Steven Soderbergh’s basketball drama probes the fraying covenant between white power brokers and their mostly black labor forceSteven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, written by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney and available for streaming on Netflix, is the finest movie ever made about the business of professional sports, not for the answers it purports to give about a billion-dollar industry charged by undercurrents of race and politics but the questions it asks. Related: High Flying Bird review – Soderbergh scales new heights on Netflix Continue reading...
Brixton Topcats coach Jimmy Rogers dies leaving an All-Star legacy and thousands of winners in the game of lifeMeeting him, that voice is what you’re going to notice straight away,” says “Marvellous” Marvin Addy, a British basketball player, now coach. He’s talking about Jimmy Rogers, a legend of the sport in this country, sometimes known as “The Bishop of Brixton”. Addy goes on: “It sounds like God talking. Deep, very deep, as soon as he speaks everyone in the whole sports hall will hear it. He can’t whisper ... couldn’t whisper to save his life.”Addy drifts between past and present, perhaps without even realising it. On Monday it was announced that the 78-year-old Rogers, the long-time coach of the Brixton...
The NBA’s best player could be on his way out of Cleveland (again) after declining his player option on Friday, but there’s something hollow about his thankless pursuit of Michael Jordan’s six titlesLeBron James, who declined his player option with the Cleveland Cavaliers and became a free agent on Friday, is a superstar in a predicament of his own making. He essentially created the culture of NBA stars teaming up to win championships, one that allowed Kevin Durant to make the Golden State Warriors a dynasty at his own expense. The unfortunate thing for James is he gets no credit. While Durant is hailed as a selfless hero who stifled his ego to win two titles with the Warriors, LeBron...
A team-by-team analysis suggests some clubs will improve overnight while others won’t see returns for a few years (if ever)NBA draft 2018 – as it happenedThere may be no bigger gamble than the NBA draft: a four-hour procession of tall, young men with impossibly long arms, long on potential and short on certainty. No one with any credibility can say with assuredness that any team “won” or “lost” Thursday’s draft at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Most of the top players picked have five months of college careers and a handful of empty-gym workouts to show the teams who selected them. This draft might well have the next Kobe Bryant or Stephen Curry, but it probably doesn’t. It will likely be remembered...
The 41-year-old coach of the undermanned Boston Celtics has emerged as one of the sport’s sharpest minds, but reaching the NBA finals without his two best players would be his best trick yetThe first time I met Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens was outside Butler University’s famed Hinkle Fieldhouse. It was winter 2012, less than a year after Stevens, then the coach at the tiny Indianapolis school, had led Bulldogs to their second consecutive NCAA championship game. I was with a friend who knew Stevens a little and wanted to say hello. I was surprised Stevens had agreed to meet us. Most college coaches don’t have time for such things, especially in the middle of the season with practice barely...