AA

champs: Sidwell Fr iends

and Sidwell Fr iends. D5

SOCCER

Brawl at Mexican league

match leads to more than

two dozen injuries. D2

F

lau’jae Johnson skipped up the steps of the school bus, slipped her phone out of her pocket

and flipped the camera onto herself. She showed the diamonds of her “Street Execs” chain

sparkling over her black Sprayberry High warmups. Then she showed off her freestyle rap

skills, hyping up her teammates on the drive to play their rival, Kell High. It was the

Georgia Region 6-6A tournament final, and Flau’jae wanted her 684,000 Instagram followers to

share in the moment. ¶ By the time Flau’jae sent the Feb. 18 game to overtime with a deep three-

pointer, thousands of people already had streamed her story. By the time she got home, dozens of

fans had tagged her in the highlight of her game-tying shot. But she didn’t see those mentions. Her

Yellow Jackets had lost in overtime. So after leaving the locker room, she drove straight to the

studio, where she rapped until 2 in the morning, trying to vent all the frustration she was feeling —

and trying to turn the thousands of melodies she has stored in her Voice Memos app into just a

dozen tracks for her first mix tape. It’s what her dad would have done. SEE FLAU’JAE ON D3

KLMNO

SPORTS

MONDAY, MARCH 7 , 2022. SECTION D EZ M2

hoops or hip-hop? For her, both.

BY DAVID GARDNER

Flau’jae, 18, w ill play basketball

for LSU and rap for Jay-Z’s label.

The new rules of college sports

will let her profit from everything.

KEVIN D. LILES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

McDonald’s all-American Flau’jae

Johnson says: “Music and basketball

go together.... For me, neither one

outshines the other.”

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

Kristaps Porzingis contributed a team-high 25 points in his first game since he joined the Wizards.

BY EMILY GIAMBALVO

east lansing, mich. — The

Maryland players leaped from

their seats on the bench, rushing

onto the court with glee after

Michigan State called a timeout.

The reserves and staffers had

been energetic spectators to a

gritty comeback effort that saw

the Te rrapins’ massive deficit

dwindle to as little as three

points. But by the final minutes,

they watched quietly, resigned to

a defeat in the regular season

finale.

With a double-digit lead se-

cure, Michigan State began its

tradition of allowing each senior

to acknowledge the roaring

crowd and kiss the Spartans logo

at center court with a push-up.

Michigan State had struggled

over the past month, but Sunday

at Breslin Center, the Spartans

had a dominant start and held off

Maryland’s rally for a 77-67

SEE MARYLAND ON D4

Terps can’t

overcome

brutal start

vs. Spartans

MICHIGAN STATE 77,

MARYLAND 67

BY AVA WALLACE

Twenty-four days after the

NBA trade deadline, the deal

that brought Kristaps Porzingis

to the Washington Wizards fi-

nally bore fruit.

Porzingis played on a min-

utes restriction in his Wizards

debut Sunday, his first game

since a right knee bone bruise

sidelined him Jan. 29. But

Coach Wes Unseld Jr. had a

strategy: deploy Porzingis for

about five minutes alongside

the starters at the beginning of

each quarter but save enough

so the team could finish with

him on the court. With less

than three minutes to play, the

Wizards were leading the feisty

Indiana Pacers by just six

points. The 7-foot-3 Latvian

known as “The Unicorn” was

not staying on the bench.

With added insurance from

its prize trade-deadline acquisi-

tion, Washington beat Indiana,

133 -123, on Sunday night at

Capital One Arena in an

SEE WIZARDS ON D10

Porzingis’s debut is a winner

WIZARDS 133,

PACERS 123

Big Ten second round

Maryland vs. Michigan State

Thursday, 6:30 p.m., BTN

Wizards at Clippers

Wednesday, 10:30 p.m., NBCSW

BY CHELSEA JANES

The previous time Major
League Baseball’s negotiating
team and the players union’s
negotiating team met in person
for a formal session, they did so
in Jupiter, Fla., on little sleep and
with emotions running high.
That Tuesday session concluded
with Commissioner Rob Man-
fred announcing MLB would
cancel the first two series of the
regular season because the sides
could not agree on a new collec-
tive bargaining agreement in
time to save them.
In the four days afterward, the
sides flew back to their head-
quarters in Manhattan, chatted
on the phone and met informally.
On Sunday, as the owner-im-
posed lockout hurtled toward its
100 th day and threatened to
consume more regular season
games, the sides sat down to talk
again.
Exactly what constitutes the

difference between a “formal”

negotiating session — such as the

one held on this day at the offices

of the MLB Players Association

— and the ones in the days before

isn’t always clear. But on Sunday,

the interaction was considered

more formal — and more official

— because the union’s negotiat-

ing team presented a written

response to MLB’s previous pro-

posal, codifying items that the

sides had previously only dis-

cussed and putting long-stand-

ing positions in print.

The offer contained few

changes from the one the union

pitched before the sides broke up

in a relative huff Tuesday, and

MLB’s negotiating team was left

frustrated by that.

“We were hoping to see some

movement in our direction to

give us additional flexibility and

get a deal done quickly. The

players association chose to

come back to us with a proposal

SEE LOCKOUT ON D2

MLB, union remain far apart

as labor negotiations resume