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Zara Tindall recently tugged at the heartstrings of royal fans via her bittersweet candor, and honest admissions about her children.

In a chat with Bella magazine, the daughter of Princess Anne and mother to three kids admits some of her traits have even managed to peek out through her kids, Mia, 11, Lena, 7 and Lucas 4.

“My personality is coming out in the kids, and there are some parts that you love and some that you don’t like,” she is quoted saying.

Especially since as a parent “every day there is a different dilemma or problem”, although an ‘incredible’ one she admits.

She even shared her hope for her children’s future and added that as a mother one hopes that one can “instil in them the values that you hold and from both of us, what we have learned from our careers and our hard work, dedication, motivations, lessons and respect.”

Near the end, she also acknowledge all the struggles that come with modern day parenting too.

“It is so easy to be distracted from that kind of thing, so we try and work every day to make sure they get the same values that we had,” she added to the outlet all before signing off.

Editor’s Note: Read more NBA coverage from The Athletic here. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA or its teams.

***

It’s the complaint that they all have, the exhausted, the annoyed, the aggrieved. The NBA, no matter what the mass media says, is more than the Los Angeles Lakers. Every time a big-name player gets released, every time a big-name free agent hits the market, every time a star wants a trade, an army of purple-and-gold photoshops arrives with the talking heads to turn the league’s eyes to the West.

And a lot of days, those people have a point.

But here in the early moments of the NBA offseason, the Lakers have firmly established themselves as the main character, for better or worse, because of their glaring deficiency at center, because of the big decisions ahead and because their two superstars are at wildly different stages in their career.

Beginning with Sunday’s news that Dorian Finney-Smith was opting out of his deal, the Lakers found themselves as the main event in text messages bouncing between scouts, executives, agents and reporters. It cascaded from there into a flurry of rumor and speculation. Does LeBron James want a trade? Is Finney-Smith going to leave? Are the Lakers trading Austin Reaves for Walker Kessler? Are they the favorites for Brook Lopez? And, in one last exclamation point for the night, did Deandre Ayton just take a buyout from the Portland Trail Blazers to go play with Luka Dončić?

It was a real set of waves crashing in for 12 hours or so, and it continued into Monday, when the Lakers were one of the biggest stories, sometimes behind the story.

The noisiest stuff was attached to James — the reaction from around the NBA to Rich Paul’s statement ranging somewhere between a not-so-veiled threat to leave to an outright trade request to a not-so-subtle reminder to the Lakers’ front office that his role in their team matters too (even if they’ve clearly put their priorities behind Dončić).

While some of that calmed on Monday with Paul telling Chris Haynes that there’s been no trade conversations and that James merely wants the Lakers to prioritize winning now while still being wise with their plans for Dončić and the future, that kind of storyline just doesn’t disappear.

And losing Finney-Smith to the Houston Rockets came with its own set of issues. The Lakers, according to team sources, offered two years against the four-year, $53 million deal he got with Houston because they wanted to maintain as much future flexibility as possible to be in position to land a superstar down the line to pair with Dončić.

Without Finney-Smith, the Lakers quickly pivoted to Jake LaRavia, the Sacramento Kings’ free agent who had interest from multiple teams. The 6-foot-7, 42-percent 3-point shooting wing was an unrestricted free agent after the Memphis Grizzlies declined his fourth-year option last November.

In Memphis and, briefly in Sacramento, LaRavia flashed the kind of potential that some evaluators coveted at a low price tag this free-agent cycle.

“Everyone can use a player like him,” one Western Conference executive told The Athletic.

Another executive praised LaRavia’s toughness, his shooting and promising skills as a playmaker off the dribble.

LaRavia is represented by Aaron Reilly and Reggie Berry, the same agency team that represents Reaves. Reaves made a surprise cameo at the end of a long LaRavia interview this summer, when it turned out that the car LaRavia was riding in was being driven by his future Lakers teammate.

According to league sources, LaRavia was the Lakers’ first call when free agency officially opened at 3 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday. In his conversation with Rob Pelinka and Lakers coach JJ Redick, LaRavia and his team were impressed with the ways Pelinka sold the strengths of the Lakers’ brand and Redick’s detailed vision for how he’d like to use the young wing.

