Sports

PHOENIX — Fresh off, arguably, the most important performance of his young career, Anthony Edwards sat in front of the world with a white tank top and an all-black Atlanta Braves fitted cap that sat loose, hovering just above his crisp hairline — making him look more like an extra in Outkast’s “Player’s Ball” video than the future face of the NBA.Edwards is who he is. Silly. Lovable. Intelligent. Country. He wears it all, loudly and proudly. He’s also a competitor. A trash-talker. He wears all of those things just as loud, just as proud.You add all of that up and you have a star. You add all of those things up plus a 40-point performance in a playoff-sweeping 122-116 victory over the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night, and you start to enter superstardom.Yet, Edwards, for one reason or another, ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — For years, Luke Kunin watched as his girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife, Sophia, supported his career.She was a shoulder to lean on when things got tough in Minnesota. Moved to Nashville when he was traded there. Was a constant during the toughest season of his pro career — last year with the San Jose Sharks, when he tore his ACL.So Kunin can’t wait to walk into Xcel Energy Center — the arena where he began his NHL career as a Minnesota Wild rookie seven years ago — on Saturday with the shoe on the other foot. The 1 p.m. CDT game will be his first time watching Sophia play at the highest level in person, as she’ll take the ice with Minnesota’s Professional Women’s Hockey League team to face Boston in its regular-season home finale ahead of next month’s playoffs.“I’ll get...

The heights they are reaching have become comical, two golfers taking over their respective sports with such dominance that — at least for this moment — it’s difficult to imagine anyone beating them.Nelly Korda just won her fifth straight start, ending with a major, the Chevron Championship. Scottie Scheffler just won four of five starts with a Masters in the middle. The men’s and women’s world No. 1s are no longer just the best players in their sport. They are becoming two of the best ever. It’s reached the point Scheffler was playfully asked this week in Hilton Head if the two of them are in a competition.“I don’t know, man,” he joked, “I think if it’s a competition she’s got me pretty beat right now. Five wins in a row. She had that T16 at the beginning of the year, which was just terri...

Dan Capuano’s funeral at St. Rita of Cascia High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side was standing-room only. Hundreds of firefighters from Chicago and around the country attended. Members of the St. Jude Knights youth hockey club were there, too, wearing their jerseys.Capuano’s sons, Andrew and Nick, played for the Knights, a Northern Illinois Hockey League program that feeds many of Chicago’s powerhouse Catholic schools. Nick was on the 2012-13 team that won the Squirt A state championship.Dan had devoted much of his time to the Knights before he died in the line of duty while fighting a warehouse fire on the South Side on Dec. 14, 2015.That title-winning Knights team wanted to get back together to honor Capuano and his family, so in March 2016, a new team was formed. “Team Capuano” would ...

This is an updated version of an article first published on March 8.It is two and a half years since Mark Clattenburg had his autobiography, Whistle Blower, to plug. No prisoners were taken in the book’s content or the promotional work ahead of its release.Graham Poll, Martin Atkinson and David Elleray were all among the former colleagues Clattenburg swung for in caustic appraisals designed to settle old scores. And as for Mike Riley, his old boss at Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the body responsible for overseeing referees? “A boring f**ker,” was the succinct description.Less spiteful were the words chosen for Howard Webb, a man he had known for over two decades, but Clattenburg still made it clear this was a fractured relationship he had little wish to mend.“When How...

Rudy Gobert knows what is coming. He knows that a fourth NBA Defensive Player of the Year award is almost assuredly his after being the best defensive player on the best defensive team all season long.He also knows that will do nothing to quiet the legion of skeptics who are ready to pile on should he fail to break through in the playoffs.Gobert is one of the NBA’s great development stories, the gangly teen who has morphed into a chiseled All-Star. The former 27th pick who played in the D-League as a rookie before blossoming into a generational defender. But he remains one of the league’s biggest targets from those who believe he doesn’t have the offensive skill to merit all the money and accolades that have come his way.Now that the playoffs are here, the scrutiny will only increase. Gobe...

The playoffs are almost here, and while we’re still waiting on a couple of matchups, we know the 16 teams. If you root for one of them, you’re not reading this because you’re curled up in a little ball, twitching and sweating and trying not to puke. Playoffs, baby!That leaves the rest of you, the fans of the 16 teams that spent the season being big losers strategically retooling for a brighter future. You’ve got to figure out who to root for over the coming weeks and months. You could skip that part entirely, of course, and just enjoy the playoffs as a neutral observer. You could hate-watch your team’s rivals. Or you could pick and choose, dropping in and out of whichever series looks good and cheering on whoever feels like the right choice in the moment.Those are all valid options. But th...

Follow The Athletic’s Olympics coverage here.In 100 days, Paris will host the most famous sporting jamboree on the planet: the summer Olympic Games.There will be action across 32 sports watched by millions of visitors, as well as an unprecedented opening ceremony set to take place on the River Seine, which runs through the city’s heart. At least, that is plan A, anyway — Emmanuel Macron, the French president, confirmed an off-river contingency for the first time on Monday.Excitement has not quite taken hold in Paris yet. Decorations around the city remain discrete for a Games awarded to the French capital in September 2017. The City Hall has been plastered with Olympic regalia, but the focus of messaging has primarily been on practicality — “anticiper les jeux” (anticipate the Games), as p...

Are you ready for some NBA postseason? We got a little taster on the season’s final weekend, with a few teams playing high-stakes games that resembled playoff environments. That was particularly true in the jumbled Western Conference standings, where the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings were locked in a series of huge games that determined spots six through 10 in the West hierarchy.And now, we exhale. There are no games Monday, but we get two big play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday before the final play-in for each conference on Friday; that sets the bracket for the main event to start this weekend with four games on both Saturday and Sunday. The first round runs two weeks, with potential seventh games on the weekend of A...

The celebration was almost as glorious as the goal itself. The fuzz of chest hair, the twirling shirt, the body swerve to evade the Manchester United fans who had run on the pitch in their euphoria.On Sunday, it is 25 years since Patrick Vieira, a genuine great of Arsenal’s midfield, played a wayward pass amid the high drama of an FA Cup semi-final between the leading two English sides of the time.Ryan Giggs took the ball and then he was off and running, picking up speed from inside his own half, slaloming past opponents, one by one.Vieira tried to get back but Giggs, crossing the halfway line, dipped his shoulder to get away. Lee Dixon was next to come across. He, too, could not get near him.Arsenal had the most famously parsimonious defence in English football — yet Giggs had magic in hi...