Browsing: Basketball

Kevin Durant isn’t pointing the finger at anyone but himself after his first game with the Houston Rockets.

“I missed the free throw (in regulation) and I fouled (SGA) at the end to put them up one,” he told reporters after Tuesday’s 125-124 double-overtime loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. “I think those two plays are the reason we lost.”

Durant had a chance to put Houston up three in the final 10 seconds of regulation but made just one of two free throws, which opened the door for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to hit from mid-range and force overtime.

The future Hall of Famer also fouled Gilgeous-Alexander with 2.3 seconds left in double-overtime, and the reigning MVP hit the ensuing two free throws to give the Thunder the lead for good.

While those were two critical plays, Durant also played well for extended stretches.

He finished with 23 points, nine rebounds and three assists behind 9-of-16 shooting from the field, although he was 0-of-4 from deep and fouled out. His and-1 and assist to Alperen Şengün in the closing stretch of the double-overtime put the Rockets ahead by one before SGA drew the foul that ended up being the difference.

Houston surely envisioned Durant as a veteran leader for a young core when it traded for him this offseason, and shouldering the blame after a loss is a sign of that leadership.

Ultimately, though, the visitors didn’t have enough answers for Gilgeous-Alexander when the game was on the line. After holding him relatively in check for the majority of the game, the reigning scoring champion took over in the fourth quarter and the extra periods to lead the Thunder to the win.

It was a much-needed showing since Jalen Williams was sidelined by a wrist injury and Chet Holmgren fouled out. SGA finished with 35 points, five rebounds, five assists, two steals and two blocks in a statement performance against a fellow Western Conference contender.

This was just one of 82 regular-season games, and there is plenty of time for the Rockets to bounce back. Durant will likely be more aggressive seeking out his shot in future contests, especially when he is more comfortable with his new teammates.

And he will likely be the crunch-time hero in some of those future games even if he blamed himself for the opening loss.

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The NHL reportedly will no longer hold an Olympic sendoff event at the home of the New York Islanders this season and will instead hold All-Star Weekend at UBS Arena in 2027, according to ESPN.

The NHL announced in May plans to hold an Olympic sendoff event at UBS Arena in place of All-Star Weekend in February, with players, coaches, and staff set to gather in New York before flying out of John F. Kennedy International Airport to Milan for the Winter Olympics.

After the success of the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament during All-Star Weekend earlier this year, officials questioned whether to return to traditional All-Star Weekend festivities, such as a skills competition and either a game or the 3-on-3 tournament.

The Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 5 to Feb. 22. The league will have a mid-season break during that time rather than an All-Star Weekend.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in April that the format for the 2027 All-Star Weekend is not yet finalized.

“We’ll have an event at UBS before we go to the Olympics but then we’ll do something that’s more focused on a major hockey event for the following year,” Bettman said. “We have a little bit of time to finalize what we’re doing.”

According to ESPN, the NHL hopes to have the 2027 All-Star Weekend at UBS Arena from Feb. 5-7.

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• David Purdum

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  David Purdum

  ESPN Staff Writer

  • Joined ESPN in 2014
  • Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008

• Doug Greenberg

Oct 21, 2025, 05:11 PM ET

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the first acting professional league commissioner to come out in support of legalizing sports betting in the United States, said Tuesday that more regulation is needed to reduce opportunities for game manipulation related to gambling and to combat bad fan behavior in arenas, which may stem from losing wagers.

Appearing on “The Pat McAfee Show,” Silver pointed to the NBA’s efforts to reduce betting options on players on two-way contracts. In the summer of 2024, the NBA asked its sportsbook partners to refrain from offering prop bets on players on two-way contracts to underperform, after Jontay Porter, formerly of the Toronto Raptors, was found to have manipulated his performance in multiple games during the 2023-24 season as part of a gambling scheme. Silver banned Porter from the NBA.

“We’ve asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have the same stake in the competition, where it’s too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score,” said Silver. “We’re trying to put in place — learning as we go and working with the betting companies — some additional control to prevent some of that manipulation.”

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Silver said that prop bets also can lead to abuse of players from fans, even in winning efforts.

