• Part II of a five-part series ahead of the 2024-25 NBA season, chronicling how the league reached this era of parity and the key questions that remain. Part I | Welcome to our new era of NBA parity, where one team in each conference is favored by Vegas to lap the field by several games.…

In spring 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended the country, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert was locked down in her New Jersey home. The league was facing a season on the brink right as its stakeholders felt it had begun to gather momentum. In conversations with league owners and players, Engelbert sensed in those early weeks…

This isn’t shaping up to be the year to need a quarterback in the NFL Draft, yet several teams already know where their priorities must lie this coming April. The Las Vegas Raiders and New York Giants absolutely need to spend a high pick on a quarterback. The Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers almost certainly…

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — When Aaron Rodgers gets hit, it takes him a little bit longer to get up than it used to. His knees hurt, his ankles hurt — the hits always hurt, but now they hurt more. That’s football at age 40. In between the creaks and the crumbles, signs of the old…

Premier League managers are judged by how their teams perform on the pitch, but the language they use off it can also play into how they are perceived by supporters, players and the media. From Ange Postecoglou’s many uses of “mate” to the importance Sean Dyche places on “hard yards”, managers use language to create…

Almost two decades after the last time it happened, Novak Djokovic finds himself occupying a space in men’s tennis with which he is all too familiar. He is, by a distance, the third-best player in the world. In the summer of 2007, soon after he turned 20, Djokovic made the semifinals of the French Open…

YUMA, Ariz. – Buddy Hield … who is this Buddy Hield? Jordan Holt typed furiously on his computer in his Phoenix hotel room, searching for information on Indiana Pacers guard Buddy Hield. Holt, a 43-year-old meter and relay technician, was steaming mad, having just watched an NBA game between the Boston Celtics and the Pacers.…

Before we sort through end-of-season Deshaun Watson exit strategies for the Cleveland Browns, let’s make one thing clear: Watson remains the starting quarterback. Browns fans know the routine. Another week, another depressing performance from the offense, followed by credibility-sapping assurances that Watson remains QB1. It happened again Sunday after the Browns lost 20-16 at Philadelphia…

NEW YORK — It all looked kinda familiar, almost as if we’d seen it before … There they were, that where’d-they-come-from wild-card team dancing and hugging in the infield, as fireworks popped and 44,000 people obliterated what was left of their vocal cords … While across the field, but in another universe, those famous dudes from that…

By Brendan Marks, Justin Williams and Mark Cooper For the second consecutive season, Kansas will begin the year as the No. 1 team in men’s college basketball. This time, the Jayhawks hope to stay there. Kansas received 30 of 60 first-place votes to top the preseason AP Top 25 on Monday, putting it narrowly ahead…