it Page 427 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

World Cup Group B Preview: It’s time for Sam Kerr to take this itty bitty world by storm
We spilled some ink in these parts about Mallory Swanson by herself making the USWNT a threat to win the World Cup, before her unfortunate injury. But the US isn’t the only team with a player who is capable of grabbing a short tournament by the haunches, and the co-hosts Australia may have the bigge...

The USMNT looked terrible against Canada, and it doesn’t matter
It took until the 88th minute for the United States men’s national team’s C-squad to score a goal on home soil in a major-tournament quarterfinal and 15 seconds after play resumed for the offense to take place that gave Canada a golden opportunity to take it away. An uninspired first half, saved by ...

Assessment after 2 summer league games: Victor Wembanyama is scary
Victor Wembayama’s rookie summer league didn’t have quite the immediate impact of Zion Williamson’s. There was no steal in which he wrestled the ball from the clutches of NBA starter and went Daryl Dawkins on the rim, nor an earthquake that stopped the game. What Wembayama was able to accomplish thr...

Chiefs 'superfan' on run from law finally gets caught
After months as a fugitive on the lam, Kansas City Chiefs superfan Xaviar Babudar (aka ChiefsAholic) has been apprehended. Babudar’s capture ended one of the longest fugitive runs in sports entertainment. After being released on bond for his Dec. 16 robbery of the Tulsa Teachers Credit Union, Babuda...

Cooper Flagg was playing in the wrong summer league
Victor Wembanyama’s NBA summer league debut was a mixed bag that had quick-take artists calling him Raef “LaFrench” after a 3-for-14 shooting performance. Nevermind that he rejected several shots and affected a slew of others. On Sunday night, Wembanyama had to respond to the best player in a summer...

Larry Nassar got shanked in prison — it’ll be hard finding anyone who feels sorry for him
Larry Nassar got gutted like a fish....

Long live student journalism
I spent two college summers delivering Edy’s Ice Cream to Jewels, Moo & Oinks, and 7 Eleven’s throughout the Chicagoland area. The summer after my junior year I interned for NBA.com and thought I was hot stuff with a feature I wrote on Josh Smith’s basketball camp. Nicole Markus, Alyce Brown, Cole R...

The Charlotte Hornets are a soap opera
Throughout the history of NBA teams that have called Charlotte, North Carolina home, a second-round trip to the playoffs has been the furthest point any franchise has made it. And while this iteration of the Hornets has nothing to do with the ones from yesteryear, they do feature something that prob...

Victor Wembanyama passes first test
If it wasn’t obvious from Victor Wembanyama’s interview on J.J. Redick’s podcast, this young man is ready for NBA life. Las Vegas, the slow July sports news cycle, Britney Spears, all of it crashed down on him in less than 24 hours. However, when it came time to address the scenario, Wembanyama was ...

Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier’s spinoff league offers a platform for WNBA stars
Every offseason, women’s basketball’s finest head abroad to take part in leagues that run concurrently with the NBA schedule. Unfortunately, that often creates a problem for the WNBA teams that have them under contract between May and the completion of their respective seasons in early fall. That’s ...

Hoops, she did it again
This year’s No. 1 overall pick, Victor Wembanyama, has only been an official NBA player for a week, and he’s already had his first wild encounter with a fan. But this wasn’t some random fan walking around Las Vegas, where Wemby will make his summer league debut on Friday. No, this was former teen po...

Where should expectations be set for Victor Wembanyama’s summer league dress rehearsal?
Victor Wembanyama’s career prologue is almost as long as he is. It already feels like Wembanyama’s in his second NBA season doesn’t it? It feels like just yesterday, when he was in the (French) Finals at the exact same time as Nikola Jokic. According to Marc Stein, Wembanyama’s scheduled NBA debut h...

The sports world takes sports betting more seriously than violence against women and racism — go figure
Greg Hardy got to play football again. Antonio Brown keeps hanging around. Donald Sterling and Robert Sarver made millions after selling their teams. The NCAA keeps making billions off the backs of unpaid teenage Black basketball players in March. Pete Rose still can’t get into the Hall of Fame — ma...

Tough luck Pittsburgh, no Beyoncé for you
A significant blow was delivered to the Pittsburgh economy on Wednesday. At summer’s end, Acrisure Stadium will have hosted only one of the biggest concert tours of the season. Taylor Swift performed there in front of a record crowd in June. Beyoncé was scheduled to take that stage in August but the...

The 15 Most Valuable Professional Sports Franchises
This story was corrected and revised on July 6, 2023. ...

The Rockets have become the NBA’s most polarizing team
The Houston Rockets have been stuck in zero gravity since their post-Harden rebuild began two years ago. Despite their lottery successes they still have no direction. The Rockets lit the fuse this summer expecting a controlled explosion and witnessed the creation of the NBA’s most opulent sparkler....

Michelle Wie West is retiring and she’s leaving behind a weird legacy
Somehow, Michelle Wie West is only 33. She was a grown adult when I was a kid and now the prodigy is only two years older than me. After a professional golf career of nearly two decades, Wie West is hanging up the clubs after this week’s U.S. Open. Wie West, who didn’t marry Kanye or Adam, but Golde...

Dan Le Batard was right — ‘Embrace Debate’ has destroyed sports television
Too much of anything is bad for you. Excessive amounts can be catastrophic. Dan Le Batard hinted at this a few months ago. And after the reported cancellation of Bomani Jones’ Game Theory on HBO, it’s become quite clear — “embrace debate” killed sports television shows. ...
