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Elden Campbell, the all-time leading scorer in Clemson basketball history, who went on to play 15 seasons in the NBA and won a ring as part of the 2004 Detroit Pistons, has died at the age of 57.
Clemson and the NBA confirmed his death. No cause of death has been given.
Campbell was a 6’11” big man known for his easy-going style off the court — his nickname was “Easy.”
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On the court, he scored 1,880 points for the Clemson Tigers, a university scoring record that still stands today. He came to Clemson as Horace Grant’s backup, but by his senior season, he and Dale Davis formed a formidable frontline that led the Tigers to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
“I am deeply saddened to learn of Elden Campbell’s passing,” Cliff Ellis, Campbell’s head coach at Clemson, said in a statement released by the university. Elden was a great player for four years, especially in 1989-90, when he was a major reason we won Clemson’s only ACC regular season championship. He went on to a 15-year career in the NBA and won a World Championship. But most of all, Elden was an outstanding, giving person. This is a sad day for the Clemson family.”
The Los Angeles Lakers drafted Campbell with the No. 27 pick in the 1990 NBA Draft.
That coming season was Magic Johnson’s last in the NBA — Campbell was on the Lakers’ team that lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals — and from there Campbell was a key part of the Lakers teams between the Showtime era and when Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal came to town. He is still third on the Lakers’ all-time blocked shots list.
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After that, Campbell played for the Hornets, Sonics, and then was part of the 2004 Detroit Pistons championship team, a season where he played in 65 games, primarily off the bench.
For his career, Campbell averaged 10.4 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks across the 1,044 games he played.
Scottie Scheffler is going for the four-peat.
The PGA Tour released the finalists for its Player of the Year (Jack Nicklaus Award) and Rookie of the Year (Arnold Palmer Award) honors Wednesday, and Scheffler once again headlines the ballot.
Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood, Ben Griffin and Rory McIlroy are the finalists for Player of the Year; Michael Brennan, Steven Fisk, William Mouw, Aldrich Potgieter and Karl Vilips are the Rookie of the Year nominees.
Scheffler has won the last three Player of the Year awards, and when he won in 2024 he joined Tiger Woods as the only players to win in three consecutive years. (Tiger won five in a row from 1999-2003 and three in a row from 2005-2007.)
Scheffler is the favorite this year as well. McIlroy might have had the most important win of the season — exorcising his Augusta National demons and claiming the career Grand Slam — but Scheffler won two majors to McIlroy’s one.
Scheffler won six times total, hoisting trophies at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, PGA Championship, Memorial, Open Championship, BMW and Procore. His two majors pushed his career total to four, and he’s now just a U.S. Open win away from becoming the seventh player to win the career Grand Slam. Besides the Masters, McIlroy won the Players and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; he also won the Irish Open, although that victory doesn’t count toward his PGA Tour resume.
Griffin won three times in 2025. Tommy Fleetwood won once, claiming the Tour Championship for his long-awaited first PGA Tour victory.
All five Rookie of the Year finalists won once each in 2025. Potgieter was the only rookie to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and finished 56th in the FedEx Cup Fall standings.
Both awards are determined by a member vote, with ballots closing on Dec. 12 and the winners announced shortly after.
Woods’ 11 Jack Nicklaus Awards are the most ever. Scheffler and McIlroy both have three.
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Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones are back to bounce around the league!
First, they discuss the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks racking up wins despite missing key talent. From there, they discuss the good-but-just-how-good Boston Celtics, the streaking Memphis Grizzlies (Edey time!), and the disappointing Los Angeles Clippers.
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Finally, they close the show with some well deserved player shoutouts; Steve also hits Nekias with a Free Throw he wasn’t prepared for.
Fun all around!
If you ever have NBA or WNBA questions, email us at dunkerspot@yahoo.com.
If youâ€d like to join our Dunker Spot Playoff watch parties — they’re free, and easy to sign up for — you can do so here: https://www.playback.tv/thedunkerspot
(1:22) — San Antonio Spurs
(13:29) — New York Knicks
(33:58) — Boston Celtics
(53:48) — Memphis Grizzlies
(01:06:17) — Los Angeles Clippers
(01:11:59) — Player Shoutouts (plus an evil Free Throw)
Zach Edey has been huge for the Memphis Grizzlies. (David Richard-Imagn Images)
(David Richard-Imagn Images)
ðŸ–¥ï¸ Watch this full episode on YouTube
Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at or atyahoosports.tv
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Tim BontempsDec 2, 2025, 11:00 AM ET
- Tim Bontemps is a senior NBA writer for ESPN.com who covers the league and what’s impacting it on and off the court, including trade deadline intel, expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast.
