Horse racing notes: Santa Anita finale features marathon rematch

• June 13, 2024

SANTA ANITA LEADERS

(Through Sunday)

Jockeys / Wins

Antonio Fresu / 29

Juan Hernandez / 26

Kyle Frey / 24

Umberto Rispoli / 20

Edwin Maldonado / 18

Trainers / Wins

Phil D’Amato / 17

Mark Glatt / 13

Steve Knapp /12

Doug O’Neill / 12

John Sadler / 11

WEEKEND STAKES

SANTA ANITA

Saturday

• $100,000 Possibly Perfect Stakes, fillies and mares, 3-year-olds and up, 1¼ miles on turf

Sunday

• $100,000, Grade III San Juan Capistrano Stakes, 3-year-olds and up, about 1¾ miles on turf

LOS ALAMITOS

Saturday

• $100,000, Abigail Kawananakoa Handicap, quarter-horse fillies and mares, 3-year-olds and up, 350 yards

Sunday

• $1 million, Grade I Ed Burke Million Futurity, 2-year-old quarter horses, 350 yards

DOWN THE STRETCH

• Santa Anita’s season-ending, four-day racing week climaxes Sunday with the San Juan Capistrano, featuring a rematch of 2023 1-2-3 finishers Planetario (Hector Berrios riding), Offlee Naughty (Juan Hernandez) and Rimprotector (Kyle Frey). A six-horse field will make four turns, the first of those right-handed on the turf hillside, in the 1¾-mile marathon.

• Sunday night’s Ed Burke Million, the first of four million-dollar races for quarter horses at Los Alamitos this year, features top qualifier Up To Party, Kindergarten Futurity runner-up My Budd, unbeaten Big Hurt, Laredeaux and Norco.

• Golden Gate Fields ran the last races in its 83-year history Sunday in front of 5,936 fans. The finale was won by Adelie ($13), shipped north by D’Amato to rally from last in a one-mile turf race under leading Golden Gate jockey Assael Espinoza. When the closure of the Albany, Calif., track was announced in 2023, it was said to be “aimed at consolidating, invigorating and innovating racing throughout Southern California.” But racing journalist Ray Paulick points out that none of the 149 horses entered at Santa Anita on Thursday and Friday came in from Golden Gate. Pleasanton opens a three-week county-fair meet Friday with six races, none bigger than seven horses.

• Abel Cedillo and Joe Talamo are back in Southern California after stints in Kentucky. Cedillo, 35, was among the circuit’s top jockeys from 2019 to 2023, and finished third in wins at Turfway Park’s recent winter-spring meet. Talamo, 34, won the Eclipse Award as North America’s best apprentice jockey and 23 Grade I stakes when he rode here from 2007 to 2020 before going to the Midwest.

• After Sugar Fish won Saturday’s Summertime Oaks, co-owner Kim Lloyd praised trainer Jeff Mullins for turning around the 3-year-old filly’s career: “I’ve got to tell you, Jeff Mullins is as fine a horseman as there is in the country, and I’m not exaggerating,” said Lloyd, who trained in California from 1987 to 2002. Mullins’ 27% win rate is the best among trainers at Santa Anita’s Hollywood Meet.

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• Racing-related equine fatalities declined 38% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023 at tracks operating under Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority rules, occurring at a rate of 0.84 per 1,000 starts, HISA reported. “While even one fatality is too many, we are pleased to see the progress we are making,” HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus tweeted.

• The Belmont Stakes drew $60.9 million in bets Saturday, the highest handle since Justify completed his Triple Crown in 2018. Held at Saratoga while Belmont Park is being renovated, the Belmont had a 10-horse field featuring Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan, Preakness winner Seize the Grey and four other horses out of those races, including winner Dornoch ($37.40).

— Kevin Modesti

​ Orange County Register 

Biden to join Obama, salvo of Hollywood star power Saturday in LA

• June 13, 2024

President Joe Biden is coming to Hollywood on Saturday, surrounding himself with big-name celebrities led by late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel who will interview him at a live event, along with former President Barack Obama and mega-stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

The Biden re-election campaign hopes to top the haul from a similar, celebrity-studded campaign stop in New York City in March, when he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, host of “Late Night with Stephen Colbert.” That event included Obama, former president Bill Clinton, and several Broadway stars. It raised $25 million for Biden’s campaign.

But many say there’s nothing better than a Los Angeles gathering of superstars to pad the campaign’s cash reserves. And California, a blue state projected as an easy win for the president, will play a familiar role for out-of-state candidates.

“California has been called the ATM machine of national politics,” said Joel Fox, adjunct professor at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University on Thursday, June 13.

“They come out to California to collect money to spend someplace else,” Fox added. “The state serves as an ATM for the Republican side, too, it is consistent.” He was referring to former President Donald Trump’s recent fundraising stop in Beverly Hills.

Trump and the Republican Party outraised Biden in April, raking in $76 million as compared to $51 million for Biden and the Democratic National Committee that same month. Biden said he had a $192 million war chest at the end of April, the same as previous months, meaning he appears to be spending it as fast as it comes in.

For example, Biden on June 13 launched a seven-figure ad in Spanish and English in battleground states on “lowering costs for food and rent,” raising wages and creating jobs, the campaign reported. Campaign ads are rarely aired in California.

