OAKLAND, Calif.
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Three years ago, as the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated the franchise's first NBA championship on the Golden State Warriors' home court, Draymond Green sat at his locker and sent a text message to Kevin Durant.
CHARLIE EBERSOL WOKE up in his San Francisco apartment just after 6:45 a.m. on April 2, his phone buzzing. He was running on four hours of sleep, as he had for months.
Late one late March afternoon NBA player agent Rich Paul, 38, whose professional manner swings between stone-faced cool and startling focus, is chewing through his third tangerine and detailing how he’s been singled out as the reason that two franchises, the league at large, and—why not?—Ameri
In an era dominated by superteams, a team built around a single star on an expiring contract overthrew the league’s most dominant force (albeit a hobbled version) in a truly chaotic NBA Finals The thing to remember, I think, is that the Toronto Raptors were broken.
The free agency chase has become as important as the games themselves. Here’s how the events of the NBA Finals may affect the forthcoming decisions for Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, and Klay Thompson.
For the past decade, many of Smith’s reports and predictions have failed to come to fruition. But what would basketball look like if sports media’s most prominent talking head were always right? Being proved wrong isn’t fun.
The Finals MVP used to only go to LeBron and the player who guarded him. Now the best player on a title team is the one who plays LeBron’s role. There was never a question about who the NBA Finals MVP would be if the Raptors won.
Is a title enough to keep Kawhi Leonard in Toronto? And if not, are the Raptors headed for a long-awaited rebuild? Here are the major challenges facing Masai Ujiri this offseason.
Of course, euphoria had spread throughout the country by then. The longest 0.9 seconds in NBA Finals history was all that separated Toronto and the kind of certainty the city had been devoid of for more than a quarter-century. But around the world, closure had already come.
How long does it take to become elite at your craft? And what do the people who master their goals do differently than the rest of us? That's what John Hayes, a cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wanted to know.
We came across the following article by Stephen King a little while ago on a number of different websites. We believe it was originally published in a 1986 edition of The Writer magazine and republished in the 1988 edition of The Writer’s Handbook.
What a loss to suffer, even if for years you knew it was coming.
The Bag Man excuses himself to make a call outside, on his "other phone," to arrange delivery of $500 in cash to a visiting recruit. The player is rated No. 1 at his position nationally and on his way into town.
It had been a good meeting as far as Perry Husband was concerned. The 15 minutes he had been promised to convince the Houston Astros' team brass to fundamentally revamp their organizational approach to pitching had turned into close to an hour.
An investigation into a surprisingly divisive question.
This article is an excerpt from Atomic Habits, my New York Times bestselling book.
We know we need to exercise for our health, but a lifelong exercise habit may also help us feel younger and stay stronger well into our senior years.
Dry heaves racked Dan Stoddard’s body as he bent his 6-foot-8, 325-plus-pound frame awkwardly over a toilet, shaking as he vomited up the Gatorade and other fluids he had consumed in an attempt to stave off dehydration.
The server is speaking to a man named Jeremy Threat -- and from the tone in his voice, something is clearly amiss. Threat hustles back to the main dining room of Spataro Restaurant & Bar, an Italian restaurant in Sacramento, California, that has been overrun by the San Antonio Spurs.
Even if you're not aware of it, it's likely that your emotions will influence someone around you today. This can happen during our most basic exchanges, say on your commute to work. "If someone smiles at you, you smile back at them," says sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Yale University.
Every day of Joe McLean’s job, as the premier wealth manager of the N.B.A. elite, requires him to make the kind of purchases that most of us make only once or twice in a lifetime. He bought 25 cars on behalf of his clients last year, and he probably sold nearly as many.
On Thanksgiving night in 2009, Tiger Woods’s meticulously crafted image was shattered in a single-car accident outside of his home in Windermere, Fla.
IN THE WEEKS after the Los Angeles Lakers' 2016-17 season ended in mid-April, with the franchise failing to reach the postseason for the fourth consecutive year, more than 30 Lakers staffers -- largely from basketball operations -- gathered at the team's practice facility in El Segundo, California.
The world record for a marathon, set by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya in Berlin in September 2014, stands at two hours, two minutes, and 57 seconds. If that number means nothing to you, understand this: running 26.2 miles in 2:02:57 is absurdly fast.
When Rebecca Twigg was 7, she rode a bike for the first time. There were no training wheels, but Twigg took off like she’d done it in a previous life. She fell only when she realized she didn’t know how to stop, and steered into a wall.
Last July, a few weeks before the New England Patriots started training camp, I got a call from Donald Yee, the agent in Los Angeles who has represented Tom Brady since he entered the N.F.L. in 2000.