Longtime NBA forward Danilo Gallinari announced his retirement from basketball Tuesday morning.
Gallinari, 37, spent 16 years in the NBA, playing in 14 seasons — and missing two others with torn ACLs — for several teams, beginning with the New York Knicks, who selected him sixth overall in the 2008 draft.
One of 299 players, per the Elias Sports Bureau, to have played at least 14 NBA seasons, Gallinari also played for the Denver Nuggets, LA Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics (no games logged), Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks.
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The son of Vittorio Gallinari — a teammate and roommate of longtime NBA head coach Mike D’Antoni while the two were members of Olimpia Milano in the 1970s and ’80s — Gallinari is the second-highest-drafted Italian player ever, behind former No. 1 selection Andrea Bargnani, and his 11,607 points is the most of any Italian player in NBA history.
He was best known for his time with the Knicks, where he was the fresh-faced on-court part of their rebuilding project ahead of the star-studded 2010 free agency class while D’Antoni was the head coach, and with the Nuggets, where he arrived as part of the massive trade that brought Carmelo Anthony to New York in 2011.
Danilo Gallinari scored 11,607 points during his 16-year NBA career, the most for any Italian player in league history. Chris Schwegler/NBAE via Getty Images
It was in Denver that Gallinari was part of a 57-win Nuggets team in 2012-13 that was made up of several of the players who came with him as part of that Anthony trade and that appeared ready to make a run in the Western Conference playoffs when Gallinari tore his ACL late in that regular season.
Injuries were, unfortunately, a major storyline of Gallinari’s career, as he missed at least 10 games in all but one of his NBA seasons. He not only missed two entire seasons — 2013-14 and 2022-23 — to ACL tears but also missed the vast majority of his rookie year with a back injury.
But when he was on the court, Gallinari was a tremendously skilled offensive player — particularly given that he was 6-foot-10. His 1,456 3-pointers is the sixth most by any player in NBA history who is at least that tall. In February 2021, while playing with the Hawks, he became one of eight players in league history to hit at least 10 3-pointers while coming off the bench.
Danilo Gallinari made 10 3-pointers off the bench in a game with the Hawks during the 2020-21 season, becoming one of only eight players in NBA history to reach that milestone. Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images
That season with Atlanta marked the only time Gallinari would make it as far as the NBA’s conference finals in his 14-year career, although he capped off his professional career by winning the Puerto Rican league title, and winning the championship series MVP award, with Vaqueros de Bayamon this past summer.
Gallinari’s last game in the NBA was Game 6 of the Bucks’ first-round loss to the Indiana Pacers in the 2024 NBA playoffs.
It seems like Erling Haaland has reached a milestone almost every other week since joining Manchester City in summer 2022.
Among his many feats, the Norwegian striker scored the most goals in a Premier League season (36 in 2022/23) and became the first player to win two Golden Boots in their first two Premier League campaigns.
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1. Alan Shearer (260 goals)
Alan Shearer is the Premier League’s record goalscorer (Image credit: Getty Images)
Shearer’s 34 strikes in 1994/95 – the first of three successive Golden Boots – helped Blackburn pip Manchester United to the title, before he joined boyhood club Newcastle in 1996 and went on to become their record goalscorer with 206 in all competitions.
2. Harry Kane (213 goals)
Harry Kane scored 213 Premier League goals for Tottenham Hotspur (Image credit: Getty Images)
It looked like only a matter of time until the England captain would break Shearer’s record – but then he left Tottenham Hotspur for Bayern Munich in summer 2023.
Kane scored his 213 goals in just 320 games and won three Golden Boots, including one shared with Mo Salah. Shearer will be hoping the 32-year-old doesn’t return to England any time soon.
3. Wayne Rooney (208 goals)
Wayne Rooney is one of three players to hit 200 Premier League goals (Image credit: Getty Images)
The forward kept scoring after he joined Manchester United in 2004 and helped the Red Devils to five top-flight titles under Sir Alex Ferguson.
4. Mohamed Salah (188 goals)
Mo Salah won the Golden Boot last season (Image credit: Alamy)
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Salah has twice shared the Golden Boot, in 2018/19 and 2020/21, and won it outright both in 2017/18 and last season, when his 29 strikes fired Liverpool to the title.
5. Andy Cole (187 goals)
Andy Cole scored 34 goals for Newcastle in 1993-94 (Image credit: Alamy)
After leaving Old Trafford, the former England forward added another 51 top-flight goals across spells at Blackburn, Fulham, Manchester City and Portsmouth.