FILE – In this Jan. 4, 2017 file photo, then Vice President Joe Biden, left, watches then President Barack Obama, center, at Conmy Hall, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Some wonder if hob-knobbing with rich celebrities sends the wrong message to Black and Brown voters struggling to make ends meet. Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chair Mark Gonzalez disagreed.

“Celebrities support good union jobs,” he said, noting the Biden calls himself the most supportive union president in American history. “They contribute to the local economy. Film industry brings taxes to Los Angeles.” He noted some country western performers support Trump. These include: Jason Aldean, Toby Keith and Kid Rock.

Kimmel has risen from a radio career and later, a half-hour show on Comedy Central, “The Man Show” that featured testosterone-infused sketches of beer-chugging guys, female models bouncing on trampolines and toilet jokes. He has been host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC-TV since 2003, and mixes humor with serious talk.

On June 8, 2022, he interviewed President Biden on the show not long after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed. The two discussed gun background checks. More recently, Vice President Kamala Harris was a guest.

Gonzalez said Kimmel brings Biden’s message to a younger voting bloc — those under 45. Though born in Brooklyn, he moved to Las Vegas, Nev. with his family as a child, where he attended college and became a deejay.

“His name is connected to the campaign,” Gonzalez said. “Growing up in Nevada, a swing state, can appeal to Nevada voters. Now in California, he is a validator and has an audience who can put their support behind the president.”

Kimmel has publicly sparred with Trump. On social media, the presumptive Republican nominee heavily criticized his performance as host of the 2023 and 2024 Academy Awards shows. During the last show, Kimmel read the social media slam, then ended  with this quip: “Isn’t it past your jail time?”

This Saturday event will take place after Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn star with whom he allegedly had sex. Prosecutors said it was a cover-up to prevent voters in 2016 from learning about the extra-marital affair.

It also comes just a few days after the president’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted of three felony firearm charges involving lying on a mandatory gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs, and illegally having the gun for 11 days.

Whether either issue will be raised by Kimmel remains a question. Kimmel’s public relations team, and Biden’s campaign both did not return emails. Gonzalez said asking about the president’s son would be “uncouth” and “irrelevant.” “His son isn’t running for president,” he said.

A Biden campaign aide told People magazine that Kimmel will ask about democracy issues, abortion rights and Obamacare and the GOP’s failed attempts to kill it. Kimmel may discuss his son, Billy, who had open heart surgery shortly after birth. On his show, he said no one should be denied healthcare because they can’t afford it, and uplifted the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The event is selling tickets by donations via Eventbrite, at a not-yet-disclosed venue. Last week, it was reported Biden would attend a fundraiser at the Peacock Theater in LA Live! The invitation said the campaign will accept tickets selling from $0 to $500,000.

Fox said celebrities mixing with presidential candidates can give a campaign a jolt, but they really don’t add new voters.

“I don’t think it moves the needle much at all,” he said. “It could have some effect but ultimately, it comes down to politics and policy.”

Fox, who was a senior aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said at a San Diego rally, people lined a shopping plaza to catch a glimpse of the movie star, not the politician.

“The vote comes down to who is best for me in the economy, who is best for me in terms of my safety, for immigration and the wars overseas,” Fox said.

Celebrities and campaigns are not a new marriage. Ronald Reagan was a movie actor who ran successfully for governor, then president, he said.

“It’s not a new story that celebrities get involved with presidential candidates. It goes back to that famous singing of Happy Birthday by Marilyn Monroe to JFK,” Fox said.

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​ Orange County Register 

Elon Musk wins back his $44.9 billion Tesla pay package in shareholder vote

• June 13, 2024

By TOM KRISHER and DAVID HAMILTON | AP Business Writers

DETROIT — Tesla shareholders voted Thursday to restore CEO Elon Musk’s record $44.9 billion pay package that was thrown out by a Delaware judge earlier this year, sending a strong vote of confidence in his leadership of the electric vehicle maker.

The favorable vote doesn’t necessarily mean that Musk will get the all-stock compensation anytime soon. The package is likely to remain tied up in the Delaware Chancery Court and Supreme Court for months as Tesla tries to overturn the Delaware judge’s rejection.

Musk has raised doubts about his future with Tesla this year, writing on X, the social media platform he owns, that he wanted a 25% stake in the company in order to stop him from taking artificial intelligence development elsewhere. The higher stake is needed to control the use of AI, he has said.

Tesla also has struggled with falling sales and profit margins as demand for electric vehicles slows worldwide.

But at the company’s annual meeting Thursday in Austin, Texas, Musk reassured shareholders that he will stick around, telling them he can’t sell any stock in the compensation package for five years.

“It’s not actually cash, and I can’t cut and run, nor would I want to,” he said.

Vote totals on Musk’s pay weren’t immediately announced at Tesla’s annual stockholders’ meeting, but the company said shareholders voted for Musk’s compensation plan, which initially was approved by the board and stockholders six years ago.

Tesla last valued the package at $44.9 billion in an April regulatory filing. It was once as much as $56 billion but has declined in value in tandem with Tesla’s stock, which has dropped about 40% in the last 12 months.

Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick ruled in January in a shareholder’s lawsuit that Musk essentially controlled the Tesla board when it ratified the package in 2018, and that it failed to fully inform shareholders who approved it the same year.

Tesla has said it would appeal, but asked shareholders to reapprove the package at Thursday’s annual meeting.

A separate vote approved moving the company’s legal home to Texas to avoid the courts in Delaware, where Tesla is registered as a corporation.

“Its incredible,” a jubilant Musk told the crowd gathered at Tesla’s headquarters and large factory in Austin, Texas. “I think we’re not just opening a new chapter for Tesla, we’re starting a new book.”

Legal experts say the issue of Musk’s pay will still be decided in Delaware, largely because Musk’s lawyers have assured McCormick they won’t try to move the case to Texas.

But they differ on whether the new approval of the pay package will make it easier for Tesla to get it approved.

Charles Elson, a retired professor and founder of the corporate governance center at the University of Delaware, said he doesn’t think the vote will influence McCormick, who issued a decision based on the law.

McCormick’s ruling essentially made the 2018 compensation package a gift to Musk, Elson said, and that would need unanimous shareholder approval, an impossible threshold. The vote, he said, is interesting from a public perception standpoint, but “in my view it does not affect the ruling.”

John Lawrence, a Dallas-based lawyer with Baker Botts who defends corporations against shareholder lawsuits, agreed that the vote doesn’t end the legal dispute and automatically give Musk the stock options. But he says it gives Tesla a strong argument to get the ruling overturned.

He expects Musk and Tesla to argue that shareholders were fully informed before the latest votes, so McCormick should reverse her decision. But the plaintiff in the lawsuit will argue that the vote has no impact and isn’t legally binding, Lawrence said.

The vote, he said, was done under Delaware law and should be considered by the judge.

“This shareholder vote is a strong signal that you now have an absolutely well-informed body of shareholders,” he said. “The judge in Delaware still could decide that this doesn’t change a thing about her prior ruling and doesn’t require her to make any different ruling going forward. But I think it definitely gives Tesla and Musk strong ammunition to try to get her to revisit this.”

If the ruling stands, then Musk likely will appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court, Lawrence said.

Earlier Thursday, Tesla disclosed that shareholders were voting for Musk’s pay package by a wide margin. That drove the company’s shares up 3% by the time the markets closed. The stock is down about 25% this year.

After the votes were announced, Musk began telling shareholders about new developments in the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system. He has staked the company’s future on development of autonomous vehicles, robots and artificial intelligence.

“Full Self-Driving” keeps improving with new versions, and there’s no question it will exceed the safety of human drivers, Musk said without giving a time frame.

“This is actually going to work. This is going to happen. Mark my words, this is just a matter of time,” he said.

Despite its name, “Full Self-Driving” can’t drive itself, and the company says human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times. Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” hardware went on sale late in 2015, and Musk has used the name ever since as the company gathered data to teach its computers how to drive.

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In 2019, Musk promised a fleet of autonomous robotaxis by 2020, and he said in early 2022 that the cars would be autonomous that year. In April, Musk said the system should be ready in 2023.

Since 2021, Tesla has been beta-testing “Full Self-Driving” using volunteer owners. U.S. safety regulators last year made Tesla recall the software after finding that the system misbehaved around intersections and could violate traffic laws.

Musk said the company is making huge progress on its Optimus humanoid robot. Currently it has two working at its factory in Fremont, California, that take battery cells off a production line and put them in shipping containers, he said.

Despite laying off the team working on Tesla’s Supercharger electric vehicle charging network, Musk said he thinks the company will deploy more chargers this year “that are actually working” than the rest of the industry. In the second half of the year, he expects to spend $500 million on Superchargers, Musk said.

Hamilton reported from San Francisco.

​ Orange County Register 

How ‘Little Women,’ ‘American Psycho’ and the Kardashians inspired ‘Tehrangeles’

• June 13, 2024

The Milani sisters, daughters of an Iranian American frozen food magnate and would-be reality TV stars, are four very different young women largely confined to their massive, luxurious family home at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Tehrangeles,” a satire of the rich and TikTok-famous from acclaimed author Porochista Khakpour, is named for a cluster of Westside neighborhoods with a large Iranian American community. The novel has been in the works since 2011.

“It was, sort of, for a while, a mischievous response to rejections,” says Khakpour about the novel’s origin during a recent video call. 

Khakpour, whose 2007 debut novel, “Sons and Other Flammable Objects” won the California Book Award for First Fiction, was shopping around her follow-up, but the response wasn’t ideal.

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“Editors were suggesting and pitching to me what they thought my second novel would be,” she explains. “I had a lot of popular essays at the time that were about Iranian American families and Iranian American women’s experiences, obviously about myself, so they wanted a more Iranian women-focused book, which was not my second novel at all.”

So Khakpour began writing a book with an all-female, all-Iranian American cast simply as a means of entertaining herself. In the process, “Little Women” became a model for the story. “‘Little Women’ was always a book that I couldn’t stand,” she says. “I realized, in my research, that Louisa May Alcott also didn’t enjoy working on it, so that made me more interested.”

Khakpour’s “tendency towards satire” emerged as she drafted and re-drafted versions of what would become “Tehrangeles.” Years passed. She published other books. Then, the pandemic hit. 

