ESPN has taken noble swings at programming a sports network with no sports. But there are only so many airings of marbles races, old games and gabfests about the April 23–25 NFL draft—an event that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, feels as significant as a speck of sand—that viewers can take. That’s why fans clamored so hard for ESPN to move up its highly anticipated 10-part docuseries starring Michael Jordan, widely regarded as the greatest athlete ever to grace this earth, from an original airdate of June 2—coinciding with an NBA Finals series that no longer exists—to ASAP. People need a dose of nostalgia, and reason to anticipate any kind of shared cultural experience, now more than ever.

Luckily, the network listened. The first two episodes of…

The fifth episode of The Last Dance, the popular ESPN docu-series examining the impact of Michael Jordan and the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls, touches on one of the more controversial aspects of Jordan’s legendary career: his lack of political engagement during his playing days. Back in 1990 Jordan, who grew up in North Carolina and starred for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, refused to publicly endorse Harvey Gantt, the African-American former Democratic mayor of Charlotte, in his racially contentious Senate race versus Republican Jesse Helms. Helms’ career was marked by repeated charges that he was racist. In the 1980s, he opposed making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.

“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Jordan famously said by…

This profile is published as part of our TIME100 Next list, recognizing 100 emerging leaders from across the world who are shaping the future.

A few days before the start of the 2024 NBA Finals in June, Brad Stevens, the coach turned executive of the Boston Celtics, joined one of his star players, Jaylen Brown, for breakfast at the team’s practice facility. The Celtics had quickly disposed of the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals—a series sweep in which Brown was named MVP—so the team enjoyed a near week and a half gap before the start of the championship round against the Dallas Mavericks.

It was a quiet moment during pre-finals downtime. But Brown suddenly looked Stevens dead in the eye.  

“Big f-cking two weeks,” Brown tol…

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, shared an encouraging message to Andy Murray after his Wimbledon career came to an anticlimactic end.

“An incredible Wimbledon career comes to an end,” Middleton said, via a post shared on Instagram stories on Saturday. “You should be very proud @andymurray. On behalf of all of us, thank you!”

The Instagram story was set against a plain white backdrop, and signed with the letter “C,” the first initial of her full name. Middleton also shared the message on the official X (formerly Twitter) account belonging to The Prince and Princess of Wales.

Middleton, 42, has not yet attended a match at Wimbledon 2024, but she is a known fan of the tournament and was a royal fixture there for many years, previously attending every year …

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games kicks off tonight, with the opening ceremony beginning at 8 p.m. local time. The Games will feature 4,400 athletes representing 184 delegations who will compete in 22 different sports, including two—goalball and boccia—which are unique to the Paralympics and do not have an Olympic equivalent.

Here are some of the most anticipated events at this year’s Games. A full schedule is available on the Paralympics website.

Read More: The World War II Origins of the Paralympic Games

Wheelchair Rugby, a.k.a. “Murderball”

Wheelchair rugby, which combines elements of basketball, handball, and rugby, is one of the most high-impact sports in the Paralympics, with players frequently puncturin…

In the midst of everything else going on throughout the world, Boston sports fans now also have to deal with Tom Brady leaving the New England Patriots.

The superstar quarterback, who won six Super Bowls over the course of his 20-year tenure with the Pats, shared a two-part message on his social media accounts on Tuesday in which he thanked fans and announced that his “football journey will take place elsewhere” from here on out.

“Pats Nation will always be a part of me,” he wrote. “I don’t know what my football future holds but it is time for me to open a new stage for my life and career.”

On an early spring afternoon in 1969, John Gow climbed into a Cessna 140 fixed-wing airplane on the runway of the tiny airport in the rural logging town of Golden, British Columbia. His friend Bernard Royle sat in the pilot’s seat, preparing the little plane for flight. The snow-capped teeth of the northern Purcell range stretched out gleaming before them.

In the decades that followed, this rural region would become famous as the world’s mecca for heliskiing: downhill skiing in wild terrain only accessible by helicopter, now one of the world’s most coveted adventure experiences. But in 1969, those mountains represented a vast wilderness, and heliskiing called for pioneers to lead in this whole new sector of skiing—ones willing to accept mortal risk in excha…

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has begun to shift his messaging on the Tokyo Olympics, in a sign he may have accepted that the deadly coronavirus will make it necessary to postpone the event planned to start in July.

Abe and his cabinet, as well as the organizers and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, had until days ago been unanimous in insisting the Games would be staged as scheduled. But, following a G-7 leaders’ video conference on the coronavirus Monday, Abe avoided comment on the timing of the event.

“I want to hold the Olympics and Paralympics perfectly, as proof that the human race will conquer the new coronavirus, and I gained support for that from the G-7 leaders,” he told reporters after the event.

Sporting events around the globe have been c…

It’s a game played by the likes of little kids and middle-aged, out-of-shape wannabe Kevin Durants, in backyards and driveways and weathered gym floors across the world. You’ve got six weekend warriors at the park, looking to get in some exercise? Play a little 3×3 basketball. If you’ve got seven … some poor soul sits and has “next.”