6. Sergio Aguero (184 goals)
Sergio Aguero won Manchester City the Premier League in 2012 (Image credit: Getty)
The most famous of the Argentinian striker’s 184 Premier League goals is undoubtedly his strike against Queens Park Rangers to win the title for City in the final seconds of the 2011/12 season.
Aguero spread his tally across 10 seasons and won the Golden Boot in 2014/15, despite City finishing 2nd to Chelsea.
7. Frank Lampard (177 goals)
Frank Lampard scored 147 Premier League goals for Chelsea (Image credit: Getty Images)
The highest-placed midfielder on this list, Lampard’s goals played a major part in the three Premier League titles he won at Chelsea in 2004/05, 2005/06 and 2009/10.
The England international scored 147 times for the Blues, with his other 30 goals coming across spells at West Ham United and Manchester City.
8. Thierry Henry (175 goals)
Thierry Henry won the Golden Boot four times in five seasons (Image credit: Getty Images)
Henry’s goals came in just 258 games, with that prolific strike-rate helping the Gunners win the title in 2001/02 and 2003/04, going the latter season unbeaten.
9. Robbie Fowler (163 goals)
Robbie Fowler was nicknamed ‘God’ by Liverpool fans (Image credit: Getty Images)
The fact that Fowler was nicknamed ‘God’ by Liverpool fans shows the esteem in which he was held in on Merseyside.
The striker scored 128 goals for the Reds between 1993 and 2001, before moving on to Leeds United and Manchester City. His Premier League mark was surpassed by Salah only in 2023.
10. Jermain Defoe (162 goals)
Jermain Defoe scored for five Premier League clubs (Image credit: Getty Images)
The former England forward completes the top 10 having been a reliable goalscorer for five clubs during a distinguished Premier League career.
11. Michael Owen (150 goals)
Most of Michael Owen’s goals came in his early years at Liverpool (Image credit: Getty Images)
Having been prolific in his early years, injuries hampered the former England international and he retired in 2013, aged just 33.
12. Les Ferdinand (149 goals)
Les Ferdinand starred for Newcastle in the mid 90s (Image credit: Getty Images)
That included a prolific two seasons on Tyneside between 1995 and 1997, hitting 41 goals as the Toon twice went close to winning the title.
13. Teddy Sheringham (146 goals)
Teddy Sheringham won three Premier League titles at Manchester United (Image credit: Getty Images)
A team-mate of Ferdinand at Tottenham, Sheringham is still third on Spurs’ all-time list of Premier League scorers with 97 goals across two spells.
He added another 31 at Manchester United between 1997 and 2001, when he won three top-flight titles and scored the equaliser in the dramatic 1999 Champions League final win over Bayern Munich that sealed the Treble.
14. Jamie Vardy (145 goals)
Jamie Vardy fired Leicester City to the Premier League title in 2016 (Image credit: Alamy)
Vardy’s tally of 145 is some going for a player who made his Premier League debut aged 27.
The Leicester talisman will always be remembered for his part in the shock 2015/16 title triumph, when he hit 24 goals.
15. Robin van Persie (144 goals)
Robin van Persie won the Golden Boot with Arsenal and Manchester United (Image credit: Alamy)
The Dutchman joined Arsenal in 2004 but it wasn’t until 2011/12 that he really got going, with a 30-goal campaign to win the Golden Boot.
16. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink (127 goals)
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was the Premier League’s joint top scorer in 1998-99 (Image credit: Alamy)
A Golden Boot winner with two different clubs, Hasselbaink shared the award with Dwight Yorke in 1998/99 while at Leeds, then won it outright during his maiden season with Chelsea two years later.
Those spells took the Dutchman into the 100 club, and he boosted his numbers with spells at Middlesbrough and Charlton Athletic.
17. Son Heung-Min (127 goals)
Son Heung-Min spent 10 seasons at Tottenham (Image credit: Alamy)
Joining Hasselbaink on 127 goals is Son Heung-Min, who is second only to Kane in Tottenham’s list of Premier League scorers.
The South Korean forward signed from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015 and spent 10 years in north London before leaving for LAFC in the summer.
18. Robbie Keane (126 goals)
Robbie Keane scored Premier League goals for five clubs (Image credit: Getty Images)
The next Spurs marksman is Keane, whose trademark ‘cartwheel/forward roll/gun-fingers’ celebration greeted many of his 91 goals for the Lilywhites.
The Irishman opened his Premier League account at Coventry City, also finding the net for Leeds, Liverpool, West Ham and Aston Villa.
19. Nicolas Anelka (125 goals)
Nicolas Anelka won the Golden Boot in 2008-09 (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Frenchman won two Premier League titles 12 years apart, following his 1997/98 success while playing for Arsenal with glory at Chelsea in 2009-10.
