basketball Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The NBA can try all it wants, player rest is impossible to stop
Remember when the Dallas Mavericks concluded an embarrassing 2022-23 season by not dressing Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić instead of attempting to qualify for the Play-in Tournament? The Mavericks were fined $750,000, and I think that the NBA reached a breaking point in its never-ending saga of star-...

LeBron James is Team USA’s shadow GM and possibly its next director
LeBron James is back to doing what he does best, flexing those roster construction muscles as the league’s greatest shadow GM. According to Shams Charania and Joe Vardon’s report in The Athletic, an effort to recruit Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, Jayson Tatum and Draymond Green, is being...

USA’s FIBA World Cup loss to Germany proves something needs to change before the 2024 Olympics
The Americans will leave this year’s FIBA World Cup without a title....

Kim Mulkey getting paid is just latest evidence that college sports is alive and well
Locking in Kim Mulkey as a Bayou Bengal for life was always a matter of when, not if, especially coming after leading LSU to a national championship in her second season on campus. No matter what you think of Mulkey off the court — and trust me, there’s plenty to criticize — she’s one heck of a bask...

Dillon Brooks and Luka Dončić take NBA antics international
NBA players can’t help themselves sometimes, even while playing under international rules. Canada played Slovenia in a FIBA World Cup matchup Wednesday morning, with the Canadians coming out on top, 100-89. Multiple NBA players headlined this game — mainly for Team Canada — but once Luka Dončić (Slo...

Breanna Stewart is the heir apparent to Diana Taurasi’s scoring crown
In a sport where offense sells, Breanna Stewart is a closer. On Tuesday night, the New York Liberty needed each and every one of Stewart’s 40 points on a panoply of turnaround fadeaways, driving finishes, post-ups, and off-the-dribble triples to put away the Dallas Wings 94-93. ...

Coco Gauff is proof that tennis is wack without Black women
They used to not want Althea Gibson’s “kind” around. Now we don’t know where tennis would be without them. That’s how you ace an opportunity....

Team USA must play like this for the rest of the FIBA World Cup
Americans don’t care when Team USA wins non-gold medal games. But they do give a damn if they lose them....

College football on Labor Day has always been a sick joke
Labor Day Weekend serving as the official kickoff for college football is still the biggest oxymoron in sports. For decades, college football was the most abhorrent, openly accepted form of free labor. Unlike their basketball counterparts, NFL-caliber athletes are forced to push themselves through t...

Why have there been so many WNBA broadcasting blunders this season?
Broadcasters in the 2023 WNBA season are mostly pronouncing players’ names right. Considering the frequency with which on-air talent mispronounced players’ names (or misnamed players) in recent years, this is a triumph....

Dennis Schröder wasn’t having any of his FIBA World Cup coach's foolishness
Most NBA players see it as an honor to represent their country in the FIBA World Cup, especially those from outside the United States. These players usually won’t pass up the opportunity to play for the bragging rights of becoming “real” world champions. But like most players today, the old way of c...

Team USA’s lack of size was exploited in men's World Cup loss to Lithuania
The United States Senior Men’s Basketball Team got its feelings hurt on Sunday. In the final game of the 2023 FIBA World Cup Group Stage, they suffered their first international defeat of 2023 with a 110-104 loss to Lithuania....

It’s OK to feel uneasy about Damar Hamlin’s return to football
Damar Hamlin’s return is almost complete. Bronny James is “doing extremely well” in his recovery. You’re not a bad person for wondering if playing again is the best idea for both of them....

Maybe Noah Lyles was right about the NBA after all
The NBA announced Wednesday morning that the Dallas Mavericks will take on Euro League champions Real Madrid in a preseason exhibition on Oct. 10 in Spain. It isn’t unusual for the NBA to send teams to other countries for games before the start of the regular season, but this announcement’s timing ...

Rondae Hollis-Jefferson has taken quite a star turn during the FIBA World Championships
It was a long shot for Jordan to qualify for the second round at the 2023 FIBA World Championships. They are 0-3 through three games and were throttled by USA, 110-62. However, through the defeats a player bloomed. The leading scorer in the FIBA World Cup is, unsurprisingly, Luka Dončić at 30 points...

Desean Jackson providing weekend warriors a chance to borrow Kevin Hart's wheelchair
For every armchair quarterback out there who has fantasized about competing on the same field as their favorite NFL stars, now is your time — even if Kevin Hart’s wheelchair is still warm. ...

If Noah Lyles is confused about NBA superiority, he should buy a ticket to the Rondae Hollis-Jefferson show
You would think Team USA gold medalists would stick together. Instead, the newly crowned fastest man in the world, Noah Lyles wasted his coronation at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest by dumping on the NBA. More specifically, he took aim at the National Basketball Association taking the...

Giannis Antetokounmpo sounds more excited to play in Saudi Arabia than Milwaukee
Giannis Antetokoumpo is already the savior of pro basketball in Milwaukee. Bucks ownership was threatening to relocate to Seattle while the city hedged on providing the funding for a stadium upgrade before The Greek Freak singlehandedly yanked them out of basketball purgatory. Nearly a decade later,...

Skip Bayless’ new <i>Undisputed</i> co-hosts mean more ex-athletes replacing journalists
Screaming and arguing are in. Context and nuance are out. And over at FS1, the decibel levels just got louder, while the conversations just got dumber....