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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — None of the last eight unbeaten teams in major college football this season were unbeaten going into November last year. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. Or in the decades before that, in some cases. The last eight unbeatens: No. 1 Oregon (8-0), No. 3 Penn State (7-0), No. 5 Miami (8-0), No. 9 BYU (8-0), No. 11 Iowa State (7-0), No. 13 Indiana (8-0), No. 18 Pitt (7-0) and No. 21 Army (7-0). "It can get real special," Miami running back Mark Fletcher Jr. said after the Hurricanes beat Florida State o...
PARIS (AP) — Stephen Curry was thinking about this two years ago, after winning his fourth NBA title with the Golden State Warriors. The only thing left for him to win was Olympic gold. And in the ultimate moment, he made sure that medal would be his. The U.S. is atop the international men's basketball world once again, after Curry scored 24 points — all on 3-pointers — and led the way to a 98-87 win over France in the final at the Paris Games on Saturday night. It was the fifth consecutive gold medal for the U.S. and the 17th in 20 all-t...
VILLENEUVE-D'ASCQ, France (AP) — LeBron James was feeling some nervousness, some butterflies, maybe even a bit of angst as he listened to the national anthem play before his first Olympic game in 12 years. It all went away quickly. James and Kevin Durant — the two most-experienced Olympians on this American team — opened the Paris Games and a U.S. bid for a fifth consecutive gold medal with a near-perfect show. Durant made his first eight shots and scored 23 points, James added 21 points, nine assists and seven rebounds and the U.S. rolled to a...
The NBA signed its 11-year media rights deal with Disney, NBC and Amazon Prime Video on Wednesday after saying it was not accepting Warner Bros. Discovery's $1.8 billion per year offer to continue its longtime relationship with the league. The media rights deals were approved by the league's Board of Governors last week and will bring the league about $76 billion over those 11 years. WBD had five days to match a part of those deals and said it was exercising its right to do so, but its offer was not considered a true match by the NBA. That...
There were plenty of people at a movie theater in central Iowa on Monday night, though very few of them were watching an actual movie. They were there to see Caitlin Clark. And they weren't alone. Not even close. Millions of people — the preliminary viewing numbers are expected sometime Tuesday — tuned in across America to watch a doubleheader of women's basketball that captivated fans like perhaps never before. Clark and Iowa, in a national-title-game rematch against Angel Reese and LSU in one game; Paige Bueckers and perennial power UConn aga...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NBA has a new trophy to play for, and some bonus cash for the teams that make the knockout round. The unveiling Saturday of the long-awaited plans for the in-season tournament that'll start in November likely brought some questions, since it's a new concept and will make the schedule a bit unclear when the list of games for the 2023-24 slate gets released later this summer. All 30 teams will take part. And every game will count in the stats and standings — except the championship game in Las Vegas on Dec. 9. HOW DOES THI...
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — An Orange Bowl trip helped usher in Clemson's current run of success. Maybe it'll be the start of something special at Tennessee, too. The sixth-ranked Volunteers (10-2) take on No. 10 Clemson (11-2) in the Orange Bowl on Friday night. For Tennessee, it's a chance at what would be the school's first 11-win season since 2001 — and, just as Clemson's first Orange Bowl trip in a generation did 11 years ago, it may help set the tone for a return to college football's mountaintop. "It's another opportunity for kids acr...
Joe Dumars might have been destined for this job. He played with the Bad Boys, those Detroit Pistons teams that were physical, aggressive and intimidating. And even in those rough-and-tumble times, he wound up becoming the first recipient of the NBA's sportsmanship award — now called the Joe Dumars Trophy. He's now tasked with ensuring that players don't act like his old teammates often did. Dumars became Executive Vice President and Head of Basketball Operations for the NBA in May, making him a major decider in all things related to player d...
Hurricane Ian was over southwest Florida for only a few hours. It will take months to clean up all the damage. Maybe longer. And some of the destruction can't be cleaned up at all. From trees getting ripped out of the ground to signs being ripped apart, traffic lights crashing onto roadways and some buildings simply being destroyed, the impact was everywhere and almost nothing was spared. The only difference between one place and the next was the severity of the problems. "We will get through this," said Vice Mayor Richard Johnson of Sanibel,...
The NBA has rescheduled all 11 games that were postponed in December for virus-related reasons and either shifted the times or dates of 10 other games to help accommodate those changes. Toronto had six games affected, Chicago had five and Brooklyn had four. In all, 18 of the league's 30 teams had at least one game date changed by the postponements or future adjustments, all of which were revealed Monday. There are now seven teams that have at least one stint of playing four games in five nights: Chicago, Toronto, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Miami, New...
Nobody knew exactly what to say in Oklahoma City around 7:10 p.m. local time on March 11, 2020. That was an issue for Mario Nanni, whose job as the Oklahoma City Thunder public-address announcer is to tell fans exactly what’s happening. He had just introduced the starting lineups. The Thunder and Utah Jazz were about to play. And then someone ran onto the court from the back of the arena with one mandate: Make sure that game doesn’t start. The referees were hastily gathered, then coaches were brought together to hear the news: Jazz center Rud...
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA is also seeing a blowout epidemic. One can only wonder if the two are related. Games are turning into runaways far more than usual throughout the first three weeks of this NBA season. Maybe it's because there are no fans in most arenas, maybe it's because teams are tired from playing with a bit less rest than they've gotten in recent years or maybe it's because the strains of a COVID-19 world are weighing heavily on players. It's probably a combination of all that and more. But the numbers are also quite...