“It’s often the case that your team wins and a player scores 25 points, but the fan, the bettor, had bet that the player was going to score 28 points or 30 points,” Silver said. “We have to protect the competitors. We want to protect the environment in the arena of people getting out of hand.”

The NBA sent out a memo to teams last week, emphasizing the “need for consistent and vigilant enforcement of the NBA Fan Code of Conduct to deter and address fan misconduct at NBA games and events,” according to a source familiar with the memo.

In 2014, Silver wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a new approach to sports betting, including federal regulation. At the time, state-sponsored sports betting was allowed primarily only in Nevada. Eleven years later, 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have launched legal betting markets.

“I think, probably, there should be more regulation, frankly,” Silver told McAfee on Tuesday. “I wish there was federal legislation rather than state by state. I think you’ve got to monitor the amount of promotion, the amount of advertising around it.”

Silver added that the regulated market does allow for more visibility of the bets, who is placing them and from where.

“With this regulated structure of legalized betting, we can monitor it in ways that were unimaginable years ago,” said Silver. “If there’s any aberrational behavior: People betting large numbers who hadn’t historically done so, just opening an account to place bets, or even the geotargeting, we know exactly from where the bets are being placed, very specifically. If you’re in an arena and place a bet, we know you’re in the arena in many cases. We know where in the arena you are when you place that bet.”

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Oct 21, 2025, 09:55 PM ET

Michael Jordan made his debut as a special contributor to NBC Sports’ return to NBA broadcasting on Tuesday night, saying he’s doing so as a way to give back to basketball.

Jordan, speaking to NBC play-by-play voice Mike Tirico in the first installment of a series the network is calling “MJ: Insights to Excellence,” said he makes a conscious decision to prioritize time with family over being seen more in the public eye.

That said, he also acknowledged a desire to “pay it forward.”

“I have an obligation to the game of basketball … as a basketball player is to be able to pass on messages of success and dedication to the game of basketball,” Jordan said during a segment at halftime of the season-opening game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets.

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Jordan’s presence was part of a night in which NBC — back in the NBA broadcasting game for the first time in more than 20 years — delicately blended the present with the past. The opening intro included some players from this era being asked for their memories of when the game was on NBC, and of course, many of them didn’t have any since they either weren’t born yet or were very young.

John Tesh’s famed “Roundball Rock” — the soundtrack that was NBC’s NBA theme music through 2002 — was back. And with some help from artificial intelligence, so was the voice of the late Jim Fagan, a longtime NBC Sports narrator who was part of those NBA broadcasts a generation ago.

Jordan starred in plenty of those games. Now, he’ll talk during some.

At 62, Jordan — a six-time NBA champion, a Hall of Famer and arguably the greatest player ever — said the competitive fire that he was famous for still burns but that he rarely touches a basketball anymore. He rented a home when he was watching the Ryder Cup and the owner, whose grandchildren were there, got Jordan to agree to some photos and asked him to shoot one free throw on the court that was on the property.

Jordan got nervous — more nervous, he said, than he had been “in years.”

“The reason being is those kids heard the stories from the parents about what I did 30 years ago,” Jordan said. “So, their expectation is 30 years prior, and I haven’t touched a basketball.”

“I hope you swished it,” Tirico said.

“Absolutely,” Jordan replied. “That made my whole week.”

NBC said the next installment of Jordan’s conversation with Tirico would air Oct. 28 and that one of the next topics covered would be load management.

“I wish I could take a magic pill, put on shorts and go out and play the game of basketball today because that’s who I am,” Jordan said. “That type of competition, that type of competitiveness is what I live for, and I miss it. I miss that aspect of playing the game of basketball, being able to challenge myself against what people see as great basketball. But it’s better for me to be sitting here talking to you as opposed to popping my Achilles and I’m in a wheelchair for a while.”

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The NFL could add two more league-organized international games to its schedule as soon as next season.

“We have seven [international] games this year, and six of those are league-organized, and we do believe next year there will be more than that,” NFL senior vice president and managing director international Gerrit Meier told reporters Tuesday. “Whether that leads to the maximum of eight league-organized games or not, we will see, but the definite idea is to get ourselves more to the maximum.”