20. Dwight Yorke (123 goals)
Dwight Yorke won three straight Premier League titles with Manchester United (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Trinidad and Tobago striker shared the Golden Boot with Hasselbaink when he scored 18 times in United’s Treble-winning season of 1998/99.
That followed a successful spell with Villa, where Yorke’s 60 top-flight goals still makes him the club’s third-highest Premier League goalscorer.
21. Raheem Sterling (123 goals)
Raheem Sterling has scored Premier League goals for Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea (Image credit: Getty Images)
It’s now 13 years since Sterling scored his first Premier League goal, bagging the winner for Liverpool against Reading in October 2012.
The England winger has added another 122 for Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea since then, winning four titles with City in the process.
22. Romelu Lukaku (121 goals)
Romelu Lukaku enjoyed a breakthrough season at West Bromwich Albion (Image credit: Alamy)
The Belgian’s breakthrough season came on loan from Chelsea at West Brom in 2012/13, when he scored 17 league goals as a teenager.
More than half of Lukaku’s Premier League strikes were for Everton, where he scored 68 times between 2013 and 2017.
23. Steven Gerrard (120 goals)
Steven Gerrard scored several stunning strikes for Liverpool (Image credit: Getty Images)
Just the second central midfielder on this list after Lampard, many of the Liverpool legend’s 120 goals were sensational strikes from distance.
Despite inspiring the Reds to Champions League glory in 2004/05, Gerrard famously never won the Premier League in his 17 years at Anfield.
24. Ian Wright (113 goals)
Ian Wright is Arsenal’s second-highest all-time goalscorer (Image credit: Getty Images)
The forward-turned-pundit scored a hatful of goals for Crystal Palace and Arsenal before the Premier League’s inception in 1992 – then continued that form throughout the 1990s.
Wright became the Gunners’ record goalscorer, before later being overtaken by Thierry Henry, with 104 in the Premier League.
25. Sadio Mane (111 goals)
Sadio Mane helped Liverpool win their first top-flight title in 30 years in 2020 (Image credit: Getty Images)
Mane made his name in the Premier League with Southampton, earning a move to Liverpool in 2016.
He was joint top-scorer with team-mate Salah in 2018/19 and helped the Reds to their first top-flight title in 30 years the following season.
26. Dion Dublin (111 goals)
Dion Dublin enjoyed a productive spell at Coventry City (Image credit: Getty Images)
The striker joined Manchester United ahead of the Premier League’s maiden campaign in 1992/93 but scored just twice in the top flight.
27. Emile Heskey (110 goals)
Emile Heskey made his name at Leicester City (Image credit: Clive Brunskill /Allsport)
Despite a less than prolific England record of seven goals in 62 caps, Heskey’s long career at the top level saw him join the 100 club.
The forward came through at Leicester City and moved to Liverpool in 2000, before also scoring in the top flight for Birmingham City, Wigan Athletic and Aston Villa.
28. Ryan Giggs (109 goals)
Ryan Giggs scored in 21 consecutive Premier League seasons (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Manchester United legend spent almost a quarter of a century in the first-team at Old Trafford, racking up 632 Premier League appearances to sit third in that particular list.
His goal record wasn’t bad either, with Giggs scoring in 21 consecutive seasons. Oh, and he also holds the record for the most Premier League titles, with 13.
29. Peter Crouch (108 goals)
Peter Crouch is Stoke City’s record goalscorer in the Premier League (Image credit: Getty Images)
Before he became a podcaster and Paddy Power banter merchant, Crouch enjoyed a long career in the Premier League.
The former England international spread his 108 goals across six clubs – Aston Villa, Southampton, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Tottenham and Stoke City – with his tally of 45 for the latter the most in the Premier League by any Potters player.
30. Paul Scholes (107 goals)
Paul Scholes is another Manchester United player in the 100 club (Image credit: Getty Images)
Like fellow United legend Giggs, Scholes is much higher in the appearances table – his 499 is bettered by only 13 players.
The midfielder is another player with an impressive highlight reel – we’ve all seen his volley against Aston Villa which was part of that Premier League goal of the month competition in 2006.
31. Darren Bent (106 goals)
Darren Bent scores with the help of a beach ball against Liverpool in 2009 (Image credit: Alamy)
The striker scored one of the most infamous goals in Premier League history, when his effort for Sunderland against Liverpool in 2009 flew into the net via a beach ball.
