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Saquon Barkley likes being a New York Giant. 

Three years after former general manager Dave Gettleman delivered an infamous line about Odell Beckham Jr.’s trade market that turned out to be misleading, the Giants are back at the NFL Scouting Combine with another injury-plagued star caught up in trade rumors. 

That, however, is where the comparison ends. 

Barkley’s strong preference is to stay with the Giants even as they start another rebuilding process, according to a source. A handful of agents, coaches, scouts and executives surveyed in Indianapolis agreed the Giants would need to be blown away to trade away Barkley, who is still the face of the franchise. 

General manager Joe Schoen, who replaced Gettleman in January, said the Giants are “open to everything” in response to a question that singled out Barkley. That answer was misconstrued in some corners of the viral news vortex to make it sound as if Barkley was being shopped, which is not the case. 

The Mets are going to retire Keith Hernandez’s No. 17 during a ceremony on Saturday, July 9, prior to a game with the Marlins.

Hernandez, the lynchpin of the Mets’ 1986 world championship team, joins Casey Stengel (37), Gil Hodges (14), Tom Seaver (41), Mike Piazza (31) and Jerry Koosman (36) to be so honored.

Hernandez played for the Mets from 1983-89, acquired from the Cardinals in a trade on June 15, 1983. He hit .297 as a Met and won five Gold Gloves as a first baseman in New York. In 1984, he finished second to Ryne Sandberg in the NL MVP vote, hitting .311 with 97 RBIs.

He shared the 1979 MVP Award with Willie Stargell, hitting .344 with 105 RBIs for St. Louis, and was also a key member of the Cardinals’ 1982 World Series winner.

Hernandez was elected to the Mets Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Mets believed they had tacked on another two-out run in the third inning when a Patrick Corbin sinker bore in on Luis Guillorme, appearing to strike his hand with the bases loaded. But upon the Nationals’ challenge, the call was overturned: The ball had drilled the handle of the bat.

And so on the next pitch, Guillorme calmly slapped a two-run single through the left side.

In a season in which the Mets have lost Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer for a significant chunk of time only for other pitchers to step up in their absences, even things that go wrong have ended up going right.

Behind yet another offensive explosion filled with timely hits and yet another step-up from an unexpected pitching source, the Mets continued to play the hammer to the nails in their division with a 10-0 destruction of the Nationals at Citi Field in front of 25,263 on Tuesday night for their season-high fifth straight victory.

The Mets (34-17) are a season-best 17 games over .500 and 18-7 against the NL East. The Mets now head west as their competition level gets cranked up against the Dodgers, Padres and Angels.

“I hope the hitters keep approaching the way they are, putting the ball in play,” Buck Showalter said of an offense that clicked for 17 hits. 

The Rangers survived one natural disaster, and they’ll get another as a reward.

New York completed its rally from a 3-1 deficit with a 6-2 win over the Hurricanes in Game 7 of their second-round series on Monday at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C.

Adam Fox and Chris Kreider scored first-period power play goals for the Blueshirts, who got 36 stops from Igor Shesterkin in the win — the team’s second Game 7 win of the 2022 NHL playoffs.

Ryan Strome added to the lead with a second-period tally with Kreider making it 4-0 early in the third.

The Hurricanes got a slim ray of hope with Tony DeAngelo’s third-period goal — but those hopes were quickly dashed when Filip Chytil picked up a loose puck in the offensive zone and quickly put it behind Pytor Kochetkov for a 5-1 lead. Max Domi’s late goal made it 5-2 before Andrew Copp’s empty-net goal made it 6-2.

Now, the Rangers will face the reigning Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference Final.

The Boston Celtics are headed to the 2022 NBA Finals — their first trip to the championship round since 2010 — and they will meet an experienced Golden State Warriors team that knows how to win on this stage.