“The pandemic just made it really perfect,” she admits. It provided a real-world situation of confinement that worked in Khakpour’s fictional story. But there was another advantage to the setting. “It also gave my characters an opportunity to behave pretty badly,” says Khakpour.

The ringleader in “Tehrangeles,” is Roxanna, the second-born daughter who seems to have more in common with Kim Kardashian than Jo March. Reality TV helped shape the novel as well. 

“I was most interested in the idea of the confessionals,” says Khakpour. “That was a format that I really liked that reality TV offers. You have a front story and the back story is delivered through this confessional format, which I thought was really interesting.”

Within the family home, Khakpour visualizes a life of designer excess that few have seen in person. “There were outfits and furniture and things described in this book that I had never really seen,” she says. “I would have to Google things and encounter designers. I didn’t know that Bentley Home existed or Fendi did a home line.”

Homa, the girls’ mother, spritzes rooms with Caroline’s Four Hundred, the signature fragrance of St. Regis Hotels and Resorts. “That was something that I had encountered in my research,” says Khakpour. “I really couldn’t even imagine it, but it was so specific that I was delighted by it.”

TikTok proved to be handy in Khakpour’s research as well. “I would see all these TikToks talking about [high-end supermarket] Erewhon and fetishizing Erewhon’s horrible prices,” she says.

Heightening the satire, Khakpour, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, dug into outsider perceptions of L.A. glitz. “The fetishization by outsiders is really bizarre because that’s not the L.A. that most of us grew up in,” says Khakpour. “That’s not the L.A. that most of us relate to at all, but it’s this surface, weird Hollywood L.A. that a lot of people love.”

And as the Milani sisters, who are in their teens and very young adulthood, live with few restrictions on either their spending or behavior, there are echoes of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “Less Than Zero,” 

“Definitely the atmosphere of ‘Less Than Zero,’ which is dystopian and these rich kids kind of throwing their lives away in L.A.,” Khakpour acknowledges with a laugh. “I love that about the book. I actually think that ‘Less Than Zero’ is probably one of the best books about L.A. that there is.”

Ellis, it turns out, was a significant source of inspiration for Khakpour while writing “Tehrangeles.” 

“I had to repurchase ‘Glamarama’ when I was working on it because I really loved the way that every sentence in ‘Glamarama’ is packed with inner references,” she says. “I wanted to make sure that it made sense and I remember that he did it really well.”

She also notes that, within “Tehrangeles,” the essays the characters write as content for their reality show are a nod to Ellis, particularly Patrick Bateman’s asides on subjects like the band Genesis in “American Psycho.” 

“I love ‘American Psycho.’ I really do love a lot of what Bret Easton Ellis writes and I love those sections and how they bring this local color to life. They have such an exciting way of parroting the setting in a way,” says Khakpour. “There’s a lot of texture in ‘American Psycho’ that people don’t think about. It almost, to me, feels like a ‘Moby Dick,’ where people have to read it to know about how great it is.”

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​ Orange County Register 

The ‘Portal House’: How USC’s Eric Musselman pulled in a wave of transfers

• June 13, 2024

LOS ANGELES — None of them dared to sleep until Eric Musselman’s eyes grew weary, tethered to their phones until he’d give the unofficial OK to clock out for the night.

Finally, the unbridled motor churning inside Musselman’s 5-foot-7 frame would stall, and he’d trudge upstairs toward a master bedroom and a few hours of rest. Then, and only then, would a handful of his USC assistants-turned-roommates – son Michael Musselman, Anthony Ruta, Will Conroy – scatter to individual corners of their shared spring home in Manhattan Beach, ringing their wives and families for a few fleeting moments before crashing.

They had a barren men’s basketball roster to fill at USC with Musselman’s arrival in April, and precious little time to build it, each day the same relentless grind of another recruit hitting the portal and another flurry of texts and FaceTimes.

Waiting, each night, for Musselman to announce he was going to bed so everyone else could, too.

“You just felt like, if Michael Musselman was over there on the phone with a recruit, and Anthony Ruta was talking to a recruit,” Conroy said, “it’s like, ‘I can’t be on FaceTime with my wife. I gotta be FaceTiming with a kid.’”

This is how the Muss Era of USC basketball was built, with 30 days in a rental home 50 yards from The Strand, a working-man’s Animal House for a group of coaches trying to piece together a team from scratch that could compete in the Big Ten Conference. With families still working on moving to Southern California, they’d obtained the lease not long after Musselman was hired at USC, the former Arkansas head coach collecting most of his staff under one roof to centralize a recruiting frenzy.

Musselman would hand-dry his USC T-shirts on the front porch. Michael Musselman and Ruta slept in a bunk bed. They’d all stroll down The Strand for dinner together every night, hitting one pizza joint so often Conroy joked to the owner he should put an Eric Musselman special on his menu.

Within a month, they’d filled the roster.

“It wasn’t a frat house,” Musselman grinned Thursday morning. “It was a Portal House.”

In the mornings this spring, as Conroy attested, Musselman would get up around 5 a.m. for a seven-mile walk. He and staff would head to the Galen Center around 7 a.m., leave around 4 p.m. grab dinner, and then settle in back in Manhattan Beach to recruit for roughly five hours straight.