In Tokyo, this shrunk-down, half-court version of basketball will make its Olympic debut. On the surface, that counts as an improbable development; regular 5-on-5 basketball is pretty darn popular in its own right. Why is the makeshift version of the game worthy of a gold medal?

But in the U.S., outfits like Hoop It Up have organized 3×3 tournaments since the 1990s, and FIBA, basketball’s gover…

Saint Lucia and Dominica Just Won Their First Olympic Medal Ever—And They’re Gold

Two Caribbean athletes just made history at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games—winning their countries their first ever Olympic medals. And not just any medals; both were gold.

Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred beat out Team USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson, the reigning World Champion who was heavily favored to take home the gold in the women’s 100-m sprint on Saturday. Alfred won the race by 0.15 seconds. Another American, Melissa Jefferson, took bronze. 

“I’m still trying to think of what just happened,” Alfred said after the race in Stade de France. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.” In Saint Lucia’s capital of Castries, people gathered to watch Alfred make hist…

An all-too-long 141 days after the NBA shut down on March 11—an event that first signaled to many Americans the dire seriousness of COVID-19—the league will restart its 2019-2020 season on Thursday, with a nationally televised doubleheader: the New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz face off at 6:30 p.m. eastern, while the Los Angeles Lakers take on the Los Angeles Clippers at 9; both games will air on TNT.

At one point, fans, league officials and players might have imagined a resumed NBA season to be a sign that America has emerged from the worst of the novel coronavirus. Unfortunately, tip-off is no mark of public health improvement: July has seen a record surge of new daily cases of COVID-19; on July 28th alone, more than 60,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the U…

The U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team won a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal on Saturday night at Bercy Arena, besting France 98-87 in front of a raucous hometown crowd. The game was a rematch of the Tokyo gold medal game three years ago, and once again, France couldn’t match the American firepower, which is chock-full of future hoops Hall of Famers.

Stephen Curry led a balanced U.S. attack with 24 points, including four crucial 3-pointers late in the game. He simply took over the game. Curry finished with 8-threes on the night, and relished every moment of destroying France’s upset dreams.

Team USA continued its run of world dominance on the men’s side, ever since the team lost two preliminary round games at the Athens Olympics—including a blowout loss to Puer…

Football is full of unexpected action, but perhaps never more so than on Monday night when a black cat with superior athletic skills jumped into the game to offer a little more hustle.

If you were looking for an alternate player to step in during the second quarter of the showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, fans didn’t have to look too far thanks to this showoff of a domestic cat who raced on to the field to score a casual “touchdown.” Announcer Kevin Harlan didn’t even miss a beat the moment the cat hopped onto the field and straight into the end zone — quickly equating the feline with two quick-footed human running backs in the game.

“Policemen and state troopers have come onto the field, and the cat runs into th…

Team USA cyclist Kristen Faulkner secured the gold in the women’s road race Sunday—though her participation in the race almost didn’t happen. 

The 31-year-old wrapped up the 158-km race with a time of 3:49:23 after charging down the final stretch, launching a counterattack, and riding away from the top three riders in the race. “I knew I had to attack them as soon as we caught them. I knew they were sprinters. But I knew they didn’t want to work together – they were [from] three different countries. I knew if I got a small gap they would have to race for second,” Faulkner said after the race.

The victory was a shock to many, especially since Faulkner was a late addition to the team. USA Cycling had secured two spots in the women’s road cycling events, for Tayl…

Each year between Sept. 15 and Oct.15 , consumer brands, nonprofits, elected officials, and media companies express celebratory words for Hispanic Heritage Month. This once annual display doesn’t come close to addressing the monumental impact of Latinos year-round. The numbers don’t lie, and they are staggering. The U.S. Latino cohort represents 63 million people, 19.7% of America and $3.6 trillion in buying power, equivalent to the world’s 5th largest economy.

One undeniable trendline in our cultural landscape is the unmatched power of sports. Sports bring people together in a common rallying cry, uplift communities, and unlock economic growth. Yet somewhat still overlooked is the massive impact Latinos have on this industry’s success.

Until recently, I was the CEO…

In February 2002, when high school junior LeBron James came into the national consciousness and Sports Illustrated ran a cover story calling him “The Chosen One,” what could any reasonable person imagine? Another young athletic phenom, for one—with the potential to fall short of the hype. It had happened many times in sports before LeBron, and many times since: the can’t-miss sports teen who struck out. In fact, America’s premier athletic hype factory, ESPN, heaped even more expectations on James in his senior year, reserving coveted airtime for his high school games.

Given the history of highly tipped athletes falling short, probably few would bet that he’d become the first player to lead three different teams to NBA titles, as LeBron …

For Nigerians, 1996 lives in cultural memory as the year its soccer team, the Super Eagles, became global icons during the Summer Olympics. And, 25 years later, it’s clear that team had an impact that stretched far beyond the nation’s borders. Nigeria’s Dream Team was responsible for cementing the country’s place as a soccer nation worthy of considerable regard to opponents beyond the continent. Moreover, the nation’s path to gold involved defeating the best soccer team in the world at the time, Brazil—a feat players and fans recall as not just a victory for Nigerians, but one for Africans as a whole.