32. Didier Drogba (104 goals)
Didier Drogba won four Premier League titles with Chelsea (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Ivory Coast striker joined Chelsea in 2004 and made an immediate impact, helping Jose Mourinho’s side win the title in his first two seasons.
Drogba won the Golden Boot in 2009/10 as the Blues topped the Premier League again, before helping them to a fourth crown during a one-year second spell in 2014/15.
33. Cristiano Ronaldo (103 goals)
Cristiano Ronaldo fired Manchester United to three Premier League titles (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Portuguese forward scored his goals across two spells at Manchester United, including 31 to win the Golden Boot in 2007/08 – one of his three Premier League title wins at Old Trafford.
34. Matt Le Tissier (100 goals)
Matt Le Tissier became a legend at Southampton in the 1990s (Image credit: Getty Images)
A few players in this list have a pretty decent highlight reel and Le Tissier is right up there.
The Southampton legend scored too many crackers to mention, with the goal to reach 100 a stunning volley in the club’s final match at The Dell in 2001.
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Tim BontempsDec 2, 2025, 11:01 AM ET
- Tim Bontemps is a senior NBA writer for ESPN.com who covers the league and what’s impacting it on and off the court, including trade deadline intel, expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast.
Back in June, between Games 2 and 3 of the NBA Finals, former All-Star DeMarcus Cousins made national news when he was ejected from a game in the Puerto Rico league after an altercation with fans. The scuffle, captured in cellphone videos that quickly went viral, landed Cousins a suspension for the remainder of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional season.
But another longtime NBA player was standing just a few feet away as the chaos unfolded: 16-year veteran and onetime No. 6 pick Danilo Gallinari.
And, while sitting at his kitchen table in South Florida last week, Gallinari — with a sheepish grin — admitted something that few watching those videos would notice:
He started it.
“I hit him in his eye twice. We were scrambling to get the [rebound], and he fell down and the referee didn’t call it,” Gallinari told ESPN of that matchup of his Vaqueros de Bayamon against Cousins’ Mets de Guaynabo on June 9.
“And, from there, he started to go crazy at the ref. Our fans are crazy. They started to go at him and he started to have this conversation with one of our fans and I don’t know if he slapped or punched one of our fans — and they started throwing all kinds of stuff at him.
“So it was a huge thing, but everything started because I poked him twice in the eye.”
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But all the attention on Cousins’ dramatic exit overshadowed the fact that Gallinari was playing in Puerto Rico in the first place. It was his final season as a professional on a basketball court, as, after joining the Italian national team during this summer’s EuroBasket tournament, the 37-year-old Gallinari officially announced on Tuesday that he is retiring from the sport.
All of that begs a simple question: Why was Gallinari, who has earned more than $200 million in the NBA and is a basketball icon in his native Italy, plying his trade a couple of hours southeast of his now permanent home in Miami?
It was, as Gallinari said, “Pure love for basketball.”
THE JOURNEY BEGAN with a Sunday morning pickup run.
After Gallinari finished what turned out to be his final NBA season with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2024 — a six-game first-round loss to the Indiana Pacers — the free agent had visions of a 17th year in the 2024-25 campaign.
“I wanted to play my last one even if I knew it was going to be a veteran role, where you don’t play as much and you’re just mentoring guys,” he said.
But that plan required a team to call. Gallinari had relocated to South Florida full time with his wife, sports journalist Eleonora Boi, and at the time their two young children. So while he waited for interest from NBA teams, he stayed in basketball shape by playing in Sunday runs at the University of Miami with former NBA guard Carlos Arroyo and current and former collegiate players.
Arroyo, a Puerto Rico basketball legend who was the flag-bearer in the 2004 Athens Olympics and led his country to a stunning upset of the United States in that tournament, broached the idea of Gallinari continuing his career outside of the NBA.
“We maintained a conversation that went on for two to three months,” Arroyo told ESPN, adding that the two Miami neighbors would regularly meet for coffee in addition to playing pickup games.
“And it wasn’t until the fourth time that we sat down, I was just listening to him telling me [what] stage he’s in his career and what he expected from basketball and what he was willing to commit.”
At the time, Gallinari still had designs on playing a final time for the Italian national team in EuroBasket this fall but knew his only way of doing so was to be playing professionally somewhere in the months before the tournament began.
Gallinari’s final stint in professional basketball afforded him one last chance to play for his home country of Italy. Matteo Marchi/FIBA via Getty Images
Playing in Europe wasn’t a realistic option, as he didn’t want to uproot his young family. Arroyo, though, had recently become a part-owner of Vaqueros de Bayamon, the biggest club in Puerto Rico, which has won a league-leading 17 titles and plays in the 12,000-seat Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum just outside of San Juan.