EVEN THOUGH HE knew better, because he'd been in this same situation dozens of times before, Steph Curry, the consummate marksman and champion, who just 40 days earlier had been named the first unanimous MVP in NBA history, couldn't help himself.
You spent years building up something—taste, experience, judgment. You were trying to like what you saw in the mirror, as all ambitious people try to do. What I am saying is, perhaps you actually like that person now. Perhaps you could use the mirror less.
You’re about to go pro, and you’re pretty excited. Deep in your heart you know you’re eventually going to succeed. But believe me, it’s coming a lot sooner than you think.
The Boston Marathon course looks like it should be fast. You start out in the distant suburb of Hopkinton—elevation 490 feet above sea level—and then cruise steadily downhill until about mile 9. The finish line has an elevation of a mere 10 feet above Boston Harbor.
In 2017, the Hall of Fame Louisville coach’s career collapsed under a string of scandals, leading to his firing from the school he had coached for 16 years.
If you imagine the summit of Mount Everest, you might picture a quiet, snowy peak far from civilisation. But a striking photo, taken by mountaineer Nirmal Purja, shows how the reality can be a lot more crowded.
Updated at 11:33 a.m. Rocky Balboa sits in a Philly bar as Apollo Creed, in a three-piece suit, holds forth on a grainy black-and-white TV screen. The bartender complains about the “jig clown” on the screen, and asks where the “real fighters” have gone.
He has made it very exciting tonight. With the Barons leading 5-1, Jordan steps in for the fourth time ... two of his three at-bats were near homers ...
This article is published in partnership with Epic Magazine. The man in the baseball cap and sunglasses waited for the teller to notice him. The morning of May 26, 2000, was quiet inside the LaSalle Bank in suburban Highland Park.
There was a quaint period in the not-so-distant past when we’d imagine the fading days of LeBron James’s NBA career and give it a familiar shape based on predictive deduction.
Iremember the exact moment I knew we were broke. I can still picture my mum at the refrigerator and the look on her face. I was six years old, and I came home for lunch during our break at school. My mum had the same thing on the menu every single day: Bread and milk.
BARCELONA, Spain — Still, they gasp.
IT'S OCT. 7, 2015, and the Cavs are hosting the Hawks in Cincinnati. It's the NBA preseason, a nothing game, really -- save for one detail: LeBron James is debuting his new, flashy signature sneaker, the LeBron 13.
There had to be a breaking point. An incident, an argument, a loss, a moment that doomed the football marriage of Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy.
The first person to receive an e-mail from the whistle-blowing organization Football Leaks was António Varela, a columnist at Record, one of Portugal’s three national sports newspapers. The message arrived early in the afternoon of September 29, 2015.
Jürgen Klopp was in his third week as Liverpool’s manager, in November 2015, when the team’s director of research, Ian Graham, arrived at his office carrying computer printouts. Graham wanted to show Klopp, whom he hadn’t yet met, what his work could do.
An oral history of the most important deal in sports TV history, when Rupert Murdoch and Fox stole the NFL and John Madden out from under the Big Three networks, created the modern pregame show, invented a new way to see football, and launched a television empire Part 1: The Choking Point The strang
José Mourinho’s whole career seems to be one long revenge plot. Despite his great success, his various reigns have all ended in spectacular discord.
Manny Machado and Bryce Harper remain unsigned. One of the sport’s best catchers had to settle for a one-year deal. Kyler Murray might play another sport if he can’t get paid.
There are so many people in the world that are so much more talented than you. They’re sexier. Smarter. Richer. More creative. More likable, more charming, better-connected, and better-looking.
Theo Epstein overcame 108 years of history to build a championship team in Chicago. In the process, he ended baseball’s long-running analytics war by proving that an objective, data-driven approach can change the game.
Editors' note: This story includes mature subject matter and language. FOUR DAYS AFTER the tweet, Johnny Manziel did what many boys do when they're in trouble. He went home.
After a long summer of topless championship parades, free-agency meetings in the Hamptons, Snapchat mishaps, and gold medals, the NBA is finally, truly, really, almost back. The start of training camp marks the beginning of our NBA Preview. This is How Basketball Works Week.
At 24 years old, Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best basketball player in the world. He is the best offensive player on a top-five NBA offense. He's the best defensive player on the No. 1 defense.
Simon Ramo, a scientist and statistician, wrote a fascinating little book that few people have bothered to read: Extraordinary Tennis Ordinary Players. The book isn’t fascinating because I love tennis. I don’t.
A collection of Twitter accounts that has criticized Joel Embiid and Markelle Fultz, disclosed sensitive information, and outlined team strategy shares eye-opening similarities. What does that have to do with the Philadelphia 76ers’ decision-maker?