The Warriors are back in the Finals after beating the Dallas Mavericks in five games during the Western Conference Finals. It’s the Warriors’ sixth NBA Finals appearance in the last eight years. They won three of the previous five, including back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018.

Oddsmakers have made the Warriors slight favorites for the series.

The Warriors are loaded with championship experience and plenty of talent, but the Celtics present a tough matchup for Golden State with their scoring depth, versatility and No. 1 ranked defense.

It is what the Rangers expect, and it is what has made them so good all year.

There is little new they can say about it, thus their tendency to reply to questions about Igor Shesterkin by simply saying he’s done the same thing for them all season.

But that does not stop Shesterkin from continuing his ascendency to superstardom. It does not stop the Garden crowd from serenading him. And it does not help opponents to score. Not in the slightest.

Shesterkin was again superlative in the Rangers’ 4-1 Game 4 victory over the Hurricanes, setting the tone early with a slide across his crease to get a glove on Brett Pesce’s shot. He finished with 30 saves, a victory and 18,006 patrons chanting his name. That is what the Rangers have come to expect from a player all but guaranteed to take home the Vezina Trophy this season.

“Same thing every night,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said. “Helps our team, battles. I think it was the second shift of the game, he made that save on the backdoor with his glove and that’s huge for us to get the lead and him making those saves early in the game.”

After a pair of Game 7s on Sunday, the NBA’s conference final matchups are set. In the West, it’ll be the No. 3 Warriors against the No. 4 Dallas Mavericks. In the East, it’s the No. 1 Miami Heat vs. the No. 2 Boston Celtics. 

Boston-Miami begins on Tuesday. Golden State-Dallas starts on Wednesday.

We’ve said all season that this was going to be a wild postseason, and it certainly has been. The title hasn’t been this up for grabs in quite a while. It genuinely feels like any one of these four teams could end up in the Finals.

Tom Brady finally revealed what made him come out of retirement. 

When the Buccaneers quarterback ended his 40-day retirement, he said in his social media announcement that he has “unfinished business” to attend to in the coming season — and avenging a playoff loss to the Rams might be at the top of his list. 

“At the end of the day, I just love the competition on the field. And last year was a very bitter ending to a season and we’ve got to make a lot of corrections to try to improve and put ourselves in a better position to succeed moving forward,” Brady told ESPN.

The Buccaneers’ season ended in a 30-27 loss to the Rams in the NFC Divisional playoff game — and Los Angeles went on to beat the Bengals to win the Super Bowl in February. 

After spending time with his wife and kids in his short offseason, Brady began to feel like he should still be playing. He spoke with close confidants in Tampa, including former coach Bruce Arians, who moved to a front-office role and handed the coaching reigns to defensive coordinator Todd Bowles. 

According to ESPN, Brady said he’s excited about the “challenge” the Buccaneers have with Bowles taking over. His short-lived retirement was also due in part to a number of realizations he had about himself and what he still has to offer the game of football.

Without both of their trophy-winning aces — and three of their top six starters altogether — the undeterred Mets continued to rack up wins at Citi Field.

Max Scherzer joined fellow multi-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom on the injured list, but the Mets overcame a blown save by Edwin Diaz on Pete Alonso’s two-run homer in the 10th for an exhilarating 7-6 win over the Cardinals at Citi Field.

Diaz couldn’t preserve a 5-4 lead for starter Chris Bassitt in the ninth. With runners on the corners and two outs, third baseman Eduardo Escobar couldn’t come up with what was ruled an infield single for Paul Goldschmidt to tie the score. The go-ahead run against Colin Holderman in the 10th scored on a double-play grounder by retiring star Albert Pujols in likely his final at-bat in Flushing.

But with Francisco Lindor serving as the automatic runner at second base, Alonso crushed Cardinals closer Giovanny Gallegos’ 1-0 slider into the second deck in left for his third career walk-off homer as the Mets improved to 26-14 through 40 games entering a six-game road trip  beginning Friday in Colorado.