All-Star guard Chris Paul is being traded from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Phoenix Suns, where he'll play alongside one of the league's most dynamic young scorers in fellow All-Star Devin Booker, a person with knowledge of the situation said Monday. The Thunder are acquiring Ricky Rubio, Kelly Oubre, Jalen Lecque, Ty Jerome and a first-round pick that will be conveyed sometime between 2022 and 2025, said the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade had not been finalized by the league. Rubio...
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — LeBron James now stands alone in All-NBA recognition history, getting there unanimously. James was revealed Wednesday as an All-NBA player for a record 16th time, breaking the mark he shared with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan. He was a first-team pick on all 100 ballots, joining Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo as the only unanimous first-team selections this season. Joining them on the first team: Houston guard James Harden, Lakers forward Anthony Davis and Dallas guard Luka Doncic, who got the...
The law of averages says an Oklahoma City Thunder starter will make a 3-pointer relatively quickly on Monday night. Someone better, or else. Houston — which famously wasted a chance to reach the NBA Finals by missing 27 consecutive 3-pointers in Game 7 of the 2018 Western Conference finals — is a game away from the second round of these playoffs, after watching the Thunder suddenly forget how to shoot on Saturday night. The Rockets will take a 3-2 series lead into Game 6 against the Thunder in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, on Monday night. "We...
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Making their strongest statement yet in the fight against racial injustice, players from six NBA teams decided not to play postseason games on Wednesday in a boycott that quickly reverberated across other professional leagues. Also called off: Some games in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the three WNBA contests, as players across four leagues decided the best way to use their platform and demand change was to literally step off the playing surface. Players made the extraordinary decisions to p...
There seem to be fewer players fishing at Walt Disney World these days. Getting a tee time or streaming video games might not be as much of a priority as it was a few weeks ago, either. Summer vacation is over. The restart gets real now. The NBA playoffs start Monday, the beginning of a two-month journey to see which team will be able to say it won a championship. It would come in the most unusual, most trying season the league has ever seen because of a shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic and 22 teams eventually moving into a so-called...
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — The last day of an NBA regular season typically sees just about every team in action, with plenty of drama surrounding down-to-the-wire playoff races and statistical titles on the line. Typical doesn't seem to exist in 2020. The NBA's regular season ends — sort of — Friday with just four games, none with any bearing on matchups for the first round of the playoffs that begin next week. The biggest items to be settled Friday are which teams will wear home uniforms to start the Miami-Indiana and Oklahoma City-...
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Re-opening night is fast approaching, and Anthony Davis' status is uncertain. Davis, who left the Los Angeles Lakers' second scrimmage after getting poked in the eye and didn't play in the team's exhibition finale at Walt Disney World, didn't practice on Tuesday. The All-Star forward is still being listed as day-to-day. "There is some concern that he could potentially not play Thursday, but we're hopeful that he does and we'll see how that plays out," Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. "He's going to continue to be e...
After four months of waiting and planning, the NBA bubble is ready to be tested. The first six teams — Brooklyn, Denver, Orlando, Phoenix, Utah and Washington — are scheduled to arrive Tuesday at the Disney complex. Another eight teams arrive Wednesday, the last eight arrive Thursday, and with that training camps will be on the cusp of beginning. If the plan works, all teams will be at Disney for at least 5-1/2 weeks and some teams will be there for more than three months. And not everyone in the league has an abundance of optimism that the...
The deals are done. The NBA is coming back. The season will resume on July 30 at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Florida. Here are 10 things to know about the restarted season: THE RACE FOR 8 There are six teams in the race for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference — Memphis, Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, San Antonio and Phoenix. (Technically, Dallas is also in that race, though the Mavericks need only one win and one Memphis loss to clinch no worse than the No. 7 spot.) There are seven games where those six teams will g...
Zion Williamson is about to get another chance at opening night. Injury kept him out of New Orleans' appearance in the first game of this NBA season when the Pelicans started the year at Toronto, but now the big-name rookie will be in position to be on center stage at Disney when play resumes — against the team that was the first to find itself in the middle of the NBA's coronavirus situation. New Orleans will be in the first game of the resumed NBA season on July 30, taking on Utah at the Disney World complex near Orlando, Florida in the o...
MIAMI (AP) — A late caution flag gave Harrison Burton new life, and he took advantage. Burton took the inside line on the way to the lead in the final lap, and held on to win the Xfinity Series race Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway — denying, among others, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Noah Gragson, who seemed to be in full command with seven laps remaining. Burton, Gragson and Austin Cindric were three-wide going into that last lap, and it was Burton — the 19-year-old son of former Cup star Jeff Burton, who wound up in front in a wild finish. "Om...
MIAMI (AP) — Politicians, players and owners are trying to figure out a way to get baseball, basketball and hockey going again, not only for economic reasons but as a welcome diversion for a social distancing nation facing uncertain times. But to do so would require commandeering thousands of test kits each week for millionaire pro athletes and support staff, something many view as unseemly, especially when ordinary Americans are waiting in line. Leagues know it would be a terrible look for them to jump the testing line. Acutely aware of the p...
NBA players will receive their full checks when the next payday for most of them arrives on April 15 despite no games having been played for more than a month at that point. The league gave teams the directive on Thursday in a memo that was obtained by The Associated Press. The league and the National Basketball Players Association has been in talks for weeks about the status of salaries during the game's shutdown. The last NBA games were played March 11, the day that Utah center Rudy Gobert became the first player in the league to test...
