Photo by Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images Justin Verlander donating paychecks to COVID-19 relief efforts by Phillip Barnard During a call with several prominent sports commissioners, President Trump said he believes the NFL season will start on time and hopes to have fans back in arenas in August and September Saturday morning, President Donald Trump held a
12:02 PM ET Tim BontempsESPN The Class of 2020 will arguably be the most star-studded in the history of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. All eight finalists — led by Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett — were selected on Saturday for enshrinement and will be inducted Aug. 29 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Basketball is back! Well, technically – 16 NBA players will be playing basketball. Online. In a video game. Hey, that still counts, right? Along with a few shining moments of optimism, the sporting world is slightly less of a barren hellscape than it was a week ago – even though the rest of the planet
8:03 AM ET The Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2020 could be one of the most star-studded ever, a group that is expected to include Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and the late Kobe Bryant. But which active players are on track for basketball immortality? Ahead of Saturday’s announcement of the full class, our NBA
NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 12: An NBA logo is shown at the 5th Avenue NBA store on March 12, 2020 in New York City. The National Basketball Association said they would suspend all games after player Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images) Nylon
5:54 PM ET As part of larger corporate cutbacks amid the coronavirus pandemic, layoffs are underway within the Utah Jazz. Those cutbacks include non-basketball personnel, and some employees are taking salary reductions, sources told ESPN. The Jazz are one of approximately 80 companies within the Larry H. Miller Group, which confirmed the layoffs as “a
It may seem like it, but, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA world never truly stopped turning, even Bodog Canada is still running. Yes, in a time of some much-needed, sports-related distraction, the play has been put on hold. But the Association has continued to chug along as the draft and free
8:45 AM ET Ohm Youngmisuk Close ESPN Staff Writer Ohm Youngmisuk has covered the Giants, Jets and the NFL since 2006. Prior to that, he covered the Nets, Knicks and the NBA for nearly a decade. He joined ESPNNewYork.com after working at the New York Daily News for almost 12 years and is a graduate
Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images Our latest 2020 NBA mock draft has LaMelo Ball heading to the Chicago Bulls, while the New York Knicks wind up with Anthony Edwards. The continuously weird nature/absence of the sports landscape right now makes everything more difficult, especially the pre-draft process for both NBA and NFL teams. We don’t
12:51 PM ET The manager for potential No. 1 NBA draft pick LaMelo Ball told ESPN that they have purchased his Australian NBL team, although in a statement later, the Illawarra Hawks said no sale has been completed. “We own the team,” Jermaine Jackson told ESPN. “It’s a done deal.” No financial details were revealed.
The Lakers are one of the NBA’s oldest and winningest franchises. Along the way, their rosters have featured some strange characters you probably forgot about. The Lakers are a well-decorated franchise. They arrived in Southern California with five titles. They have won eleven more in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. They are, for lack
8:06 AM ET Al Horford never expected to become a live-in physical education teacher for his three children — especially for the oldest, Ean, his 5-year-old son. But when the COVID-19 hiatus and accompanying self-isolation hit the United States, the Horfords found themselves together in an apartment in the Philadelphia area without a yard. There
The Rockets belong to Russell Westbrook now, but that’s not the only thing we learned from the 2019-20 NBA season. As we wait for whatever is to come of the 2019-20 NBA season, even a momentary pause will leave certain moments and breakthroughs from the season as a memory and conversation to cherish while we
We don’t know when the season will return, but since we’ve got time to kill, here are the questions that would define a 2020 NBA Finals matchup between the Milwaukee Bucks and LA Clippers. Before coronavirus interrupted the NBA season and all of our lives, there seemed to be a fairly clear separation at the
8:20 AM ET WORD SPREAD QUICKLY among the Toronto Raptors: Did you hear? Gobert has it. Donovan Mitchell too. See? Right here on Twitter. The defending NBA champions quickly realized what was coming: Their final basketball game came just two days earlier, on March 9 against the Utah Jazz. They would be quarantined. But what
