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The Russian billionaire who owns the Brooklyn Nets has decided to sell the NBA team amid concerns about its financial losses and performance on court, according to reports. Mikhail Prokhorov, 49, has apparently retained investment adviser Evercore Partners to sell his share of the basketball franchise, which he bought for a staggering $223million in May 2010. The businessman, who is worth an estimated $11.1billion, currently holds 80 per cent of the Nets, as well as 45 per cent of the Barclays Center, the club's two-and-a-half-year-old arena in New York. Of these, only the team is for sale, two sources close...

One of the most gifted and ultimately tragic talents in NBA history has died. Former Dallas Mavericks big man Roy Tarpley, a terrific scorer and rebounder whose career was derailed by drug and alcohol abuse, died in a Dallas hospital Friday at 50 years old.

In the years since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hung up his playing shoes, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer has collected a host of titles, including filmmaker, author and cultural ambassador. He’s been a vocal advocate for African-Americans, and this weekend penned an essay for Time Magazine on the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers on Saturday. Some have linked the shooting to the protests that sprung up after grand juries failed to prosecute the officers who killed Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Abdul-Jabbar disagrees, saying the suggestion the killer was acting in solidarity with the protests is false and a danger to...

The Lakers each had the T-shirts on their chairs in their dressing room before the game. Every player except backup center Robert Sacre wore the shirts. "I think it's us supporting that movement and supporting each other as well as athletes," Bryant said after the game. "I think the beauty of our country lies in its democracy. I think if we ever lose the courage to be able to speak up for the things that we believe in, I think we really lose the value that our country stands for.

Rick Pitino says Louisville didn’t run up the score against Savannah State: ‘We played four white guys and an Egyptian’ Louisville beat Savannah State by 61 points Monday night, 87-26. With five minutes to go in the first half, the No. 6 Cardinals led 29-0 ... “I tried everything. We played four white guys and an Egyptian ..." [coach Rick Pitino]

Dwight Howard is under criminal investigation for child abuse ... law enforcement sources tell TMZ. We've learned the Cobb County PD in Georgia now has an active criminal investigation into allegations he beat his 6-year-old son Braylon with a belt buckle. TMZ Sports broke the story ... the Dept. of Children and Families in Florida (DCF) determined there wasn't enough evidence of child abuse to go forward, but it turns out the incident occurred in Georgia. Howard admits he hit his kid with a belt, but says he didn't know it was wrong because he was hit as a kid.

Sports fans who bristle at all manner of anti-capitalist leanings in the political or business world routinely side with leagues and team owners when it comes to capping salaries for players who could and usually should earn far more than they’re making. Sports fans who pair face-painting and American flag lapel pin-wearing suddenly turn into crusty old Bolsheviks when it comes to taking free-market enterprise out of the sports they love.

Last week a Black Islamist professional basketball player refused to come out of his team’s locker room claiming he did so because his “religion” requires him to honor only Islam and nothing else. If you haven’t heard about this don’t be surprised. Sharia has been creeping into professional sports in America through Black athletes for the last several years. All of these players with made up “Islamist” names are under the spell of CAIR and groups like it. Combining this with the “Muslim population Rule,” which holds that as they grow in numbers within a given universe they will become...

Dion Waiters informs Northeast Ohio Media Group that he is a Muslim and plans to skip national anthems • Update: Dion Waiters clarifies remarks about his pregame ritual, will be there for anthems DENVER, Colo. – Prior to the Cavaliers getting set to take on the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, one of their players was missing from the pregame opening events. Dion Waiters was nowhere to be found when the national anthem was being sung. He was absent when the starting lineups were introduced. It was the first game of the season that he was coming off the bench. He...

LeBron James isn't looking like LeBron James right now.This may or may not mean anything. The Cleveland Cavaliers — who added LeBron, Kevin Love, Shawn Marion, and Mike Miller in the offseason — are in the embryonic stage of their development. Also, 80% of LeBron is better than pretty much every other player in the NBA. But LeBron is definitely off. He hasn't been the overpowering physical force he was in Miami early in his second stint with the Cavaliers. There are a wide variety of theories for why — age? weight loss? injury? master plan? — but no single...

