Jemele Hill

A few years ago, Magic Johnson told a story about Michael Jackson that seems almost unimaginable today. In the 1980s, the former Los Angeles Lakers superstar invited Jackson to a Lakers game, an invitation the singer was initially hesitant to accept because he was worried that his presence would create too much of a frenzy. As it turned out, those fears were justified. “He sat down; people went crazy,” Johnson recalled to Variety. “They were running from upstairs, the sides.

It’s rare in professional sports to see a star publicly excoriate league leadership. Last week, the Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier delivered a savage takedown of commissioner Cathy Engelbert, saying the sport had “the worst leadership in the world” and accusing Engelbert of jeopardizing player safety by failing to address concerns with poor officiating.
“The real threat to our league isn’t money,” Collier said. “It isn’t ratings or even missed calls or even physical play.

Luther Campbell, the front man for one of the most controversial rap groups in history, has advice for Jimmy Kimmel and for any media executives trying to decide how to respond to the Trump administration’s attempts to censor disfavored speech: You’ve got to fight. He would know. When the government came after him and his music, he fought, and he won, creating a legal precedent that still protects artists and entertainers who offend the sensibilities of those in power.

For the first time in the nearly three-decade history of U.S. professional women’s basketball, its star players have become household names. What would it take for them to get paid accordingly?
While warming up recently for the WNBA All-Star Game, players wore T-shirts that read Pay Us What You Owe Us, in reference to the ongoing collective-bargaining negotiations between the players and the league.

If there were any truth to the running joke—or conspiracy theory—that the NBA rigs games so that big-market teams like the Los Angeles Lakers end up in the NBA Finals, then this year’s matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers would be disastrous for the league. In reality, NBA owners have gotten exactly what they wanted.
Although television ratings are down, the NBA’s plan to bring more parity to the league is working.

As a female journalist who has covered women’s sports for years, I have long dreamed of the day that female athletes would demand the level of media attention traditionally reserved for men.
Now that day is finally here—and it’s a lot less satisfying than I imagined.
The arrival of a dynamite WNBA rookie class, headlined by the sensational Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has prompted an explosion of coverage of women’s basketball.

When the O. J. Simpson verdict was announced, I was a junior at Michigan State University. At the time, I was the managing editor of my college newspaper, The State News, so I didn’t have the luxury of reacting emotionally one way or the other. I had the responsibility of figuring out how our publication was going to present to 40,000 students this stunning outcome to what many had called “the trial of the century.

The NCAA women’s-basketball season officially concluded a banner season on Sunday with breathless drama, even though it wasn’t a surprise ending.
In a season stocked with unprecedented highs, the heavily favored University of South Carolina Gamecocks won the national championship over the University of Iowa.

This week, the pro baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani addressed the media for the first time since his name surfaced in an investigation of an alleged illegal gambling ring. He told reporters that the $4.5 million in wire transfers from his account had been sent without his knowledge by his friend and interpreter, and that he had “never bet on baseball or any other sports.”
Opening Day is this week, and Major League Baseball can’t be happy about this cloud over its biggest star.

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET on February 17, 2024
This wasn’t supposed to be Patrick Mahomes’s year—that’s the scary part.
There were plenty of times this season when the Kansas City Chiefs and their star quarterback looked vulnerable, including a stretch when they lost four out of six games.

The NFL made some significant coaching hires recently that might indicate that the league is headed in a more promising direction when it comes to employing Black head coaches.
Thursday, ESPN reported that the Atlanta Falcons will be hiring Raheem Morris to be their next head coach, making him the third Black coach to be elevated during this season. Previous hiring cycles haven’t been kind to Black coaches.

One of Aaron Rodgers’s biggest strengths as a Hall of Fame–caliber player is his awareness. At his best, the New York Jets quarterback can anticipate the movements of aggressive defenders and use his legs to create breathtaking plays down the field.
If only Rodgers possessed such sharp awareness away from the football field, where he seems to have a knack for creating unnecessary drama and exposing himself as a fake intellectual who can’t seem to stop showcasing his rampant narcissism.

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET on November 17, 2023After Michigan’s impressive 24–15 win over Penn State last weekend, the offensive coordinator, Sherrone Moore, broke down in tears as he professed his loyalty to the head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who could not be present at the game. “I fucking love you, man,” he said in a live TV interview, choking back emotion. “I love the shit out of you, man. We did this for you.

In her new memoir, Worthy, the actor Jada Pinkett Smith quotes the Marvel Comics superhero Wanda Maximoff to point out how women are often punished by double standards.During a tense exchange with Doctor Strange in the blockbuster Marvel movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Maximoff reminds the male title character of how differently she is perceived because of her gender, even though both possess powerful supernatural abilities that can benefit or endanger humanity.