The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association are discussing the possibility of withholding pay in the event of canceled regular season games. While the NBA remains optimistic that regular-season basketball will return sometime over the summer, the league has begun to seriously consider alternative scenarios amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. According to ESPN’s Adrian
12:04 PM ET Eric WoodyardESPN While some might speculate that the NBA season will not resume because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the league’s best record when play stopped, are going forward as if they will eventually be on the court. “We are operating and functioning and just have a mentality
Where does James Harden rank among the greats? How much does he make? Did a strip club really retire his jersey? This James Harden FAQ has all your answers. James Harden is a study in contrasts. His beard makes him one of the most recognizable players in the league but his soft-spoken demeanor means we
11:55 AM ET Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who expressed optimism last week that the NBA season could resume as soon as mid-May, has backed off discussing any potential timetables for the league playing games again. “I have no idea,” Cuban said Wednesday on ESPN’s Get Up. “I mean, the only thing I know is
The Whiteboard is The Step Back’s daily basketball newsletter, covering the NBA, WNBA and more. Subscribe here to get it delivered to you via email each morning. Tuesday night’s news that the NBA is discussing withholding pay if games are canceled felt like an early April Fool’s joke, but it was also a sobering reminder
Charles Barkley compared Draymond Green to ‘the least famous person in a boy band.’ Who would that make him in NSYNC? Barkley was a guest on the Dan Patrick Show and took the opportunity to throw more shade Green’s way, saying, “He’s the least famous person in the boy band, and he thinks he’s a
After an injury-plagued season, the Warriors will hold one of the best picks in the 2020 NBA Draft. What could they get if they decide to trade it? Even before the season was suspended, the 2019-20 version of the Golden State Warriors was not coming close to living up to the standard the team set
With an injury-shortened season in Australia’s NBL, R.J. Hampton has been mostly out-of-sight, out-of-mind as an NBA Draft prospect. He’s worth another look. R.J. Hampton is enshrouded in shadows — the shadow of LaMelo Ball and his status not only as a prospect but as a basketball celebrity, the shadow of other high profile international
9:51 AM ET In the 2016 NBA Finals, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers became the first team in NBA history to overcome a 3-1 Finals deficit, beating the 73-win Golden State Warriors to give the city of Cleveland its first major professional sports championship in 52 years. To do so, the Cavs needed to
10:42 PM ET Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart, who announced Monday that he is clear of COVID-19 after testing positive two weeks ago, confirmed Tuesday night that he plans to donate blood so it can be studied with the hope of finding a treatment for the coronavirus. Michael Joyner, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic,
Photo by: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images These five players began their careers with dominant seasons and early success ranking them among the greatest rookie seasons in NBA history. One of the great injustices of the suspended 2019-20 NBA season is the lack of finality for Zion Williamson’s rookie season. Williamson’s 23.6 points per game ranks him
5:22 PM ET The NBA, NBA Players Association and 2K have partnered to produce an NBA 2K tournament that will air on ESPN and ESPN2 starting Friday, it was announced. The NBA 2K20 Player Tournament is Friday through April 11, according to a statement, and will begin airing on ESPN with a half-hour preshow at
To say the events of the past three or so weeks were irregular would be the understatement of the year. And during an already tragic year for the NBA, the league made the tough choice to postpone the season, prior to government intervention, on Wednesday, Mar. 11. In the two-plus weeks since the COVID-19 outbreak
Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images It’s fun to debate who the top NBA players drafted in the 2010s are. But who are the best draft prospects of the last decade? A fun game that’s thrown around from time to time on NBA Draft Twitter is to debate the merits of the top prospects of the
8:43 AM ET “The Last Dance,” a 10-part documentary event featuring the untold story of Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls championship season, is now coming to ESPN on April 19. Due in part to the coronavirus pandemic that has suspended the NBA season and caused shelter-in-place measures across the country, the documentary has