So, though Nigeria isn’t playing soccer in Tokyo, the Olympics are still meaningful to the nation’s fans. That August day in 1996 when…

The typical 21st-century Olympics opening ceremony is a lot. Nine years ago in London, Daniel Craig appeared to parachute into the stadium with Queen Elizabeth II as the James Bond theme blared. The 2008 Beijing ceremony enlisted 15,000 performers. Sydney 2000 had giant glowing jellyfish. It’s not hard to imagine Japan—land of Studio Ghibli and avant-garde street style, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Nintendo, Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami—one-upping its predecessors with an even more elaborate, colorful pop spectacle. Yet the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games (which we are still, confusingly, referring to with the year 2020) opened on a far more somber, muted note.

A different, older aesthetic that we associate with Japan predominated at Friday’s ceremony: mi…

One of the main attractions of the 2024 Paris Olympics is, of course, Paris. The City of Lights and its many world-famous landmarks will take center stage at this year’s Games. While equestrians will compete at Versailles, beach volleyball matches will play out in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Swimmers will, weather permitting, race in the Seine. But it’s hard to imagine that any one event will offer as magnificent a tribute to Paris as Friday’s Opening Ceremony, which eschewed the confines of a stadium and made the entire city its stage. The ceremony, which took place in the hours surrounding sunset in France and will re-air in “enhanced” form at 7:30 pm ET on NBC, was occasionally weird, wildly ambitious, ultimately wonderful, and extremely French.

The torch relay was a…

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise around the country, especially in states like Florida—home to two NBA franchises, and most crucially the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex that is slated to host the restart of the 2019-2020 NBA season—NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a TIME100 Talks discussion that there’s no guarantee the 22 NBA teams who qualified for the relaunched season will even travel to Central Florida. Teams are tentatively scheduled to arrive in Orlando between July 7-9.

“[It’s] never ‘full steam no matter what,’” says Silver in a Talk that aired Tuesday. “One thing we’re learning about this virus is that much is unpredictable.”

Even if the teams make it to Orlando, Silver recently said that a &#8220…

On a February afternoon in Las Vegas, Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs took seven steps toward the football, as many in the crowd of 62,000 at Allegiant Stadium held their phones aloft to capture the most anticipated moment of the NFL season: Super Bowl Sunday kickoff, finally, the beginning of the big game. More than 100 million viewers also tuned in, rapt with anticipation.  

Butker proceeded to bum them all out. The ball sailed over the head of the San Francisco 49ers kick returner, out of the end zone for a touchback. Bor-ing.  

Whereas Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears started off Super Bowl XLI, in 2007, with a bang by returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown—and nine other speedsters, including Fulton Walker, Desmond Howard, and Per…

Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray was the first overall pick in the NFL draft on Thursday, but on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump decided to congratulate the number two pick instead.

Former University of Oklahoma quarterback Murray, who is black, was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals and reportedly offered a $35 million contact. He’s also an accomplished baseball player, and was ninth in the 2018 MLB draft.

However, on Twitter the President congratulated Nick Bosa, the second pick, who was chosen by the San Francisco 49ers.

“Congratulations to Nick Bosa on being picked number two in the NFL Draft,” Trump tweeted. “You will be a great player for years to come, maybe one of the best. Big Talent! San Francisco will embrace you but most imp…

PARIS — French prosecutors opened an investigation into an online harassment complaint made by Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif after a rain of criticism and false claims about her sex during the Summer Games, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday.

The athlete’s lawyer Nabil Boudi filed a legal complaint with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office that combats online hate speech on Friday.

Boudi said that the boxer was targeted by a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” as she won gold in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing.

The prosecutor’s office said it had received the complaint and its Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate …

Even with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo postponed until July 23 – Aug. 8, 2021, we can still get excited about seeing the best athletes in the world in action compete for gold. But other than the athletes themselves, there’s likely no one who’s anticipating the games more than the competitors’ parents — who always seem to end up in a category of their own during the games.

It seems safe to say that the parents of Olympic athletes have probably been showing out for their kids since the first modern games were held in Athens in 1896, but it wasn’t until somewhat recently that the trend of broadcasting mom and dad’s reaction to the world has jumped in popularity.

From overwhelming joy to nail-biting anxiety, Olympic parents’ r…

Jackson Avenue is the main road that cuts through Oxford, Miss. At its northern limit, it circles the Ole Miss campus where Raven Saunders had spent the past three years as a student athlete. At its western end, Jackson splits into a T junction populated by a cluster of familiar American fast food restaurants and retail chains: a Walmart Supercenter, a Home Depot, a Popeye’s, a Chick-Fil-A.

Saunders, a senior at University of Mississippi and a star shot putter on the school’s track and field team, knew the intersection well. Turn right, and the road led home. Turn left, and the highway hugged a steep drop-off floating above towering trees below that Saunders had found herself thinking more and more about in January of 2018.

Her last year in college hadn’t b…