Author: Shekari Philemon

Basketball mourned Don Nelson Thursday as Hall of Famers, former players and coaches gathered at a Dallas church for a celebration of life honoring the man who compiled more regular-season coaching wins than anyone in NBA history except Gregg Popovich, who died Sunday at 86. Among those who spoke was Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash, who was coached by Nelson with the Dallas Mavericks for six seasons. Nash expressed gratitude to the family for sharing him with the basketball world, and specifically for sharing him with Nash himself. He said the coach functioned as a mentor and significant presence…

Terrion Arnold plans to sign a one-year contract with the Seattle Seahawks, sources told  NFL Network on Thursday, ending a free agent search that took the cornerback to four teams before Seattle emerged as his choice. He worked out for the Seahawks on Sunday and had previously visited the Houston Texans, New Orleans Saints and New York Giants. He chose Seattle after head coach Mike Macdonald confirmed the team’s interest earlier in the week and after his workout was featured in the second episode of Hard Knocks, which also showed general manager John Schneider weighing the potential implications of signing…

Ben Shelton defended his National Bank Open title Thursday night in Montreal, defeating fellow American Brandon Nakashima 6-3, 7-6 (4) in an all-American final to claim his seventh career ATP Tour title and become the first repeat champion in Canada since Rafael Nadal won consecutive titles there in 2019. The 23-year-old did not drop a set throughout the tournament. The fifth seed dominated Thursday’s final in 1 hour and 27 minutes, serving at 142 miles per hour without surrendering a single break point throughout the match. The win moves him to sixth in the world ranking. He also won titles…

Alex Eala arrives in Cincinnati as a different player than the one who started the North American hard-court swing, and she knows it. A 7-1 record on hard courts this season, a maiden WTA title at the DC Open and a run to the round of 16 in Toronto have pushed the 21-year-old Filipina to a career-high ranking of No. 20 and earned her the 17th seed at the Cincinnati Open, giving her a first-round bye as the US Open draws closer. The seeding is one measure of the distance she has traveled in a few months. Cincinnati is the…

Rinky Hijikata of Australia rallied from a set down to defeat Gael Monfils 2-6, 7-6, 6-3 Thursday in first-round action at the Cincinnati Open, earning his first ATP win on hard courts while giving the French veteran a fitting farewell in what was his final appearance at the tournament. Hijikata, 25, who played college tennis at North Carolina before turning professional, will face Italian Luciano Darderi in the second round after completing the comeback. The win on hard courts is a meaningful milestone for the Australian, who has shown more of his game on different surfaces over the past two…

Retirement gets planned for years. The date gets circled. The savings get counted. The mental image gets refined over decades until it becomes something vivid and specific, a life without meetings, without alarms, without the accumulated weight of professional obligation. Then the day arrives and the first week feels exactly like that. Then the second week comes. Something shifts in the second week that nobody really warned them about. The job is gone, and in the space it occupied, something else shows up. Not freedom, exactly. Not the vacation feeling, which turns out to have a surprisingly short shelf life.…

Elena Rybakina reached the National Bank Open final in Toronto early Thursday, defeating Coco Gauff in three sets to set up a title match against Iga Swiatek later the same night. The second seed defeated Gauff 5-7, 6-2, 6-2, completing the match just before 1 a.m. after the night session had been delayed by rain. The six-foot Kazakh added consistent power throughout the second and third sets after dropping the first, winning 12 of the final 14 games to close out the match convincingly. The victory gives Rybakina her 13th career title opportunity. She has been in strong form this…

Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels has told LSU it can no longer use his name, image and likeness, escalating a dispute over the school’s decision to allow a current player to wear the No. 5 jersey Daniels wore when he won the Heisman Trophy in 2023. An attorney for Daniels sent a cease-and-desist letter to LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry on Aug. 5, copies of obtained. The letter cited the school’s use of Daniels’s NIL beyond the terms of his college contract, which permitted LSU to continue using his likeness for 180 days following his final game. The attorney stated…

Crowley was out of the race a month ago, and on Tuesday night he became the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin by fewer than 4,000 votes. The Milwaukee County executive edged past state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who had led the field for most of the primary, in a result almost nobody in the party saw coming. With nearly all ballots counted he held 39.8 percent to her 39.3 percent. A prediction market had put her chances at 95 percent hours before polls closed. The win hands the Democratic establishment a reprieve in a state that decides…

Deshaun Watson will start the Cleveland Browns’ preseason opener Saturday against the Chicago Bears, coach Todd Monken announced Wednesday, giving the embattled quarterback his first game action since tearing his right Achilles tendon in October 2024. Watson sat out the entire 2025 season after undergoing a second Achilles surgery in January of that year. His appearance Saturday in Chicago will mark a return after nearly two full years away from competitive football, and it comes in the context of an open quarterback competition with rookie Shedeur Sanders. Monken told both quarterbacks his plan after Wednesday’s practice. He will start the…