The league can hold up to eight international games currently, with the Jacksonville Jaguars permitted to hold up to two London games per season on top of that (thus far, the team has held one annual London game). Any more international contests per season would need approval from the NFL Players Association, with the league targeting 16 international games eventually, per Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal.

This season, the NFL is holding three international games in the United Kingdom and one each in Ireland, Germany, Spain and Brazil. Next season, games in Australia, Mexico City and Brazil are already on the docket, and it’s likely that the NFL will keep contests in the United Kingdom. Saudi Arabia and a “number of other countries have also expressed interest” in hosting games, per Fischer.

The NFL currently has marketing deals with 21 countries, he added, though Saudi Arabia isn’t one of them.

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Jordan Chiles shined in Week 6 of Dancing with the Stars, as season 34 of the long-running show continued on Tuesday night.

The Olympic gymnast ultimately advanced once again.

The theme of the latest episode was Wicked Night, as the 10 remaining couples danced to songs featured in the Wicked Broadway musical as well as the Wicked movie released in 2024.

Chiles and her professional partner, Ezra Sosa, performed a Rumba to “For Good” by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. They received an impressive score of 39 out of 40 points from the judges, earning their first 10s of the season.

Fans were amazed by the routine.

Chiles has steadily gotten more comfortable as the latest season has progressed, as she was coming off a Viennese Waltz to “Daughters” by John Mayer that resulted in a score of 32 out of 40 for Week 5’s Dedication Night.

After no couples were eliminated in Week 5, viewer votes from Dedication Night and Wicked Night were combined with the judges’ scores from each night to determine which pairs would avoid elimination.

With consecutive admirable efforts from Chiles and Sosa, they weren’t in any serious danger of being sent home.

Chiles is the last remaining athlete in the 2025 competition after former NBA star Baron Davis was eliminated in Week 2.

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After having surgery on his injured shoulder, Seth Rollins shared a message to fans on Tuesday.

The WWE star posted a photo on Instagram of himself drinking a cup of coffee and rocking a Chicago Bears hat with the caption, “Caffeine and clarity. See ya on the other side. P.S. I love football.”

During Monday’s episode of Raw, general manager Adam Pearce confirmed Rollins had surgery on his shoulder and will be sidelined “for quite a while.” Pearce pointed the blame for the injury at Rollins’ teammates, Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed and Paul Heyman, who turned on him and attacked him during last week’s edition of Raw.

Also on Monday’s episode of Raw, Pearce announced Rollins had been stripped of his World Heavyweight Championship since he would be out with the injury. A Battle Royal then took place to decide who would face CM Punk for the title during Saturday Night’s Main Event.

Jey Uso ultimately won the battle royal and will get the chance to claim the World Heavyweight Championship against CM Punk on Saturday.

There was understandably some speculation about the legitimacy of Rollins’ injury, given that he pulled off the “Ruse of the Century” over the summer when he appeared to suffer a leg injury in July before returning in August to cash in on his Money in the Bank contract, but this time it’s for real.

As for when the injury occurred, that’s another question.

He appeared to have suffered an injury during Saturday’s Crown Jewel Championship match against WWE champion Cody Rhodes, and he was later spotted wearing a sling.

Whether the injury occurred on Saturday or Monday is unclear, but it’s obvious Rollins has a long road to recovery.

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Michael Jordan won six championships, six NBA Finals MVPs and five league MVPs and is considered by many to be the greatest player in basketball history.

But there’s nothing like the pressure to live up to a legendary and almost mythical legacy in front of the next generation.

Of course, he “absolutely” delivered in the face of that pressure.

The first edition of the “MJ: Insights to Excellence” segment that will air during NBA on NBC broadcasts aired during halftime of Tuesday’s game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets, and His Airness told Mike Tirico a story about the last time he picked up a basketball after so much time away from the game.

“I haven’t picked up a ball in years,” he said. “You don’t see a hoop anywhere around here, right?