“At the beginning, I wanted to play in the NBA,” Gallinari said. “I still wanted to finish like that. But then it’s February and I’m not playing.”
Gallinari took the 2½-hour flight from Miami and joined a league that, while perhaps not at the forefront of the minds of American basketball fans, is one steeped in tradition, including legendary coach Phil Jackson spending several seasons there in the mid-1980s.
“He was looking for something more stable, but close to home, somewhere he can finish playing and play at a high level and just play his game and just have fun,” Arroyo said. “And I think it met all his requirements.”
The BSN has become a popular stop for former NBA players. Just this past season, Gallinari was teammates with longtime NBA center JaVale McGee and former lottery pick Chris Duarte. Emmanuel Mudiay, the league’s regular-season MVP, was Gallinari’s rookie when the two were teammates with the Denver Nuggets a decade ago. Bryn Forbes, Hassan Whiteside, Ian Clark and Kenneth Faried were among the former NBA players scattered across BSN rosters.
“Puerto Rico was amazing,” Gallinari said. “It was perfect. It gave me the chance, first of all, to play at a very high level, which I didn’t know was that high, playing 35 minutes a game.
“It had been a while since I played all those minutes, and I was the most important player of the team or one of the most important players of the team. … Those are the feelings that a player wants to have every time, and those are the feelings that I wanted to have and finish with.”
And, from Arroyo’s perspective, the feeling was mutual. “The fans loved him. He just galvanized everything that we had,” Arroyo said.
“We had a set date for him to get here to training camp, and he wanted to get here at least a week earlier because he wanted to show his team, his new teammates, that he was committed to winning a championship. So that tells you a lot about him. He never underestimated the league or the players.”
Gallinari’s stint in Puerto Rico also accomplished two feats that had escaped him in the rest of his decades-long professional career: He hoisted the championship trophy after leading Bayamon to the BSN championship, and he was named the Finals MVP.
“We were extremely, extremely honored to have had him at the end of his career and the way he ended up playing for us,” Arroyo said. “And there were days that I wanted to give him a game or two off because at his age, at the pace of the play in Puerto Rico and playing so many games a week, and he never wanted to take a day off ever.”
In his only season in Puerto Rico, Gallinari and Vaqueros de Bayamon won the Baloncesto Superior Nacional title. He was named the Finals MVP. Edgardo Medina/NurPhoto via Getty Images
And the run to the title there allowed him one final go-round with the Italian national team, which fell in September to Luka Doncic and Slovenia in the round of 16 in what became the final competitive game of Gallinari’s career. Still, he said even without the endgame of that EuroBasket appearance, he would’ve made the journey to Puerto Rico.
“I needed basketball,” Gallinari said. “From August [2024] to February, those months when I wasn’t playing, I needed it. And so it was pure joy. … Until you experience it, you don’t really know. And I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”
TWENTY MILES FROM the setting of what would become his greatest professional achievement, Gallinari’s final basketball chapter nearly took a disastrous turn.
On July 31, on one of Gallinari’s few off days during his time in Puerto Rico — he joked that the team’s coach, Christian Dalmau, “didn’t like days off” — he, his then-six-months-pregnant wife and their two young children went to Isla Verde Beach in nearby Carolina, to which they had been given a resort membership by Arroyo and the team’s other owners.
“I was born close to the beach,” Boi, who grew up on the island of Sardinia, told ESPN. “I love the water. … They wanted to stay inside the pool, but I said, ‘It’s packed. Let’s go to the beach.’ Then, everything happened.”
While the family was wading in shallow water, Boi was bitten on the leg by a shark, and she was rushed to a local hospital to make sure that she and the couple’s unborn child would be all right.
“We grew up watching ‘Baywatch.’ It’s something that you really see in the movies, and [it is] so far away from you that you think that you were never going to experience it.” Gallinari said. “Even the stats say that you are not going to experience it. … It was very shocking. It’s still shocking now.”
And while both Gallinari and Boi said they are still working through the trauma of the incident, in the end there were no complications with the pregnancy, with their baby being born a few weeks ago and everyone doing well.
Gallinari and his wife, sports journalist Eleonora Boi, in 2019. The couple met close to a decade ago, and Boi said she only gave him a chance after her sister urged her to do so. “She said, ‘Please, give him a chance for me!” Boi told ESPN. TM/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Gallinari’s now-expanded family is a major reason he chose to walk away from the sport that has dominated his life since before he was even born.
“Can I [play another season]? Yes. But now I’m 37. I have a big family, beautiful family, three kids, and I want to be able to play with them at a high intensity.