Right before Sha’Carri Richardson smoked the field in the 100-meter final at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in July, the 23-year-old star sprinter sent a thrilling message to every Black woman who’s ever been shamed for her hairstyle and never felt fully free to be herself.Richardson pulled off her signature bright-orange wig and threw it to the side, exposing the braids underneath. She then won the U.S.

The kickoff to the college-football season is a few weeks away, but fans are already seeing 2023’s biggest showdown—one that pits the long-term interests of schools and conferences against their own insatiable greed.When a major football power switches from one conference to another—disrupting existing rivalries in favor of new opponents less familiar to fans—it’s always controversial.

When PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was asked last year about his indefinite suspension of 17 players for joining the rival LIV Golf league, Monahan chastised the golfers for choosing money over morality.Because LIV gets its money from Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy notorious for its human-rights abuses, Monahan implied that players who chose LIV over professional golf’s preeminent league would regret their association with the kingdom.

When the head of a major sports organization is caught on video slapping his wife multiple times, his career should be in jeopardy. But other than a few days of remarkably mild criticism, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White appears to be avoiding any real professional consequences.Last week, TMZ released a video that shows White in a heated argument with his wife, Anne, at a nightclub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on New Year’s Eve.

Daystar Peterson, the performer known as Tory Lanez, is on trial in Los Angeles after he allegedly shot fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion in both of her feet two years ago. But in the court of public opinion, she is the person who’s really being judged.The critically acclaimed, top-selling artist, whose real name is Megan Pete, was injured in a July 2020 incident that began as she, Peterson, and others were driving away from a party.

In 2004, my mother accompanied me to Long Beach, California, for the United States Olympic swimming trials. I was going to be covering the Athens Summer Olympics for the Detroit Free Press that year, and I was sent to the trials to write about a young phenom named Michael Phelps, who went on to become the greatest American swimmer in history and one of the most decorated Olympians of all time.I knew my mother would enjoy the trials because of her deep passion for swimming. She loves the water.

Not many people can make Charles Barkley, the former NBA MVP and legendarily outspoken broadcaster, pipe down. But the NBA icon Bill Russell, who died on Sunday aged 88, once called Barkley and did just that.“He called me. ‘Charles Barkley, this is Bill Russell.’ I said, ‘Oh hey, Mr. Russell,’” Barkley told me. “He said, ‘I need you to shut the fuck up.’ I said, ‘Okay.

College-sports traditionalists were appalled last week when the Big Ten athletic conference announced that it will add UCLA and the University of Southern California to its membership in 2024—creating a seismic shift in the college-sports landscape that will generate millions of dollars in revenue for the two California powerhouse programs.This reorganization is the strongest indicator yet that college sports is cannibalizing itself.

I was on an overnight flight from Los Angeles to New York City during the Academy Awards, so at first I didn’t see the Will Smith–Chris Rock fiasco that sent America into a complete tizzy. But when I was finally able to turn on my cellphone, I had 653 text messages.Six hundred and fifty-three.By now, you’ve probably seen multiple videos and angles of Smith slapping Rock.

Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET on March 24, 2022.The Cleveland Browns are acting as if they conducted a high-level, CSI-like investigation before offering Deshaun Watson a five-year, $230 million deal late last week. It’s a laughable pretense.The quarterback, formerly of the Houston Texans, faces 22 civil lawsuits accusing him of a range of inappropriate and coercive sexual behavior.

The Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner is one of the most dominant WNBA players ever. Yet now she’s in custody in Russia—a predicament that not only threatens her safety amid a major global crisis but also exposes the inferior status of professional women’s basketball in America.

In a damning 58-page class-action lawsuit against the NFL, Brian Flores presents screenshots of a text-message exchange that crystallizes the dilemma Black coaches routinely find themselves in: They’re supposed to play along with a hiring system that officially requires teams to consider minority candidates for top jobs but that, in practice, is plainly biased against them.

Coaches such as David Culley, just fired from the Houston Texans, and Brian Flores, of the Miami Dolphins until very recently, face a major problem in the NFL. It’s not their pedigree. It’s not their experience. It’s not their ability to relate to players. It’s not their offensive or defensive schemes.It’s that they’re Black.

Updated at 8:20 p.m. ET on January 15, 2022After a dramatic weeklong fight with the world’s top men’s tennis player, Australia’s immigration authorities wisely decided to revoke Novak Djokovic’s visa a second time because he flouted the country’s COVID-19 policies. Although the Australian authorities and tennis officials aren’t blameless, this is a huge, self-inflicted public-relations crisis for Djokovic that has smeared his legacy.

The Brooklyn Nets have officially ended their tug-of-war with Kyrie Irving over the star point guard’s vaccination status. And Irving, who has refused to get a COVID-19 shot, is unquestionably the winner.The rapid spread of the coronavirus’s Omicron variant has left gaps on rosters across the NBA.

The NBA player Enes Freedom is showing the danger of attracting the wrong kind of supporters.Formerly Enes Kanter, the 29-year-old Boston Celtics center took a new surname when he became an American citizen on Monday.