“I was at the Ryder Cup and I rented a house from the owner. He came over to do pictures and had grandkids. I was meeting and greeting, thanked him for allowing me to stay at the house. He had a basketball court. He says, ‘I want you to shoot one free throw.’

“… When I stepped up to shoot the free throw, that was the most nervous I’ve been in years. The reason being is, those kids heard the stories from their parents about what I did 30 years ago. So their expectation is 30 years prior, and I haven’t touched a basketball.”

Naturally Tirico asked if he “swished it” and Jordan responded like only he could.

It is surely a lifetime memory for those children who got to see Jordan shoot a free throw on the hoop, and it is no surprise he made the shot. After all, he was known for coming through in the most important moments throughout his career, and that ability to deliver in the clutch clearly didn’t go anywhere in retirement.

If Tuesday’s segment was a hint of what’s to come, basketball fans will be in for a treat during NBA on NBC halftimes.

Jordan telling firsthand stories about his own career while also talking about the modern-day game will surely generate headlines every time one of the interview clips air given his legendary status.

Even if those stories are about shooting free throws in retirement.

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Ryan Day is no longer Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s head coach.

But that doesn’t mean he is going to stop coaching the wide receiver.

Smith-Njigba helped lead the Seattle Seahawks to a victory over the Houston Texans on Monday, but it was his touchdown celebration that turned heads. He jumped up and threw down a dunk on the goalpost, which drew a flag from the official.

“The only thing I’ll say is, as much as you like to dunk, we have to show a little discipline and a little bit of poise and act like we’ve been there before,” Day joked during an interview with NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero (two-minute mark).

“As cool as that was—my son was like, ‘that was really cool’—we have to show some discipline. There’s a lot of things we can do that are cool after a touchdown.”

The Ohio State coach was clearly having fun at the expense of his former player and mixed in the comments with plenty of praise for the Seahawks star.

Smith-Njigba first became a household name during the 2021 season when he tallied 95 catches for 1,606 yards and nine touchdowns for the Buckeyes. He led the team in receiving yards even though Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson were his teammates and capped the effort off with a stunning 347 receiving yards and three touchdowns in a Rose Bowl win over Utah.

While injuries limited him to just three games in 2022, he still showed enough to convince the Seahawks to select him in the first round of the 2023 NFL draft.

And that was a wise decision for the NFC West team, as the Ohio State product leads the league with 819 receiving yards through seven games this season. It was more of the same Monday, as he torched Derek Stingley Jr. and the Houston defense for 123 receiving yards and the touchdown that led to the dunking celebration.

If he listens to his college coach, though, there will be a different celebration the next time he finds the end zone.

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Star defensive end Maxx Crosby will reportedly be sticking with the Las Vegas Raiders beyond the 2025 trade deadline.

According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the Raiders met with Crosby on Tuesday to inform him that they weren’t shopping him on the trade market and won’t part ways with him.

Former ESPN anchor Trey Wingo reported earlier on Tuesday that the Dallas Cowboys made “inquiries” about a swap with Las Vegas involving Crosby.

The 28-year-old has spent his entire career with the Raiders after they selected him with a fourth-round pick in the 2019 NFL draft.

Crosby immediately stood out on Las Vegas’ front seven before quickly blossoming into one of the league’s top pass-rushers, earning Pro Bowl nods in each of the past four seasons.

The Raiders rewarded him for his efforts in March, handing him a hefty three-year extension worth $106.5 million that keeps him under contract through the 2029 season.

Crosby has followed it up with another impressive individual campaign in 2025, amassing 28 tackles and 10 tackles for loss to go along with four sacks in seven games. He’s also racked up 25 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus.

Despite Crosby’s recent extension, it’s understandable that opposing front offices could be monitoring his availability considering Las Vegas’ disappointing 2-5 record.

The Cowboys will be looking for defensive improvements after trading star pass-rusher Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers on Aug. 28. Dallas is giving up 401.6 yards per game this season, the most among all teams.

Crosby doesn’t appear to be a legitimate option in a potential deal, though.

The NFL trade deadline is on Nov. 4 at 4 p.m. ET.

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