Nobody, Conroy remembered, would put their phone down.

“It’d be like midnight,” Musselman remembered Thursday, “and I’d say, ‘Hey, what about that guy from so-and-so college?’”

Longtime head coach Andy Enfield’s departure sent virtually USC’s entire roster scurrying, and Musselman entered Southern California in early April playing from behind, with just Harrison Hornery and walk-on JD Plough returning and the portal already having been open for weeks. And the hardest part of the process, Musselman reflected Thursday, was securing the initial wave.

USC has brought in 11 transfers this offseason, as active as any program in collegiate basketball, by simple necessity. The coaches reached out to countless more. Some of their first targets who they’d brought in on visits, Musselman said, didn’t commit.

“A lot of it was, ‘Well, we didn’t know who we were going to play with,’” Musselman said.

The sanctuary in Manhattan Beach, more than just a home base, became a recruiting tool. Musselman would encourage staffers to take FaceTimes with recruits out on The Strand, strategically placing miles of beach in the background behind them. Quickly, the floodgates opened, a wave of carefully targeted veterans wooed by Musselman’s fire and the promise of USC’s brand.

They snagged 6-foot-7 forward Terrance Williams after four years at Michigan. They plucked graduate transfers Matt Knowling and Clark Slajchert out of the Ivy League. Proven mid-major studs like Boise State’s Chibuzo Agbo Jr., Bowling Green’s Rashaun Agee and Northern Colorado’s Saint Thomas hopped aboard.

On one day this spring, Conroy remembered, the staff was sitting on their porch in Manhattan Beach when Musselman’s phone rang. It was Xavier transfer Desmond Claude, whom USC was pursuing hard in dire need of a point guard.

“Coach, I’m coming,” Claude told Musselman, Conroy remembered.

Musselman roared.

“People, like, was in their houses looking at, where’s this noise coming from?” Conroy said.

Suddenly, the program is littered with 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 gamers who can shoot and run the floor, Thursday an early glimpse of the ecosystem similar to those Musselman became known for at Arkansas and Nevada. They moved in constant motion at USC’s fourth summer workout Thursday morning, media getting their first glimpse at this grand experiment, the cavernous upstairs practice court at the Galen Center echoing with grunts and cries and veteran barking.

Musselman didn’t remove his foot from the gas, only pausing to chastise the act of jogging.

“I don’t want to do what I did last year,” Musselman said Thursday, after coming off a 16-17 season at Arkansas, “but I want to do what we did in other years, which is create a team that cosmetically, people are like, ‘I want to go watch that team play.’ And then, a team that opposing teams respect for how hard they play.”

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The monthlong lease has expired on their Manhattan Beach bunker, and Musselman has settled into his new home, his family finally getting situated in Southern California. It’s well time.

None of the coaches cooked, so every meal was eaten out. Sleep was minimal. Ruta went so stir-crazy he moved out after a couple weeks, replaced by Conroy. And yet, the nostalgia of a basketball hive-mind lingers fondly, the beginning of a fresh start for USC.

“He moved into his new place,” Conroy said, “he kept texting us.”

“Like, ‘I miss the Portal House!’”

​ Orange County Register 

NBA Finals: Celtics look to complete sweep of Mavericks for 18th title

• June 13, 2024

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer

DALLAS — It’s over. That’s what the numbers say. There will be a record-setting 18th championship for the Boston Celtics to celebrate soon, maybe very soon. They have a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals, a lead that has never been wasted in any NBA series, ever.

The stats are absolute.

The Celtics, to their credit, are taking nothing for granted.

On perhaps the next-to-last day of the NBA’s 78th season, the Celtics – who could finish off the Dallas Mavericks in Game 4 on Friday night – were desperately trying to keep things as close to business as usual as could be expected, given that the team’s first title in 16 years is now just one win away.

“At the end of the day we’re the most vulnerable in this,” said Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, who, at 35, could be the youngest coach to win a title since Bill Russell won one as a player-coach for Boston in 1969. “So, we have to remain with a sense of urgency. We have to have an understanding of our environment. We have to know that we’re just as vulnerable as anybody else in this situation, and how we handle that will determine our fate.”

His point: Don’t let up. A team that has gone 79-20 in its first 99 games of the season – on pace for the second-best single-season record in Celtics history – would likely be wise to keep doing what’s worked all year, one more time.

“Either you survive or you don’t,” said Celtics forward Jaylen Brown, repeating something Mazzulla told the team earlier Thursday. “That resonates with me.”

It might seem puzzling that it’s the Celtics – the team with the 3-0 lead – talking about survival and vulnerability. The reality is, obviously, that it’s the Mavericks who are backed into the corner that no NBA team has ever successfully escaped from.

They’re 0-5 against Boston this season. They’ve been outscored nearly 2-to-1 from 3-point range in this series. They saw a 13-point lead turn into a 21-point deficit on their home court in Game 3. It’s hard to find the proverbial silver lining right now, though the Mavs insisted they still have hope.

“We’re not in the offseason yet,” Mavericks star Luka Doncic said. “They’ve still got to win one more game. Like I said, we’re going to believe until the end.”

There were no concession speeches from the Dallas side on Thursday, no outward signs of surrender whatsoever. But there was an understanding of how tall this mountain is to climb, and how nobody in the NBA has managed to scale it.