“I’m very competitive. My dad was very competitive with me. … When I beat him the first time, it was a huge deal for us in the family. So I want to be able to live the same things that my dad was able to live with me as a kid with my kids.”
His father, Vittorio, was roommates with Mike D’Antoni while the two were teammates for Olimpia Milano. At the time, D’Antoni was arguably the biggest star in Italy, where he also began to make his name as a coach 30 years ago before coming to the NBA.
And it was in the NBA where D’Antoni, after his remarkable run with Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns in the mid-2000s, was reunited with the Gallinaris when he became the coach of the New York Knicks in May 2008 — a few weeks before the franchise selected Gallinari with the sixth overall pick in that June’s draft.
“His dad was my first roommate when I got to Italy, and for six years, that whole team was inseparable,” D’Antoni said. “We had so many good times that we spent together.
“Just by coaching him, it was a flood of those memories, and his family, and getting to know him as a kid.”
SIXTEEN YEARS INthe NBA took their toll on Gallinari’s body. He didn’t make an All-Star team in his career — 14 official seasons plus two lost to ACL tears a decade apart — and reached the conference finals only once, with the Atlanta Hawks in 2021.
But despite the multiple knee injuries, and missing the vast majority of his rookie year with a separate back issue, he said he’s immensely proud of becoming one of fewer than 300 players to play at least 14 seasons in the NBA, and to have accomplished what he did in the sport.
“Of course there is a fine line between … I think it was an amazing career [but] without injuries, we are talking legendary,” Gallinari said.
Gallinari was drafted by the Knicks in 2008. In 2011, he was part of the blockbuster trade that sent Carmelo Anthony from Denver to New York. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
Some of the people who spent time with him across his many NBA stops — from the Knicks to the Nuggets to the LA Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Hawks before his career finished with stints with the Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and Bucks — agreed.
“He could have been big-time,” said Doc Rivers, who coached Gallinari with the Clippers and Bucks. “I don’t think he ever had more than a year-and-a-half stretch where he was healthy, and that derailed him. Especially late, when we had him with the Clippers. …
“That’s what I was so impressed with, that he had lost a lot of his speed and he still was smart enough to play basketball.”
“A lot different,” D’Antoni said, when asked what Gallinari’s career would’ve looked like without the injuries. “He immediately had that back injury his rookie year, and those are hard to come back from.
“It’s not easy to have the career he’s had with the constant injuries that plagued him.”
None of those injuries, though, hurt quite as much as the torn ACL he suffered with the Nuggets during the 2012-13 season. That Denver team, the year after he joined as part of the package that brought Carmelo Anthony to New York, won 57 games under coach George Karl and was on pace to be a top seed when Gallinari injured his knee in April, causing him to miss the rest of that season and the entirety of 2013-14.
Gallinari spent more than six years with the Nuggets, helping lead Denver to 57 wins in 2012-13. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
“I feel like we could have done something if he doesn’t get hurt,” longtime NBA forward Corey Brewer, now an assistant coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, said of that Nuggets team. “That’s one of the best teams I ever played on.”
Though Gallinari went on to have very productive stints with the Clippers, Thunder and Hawks for the next several years before the second ACL tear wiped out his best chance to win an NBA title with the 2022-23 Boston Celtics, those lost seasons in Denver remain a fleeting memory of what could have been.
“I was the best player on the team, the franchise is counting on me for that year, and many years ahead,” Gallinari said. “We are one of the best teams in the league. We are third in the West, we are projected to go far in the playoffs and with the chance to win a championship.
“That’s the feeling a player wants at least once in their life: that you are the best.”
Gallinari has accepted how his career played out and has no issues moving into the next phase of his life, between different business opportunities he’s involved with and spending time with his family. That peace is largely due to how things ended in Puerto Rico, where he finally experienced what he spent 16 years searching for in the NBA.
“When you are a basketball player, you want to feel that,” Gallinari said. “But then you start to be a backup, and then you play less and less and less and you get away from those feelings.
“Puerto Rico gave me my feelings back.”
Raducanu shot to worldwide fame when she won the US Open as an 18-year-old in 2021.
She has previously been the victim of a stalker, with another man given a five-year restraining order in 2022 after he walked 23 miles to her home.
The Englishwoman had increased security with her at tournaments after the upsetting incident in Dubai, and praised events for the protection she was given.
In June, Raducanu told BBC Sport she had been feeling more safe at tournaments, but was still wary whenever she went out.
She is training with coach Francisco Roig in Barcelona this month, but has spent much of the past few weeks commuting to London by train from her parents’ house in Bromley.
Raducanu said she had considered going on holiday after ending her season early because of illness and a foot problem, but wanted to experience home comforts.