The Lakers were able to get a relatively quick commitment to a two-year guaranteed contract worth $12 million.

“Hope Lakers fans are as excited as I am,” LaRavia posted on Instagram. “Let’s work.”

The Lakers’ work is far from over. LaRavia could be championed as a good signing … provided the Lakers land their center.

LA’s target list, which began the day with Brook Lopez, Clint Capela and Ayton on it, quickly shrank to one by the early evening with Lopez agreeing to sign with the Los Angeles Clippers and Capela heading to Houston via a sign-and-trade with the Atlanta Hawks.

Ayton was clearly the team’s top priority. He was picked first in the same draft as Dončić, shares an agency with Dončić under Bill Duffy, who heads WME basketball, and is best equipped to give the Lakers the rolling lob threat Dončić has thrived alongside. Signing Ayton is not without risk — The Athletic’s Jason Quick detailed those in his piece on Ayton’s time with the Blazers — but a return to high-stakes basketball at a critical juncture in his career combined with a point guard who can prop up centers who are way less talented certainly makes this seem worth it.

However, there’s competition. The Milwaukee Bucks, who lost Lopez to the Clippers in free agency, are trying to remain competitive and have access to the full midlevel exception after some cap creativity and a need for a center — giving them the ability to offer roughly $6 million more than the Lakers.

That means the Lakers remain in the middle of one of free agency’s biggest storylines.

And with a team that still has a sale to close, an extension to finalize with Dončić and the handling of James’ final chapters all still to come, they’re probably not going anywhere.

***

India chose to let speculation swirl around the potential involvement of Jasprit Bumrah in Wednesday’s second Test, insisting that a decision over whether to play their premier bowler would not be taken until late on Tuesday night.

Their fear is that should Edgbaston produce a pitch which favours batting, a prospect made more likely by the dry conditions in which the ground staff have been working, and the rain that is tentatively forecast for the weekend were to fall, a draw would become the most likely result. Playing the 31-year-old might end up doing little more than draining his reserves of energy ahead of a third Test that starts at Lord’s next Thursday. Shubman Gill, the India captain, would say only that Bumrah is “definitely available”.

Speaking before his team’s final pre-match training session Gill said selection decisions would be taken only after assessing the state of the pitch. “We just thought we’re going to have one final look today and see what kind of combination we want to go with,” he said. “I want to see the wicket one last time before we decide.”

Unhelpfully, the hover cover was parked on it for the entire duration of India’s visit to the ground, leaving Gill to ruminate on Ben Stokes’s description of the surface: “It looks a really, really good wicket. They’ve tried to produce something we were after. We’re pretty clear when we speak to groundsmen what we want. They try their hardest for us as well.”

Bumrah has done minimal training since the first Test ended in victory for England last Tuesday, and in keeping with his normal, restful pre-match routine was not at Edgbaston on Tuesday. Akash Deep, who cleaned up England’s top three on his first morning as a Test cricketer in Ranchi last February, is the most likely beneficiary if he is rested.

Beyond the result India’s most obvious problem in the first Test was a lack of lower-order runs – while their top five batters averaged 72.10 in Leeds their bottom six scored just 65 between them across both innings. “Nobody really expects that your last six is going to get out in under 40 runs,” Gill said. “Even if they play bad you expect maybe 100 or 80 runs.”

But though four of that top five scored a century, one of them twice, Gill insisted it was they who were largely to blame for the team’s inability to post match-winning totals, using the way he himself got out in the first innings, to a loose shot off Shoaib Bashir when on 147, as an example.

“Once you are set, and you know that you don’t have that much depth in your batting order, maybe the top order could take a little bit more responsibility and bat them completely out of the game,” he said.

Stokes shut down questions about Bumrah’s involvement as “India’s problem to deal with”. Instead the only bowler who troubled him on Tuesday was Jofra Archer, who has remained with the group despite not being selected for this game.

“Facing him in the nets there, he got the ball swinging quite nicely, and effortless pace,” he said after training. “It’s been a while since I faced him, so it was a little bit of a wake-up call.”