Boston came close last year, rallying from a three-game deficit to force a Game 7 at home against Miami in the Eastern Conference finals, only to lose. And that came after the Celtics lost the 2022 NBA Finals to Golden State, that series ending in Boston as well. Those were learning experiences. These Finals will be one as well for the Mavs.

“When you look at the Celtics, they lose to the Warriors two years ago. They lose to Miami in Game 7 (last season). So, it’s just experience of understanding that you’re not promised to get back, that you’ve got to work,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said. “You see the group that is out there today. They know how to play. They’re a really good team.”

By Friday night, they could be a championship team.

The only way for the Celtics to lose this series, obviously, is if they lose the next four games. Never mind the stat about how teams with 3-0 series leads in a best-of-seven series are unbeatable – 156 teams have gone up 3-0, 156 teams have eventually prevailed in that series. Consider this one instead – the last time the Celtics lost four consecutive games in the same season was in May 2021, two coaching changes and a whole slew of roster turnover ago.

“I think from our experiences over the past couple of years, the thing that we’ve really gotten a lot better at is not relaxing, not being complacent. From game to game or series to series, we always want more,” Celtics forward Jayson Tatum said. “Maybe in recent years we took things for granted at some points or were happy to make it to certain rounds, where (now) we’re not satisfied. Even now up 3-0, nobody is celebrating or anything. We still feel like there’s a lot more that we can do. There’s a lot more that we want to do.”

There’s really only one thing left for this Celtics team to do. One more win and Banner 18 – one that would break the tie with the Lakers for the most championships in NBA history – will finally be secured.

Mazzulla doesn’t care when it happens, just that it happens.

“There’s four rounds left in this fight,” he said. “And however long it takes, whatever it takes, we’ll see how it goes.”

DONCIC KNOWS HE’S LEARNING

Doncic winced ever so slightly as he stepped onto the stage to address reporters a day after his Mavericks fell behind 3-0.

A rough first Finals for the 25-year-old superstar, no doubt – an injury-filled postseason punctuated by fouling out for the first time in his playoff career, thanks to a four-foul fourth quarter in a 106-99 loss to the Celtics in Game 3.

Near the end of six seasons filled with comparisons to LeBron James, here’s another for Doncic. Just like the player he idolized as a teenager, Doncic is on the verge of having to weather failure on basketball’s biggest stage before getting more chances to experience the ultimate success.

“I didn’t really study the first Finals of some people,” Doncic said Thursday.

Doncic did remember the first Eastern Conference finals – two, actually – for Michael Jordan in Chicago a generation ago.

“Obviously, there’s the story of MJ against Detroit,” the five-time All-Star said. “That was a big thing. I think he just learned from it. You’ve got to go through lows first to go on top. I think that’s great experience.”

After finally breaking through against the Pistons, Jordan won the title in his first trip to the NBA Finals in 1991, the start of a 6-0 run in the title series over an eight-season span.

Doncic is at risk of the same fate in his first Finals as James, who was swept with Cleveland against San Antonio in 2007. James lost again with Miami – against Dallas, no less – in 2011 before winning back-to-back titles with the Heat.

Asked if he thought his game could improve in the offseason, Doncic said, “Oh, definitely, a lot of holes,” before reiterating he would learn plenty from his first Finals.

The end is near for Dallas because Doncic didn’t get enough help from co-star Kyrie Irving in the first two games, or from his supporting cast in any of the first three.

Still, the Slovenian sensation has had his own difficulties, particularly in Game 3. The Celtics relentlessly targeted Doncic’s defense, which has been solid to good overall in these playoffs.

The four fouls came so quickly in the fourth quarter, his sixth forced a challenge that Dallas lost with 4:12 remaining. The Mavs were on a 20-2 run when Doncic was disqualified, and scored again to get within a point before Boston held on to avoid blowing a 21-point lead with 11 minutes remaining.

With a long history of complaining to officials, Doncic made a point earlier in the playoffs to go back to having fun. He’s had trouble sustaining it, and didn’t have kind words for the refs after fouling out in regulation for the first time in his career.

“I just really want to win,” Doncic said. “Sometimes I don’t show it the right way, but at the end of the day, I really want to win. I’ve got to do a better job showing it a different way.”

Doncic is 3 for 3 on miserable fourth quarters in the Finals, with more turnovers (four) than baskets (three) and zero 3-pointers. Before the rare foul-out (the third of Doncic’s career), he sat most of the fourth with the Celtics comfortably in front in Game 1.

Dallas’ best closer hasn’t been closing in this series, and added a chest contusion to a postseason litany of ailments that included a sprained right knee and a sore left ankle.

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Although the chest injury – sustained in Game 1 – was the only one on the latest injury report, it’s significant enough that Doncic confirmed to ESPN the network’s report that he had been taking a pain-killing injection by acknowledging he would probably have another one before Game 4.

“My message to him is he’s not alone in this,” said Irving, who bounced back from a sluggish offensive start to the series with 35 points in Game 3. “He’s played as best as he can despite the circumstances, just injuries and stuff. He’s been giving it his all. It’s not all on him.”