A cancer sufferer achieved her dream of playing in her first college basketball game on Sunday, scoring the first points of the match. Mount St Joseph freshman Lauren Hill, 19, was diagnosed last year with an inoperable brain tumor and was told she had years to live. In September, doctors had a grim update - she wouldn't make it past December - and after years as a standout high school basketball player, Hill's hopes of playing college ball were put in jeopardy.

Tony ManfredOctober 10, 2014 Shaquille O'Neal is 7'1" and perhaps the most physically imposing player the NBA has ever seen. Yao Ming, at 7'6", dwarfs him in a photo posted to Shaq's Instagram. Yao wasn't just tall, he was historically, exceptionally tall even by NBA standards. We have more thoughts on this below (via r/NBA):shaq yao ming@shaq Our initial theory was that Yao gained weight, resulting in a size disparity that made him appear taller than Shaq than he used to be. But then we went back and looked at some pictures, and it's clear that Yao made Shaq look...

Race has been in the news recently, as it should be more than it is. First the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri captured everyone’s attention, and is still making news. Then a starkly racist email sent by Atlanta Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson brought back the topic of race relations in the NBA where the owners are mostly white and the players black. And then this week psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt won a MacArthur “genius” award for her groundbreaking work on the powerful influence out-of-awareness racial attitudes have in the criminal justice system. Because her research can help us understand troubling news...

Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson cited an “inappropriate and offensive” e-mail he sent two years ago in an abrupt announcement Sunday that he will sell his controlling interest in the team. “I have said repeatedly that the NBA should have zero tolerance for racism, and I strongly believe that to be true. That is why I voluntarily reported my inappropriate e-mail to the NBA." ***** 4. Regarding game ops, i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn’t much focus on game ops. then one day a light bulb went off....

Donald Sterling's former assistant claims she never had sex with the billionaire bigot because he’s homosexual — and she was his beard. V. Stiviano made the bombshell allegation in court paperwork filed Thursday as an answer to a prior lawsuit filed by Sterling’s wife, Shelly Sterling, a source told the Daily News.

A federal judge has ruled that the NCAA can't stop college football and basketball players from selling the rights to their names and likenesses, opening the way to athletes getting payouts once their college careers are over. In a landmark decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in favor of former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon and 19 others in a lawsuit that challenged the NCAA's regulation of college athletics on antitrust grounds. In a partial victory for the NCAA, though, Wilken said the NCAA could set a cap on the money paid to athletes, as long as...

That's the approach the player formerly known as Ron Artest is taking as he prepares to play his first season in China. China Daily reported that Artest, known most recently as Metta World Peace, has decided to change his name to "Panda Friend."

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)During a town hall with young people, President Obama explained how he deals with people who criticize him. “I just don’t watch TV,” Obama joked, after he was asked about his critics during a town hall promoting the White House "My Brother's Keeper" initiative. Obama advised young people to listen to critics who actually had their interests at heart. “Who gives you constructive criticism because they’re invested in the same things you are but maybe can see the things you can’t, versus folks who are just -- what’d someone say -- hatin’? Somebody just hatin’, just haters?” Obama said. Obama...

Red Klotz, who owned, coached and played for a number of teams that toured with and lost to the Harlem Globetrotters — most famously the Washington Generals — died Saturday in his sleep in Margate, N.J., the Press of Atlantic City reported. He was 93. Klotz was a prep basketball standout in Philadelphia, twice being named that city’s high school player of the year before going on to play at Villanova. He was on the Baltimore Bullets’ 1947-48 NBA championship team. At 5 feet 7, he is tied with six others as the third-shortest NBA player ever, and was the...

LeBron James is removing his talents from Miami. Four years after stunning the NBA world with “The Decision,” the Miami Heat forward announced an even larger revelation on SI.com Friday, perhaps destined to be called “The Redemption.” James, 29, will return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, close to his hometown of Akron and far from the sunny beaches where he led the Heat to four NBA Finals appearances, two ending in championships. "I’m not promising a championship," James says in the first-person essay. "I know how hard that is to deliver. We’re not ready right now. No way. Of course, I...