Basketball
Story Stream
How the Cost of Youth Sports Is Changing the N.B.A. June 24, 2025
American sports come with implied narratives. The story of baseball is fundamentally nostalgic, connecting us to childhood and to the country’s pastoral beginnings. Football tells a story of manly grit, with echoes of the battlefield. Basketball is t...
The Pacers' Model June 20, 2025
Win or lose, the 2024-25 Indiana Pacers are something special. After an undistinguished start to the season, they were the fourth-best team in the National Basketball Association, amassing a regular season record of 34-14 since the start of the year....
How the Gen Z Takeover Is Changing the NBA June 06, 2025
For one night last month, Tyrese Haliburton had the whole basketball world in his hands. In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Knicks, he helped lead the Indiana Pacers to a historic comeback, erasing a 14-point deficit in less than ...
Missed 3s Are Taking Over the NBA April 03, 2025
In the summer of 1979, as he ended one of the most important meetings in basketball history, NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien quipped, “I think that I shall never see a thing more lovely than a three.” The NBA’s board of governors had just voted 15-7 t...
I Also Like Bad College Basketball April 02, 2025
From Subscriber EK:Since you like to tackle subjects that the mainstream is too scared to discuss... Here's an obvious one: the quality of play in the women's NCAA tournament has, for the most part, been abysmal. Even the best teams and best players,...
Is March Madness All Luck? March 26, 2025
The beauty of March Madness is that anything can happen. The horror of March Madness is that, really, anything can happen. Unlike the college-football playoffs—which are highly restrictive, and weighted toward bigger schools from powerhouse conferenc...
Play Ball! March 24, 2025
After losing ground to football and basketball, baseball might not be the national pastime anymore, but it is certainly the national bellwether, the sport that has defined America and charted its ups and downs....
John Calipari and the Razor-Thin Margins of Legacy March 21, 2025
They are dressed in blue and ready for blood, thousands of them, pouring through downtown Lexington, Kentucky, on a Saturday night in February, layered, liquored up, and ready to scream. “My guess is I’m going to get booed,” John Calipari said earlie...
He Helped Michael Jordan Win March 20, 2025
When Michael Jordan first approached me about running his basketball camps, I was hesitant.“Let me think about it,” I told him....
Basketball and the Rule of Law March 18, 2025
In sports, as in life, it often does pay to break the rules. In baseball, the Houston *stros improperly used electronics to steal signs, won the World Series, and received little more than a gentle pat on the wrist. In football, Bill Belichick, the N...
The 2024-25 NBA Midseason Awards January 30, 2025
The NBA season is officially just past its halfway point, offering a wonderful excuse to take stock of every major awards race. Some of these “winners” are unchanged from what my hypothetical ballot looked like at the quarter mark, but enough has hap...
The End of Fun in the NBA January 03, 2025
The big power forwards and centers, wide as canyons in the shoulders and waist, used to bludgeon each other in the post like elephant seals. That was basketball once — Charles Barkley backing down defenders like a bulldozer, Shaquille O'Neal shatteri...
The NBA's Problem Is Economics, Not Basketball December 19, 2024
It is becoming more difficult to form great teams, which makes it harder to elevate new superstars, which is what fans want....
Searching for the Heart of the NBA Cup in Las Vegas December 18, 2024
The 2024 NBA Cup has reached its final stage. On Tuesday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Milwaukee Bucks will face off in Las Vegas for the ultimate prize: $514,971 for each player on the winning team and, of course, the satisfaction of a jo...
Caitlin Clark’s Conundrum December 17, 2024
The photograph of Caitlin Clark on the cover of Time magazine honoring her as its athlete of the year is a stunner. Her dark hair blows back breezily as she faces the camera with a confident half-smile. Her workout top exposes her muscular midriff an...
Victor Wembanyama Is Letting It Rip November 15, 2024
I’ll admit that there’s something incongruous about Victor Wembanyama firing away from deep. Everyone in the NBA shoots 3s now, but it still touches a primitive basketball nerve when a man who can practically dunk without jumping settles for a 28-foo...
The Cleveland Cavaliers Are Dialed In November 11, 2024
“I like building little machines,” the Cleveland Cavaliers’ center Jarrett Allen once told a local reporter. He was describing the soil-humidity reader he’d crafted one weekend so that he could know when to water his plants. He grew up taking his toy...
The Influence of Sedona Prince November 06, 2024
At twenty-four years old, Sedona Prince is starting her seventh year of college basketball, but she has only played in seventy games. Last year, her first at Texas Christian University, she averaged roughly twenty points, ten rebounds, and three bloc...
Chronicling 40 Years of NBA Photography November 06, 2024
For forty years, Nathaniel S. Butler—or Nat, as he’s known to his countless friends and colleagues—has navigated the hustle and bustle of New York City to arrive at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street and clock into work with his trus...
American Boys November 04, 2024
Cedar-Riverside was humming. The boys were looking fresh—Frenchy with his hair twisted up, Saiid’s beard trimmed tight—everybody edged up and faded up and straight from the barber’s chair. Once their moms were out of sight, a few boys snugged durags ...
The 2024-25 NBA Entrance Survey October 23, 2024
Basketball is back! Time to say goodbye to your families and make watching League Pass your new bedtime routine. To celebrate Tuesday’s opening night, the Ringer NBA staff has gathered to offer some predictions and favorite story lines for the 2024-2...
The Knicks Are Supposed to Be Good October 18, 2024
On Sunday night, something unprecedented happened at Madison Square Garden: A legitimately exciting preseason NBA game took place.The basketball part of the evening was not itself compelling, and how could it have been? It was an exhibition, on a Sun...
How the WNBA Became the Most Exciting League in Sports October 17, 2024
Before this year, the last WNBA All-Star Game I covered in person was in 2009 at Mohegan Sun, the casino off I-95 that has been home to the Connecticut Sun since 2003. I’d paid my own way to be there, and I never got paid for the story I published ab...
The Greatest Knicks Team That Never Was October 11, 2024
For a few months this summer, it seemed as if the New York Knicks had done something remarkable. By bringing together Villanova University teammates Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and Mikal Bridges in the professional ranks, the team was...
The Evolution of Paige Bueckers October 04, 2024
Paige Bueckers glances at the legends gracing the imposing navy-blue walls here in the Connecticut women’s basketball film room. There’s Rebecca Lobo. Maya Moore. Sue Bird. The photos show each of them dominating. Winning. Celebrating. Just outside, ...