The spotlight in still on him, just as it was for Jordan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and James before the first of his four titles nearly 20 years ago.

“I think the history is there for us to learn from, when you look at great players and the struggles,” Kidd said. “But the great ones, they use that going into the next season or the next couple seasons to try to get back there because now they understand experience is a big thing.”

Doncic won’t do that until this season is officially over.

AP sports writer Schuyler Dixon contributed to this story.

​ Orange County Register 

Loan payments for Orange County’s record-high median-price house tops $10,000

• June 13, 2024

Southern California home buyers are reeling, no doubt, from record-high median home prices and high interest rates.

In Orange County, a single-family home in May was selling for a median of $1,410,000, an all-time high, according to Patrick Veling, chief executive and founder of Real Data Strategies. That’s up 12.8% versus May 2023.

The median condo price in May was $760,000, up 8.6% compared with May 2023. Veling, I will note, uses California multiple listing services to compile data on median home prices.

CoreLogic, which is used by my peers at the Southern California News Group, has not released May data yet, but data for April saw a record median selling price of $760,000 for the region comprising Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties. Jonathan Lansner also recently told us that the median price for single family homes in April across California crossed the $900,000 threshold.

Regardless of the current high mortgage rate environment (Freddie Mac is 6.95% for a 30-year fixed this week), Southern California home prices keep climbing.

“Home prices will continue to increase,” said Veling. “Not many more listings than now. So goes Orange County, so goes the (Southern California) market.”

As expected, the Federal Reserve held short-term rates steady June 12. The projection is one to two rate reductions for the rest of 2024.

Here is a sprinkling of mortgages available for that $1,410,000 median priced home.

You can get in with as little as 10% down or $141,000. You won’t have to pay for mortgage insurance, but the rate is higher than a kite at 9.875% on a 30-year fixed. Lenders typically require the borrower to pay for mortgage insurance if the borrower is putting less than 20% down or has less than 20% equity in the case of any refinance.

For a loan amount of $1,269,000, your principal and interest payment is $11,019 per month. Taxes at 1% would be $1,167 per month. Add $350 for insurance and your total payment is $12,536. You’d need around $28,000 of monthly income to qualify. This loan costs 2 points.

A Department of Veterans Affairs mortgage or VA gets you in with zero down and a 6.49% rate on a 30-year fixed. Assuming the VA funding is not financed into the mortgage, the principal and interest payments are $8,903 on a $1,410,000 loan. Add the same taxes and insurance from the example above, and you end with a total payment of $10,420. This loan costs 0 points. 

VA income qualifying is more liberal. Assume you’ll need an income of $20,000 or more per month.

Fannie Mae will get you in with a cool 20% down payment, or $282,000. A zero-point loan will offer a rate of 7.5%. The payment on a loan amount of $1,128,000 is $7,887. Add those same taxes and insurance. You’ll have to swallow a total payment of $9,404. You’ll need more than $19,000 of monthly income to qualify.

For less qualified borrowers, there are nonqualified loans offered that use bank statement deposits as an income gauge. You’ll need 20% down. You can get a 7.5% rate using 12 months of bank statements. The difference between this and the Fannie Mae loan is this loan costs 2 points. Still, not bad.

Reports on Housing’s cash tracker indicates 24.8% of all April 2024 Orange County sales were cash, according to Steven Thomas, its chief economist.

If possible, one way to compete with other buyers is to raise enough money to offer cash. You can pull up to 75% cash-out after closing through a mortgage program called delayed financing.

Not everybody agrees with Veling as far as home prices continuing to rise.

“In the housing market, high-for-longer interest rates have become more restrictive, causing potential buyers to pull back and resulting in a large increase in housing inventory when compared to a year ago,” said Orphe Divounguy, senior macroeconomist, Zillow Home Loans. “Zillow now forecasts that home values will decline in the next year.”

It’s worth providing some sage advice about sales transactions from Veling, who said that 67% of agents do fewer than three home transactions per year. Whether you are buying or selling, hire an experienced agent.

“You should qualify your agent. Make sure you are working with the right agent. Hold your agent accountable for the level of service you are worthy of,” he said.

Freddie Mac rate news

The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.95%, 4 basis points lower than last week. The 15-year fixed rate averaged 6.17%, 12 basis points lower than last week.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a 15.6% mortgage application increase compared with one week ago.

Bottom line: Assuming a borrower gets the average 30-year fixed rate on a conforming $766,550 loan, last year’s payment was $133 less than this week’s payment of $5,074.

What I see: Locally, well-qualified borrowers can get the following fixed-rate mortgages with 1 point: A 30-year FHA at 5.375%, a 15-year conventional at 5.625%, a 30-year conventional at 6.375%, a 15-year conventional high balance at 6% ($766,551 to $1,149,825 in LA and OC and $766,551 to $1,006,250 in San Diego), a 30-year high balance conventional at 6.5% and a jumbo 30-year fixed at 6.875%.

Note: The 30-year FHA conforming loan is limited to loans of $644,000 in the Inland Empire and $766,550 in LA, San Diego, and Orange counties.

Eye-catcher loan program of the week: A 30-year mortgage requiring 30% down, fixed for five years at 6.25% with 1 point cost.

Jeff Lazerson, president of Mortgage Grader can be reached at 949-322-8640 or jlazerson@mortgagegrader.com.

