Tag: nytimes.com

Ben Simmons, the 30-year-old, three-time All-Star who sat out all of last season while recovering from his longstanding back issues, has agreed to a one-year, $3.5 million deal with the Sacramento Kings. The deal, according to team sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced, marks the…

A one-of-a-kind sports card featuring autographs and game-worn NBA logo jersey patches from Kobe Bryant and LeBron James has surfaced nearly two decades after it was first released. It will sell at public auction for the first time through marketplace Alt this month. According to Alt, the 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Dual Logoman card…

There is some audacity in the way that Tim Connelly has assembled the Minnesota Timberwolves roster. It is as if he has spent most of his time as president of basketball operations systematically combing the NBA for the players who elicit the most debate and strongest reactions and tried to get them all on one…

As actor Paul Scheer’s phone buzzed Wednesday afternoon, the messages let him know he’d been cast in a part he knew exactly how to play. His role? Embarrassed Clippers fan. Scheer, best known for starring in FX’s “The League” and Showtime’s “Black Monday,” had moved to Los Angeles in need of a team to get…

On Sept. 3, 2025, Pablo Torre and his “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast team released an episode titled “Kawhi Leonard Signed a Secret $28M Deal. Steve Ballmer Funded a Fraud. We Followed the Money.” It was the first of many episodes over the past year that reported on the complicated layers to the story around…

For almost a dozen years, Adam Silver and Steve Ballmer enjoyed a dream commissioner-owner relationship. Both assumed their roles in 2014, an NBA recruiting class of sorts: Silver rising from longtime lieutenant to David Stern’s replacement in February, Ballmer purchasing the LA Clippers for a then-record $2 billion in August. Immediately, they made each other…

Steve Ballmer was supposed to scrub Donald Sterling’s stain from the LA Clippers. Instead, he left one of his own. Their offenses are not morally equivalent. Sterling disgraced the franchise with his racism; Ballmer corrupted its integrity.  Both men made ownership the organization’s greatest source of shame. Ballmer’s fall for using the team’s business relationships…

By the time Kawhi Leonard and his uncle, Dennis Robertson, asked for financial benefits outside the NBA’s salary cap during his free agency in 2019, the LA Clippers were familiar with the script. In 2015, the Clippers, in an attempt to keep center DeAndre Jordan — one of that summer’s top free agents — presented…

Caught. Nabbed. Busted. The LA Clippers spent the last year insisting they had nothing to fear from an NBA investigation into cap circumvention and that everything would be fine. Narrator voice: Everything was not fine. A half-decade-old scheme to funnel extra money to Kawhi Leonard has come to light, with the help of an investigative…

College football season is here, and we’ve already had a big surprise. Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels, a bit of a laughingstock last season, opened their campaign with a Week 0 win over TCU, which was an 8.5-point favorite. They showed a stingy defense in doing so and played a much cleaner game than…