There are slideshows on the Internet of the house, stately and fountained, where Stephen Curry lived as a boy — the house his parents built in 1996, the year Steph turned 8, on a 16-acre plot a few minutes’ drive from the center of Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s a big house, six bedrooms.
Editor's note: The following excerpt from the new book "SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA," by ESPN NBA analyst Kirk Goldsberry, has been updated and edited for length and clarity.
James’s move to Los Angeles seemed predicated on the assumption that he could bend events to his will—that he’s too big to fail. How does the Lakers’ doomed season change our understanding of his transformative powers?
Takes a man to admit that, I think. Let me tell you about one that changed my life.
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Analytics Issue. Subscribe today! The gatekeeper of America's most popular nightclub is a 33-year-old man known to NBA players simply as "Purple." And tonight he's busy.
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Are you a generalist or a specialist? Do you strive for breadth or depth in your career, in your life? After all, you can’t have both.
The M-V-P chants shower Kyrie Irving as he toes the line for two free throws. The point guard is putting the finishing touches on a 35-point masterpiece against the Atlanta Hawks, and the crowd bellows with praise from every corner of the arena.
HIS BOSSES WERE furious. Roger Goodell knew it. So on April 1, 2008, the NFL commissioner convened an emergency session of the league's spring meeting at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Attendance was limited to each team's owner and head coach.
“Our owner, Rich DeVos, said, ‘Why not us? Why not now?’ Everybody was saying we’re too young to win a championship. We hadn’t suffered enough. Little did we know, we would be suffering by the end.” —Tree Rollins They were destined for greatness.
The extension the center fielder is reportedly close to finalizing with the Angels will shatter records, but it doesn’t come close to compensating him appropriately for his on-field performance Angels center fielder and divine baseball being Mike Trout is reportedly close to finalizing an extensio
IN LATE OCTOBER, owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam summoned all Cleveland Browns employees to the auditorium at team headquarters for a familiar meeting. It was to announce another major shake-up, this time the firing of head coach Hue Jackson.
On Friday, the NFL and representatives for Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid announced that they had settled a grievance suit with the two players over alleged collusion to keep them out of the league because of their protests during the anthem.
In the 12 years since he became the youngest Argentine to score a World Cup goal, Lionel Messi has won more Ballon d’Or trophies, awarded to the world’s best player, than anyone before him.1 He has scored more official goals in a calendar year than anyone in living memory.
Some call him the greatest coach in history. Before retiring in May 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson spent 26 seasons as the manager of Manchester United, the English football (soccer) club that ranks among the most successful and valuable franchises in sports.
when he comes into the ring, Hakuho, the greatest sumotori in the world, perhaps the greatest in the history of the world, dances like a tropical bird, like a bird of paradise.
All this week, The Ringer will break down its findings from the massive database of reports spanning 1991 to 2003 given to us by a former member of the Cincinnati Reds front office.
This is a love story. It wasn’t seamless, starry eyes at first light. There was a discovery, unexpected and shocking. There were moments of really getting pissed and the standard irritation that comes when one half of the whole kept leaving the suitcase in the hallway.
Traditionally, in sports broadcasting, a color commentator’s job is to explain to viewers what they just saw. But, during the past few weeks of N.F.L.
Betting worth billions. Elite players. Violent threats. Covert messages with Sicilian gamblers. And suspicious matches at Wimbledon. Leaked files expose match-fixing evidence that tennis authorities have kept secret for years.
When the Washington Redskins took their cheerleading squad to Costa Rica in 2013 for a calendar photo shoot, the first cause for concern among the cheerleaders came when Redskins officials collected their passports upon arrival at the resort, depriving them of their official identification.
For the past two years, Nike has kept Colin Kaepernick on the bench despite an endorsement partnership that dates back to 2011.
When Charles Barkley's mother, Charcey Glenn, passed away in June 2015, Barkley's hometown of Leeds, Alabama, came to the funeral to pay respects. But there was also an unexpected guest. Barkley’s friends couldn’t quite place him.
Every year, NBA players take about 200,000 shots. Each season, 30 teams combine to play 1,230 games, and at the end of the regular season, you can bet the sum total of shots taken will be very close to 200,000.
In the battle for GOAT supremacy, Michael Jordan is still way out front. But the next big free-agency decision for LeBron James could determine whether he’ll ever have a chance to pass MJ.
How should we think about ESPN after the carnage? It’s a tough question. ESPN isn’t “dying.” It’s not even losing money.
"In the next 5,000 years there won’t be any more freckles or red hair," says Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller. "That’s the way humans are evolving." Miller is sitting in Venice, California, during an offseason in which he’s become one of the most famous athletes in America.
Around 10 A.M. on Friday, September 15, 2017, Ginger Chase-Watkins called the Old Town Bike Shop in Colorado Springs looking for her husband, Tim Watkins. She hadn’t heard from him in more than 24 hours.