​ Orange County Register 

California pushes insurers to cover more homes. Is your ZIP included?

• June 13, 2024

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara unveiled on June 12 an effort to force insurers to resume writing policies in high-fire-risk areas — part of an overall plan to address the state’s insurance crisis.

It consists of three different ways insurers can meet minimum requirements for writing policies in areas deemed “high risk” or “very high risk” by Cal Fire.

Online readers can check their ZIP codes at CalMatters.

Also see: Newsom unveils plan that would hasten insurance-rate reviews — and increases

Insurance department regulators said this hybrid approach takes into account the state’s complex geography, as well as the different risk levels that big and small insurers can afford to assume. Lara said this should help homeowners who have lost coverage or been forced to turn to the last-resort FAIR Plan.

Insurance companies would have these three options:

—Write 85% of their statewide market share in high-risk areas. The department explains it this way: “If a company writes 20 out of 100 homes statewide, it must write 17 out of 100 homes in a distressed area.”

More on insurance: Travelers raising California home rates by 15% on average

—Achieve one-time 5% growth in the number of policies they write in high-risk areas.

—Expand their number of policies 5% by taking people out of the strained FAIR Plan, a pool of insurers the state requires to provide fire-insurance policies when property owners can’t obtain insurance elsewhere.

Insurers could meet these policy-writing quotas either at the county level or the ZIP code level.

Specifically, they could apply the 85% or 5% option in counties regulators have identified as distressed, or in ZIP codes regulators have deemed “undermarketed” and high risk — meaning the ZIP codes have at least 15% of policies in the FAIR Plan and have a certain percentage of residents who can’t afford their premiums. Insurers who already meet the 85% threshold would be required to maintain that for at least three years after a rate application.

Or they can choose the third option, reducing policies in the FAIR Plan statewide.

Related: As Californians mitigate wildfire threats, why is there still an insurance crisis?

The Insurance Department considers counties distressed if more than 20% of homes, condos, mobile homes and dwellings with fewer than five units are classified as high risk or very high risk. Ventura County was the only one deemed distressed in Southern California. (Source: California Department of Insurance; Map: Jeremia Kimelman, CalMatters)

Regulators will update these areas at least once a year.

Gov. Gavin Newsom hailed Lara’s announcement as “critical” to fixing the state’s insurance crisis. “As the climate crisis has rapidly intensified, the insurance system hasn’t been seriously reformed in 30 years – this is part of our strategy to strengthen our marketplace and get folks the coverage they need,” the governor said in a statement.

A growing number of property insurers have paused or stopped writing policies in California in recent years, citing increased fire risk and inflation. If today’s proposal works as intended, homeowners could eventually find it easier to buy insurance with adequate coverage, as opposed to the expensive fire-only policies that many recently have been forced to buy from the FAIR Plan.

The proposed options aren’t technically requirements, because the state cannot legally require insurers to write either homeowner or commercial property policies. But the state expects insurers to comply because failure to do so would mean insurers would not be able to take advantage of something they’ve lobbied for long and hard: catastrophe modeling.

Lara unveiled the first part of his plan to allow for catastrophe modeling in March; this is the second part of that plan. Catastrophe modeling takes into account historical data and combines that with projected risk and losses — something insurers have been able to do in every other U.S. state but California. Insurers will be able to use it here once Lara’s overall plan takes effect as promised at the end of the year.

The announcement made clear what the companies will have to do in return.

“Insurance companies need to commit to writing more policies and my department will need to verify those commitments and hold them accountable,” Lara told reporters this morning. When they submit rate reviews, insurers will state which of the pathways they choose. If they don’t fulfill the requirements of that pathway, “my department will use its law enforcement authority and reconsider rate reviews,” the commissioner said.  That means possible lowering of rates and even refunds, according to his staff.

Lara’s staff said they established the requirements for minimum coverage in distressed areas after talking with different stakeholders, including insurance companies that said the requirements were achievable.  But the draft regulations also include a possible out for insurers, who would be able to request “alternative commitments” because of changes in their size or scope of coverage, or the “frequency or severity of recent events” affecting them.

The draft regulation would give insurance companies two years after a rate filing to comply with the quasi-requirements — time regulators said the companies need to be able to write those policies. “We expect them to get started right away, but recognize they just can’t flip a switch,” said Michael Soller, deputy commissioner and spokesperson for the Insurance Department.

But Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Carmen Balber said in a statement that she sees those two years as a loophole that “lets insurance companies off the hook if they fail to meet their commitments.”  Meanwhile, she said, consumers would have been paying higher premiums.

“The rest of the plan will still mean quick, massive rate hikes,” she told CalMatters.

One insurance industry group, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, did not address any specifics of the plan released today, other than to say it “remains committed” to working with the Insurance Department.

Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, called the proposal “complex, with many trade-offs,” but said his group also remains committed to working with Lara.

As with all the regulations the commissioner is proposing, this latest one is subject to public comment. The department is holding a public workshop June 26 at 2:30 p.m. and is accepting written comments until June 27.

Lara has yet to release the other main parts of his overall plan, including making improvements to the FAIR plan and allowing insurers to include reinsurance costs in their premiums.

​ Orange County Register