Author: Sarki Samson

VJ Edgecombe wasn’t interested in apathy at the Rising Stars game Friday night. The Philadelphia 76ers rookie took the game seriously, scored 17 of his team’s 41 points, and clinched the championship by making two free throws that brought Team Vince to the target score of 25. He won MVP of the game despite being one of the youngest players in attendance. But what makes Edgecombe’s performance meaningful isn’t just the stats it’s the intensity he brought to a game that easily could have been treated as a casual exhibition. The inspiration came from an unlikely source: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  The…

The Oklahoma City Thunder are watching their championship roster fall apart piece by piece. Jalen Williams, the forward who was crucial to last season’s title run and just signed a max contract extension, re-injured his right hamstring Thursday after originally straining it on January 17. He missed 10 games recovering from that injury, returned Monday against the Lakers, and had an absolutely spectacular performance Wednesday against Phoenix 28 points on 11-of-12 shooting in just 20 minutes before exiting in the third quarter. Then Thursday happened, and he’s sidelined again. Now the Thunder are evaluating him after the All-Star break, which…

The NBA All-Star Weekend has taken over Los Angeles, and this year is unlike anything the league has done before. The 75th annual All-Star Game is happening Sunday at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, but the format is revolutionary instead of the traditional East versus West matchup, the league is running a round-robin tournament with two U.S. teams facing off against a World team. This is the record seventh All-Star Game to be held in the L.A. area (last hosted in 2018), and the league clearly wanted to shake things up for the milestone celebration. Here’s how the new format actually…

NFL free agency is about to get expensive, and some teams are going to completely overpay for talent that’s finally available on the open market. The reality is that most premier players get locked up or traded before they hit free agency, which means the ones who do become available have massive leverage. They know teams are desperate. They know good pass rushers and productive receivers don’t grow on trees. So when these 10 players hit the market next month, they’re going to know their worth and teams are going to pay it. Malik Willis might be the most interesting…

Chris Paul is done. The 40-year-old announced his retirement from the NBA on Friday via Instagram with a simple message: “This is it! After 21 years I’m stepping away from basketball.” That’s one of the greatest point guard careers in NBA history concluding not with a championship parade or a tearful farewell tour, but with a social media post and a waiver by the Toronto Raptors. Paul had previously indicated he would retire at the end of this season, his 21st in the league, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected. But the circumstances surrounding the end the messy Clippers divorce, the…

The Dallas Cowboys are bringing in SMU defensive coordinator Scott Symons as their new inside linebackers coach, marking another move in their defensive reshuffling. Symons spent the past four seasons running SMU’s defense and just agreed to a contract extension in December 2024 after helping the Mustangs reach the College Football Playoff. This isn’t some unknown coordinator getting his first NFL opportunity. This is a proven defensive architect who was a semifinalist for the Broyles Award college football’s honor for the top assistant coach and has been nominated for the award in each of the past three years. The Cowboys…

President Donald Trump pardoned five NFL players Thursday, including Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry, and the late Billy Cannon. The news was announced by White House “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson, who framed the decisions around themes of redemption and second chances. “As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson wrote on social media. It’s a nice sentiment, but the White House hasn’t explained why these specific players deserved presidential pardons while countless others convicted of similar crimes remain incarcerated. Joe Klecko is probably…

The NFL officially killed the player report cards on Friday, and the arbitrator’s reasoning was brutal. The league won its grievance against the NFLPA, banning the union from conducting and publishing future player evaluations of NFL clubs and organizations. An arbitrator found that the report cards violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement by “disparaging NFL clubs and individuals.” But here’s what really stung the union: the arbitrator basically said the entire enterprise was scientific fraud designed to push a political agenda rather than objective evaluation. https://youtu.be/LGieY_z2tqc?si=AKgKsmdXsG47CmDo The arbitrator’s findings paint a picture of a union operating in bad faith According to…

Nikola Topic’s NBA debut Thursday night against Milwaukee wasn’t about the points or the stats. He scored two points, grabbed one rebound, and dished one assist in a 110-93 loss to the Bucks. The Thunder weren’t celebrating those numbers. They were celebrating the fact that he was on the court at all. The 12th pick in the 2024 NBA draft entered late in the first quarter and received a loud ovation from Oklahoma City fans who understood exactly what they were witnessing: a young player who had been robbed of basketball twice once by injury, once by illness finally getting…

The NBA finally got tired of teams pretending they’re not deliberately losing games On Thursday night, the league dropped massive fines on the Utah Jazz ($500,000) and Indiana Pacers ($100,000) for explicitly benching healthy players in games where the outcomes were still in doubt. This isn’t speculation. This isn’t the league assuming teams want to lose. This is the NBA saying: we caught you red-handed, and we’re not tolerating it anymore. Commissioner Adam Silver put it bluntly: “Overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning undermines the foundation of NBA competition and we will respond accordingly to any…