“I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but spending quality time with my parents has been so nice,” she said.
“It reminds me of when I was younger – the same bedroom, same everything.”
While being part of rush hour travel is an experience in itself, Raducanu says she is becoming more comfortable being recognised in public.
“In rush hour, people are so locked in to their world. They’re not really paying attention and probably not expecting to see me either,” she said.
“I have my hood up, or whatever, but they’re just so focused and absorbed in their own world.
“It’s all so crazy. It’s like everyone’s on a mission. You have to get the elbows out, just to get through.
“If people recognise me, if people see me, and they want to come up to me, then that’s great, but I don’t necessarily feel like I’m hiding from anything any more.”
December 2, 2025 | Paul Stimpson
Tin-Tin Ho picked up two good 3-0 wins, including against second seed Natalia Bajor, to move into the last 16 of the Women’s Singles at the WTT Feeder Parma in Italy.
Ho (WR 250) won the first three points to set the tone against Poland’s Bajor (WR 64) and she pulled away to win the first 11-5, but she had more of a battle from then on.
In the second, it was a run of four points from 6-7 which set up an 11-8 scoreline in her favour, while in the third she trailed 8-4 before embarking on a run of five. The match was still not over as Ho saw Bajor save a match point, but she took her second chance.
Ho next plays 14th seed Tatiana Kukulkova (WR 121) of Slovakia in the last 16 on Tuesday at 11.45am UK time, on Table 1. Watch on the WTT YouTube channel.
Earlier, Ho beat Lee Seojin (WR 407) of South Korea in the round of 64. Ho lost the first four points of the match but then kicked into gear, winning the next five and pulling clear from then on to win the game 11-7.
She was in front for most of the second game but saw Lee save two game points before she took her third chance to seal it 12-10.
It was also 12-10 in the third, though this time Ho saved a game point before taking her chance and ending the match.
Results
Womenâ€s Singles
Round of 64
Tin-Tin Ho bt Lee Seojin (KOR) 3-0 (11-7, 12-10, 12-10)
Round of 32
Ho bt Natalia Bajor (POL) 3-0 (11-5, 11-8, 12-10)
Jalen Brunson is off to an MVP-caliber start to the season with the Knicks, and he earned a different award on Monday, when he was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
In four games last week, Brunson averaged 28.8 points and 4.5 assists per game, shooting 40.7 percent from three-point range.
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Perhaps most importantly, the Knicks went 4-0 in those four games, including a 118-109 win over Milwaukee in which Brunson went off for 37 points.
“Thereâ€s not enough [MVP] chatter,†head coach Mike Brown said of Brunson after the win over Milwaukee. “Itâ€s early, so Iâ€m not throwing a fit, but the guy had 37 tonight on 12-of-21 (shooting), and he gets blitzed often and he makes the right play — he did what heâ€s supposed to do, and thatâ€s why we donâ€t talk about it because thatâ€s what heâ€s capable of.
“But hopefully you guys will start talking the right way about this young man in terms of him having some MVP talk because thatâ€s what he is. Weâ€re not playing the best basketball right now, but weâ€re trending in the right direction and heâ€s the engine behind it, so to me he did what he’s supposed to do which equates to him being the MVP.â€
Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncicearned Western Conference Player of the Week honors.
CHICAGO — Cal Foote has signed an American Hockey League contract with the Chicago Wolves, making him the fourth of five players acquitted of sexual assault in the high-profile trial of members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team to continue his career.
The team announced the deal with the soon-to-be 27-year-old defenseman on Monday. Goaltender Carter Hart signed with the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights in mid-October just after the window opened for the players to be eligible for new contracts.
Forward Michael McLeod, who was also found not guilty of an additional count of being party to the offense of sexual assault, signed a three-year deal with Avangard Omsk of the KHL in October. McLeod played for the club last season as well, after originally signing in the Russia-based league with Barys Astana in Kazakhstan.
Alex Formenton has played for HC Ambri-Piotta in the Swiss Hockey League since 2022 after the Ottawa Senators opted not to re-sign him.
Dillon Dube spent 2024-25 with the KHL’s Dinamo Minsk in Belarus, but the 27-year-old winger has not played this season.
All of the players except Formenton were in the NHL when they were charged in early 2024 in connection to an incident in London, Ontario, in 2018. Foote and McLeod were with New Jersey, Hart with Philadelphia and Dube with Calgary.
Those teams did not extend qualifying offers to the players that summer, and they became free agents. The league announced in September they’d be eligible to sign Oct. 15 and play Dec. 1, and Hart could make his Vegas debut as soon as Tuesday.