No matter what else happens, remember the T-shirts. It’s easy for them to get lost in this whole saga. There are overwhelming distractions to come. But don’t forget about the T-shirts, because nothing else will matter when we’re done.
This summer, JJ Redick wanted a reset. He had been telling himself that he would do it for several years but couldn't bring himself to follow through at first. Social media was his way of staying current with the news and keeping up with the reactions and the reactions to the reactions.
A baseball is a wondrous little thing. It weighs 6 ounces -- the same as an apple -- and is the perfect size and shape for the hand. It is the ideal home for the proudest autographs, so white and pristine, resting on the mantel or in the trophy case.
For some families, game nights are at the very core of who they are and how they live together.
The football analytics revolution may not be obvious, but it is happening in front of you all the time. There is an NFL team that plans to run more offensive plays to the side of the field farthest from its opponent’s bench.
Reprinted from The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. Copyright © 2017 by Michael Lewis. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved
ESPN broke ground on this $175 million, 194,000-square-foot facility, called Digital Center 2, in 2011. It was billed by executives as “future-proof,” capable of adapting to any possible change in the way people watch sports. At the time, ESPN looked indestructible.
Most people have days they’ll never forget. For me, that day is April 26, 2011. It was my first time appearing on National Public Radio. As part of the program All Things Considered, host Michele Norris interviewed me about my research that suggested increasing narcissism in pop music lyrics.
Fantasy sports are more skill-based than real ones. Early one Saturday morning in Las Vegas, I sat down at a Texas Hold ‘em poker table with seven or eight other men, all middle-aged. Being 30 at the time, I was the youngest player by about a decade. A couple of them were wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Wonder Year Near the end of a conversation with Roger Federer earlier this month, in a small dining room that had been set aside for us off the lobby of the Mount Stephen Hotel in Montreal, I asked if he happened to catch the final poignant seconds of Usain Bolt’s remarkable career as a solo runne
In 1966, San Francisco 49ers star quarterback John Brodie received a contract pitch from the Houston Oilers: “We can set things up so that if you want to, all you’ll ever have to do is play golf and drink beer and gamble,” Oilers general manager Don Klosterman told him, according to the book A
Stephen Curry’s dazzling pregame shooting sessions have become a dynasty of their own throughout a half-decade of dominance for the Golden State Warriors. Dribbling two balls at once. Swish after swish from steps inside the half-court stripe.
Nick Kyrgios, the twentieth-ranked tennis player in the world, stepped to the baseline. He briskly bounced the ball and rocked forward to begin his serve, his arms swinging. He has a narrow waist and strong shoulders, a greyhound’s look, and a greyhound’s air of languid indifference.
“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardsh
Running is the most elemental sport. The equipment is simple: shoes, socks, shorts, shirt. The activity is natural. We once ran after antelopes on the savannah, and we now run around playgrounds as kids. For the most part, we compete against ourselves.
It was exactly a year ago when teammates first noticed a change in Stephen Curry. The Golden State Warriors had just witnessed Kevin Durant suffer a knee injury, which immediately cast doubt on the team's chances of advancing to the NBA Finals for a third consecutive year.
This story appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Subscribe to the magazine here. No one had noticed anybody come or go for days when, just after 4 p.m.
Jalen Rose, who became famous as a member of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five basketball team, in the nineteen-nineties, is now one of the most recognizable figures in sports media.
Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments.
In the summer of 2016, I was researching the northwest face of the Devil’s Thumb, an infamous peak in southeast Alaska chronicled in Eiger Dreams, by Jon Krakauer.
When Jackie MacMullan joined the Boston Globe as an intern in the news department, in 1982, the N.B.A. was just beginning its ascent to major national—and, later, international—popularity.
Editor's note: This profile originally ran in August 2016, two years before Manu Ginobili announced his retirement. Four years ago in London, the last aging members of Argentina's Golden Generation sat at their lockers and wept after losing a frantic bronze-medal game to Russia.
"DO YOU REMEMBER Timmy Timlin?" Steph Curry's college coach asks. We're sitting in a bar in Davidson, North Carolina, Bob McKillop and I, each of us working on an afternoon beer.
Five Sherpas surrounded the frozen corpse. They swung axes at the body’s edges, trying to pry it from its icy tomb. They knocked chunks of snow from the body, and the shattered pieces skittered down the mountain.
Slopeside shenanigans, gallons of sprayed Champagne, celebrities behaving badly, and… ski gangs? It’s all in a day’s work at Aspen. In the late 1800s, as gold miners moved through the Colorado Rockies, they came upon the would-be ski resort of Aspen, with Mount Sopris as its crown jewel.